Who Is the Mexican President Friends With?

The Cuban people or the Communist Party?

By Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

HAVANA TIMES – Cuba’s Government is literally the “government of the Cuban Communist Party”, the PCC, not the Cuban people. You can be romantic, but not stupid, and it doesn’t look like Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) is aware of that yet. This is the reality of Cuban politics and if we were to say anything else, it would be science fiction, demagogy, or childish ignorance of Cuban reality, depending on whose mouth it comes out of.

Our people don’t elect, nominate, or exercise sovereignty. The PCC does all of this directly or indirectly; covered up or in the bright light of day; but it’s them that does it. When the principle of “self-determination” is brandished, it just doesn’t apply to Cuba because the Cuban people don’t have the political means to choose anything. This isn’t a normal country, it’s a country riddled with tyranny and totalitarianism, and we can’t even try to participate or protest.

AMLO and the rest of the presidential troupe that don’t speak up to demand our most basic human rights but use all their political capital to stand up for the PCC dictatorship’s acceptance from the international community as a legitimate government, have no interest in the combat order issued against the Cuban people on July 11th, with the Cuban Government deploying all of its repressive forces against a legitimate and incredibly orderly protest.

Nor is he interested in the criminalization of this protest with thousands of people arrested and hundreds of politicized trials. They aren’t interested in the fact there was a fatality, and that it wasn’t a police officer killed by an enraged people, but a Cuban citizen who was protesting and was killed by a police officer.

Nobody knows the name of this police officer still, there hasn’t been a trial that I am aware of, and in the meantime, they have been merciless with protestors, using Laws and courts to punish and intimidate them. This is how they convince Cubans not to use their own constitutional rights against the system. 

Nor do AMLO and company care about the domestic blockade on Cubans’ economic freedom, which is the main reason for our hardship. Furthermore, if these prohibitions and obstacles to free economic activity didn’t exist, the US blockade wouldn’t be in force because it isn’t targeting the private sector, but the state-led sector controlled by the PCC.

Every blockade is reprehensible, but nobody with ethics and decency will first demand a foreign power to lifts its blockade before first demanding this from the national blockade which is even more cruel and rigitd, and over more sensitive issues.

This is why it’s abusive, cruel and conspiratorial for them to talk about Cuba’s problem as an issue that Cubans need to resolve without anyone else interfering; without anyone to support and stand in solidarity with us; and that until we are able to shake ourselves free of this yoke, other countries should be dealing with the PCC Government, as if nothing were happening.

Just like female victims of domestic violence need external help, so do people living under tyranny. Closing your eyes to respect another person’s house than people’s dignity is collusion, and that’s worse than being the abuser’s friend.

The excuse of “not interfering with domestic affairs” isn’t legitimate in the case of Cuba. The PCC isn’t the people of Cuba, it’s the Cuban people and anyone who says they’re a friend of the Cuban people who needs to be advocating for popular sovereignty, not the PCC’s alleged right to govern us forever.

Why does the Mexican leader believe that we Cubans don’t deserve democracy or to enjoy human rights or at least have a democratic space to fight like the Mexicans do? Why do they believe we deserve a dictatorship, that doesn’t consult us or allow a free debate? Our sovereignty?

If AMLO was really the Cuban people’s friend, instead of wasting his energy trying to make dictatorships shine in a good light and be tolerated, it would have been better to have asked Diaz-Canel to release every political prisoner in Cuba, and to begin a sincere national dialogue with the opposition and civil society, as part of the advice or idea that he put on the table of “updating the Revolution.” 

Which would mean, if they wanted to do something useful for this suffering people, searching for a new social agreement where there is space for every Cuban, with democracy, economic freedom, and all our human rights. However, AMLO made it very clear who his friend is.

Read more by Osmel Ramirez here.