Martin Guevara

On Sunday, a congregation of Communist Party militants and non-dissident Christians sang the Alleluia at Havana’s Revolution Square, a place that belongs, not to Fidel or Raul Castro, but to all revolutionaries who defend Cuban independence – Christian or atheist – and who fought and died for something more than clinging to power indefinitely.

Victor Jara’s killers were finally arrested. The Chilean singer and songwriter was murdered in Santiago’s National Stadium in 1973, a few days after the military coup that toppled the government of Salvador Allende. Today we can celebrate the fact that justice moves slowly but surely – at least in the case of Chile.

Martin Guevara comments on the reaction in Euorpe to the tidal wave of refugees landing from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and fears the attitudes of the “New Man”, created by the Cuban system.

This picture was taken in front of the monument to the victims of the Maine on Havana’s Malecon ocean drive, on a sunny day, when the sea was frothy and Pilar wanted to put on her new shoes.

Cuba has entered a new and encouraging stage in the building of a new kind of socialism, a system notably different from that “real socialism” it once tried to force into the relaxed and festive Caribbean spirit of Cubans. What will the Party’s Central Committee do to change the whole range of tastes that are deeply rooted in the revolutionary, austere and nearly ascetic spirit they claim took hold of Cubans’ collective desires after the revolution?

Now, as Mrs. Rainbow Castromasov feels she can lecture us about corruption, I wonder: are there no people, people with greater moral authority, to lead any type of change in Cuba other than the members of that family? Is there not a single gay man or lesbian more knowledgeable of the needs of their community, and more entitled to lead their movement, than this woman? Is she the only one who can do this?

These days, when the United States is in vogue in Cuba and vice-versa, one gets the sense that the island is forging one of those “indestructible” friendships, of the kind it had with the Soviet Union and, more recently, with Venezuela.

The pretty girl, no longer so vigorous, though still quite beautiful, slowly returns to the lap of the beloved and hated prince. Since the discovery of America, Cuba has been the coveted bride, the treasure sought by the magnates of the time.

I have a question for you Fidelistas, followers of Raul Castro, cardboard revolutionaries, fragile de-evolutionists, communists of the Cuban-Soviet type (never true communists) and opportunists who espouse the ideology that allows you to sit in the throne of power without doing any actual work.

The Left has a fundamental advantage and drawback: it is the ideal mechanism to manage a series of moral and ethical values, concepts of solidarity, fraternity, equality and social justice which can be applied and expressed by individuals and the masses alike. These give those who claim to possess such sensibilities an aura of moral superiority, when contrasted with those who declare an inclination towards the pursuit of financial benefits and material wealth, to the detriment of the spiritual and the longing for social justice.