Was Cuba’s Finance Minister Alejandro Gil Naïve or Sinister?

By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES – The recent dismissals of Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy and Planning of Cuba, as well as those of the ministers of Science, Technology and Environment, and the Food Industry, in addition to the president of the Central Bank, stirred up controversy this week.

Obviously, the most visible and important face is that of Gil, whose last name is the same as a term used in Cuba to describe the innocent, the foolish, and which is currently trending on social media.

In particular, some words from Maria Victoria Gil, Alejandro’s sister, caught people’s attention and went viral on social media.

According to her statement, she feels hurt and disappointed with the misgovernment and shamelessness, as she said in her own words. Alejandro has devoted his life to a corrupt, failed, fundamentally flawed system, but whenever there is someone who bothers them, they make them disappear. The latter is quite dubious because he was never even seen to discomfort the system with the controversial issue of small and medium-sized enterprises. He was always a puppet who repeated the same litany and the same lies over and over again, and he wasn’t seen embarrassed in any of his public appearances.

I don’t believe the two siblings think alike, but if they do, I doubt Alejandro would dare to publicly acknowledge it. All the sacrifice that, according to María Victoria, the former minister made was in vain because the Cuban economy is worse off than when he took office. He may be very hurt and disappointed as she says, but I don’t agree on the fact that he doesn’t deserve it because he really did everything to end up dismissed, and it’s easy when you lose privileges to loosen your tongue a little. Perhaps the pain is more for having had to lie knowingly, for having served as a spokesperson for the absurd and not feeling rewarded for his sycophancy.

“What can one expect from a dictatorship?” wondered Maria Victoria, for decades a TV presenter. That’s what you should have told your brother before he took office. He knew perfectly well what he was doing and what he would have to do in the following years, so no beating around the bush, he must now admit that he deceived the people completely consciously, because if he really knows about economics, it was clear that everything he was preaching was false and the sacrifice he demanded from the people is truly criminal.

Maybe in private conversations, he talked about his own ideas and not the propaganda he always publicly defended, but the mere fact of not emigrating in his case is a symbol of collusion with the regime.

Innocently, she believes that her brother was able to stand in front of the ruling elite and oppose the dictatorship. How ridiculous!

Our dear Miguel Díaz-Canel sent a thank-you message to all the dismissed officials through social media and added that they still have “tasks” to do. This raises suspicions in the sense that perhaps the order to send them home did not come from him. I’ll leave it at that.

Gil himself responded to this message saying that it was an honor to work with Díaz-Canel. “I am at your service,” he added, so everything seems to indicate that those who see a different hand moving the strings are not far from the truth, and much less that he is disappointed as his sister says.

Coincidentally, it was his birthday these days, and the official account of the Ministry of Economy and Planning of Cuba sent him a public congratulation, I don’t know if challenging the eldest of the Castros because in a way this is like saying that Gil is a very good worker and does not deserve dismissal.

I see him as many other exploited militants of the Communist Party of Cuba thinking of taking advantage of the cork technique, which always floats, and in this case means reinventing oneself as the director of any company. Then after a couple of years, they go to Miami to live the sweet life as if nothing had happened, and repentance is enough for them to be received with open arms, taking advantage of forgetfulness and neglect, without realizing that every screw of this ship delays its sinking, and that should not be forgiven.

Anyone who has continued to defend the Revolution after the historic July 11, 2021 protests, cannot be forgiven because covertly they are supporting the sentencing of all the political prisoners who came afterward. That’s to avoid going further back in time.

It’s not necessary to be from the Ministry of the Interior and the Armed Forces or the State Security to have blood on your hands. It’s possible that even some military personnel are cleaner than these other white-collar criminals who whitewash the dictatorship from their seemingly academic positions and extend the suffering of the people.

These bootlickers who all end up in pajamas and living off their meager salary were pawns in the repressive machinery, whether they want to see it or not. With their public interventions on the Round Table TV program demanding sacrifices, they become the regime’s front people.

Not even the beyond words program Con Filo nor the National Television News sees the dismissals as a problem; they are more concerned about the “arrogance of developed nations”, the loss of identity of many cultures, and other profound issues.

It is said that there will be more dismissals, but without mentioning names, and that can also be the strategy of the dictatorship itself so that the rest of the ministers beware. They won’t want to be the next fool in the movie.

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