Cuba Amid Games of Hunger

By Fernando Ravsberg

HAVANA TIMES — The Ladies in White and other dissident groups published a letter against the European Union for having reached an agreement with Cuba and normalizing bilateral relations. They hope to push Brussels to exert financial pressure on the island again in this way.

A member from the La Joven Cuba website wrote: “If I ever felt tired; if I felt that there weren’t enough reasons to defend the Revolution, I would sit down and watch the counter-revolution’s videos. They are a school of thought, they clear up any doubts and recharge your batteries to move forward.”

I publish this because I perfectly understand the reaction of many Cubans when they realize that these groups are set out to besiege them again, when anti-Castroites in Miami and “dissidents” in Cuba are criticizing Europe, they are applauding Trump’s policy against Cuba.

Washington’s policy shift clearly revealed who the real “enemies” are, which plays to the Cuban government’s favor politically-speaking. However, they are harming the country, the economy – both the macro and family economy will suffer as a result of cutting back on relations with the US.

It was pitiful to see these “saviors of the Cuban people” applauding Trump and singing the US anthem with their hand on their heart. It could only be compared to when the dissident who ran through Revolution Square, raising a US flag.

The Cuban government has always accused them of being “mercenaries who serve the Empire” but I have to admit that the opposition makes it really easy for them to do this. We could even say that the official propaganda machine doesn’t fully use the photos that dissidents give them.

The Anti-Castro movement doesn’t seem to have generational problems, young people like Rosa Maria Paya or Antonio Rodiles, continue to use the same strategy from the 1960s: to pressure the US to overthrow the Revolution. It wasn’t a coincidence that invaders of the Bay of Pigs were present as well.

Among the dissidents present on June 16^th in Miami, it’s worth mentioning Jorge Luis Garcia (aka. Antunez), who applauded but wasn’t completely happy. The changes being undertaken by Trump seem to be lukewarm to him, so he wrote a letter to the White House asking it to take a more hardline approach.

Antunez is demanding that the Economic Embargo be maintained and that Washington receives a green light to use “any other form of pressure” against the island, thereby establishing a “policy against the government in Havana without the slightest concession.”

He wants Cuba to reappear on the “state sponsors of terrorism” list, which it “should have never been taken off”, and he is declaring himself against cultural exchanges between the two countries. Next to Antunez, Donald Trump looks like a cautious and moderate politician.

Asking the leader of the greatest military and economic power in the world to use any form of pressure against his own country is nothing new, it perfectly fits into a strategy that has been in effect ever since the bearded ones were victorious with their Revolution.

The opposition has always placed their bets, in one way or another, on the US being the one to destroy the Cuban Revolution and later they would hand over the country to them as a gift for good neighborly relations. This reasoning has led them to be defeated time and time again since 1959.

They are still accusing President Kennedy of treason for not ordering the Pentagon to attack Cuba, when the “heroic” members of the 2506 brigade had surrendered at the Bay of Pigs just 72 hours after the 1961 invasion began.

These anti-Communist fighters are very unfair because they were the ones who made this military operation fail because they couldn’t resist long enough. They are ungrateful too given the fact that it was JFK who rescued them, swapping them with Fidel Castro for baby food.

With such partners, it is no wonder that the dissidence is isolated. Every Cuban knows that it is the poorest, the weakest, the most vulnerable Cubans who pay the price of this “pressure strategy”, having been converted into “collateral damage” in these hunger games.

What the Ladies in White and Antunez are asking for, what Rosa Maria Paya or Rodiles is applauding, is a return to the harassment policy against ordinary Cubans, which was put on paper on April 6th 1960 by the Under-Secretary of State, Lester D. Mallory.

The directive ordered a “skilled and discreet” line of action to be taken which would deprive “Cuba of money and supplies, decreasing their financial means and real wages, and bringing about hunger and desperation and the overthrow of the Government.”