A Spanish Cuba?
HAVANA TIMES – As many know, in a dramatic turn of events, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Trump administration’s appeal and has decided to unfreeze the executive order that revokes the benefits of the Humanitarian Parole program for thousands of Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
This measure strips beneficiaries from these four countries of their work permits and puts them at risk of deportation.
What’s most striking is the overwhelming support for these measures from the Cuban community, judging by the comments circulating on social media.
To these US residents and citizens of Cuban origin, those of us who entered through the program are branded as criminals, frauds, communists, etc.
They can’t hide their delight. To them, the executive is doing the right thing for the security and economy of the United States — their country.
It doesn’t matter if they were born in Cuba, or if they themselves once entered the country irregularly. Who remembers that? They’re so pathetic they perceive themselves as white, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Anglo-Saxon Americans.
These circumstances have pushed me toward an idea that has been taking hold of my convictions for weeks.
It’s clear that Cuba is going through its deepest crisis — not just socially, but more importantly, morally and spiritually.
Cuba is now reaping the consequences of more than six decades of socialist totalitarianism: the destruction of the national soul.
Most Cubans today fall into three well-defined groups:
- Supporters of the regime
- Those living in survival mode, broken by double standards and disgrace
- The far-right Trump supporters, mostly based in South Florida
The latter consider themselves staunchly anti-communist, but they are anything but democratic. Spiritually, they’re aligned with Castroism — they use the same methods, the same strongman-style attitudes, and the same intolerance toward independent thought.
They’re a kind of sect, a cult of the leader. In the absence of Fidel, they now have Trump.
The real opposition, the true exile, is rendered invisible in the midst of this crossfire.
The idea that has been hammering in my brain for weeks is that Cuba has no solution. We’ve reached the point of no return. There is no model of Western democracy or free market that can save us from such pettiness, hypocrisy, and evil — from so much disgrace and international ridicule.
Sometimes I feel ashamed to call myself Cuban. Sometimes I wonder whether Martí and the rest of our founding fathers might have been wrong — whether a Spanish Cuba might have been better. Today we’d be a province of Spain and would be better off. We’d have democracy despite that country’s own issues.
Sometimes I think of renouncing my Cuban identity and defining myself as Spanish. After all, that’s where my ancestors came from.
I don’t know. It’s an idea that hammers in my brain.
Would Spain set up a Cuban colony / entity on the mainland, to be able to break sanctions in a “desirable way” for “future positive development”?
Cuban-Americans on the right don’t turn to Trump in the absence of Fidel. That statement is wrong because they’re polar opposites and enemies – despite the argument that both have authoritarian leanings. Nor do they think that they are Anglo-Saxon, because they don’t have to be Anglo-Saxon to be conservative or white, as they almost all descend from Spaniards, who are not Anglo-Saxon but are in fact European. Some people of Cuban descent do, however, agree with your final idea… that Cuba would have been better off as a part of Spain. A majority of the Cuban people of those times were direct descendants of Spaniards, and a large number today are still direct descendants of Spaniards. Martí, Castro, etc., betrayed their ancestors and led the island into disaster. Cuba has no solution, as it has been fractured beyond repair. You can identify as Spanish as an individual and forget Cuba. Leave Cuba to the modern Cubans. It is their island now and only they can determine what happens to it. But some of us don’t have to identify with what they have created. So you forget a 4th category of Cuban-descent people, those who don’t care about Cuba anymore and can redefine themselves because a tiny republic of less than 200 years does not deserve so much credit anyway. Some people are a vestige of a Spanish Cuba that no longer exists, and will never exist again.
When I met the family of my Cuban wife in Guantanamo, many of them whispered behind my back “he seems nice but did she have to choose a negro?” The chiste is that some of those family members saying this had complexions darker than me! Anyway, this anecdote highlights the schizophrenia that plagues so many Cubans. In their efforts to escape the “negative” stereotypes of being Cuban, they are constantly more than willing to work contrary to their own interests. Cuban society is riddled with hypocrisy. A large number of Miami Cubans seemed to delight in the suffering of their paisanos just as the author of this post declares. Cubans in Cuba are just as bad. When a woman meets a foreign man, genuinely falls in love wih him, marries and moves abroad, the chisme about her real motives explodes. She is assumed to have been jineteando and simply got lucky and found a sucker to pay for her escape. Marco Rubio, a first generation Cuban-American is proving to be the worst example of the Cuban criticism of Cubans who drink the Coca-Cola and then forget their roots.