Fidel Resurrects Himself Again

Rosa Martinez

Fidel Castro with Hugo Chavez earlier this year in Havana in the days after the Venezuelan leader’s second surgery. Foto: cubadebate.cu

HAVANA TIMES — Comments on the death of Fidel Castro (Cuba’s undisputed leader – loved by millions, hated by thousands) had already started circulating on the Internet for several days. But when Hugo Chavez was re-elected and the Comandante didn’t make a public appearance to congratulate him, the speculation mushroomed.

Dissidents and opponents of the government were already celebrating the death of someone who has more lives than 10 cats added together. Notwithstanding, they have killed him (in the press at least) more than a 100 times, though he’s still here alive and kicking.

Fidel has been killed in each of the hundreds of failed attempts by the anti-Cuban mafia, which has tried to poison his cigars and clothing, and has even planned terrorist attacks against him in the middle of Havana’s Revolution Square.

This is the desire of many of those who believe that his death will solve the problems of the 11 million Cubans or bring capitalism back to the island

Everyone knows for sure that the death of the historical leader of the revolution will not end the half-century long conflict between the US and Cuba, nor will it be what magically restores the Cuban economy and increase the pitifully low salaries of the workers here.

Neither his death, nor Raul’s or that of any other leader will allow us to achieve our dreams for our beloved country, nor will it make the dreams come true of those opponents here or the ones on the other side of the Florida Straits. Nevertheless, some continue desiring this.

Once again Fidel has died, this time in Twitter messages as well as through word of mouth. I heard that here in Guantanamo a group of dissidents took to the streets, though I don’t know if they did it to raise the same demands as always (freedom of expression and movement, multiparty elections, better wages and living conditions, and so on).

Maybe this time they were also celebrating the death of the person who — according to them — is to blame for all our misfortunes.

I’m fully aware of the many mistakes made Fidel in leading our country for nearly 50 years, just as you readers are aware of them. I also think it’s very easy to blame only him for the misfortune of all the “non-conformists” who were sent to UMAP work camps, the failed harvest of 10 million tons of sugar, the world coming close to nuclear war, the balseros (rafters) who never made it, our low wages and meat not reaching our tables.

He, like the other leaders around him, like all Cubans, like you and me, is partly to blame for every misfortune that has struck our country – he as the leader, just as we followers of his ideology, and even the opposition.

But they shouldn’t waste their time killing him, since those above have shown they don’t want him, from all those times they have tried to send him. Let him die in peace. I think that at this point everyone should have realized — as he did with many things in his life — that he too will die when his time comes.

5 thoughts on “Fidel Resurrects Himself Again

  • Once agin we see media at work while 4 million follow mr castro about 7 million would wish his dimise these are one of your own writers words

  • An interesting revelation:

    Fidel Castro ‘recruited Nazi SS members to train troops during Cuban missile crisis’

    “Papers released this week by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – the German foreign intelligence agency – show information gathered by German operatives 50 years ago during the tense days of the Cuban missile crisis.
    They reveal that Castro personally approved a plan to hire former Nazi officers to instruct the Cuban revolutionary army, offering them wages that were four times the average salary in Germany at the time and the chance to start a new life in Havana.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/9609851/Fidel-Castro-recruited-Nazi-SS-members-to-train-troops-during-Cuban-missile-crisis.html

  • Thank-you Rosa, your phrase, “loved by millions, hated by thousands” resonated with me, putting in perspective what we see in comments here – a few supporters of the American government who relentlessly denigrate Fidel whilst the majority of readers are forced to endure the slurs as HT won’t come to terms with them, for whatever reason.

    The “dissidents and opponents of the government” you refer to who “were already celebrating the death” are likely attempting a ‘pre-emptive strike’ to counter the outpouring of recognition for what Fidel has accomplished. Their attempt is futile, but it serves to illustrate their real nature, so useful.

    It’s only thousands worldwide, it’s only one or two on HT who hate. Millions love.

    Many thanks, Rosa.

  • Civil rights heroine Rosa Parks said she decided to remain seated in her seat on that bus in Montgomery in 1955 because she was ¨Sick and tired of being sick and tired¨. The death, someday, of Fidel Castro will not in and of itself solve any of the myriad of problems facing Cuba today. What it will do however is likely serve as a flashpoint for Cuban themselves to finally decide to take a seat on the bus. Not the US embargo, not the rejection from world of international human rights watchers, none of these things have catalyzed Cubans to be sick and tired enough to sit down or better yet, stand up for their rights as human beings against their totalitarian regime.

  • Thanks, Rosa, for an excellent post. I love and honor Fidel, and stand in awe of his ability to survive and help change the world for the better. This does not mean of course that I (and our movement) cannot critique his failures and discuss how they might be rectified.

    How a transformational government is achieved is a million times less important than the plan of reorganization and transformation that it undertakes. Fidel, it seems unfortunately, may cash it in before he realizes that the ancient Marxian formula of full state monopoly ownership is bogus.

    As I’ve said many times, Cuba needs precisely what my country, the US needs: a democratic cooperative republic, built around a core formula of modern cooperative, state co-ownership socialism.

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