Cuba and Europe
By Carlos Alberto Montaner
Cuba has become a problem for the left everywhere. They don’t know what to do with the island. The European Parliament (EP), the largest on the planet, voted a resolution condemning the government of engineer Miguel Díaz-Canel for the repression exercised against the youth of “Patria y Vida” on July 11. Thousands took the streets to protest peacefully in some 50 cities and towns in Cuba, exercising a constitutional right, and the regime, instigated by Díaz-Canel, repressed them without compassion. There were 426 votes against the dictatorship, 146 in favor and 115 abstentions.
Of the 146 votes in favor, almost all used the “blockade of Yankee imperialism” as a pretext. They, and Díaz-Canel know that this is a silly excuse, but they assume it because it’s the only one they have. First, because the embargo basically means that it’s not possible to grant credits to Cuba (essentially because it doesn’t pay), but the first supplier of food and medicine is the United States. The embargo is simply not true. It doesn’t exist.
The European Parliament is made up of founding countries, such as France and Germany, and nations that managed to shake off the Soviet yoke that were part of that sinister, totalitarian and barbarian world. The greatest resistance to communism, of course, is in that sector. From the three Baltic countries to the north, to the south to Bulgaria and Slovenia, passing through the Czechs of the unforgettable Havel and the Poles of Solidarity, where communism began to unravel. Some ban the existence of communist parties, others allow it. Communists today try to survive by respecting democratic rules and forgetting the Marxist recommendations to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” during a period that Marx didn’t specify.
What remains of communism is a party that viciously pursues “inequality of results,” that believes in public spending like the Syriza of the Greeks and advocates central planning. Since that is the recipe for an announced failure, Alexis Tsipras sank with it, but left an example in the four years that he ruled from 2015 to 2019: the communists, by breaking away from Leninism, and supporting Human Rights, are trustworthy and democratic. That is why the old Cuban communism, made of repression and severe punishment, is a serious moral dilemma. If they support it, it’s because they haven’t learned their lesson and are great hypocrites (like the Communists of Podemos in Spain).
There is a law, signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, called “The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act,” the Helms-Burton Act, which treats the Cuban government as an enemy, which is what Fidel Castro wanted and what he always felt towards its northern neighbors, and which has its basis in the confiscations without compensation in 1959 and 1960.
In reality, the law is generous. If Cuba ceases to be a totalitarian exception in the world, and allows free and multi-party elections, without a doubt the sanctions would end and there would be an aid to rebuild the Cuban nation. The law says so. The amazing thing is that Díaz-Canel and the leadership, made up of generally intelligent people, know that either they change the political model or they continue to be miserable. That’s why the Cubans took to the streets demanding freedom.
Later on, with the departure of almost two million people from Cuba, and their progressive installation in the United States, specifically in Florida, the embargo was maintained as a concession to those Cuban-Americans, given the American political tradition of taking into account the victims when designing the foreign policy. (Jews in relation to Israel, or blacks in relation to Africa are good examples). That is why Democrats and Republicans thought that “Cuban affairs were a matter of internal politics” of the US. In fact, they are.
The EP vote occurred while Díaz-Canel was invited to Mexico by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Anti-Castro Cubans living in Mexico and the Mexican opposition itself make AMLO pay a high price. Vicente Fox (“eat and leave, Fidel”), Felipe Calderón, what remains of the decent PRI –there is a decent PRI, believe it or not–, and some intellectuals gathered in different literary magazines such as historian and essayist Enrique Krauze’s Letras Libres. AMLO will think twice before inviting that individual again. Unless he changes.
