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MARIO J. TORRES
Pinocchio
PART I: PROMISES
The nose of this gloomy Pinocchio,
unfortunately made of bone and flesh, began to grow since his arrival to
Havana in 1959 when the white doves that settled on his shoulder and that so
much impressed the Cuban people, did not do it spontaneously, but they were
prepared. Starting from there, the green man with the black beard,
completely disregarded a really inexistent Jiminy the Cricket and did not
have a second's rest in using deceit in quest of keeping and strengthening
power at all cost and apart from turning into a Caribbean Cardinal
Richelieu, king of intrigue, eliminating all adversaries who bothered him
along the way by utilizing any possible means, from Camilo Cienfuegos and
Huber Matos up to Arnaldo Ochoa, this false redeemer without Caesar,
bourgeois nor God, already wild and without listening either to a Gepetto
who later regretted having created him, did not hesitate in bombing his
people with all kinds of lies and promises with constantly renewed truces
that he never fulfilled and that nor even an elephant's memory could recall
or record in a great swindle to Cubans which reaches almost half a century
now. Among his many lies, promises and deceit and their real results, these
come more to memory:
Promises:
1- All army garrisons will be turned into schools.
2- Our revolution is not communist, but nationalist and it is as green as
our palm trees and points out the values and traditions of our country.
3- Weapons, what for? we only need tractors and ploughs.
4- Every Cuban child will be entitled to a bottle of milk on a daily basis .
5- This revolution is the people's, by the people and for the people.
6- Cubans will be the owners of their homeland and its patrimony and they
will also have the right to use its beaches, hotels and all of its services.
7- The Cuban people, who are now the owners of everything inside their
country, can freely move all along it and do as they please.
8- Everyone is equal with no distinction of race or origin.
9- He, who decides to leave the country, will not have the right to return.
10- Cuba is the first free land in America.
11- All Cubans have their work, their food, their clothes and their place to
live totally guaranteed.
12- There is no rural police who locks up Cubans in a garrison nor who kicks
them out of their houses.
13- People can speak in their own language because there is no owner to whom
they have to speak English any more.
14- Farmers are the owners of their land.
15- José Martí is the intellectual author of the Cuban revolution.
16- The delivery of food, medical and material resources to other countries
are leftovers of Cuban production.
17- Commander Camilo Cienfuegos's plane fell in the sea and he disappeared
in the waters.
18- General Arnaldo Ochoa and his men were dealing with drugs and they were
prosecuted and sentenced for that reason .
19- The dollar is the enemy's currency.
20- Our country has a religious opening and the most democratic election
system in the planet.
21- Education of new generations is free and it is based on highlightening
our patriotic values.
22- Public health is at the reach of every citizen.
23- Internationalism is a sacrificed task carried out as pay for a debt we
have with mankind.
24- Cubans voluntarily belong to all mass organizations.
25- Alimentary plans will guarantee food for every Cuban.
26- Construction micro-brigades will end up all housing problems in Cuba.
27- The 10 Million Tons Sugar Harvest will solve all the economical problems
of the island.
28- The Ministry of the Interior is a glorious organization in charge of
defending people's achievements.
29- The Cuban revolution is generous and benevolent with its enemies.
30- In Cuba there is freedom of speech and thought.
31- The revolution eliminated injustice, robbery, corruption and
prostitution.
32- We should be grateful to the socialist field and especially to the
Soviet Union for its disinterested help.
33- Culture and sports are people's rights.
34- Radio, TV and other mass media are at the service of the working people.
35- Cubans are ready to face and defeat a Yankee invasion.
36- Cuba is a medical power.
37- Public Health and Education are two achievements of the revolution.
38- Those who leave the country are traitors to their homeland.
39- Massive migration is always instigated by the misleading promise and
temptations of the Yankee Imperialism to destabilize the revolutionary
historical process.
40- This revolution, that defends the noblest of the causes, is in a special
period in time of peace in order to keep its conquests.
If all these promises and assertions had been fulfilled, perhaps, and still
obviating many other things, Cuba, now, could be a "livable" country but
realities have been totally the opposite and much rougher and tougher than
anyone may ever have thought.
PART II: REALITIES
With the passing of the time and too late to react, the Cuban people started
to discover they had been deceived in a great swindle and that all hopes for
a better life promised by the leader were a bunch of lies and also that the
truth and facts taking place in the island were far from being what he had
so much announced, so they had to undergo for decades the consequences of
the transformation of an ideal image of a kind Dr. Jekyll to a brutal and
real Mr. Hyde with a system full of repression, persecution, hunger, needs,
misery, deceit of al kinds, hidden truths, bribe, blackmail, misinformation
to the people, manipulation of news for his convenience, brainwashing,
promises with treacherous truces, economic disaster, discrimination of Cuban
citizens, political contradictions, discredit to leaders to be periodically
eliminated or replaced , training of terrorists in Cuban national territory
and the sending of Cubans to die overseas for the sake of exporting
revolutions and always blaming American presidents and the "evil" Yankees
for all of his mistakes.
Realities:
1- The country is a giant army garrison and everything is militarized.
2- We are Marxist-Leninist. Why should we deny it? This socialist and
atheist revolution is incompatible with Christmas, the tradition of the
Three Wise Men and other religious beliefs and has instituted new historical
and celebration dates according to its interests and ideals.
3- The Militia of Territorial Troops carries our fundraising activities and
asks for donations to purchase weapons in the preparation of all the
people's war and Castro, in his long speeches and in his mandatory rallies
stimulates militarism and the "anti-imperialist" war with a psychosis such
as that of Osama Bin Laden's.
4- Only children younger that 7 years old can consume a bottle of soy yogurt
every 4 days.
5- The system represses and harasses the people.
6- Cubans live in total apartheid as second class citizens without any right
to enjoy the island's beaches, hotels and other facilities.
7- Cubans do not own anything in their country and they have huge
limitations in going to places which are reserved and restricted to tourists
and foreigners. Apart from this, there is no transportation to travel nor to
go on vacation. All Cubans own are problems, rags, misery and despair.
8- There exists discrimination of the Cuban citizen and being Cuban has
become a shame, handicap or disadvantage. Also, those, who are not involved
with the system, are cornered, marked and despised and at times even those
who do not receive help or money from overseas! Besides, there isn't the
least respect for human rights.
9- The Cuban Community from abroad can send money to their relatives in the
island and may come to visit them and they have the right to enjoy all
tourist services as regular foreigners as long as they pay for their
services with dollars or foreign currency.
10- Cuba is an island of slaves without the slightest kind of freedom in any
area of life, as a concentration camp having the sea as barbed wire, with
hundreds of political prisoners who rot in jail and who live in awfully
inhumane conditions.
11- In Cuba, its people perish in slow motion due to lack of food and first
need products. Shops do not sell clothes in national currency and people
wear the same clothes for years unless they get it from relatives abroad or
buy it with foreign currency. There is no housing and urban landscape is
gloomy as a result of many houses and buildings falling down and in need of
paint and remodeling. Jobs are scarce and in order to get one, persons need
to have "political and ideological conditions" but anyhow, salaries are
insufficient due to the high cost of life.
12- State security officers and their informers, the CDRs and the complex
repression and control system exerted on Cubans is always ready to watch,
denounce, prosecute and send to jail with a trial without a defense anyone
who opposes the tyrant through facts or comments.
13- Cubans must learn English to be able to communicate with foreign
tourists in order to try to get anything from them in gifts, money or help,
also to be ready to apply for a job in any of the tour facilities built in
the island or simply to leave the country, traveling to the United States
already knowing the English language.
14- All the land and everything within it is the sole property of the state.
There is no private property.
15- Jose Marti's ideas were totally opposed to the actual reality in Cuba
and his work and efforts to see Cuba finally free are still unfinished
because of the dictatorship going on in Cuba.
16- The Cuban people are deprived of medications, food and other resources
to be sent to other countries and so deceive international public opinion by
saying these are leftovers from the island.
17- Camilo Cienfuegos was physically eliminated, like many others who shone
more than Castro or who stood in his way.
18- Arnaldo Ochoa and his followers wanted to overthrow Castro by means of a
coup d'etat and for that reason they were prosecuted and Ochoa shot to
death.
19- The dollar was instituted until recently as an alternative and legal
currency in all the Cuban national territory and most of first need articles
have been sold in that currency.
20- The Cuban system is atheist and religious people are discriminated and
not regarded with good eyes. Church is limited in its action since it is
incompatible with the regime. The Pope was deceived during his visit to Cuba
because in an attempt to get him off his back, Castro made promises of a
religious opening but he only granted December 25th as a holiday but nothing
else. In Cuba, there are no elections and Fidel Castro practically elects
himself in a weird "closed circuit" election in which people do not
participate!
21- Education, which is a complete brainwashing, is totally politicized and
all patriotic values are pseudo communist dogmas and empty slogans and
mottos.
22- Doctors do not have at hand any resources nor medications to prescribe
their patients, so seeing a doctor is literally just seeing him.
23- Internationalism was and still is the sending of Cuban personnel as
messengers for the penetration of the communist system in those countries,
the cause of death in mercenary wars with no reason of many innocent Cubans
and to proclaim to the world the progress, freedom, economical abundance and
prosperity of the island; all of them inexistent, as the person who clangs
his spoon against an empty plate to make his neighbor believe he is eating,
so as to deceive whoever he can as long as he can, as the whims of a madman
or as reactions from a serious childhood trauma. Castro, as he himself
confessed "did not pay proper attention" to his country in order to be
pending on the war in Angola and direct it from the distance .
24- The government has created lots of repressive organizations which are
pretended to look like mass organizations with a voluntary affiliation but
belonging to them is a requirement to keep living in the island without the
risk of being marked, losing the job or going to jail because these are
really ruthless groups devoted to vigilance and repression. These
organizations organize mandatory activities such as parades, rallies,
productive works , night guards, military maneuvers, study and analysis of
Castro's speeches, meetings where hollow slogans are repeated and people say
the opposite of what they think with an open double morality due to the
total lack of freedom of _expression. These organizations also control all
manifestations, lifestyle, movements and activities of all Cubans in their
houses, places of work, blocks and neighborhoods, watching those who do not
follow their game so as to take retaliation measures with them that can even
get to imprisonment.
25- Castro has devised endless economical and agricultural plans and all of
them have been a ridiculous failure and he has been switching from one to
the other like a game or experiment full of madness and contradictions,
which have brought about the total deterioration and further destruction of
the Cuban economy and the Cuban people have never seen any results of such
plans, only more hunger and misery day after day.
26- Housing is a serious problem in the island and the number of persons
living in somebody else's homes, packed with small room or dwelling in the
so called 'barbacoas" (like very low rustic second floors almost touching
the first one) are considerable. Many houses crumble down or are in a really
bad shape or in need of paint or remodeling as also happens with all
external urban landscape such as streets, roads which are full of holes but
to carry out a house exchange, house remodeling, modification or
construction even though the house be the owner's legal property, permission
from the state and the country's owner is needed apart from the fact that
there are no construction materials available. House sales are forbidden and
construction micro brigades, up to a great extent, are solving builders' own
housing problems who volunteer to build apartments because they do not have
any place where to live either.
27- The famous 10 million tons sugar harvest was a big failure and after it
all remained the same. In the speech in which the dictator recognized his
crazy goal could not be attained, he apologized to the Cuban people for his
"learning" but it seems he never learned or is never going to do it. The
objective of the propaganda regarding this sugar harvest as well as that of
the frequent and recurrent agitation campaigns and alarms on the Cuban
people such as imminent American invasions among others is to have them
entertained, hypnotized and in constant check with something new always as
part of his Machiavellian mass psychology.
28- The Ministry of the Interior, twin of Hitler SS, is the main, most
frightening, terrifying and feared repressive organ of the system on the
Cuban people and it is everywhere watching every move, behavior, activity or
_expression of Cuban citizens and if anyone dares to break the regime's
rules protesting, making any comment or doing anything that may be
considered against it, the job of this organization is to arrest this
person, judge him without any defense, lock him up, torture him, make him
disappear or eliminate him physically as it has done with hundreds that have
been shot to death without a trial just for going against the tyrant.
29- The Cuban system is ruthless and has no mercy or forgiveness with those
considered as enemies and to be one, it is not only required to act or say
something against it but also being neutral or "apathetic" not repeating
like a parrot what the regime wants everyone to say or not doing what it
wants everyone to do, which can turn the person into an enemy and the
penalties for this are serious: from being socially marked without having
the right for anything, losing the job up to imprisonment with sentences
made up by Castro such as: enemy propaganda, attempt against the powers of
the state or offense to the figure of the Commander in Chief, which can all
lead to torture, physical disappearance or to an easy and quick execution by
the shooting squad with no trial or defense. Cuban jails are packed with
political prisoners who are not considered as such.
30- In Cuba, there is indeed freedom but only freedom of thought because
that one cannot really be controlled and what is thought is totally opposite
to what is said since those who would ever dare make the slightest comment
against the government either in the street, in a supermarket, on the radio,
on TV is completely finished and Cubans know the rules of this game and keep
their mouths shut or else, in a sad double morality, say what they do not
feel, hypocritically praising the system.
31- There are new types of injustice, robbery, corruption and prostitution
and some of them have changed their name. Prostitution is stronger than ever
and appears under the name of "jineterismo", meaning like "riding" and here
women do not lead a "happy" life just because they are prone to it or like
going to bed with anyone as in a "regular job" voluntarily chosen by them as
had always happened, but as their only way out to obtain vital resources for
their survival and that of their families, looking ONLY for foreigners who
may give them dollars or any other type of help. Corruption is seen in the
highest spheres of the regime where there is abuse of power on the part of
the leaders who act as owners of the country living like bourgeois whereas
the people perish full of needs. Injustice is the core of existence of the
system as such and robbery can also be expanded to stealing food because
thieves are also hungry.
32- The help from the Soviet Union was not disinterested but it was the
payment to Castro's job as a communist spy in America, also for being a
trainer of terrorists and rebels and for exporting that ideology he accepted
to spread. In the past, according to Castro, everything coming from Russia
was good, although in fact nothing had any quality at all, but after he lost
their help, the leader himself spitefully recognized this fact in public
later .
33- Sports and cultural manifestations are manipulated and controlled by the
government. To be an athlete or an artist, the person has to have
"revolutionary and political conditions", if not he will never be popular or
may get into trouble. Sports is a source of propaganda as another
achievement of the system. Athletes traveling to competitions abroad, who
have to be closely watched so that they do not ask for political asylum in
any country overseas, receive a special attention in clothes, food, training
and overall they have a considerably better standard of living since they
are a selected elite, chosen as a sample of the achievement Castro claims
and for the rest of players and sportsmen, let them starve to death. Art
manifestations are a hundred percent managed, ruled and controlled by the
regime and every artist in any manifestation on any field of Art from a
song, a TV show, a theater play, a book, in dance, poetry or painting must
abide to the rules and accomplish the "ideological" requirements of the
government.
34- Radio, TV and newspapers are organs of the glorious Cuban communist
party and all kind of information is digested and processed to fit the
interests of the system before it goes on the air or is published and
whoever dares to change this, is vanished from the scene.
35- Castro spends most of his time putting the people on the alarm for
fictitious, imaginary and "imminent" American invasions but this is only an
"entertainment" strategy to keep Cubans busy in mandatory "fighting people"
rallies, parades, slogans, condemns, military preparation, maneuvers,
fundraising, organization and training as one more way of repression.
36- The Cuban Public Health system is devastated with a total lack of
medications, water, electricity and resources in general. Dentists usually
ask patients to "solve" and take their own anesthesia for an extraction and
when this happens, then there is either no water or electricity. Doctors
only prescribe herbal or home-made medicine as was done more than a hundred
years ago and seeing a doctor will only be to greet him because they are not
able to cure. Doctors as well as many other medical resources which are
"leftovers" of the island are indeed sent to other countries as part of an
evil and ironical propaganda.
37- It is said that the Public Health and Education systems have been two
achievements made by the regime due to their free essence and their massive
reach and scope, but : What's the use of having a free health service if
such service does not exist and there are no medications? and : What's the
use of a free education system if it is only a communist brainwashing device
that indeed does require payment, not in money but in full submission,
pledge and slavery to the regime for life?
38- Castro purposely mixes the idea of homeland with the essence of his
system and calls traitors all of those who got tired of living in hunger and
misery and of putting up with injustice and decided to migrate to other
lands looking for a better standard of living and future.
39- Migration exoduses, which have been endless, from people drowning in the
sea, fleeing in planes either hiding inside a box or holding from the
undercarriage of a plane, crossing mined fields, risking the adventure of
staying in a third country, like gambling with their own lives leaving all
relatives and properties behind, and which would have been a reason for
shame for any other president but him, clearly mean that something is going
wrong very seriously in the island. For the "Yankee Imperialism" this
massive migration is not convenient, nor even less would its government
encourage them; on the contrary, the US has been rather indifferent to this
crazy tyrant's hysterical cries, who always puts the blame on his northern
neighbor for the miseries he himself has created in the once Pearl of the
Antilles.
40- The Cuban octopus on purpose confuses mankind's development and normal
progress with what he calls achievements or conquests of his "noble"
revolution, which is better explained as a cruel involution and besides,
this evil monster, with a term full of cynical euphemism calls Special
Period in times of peace, the sad catastrophe he has created in the island
with his whimsical game for keeping the power at all cost, not wanting to
realize his political death and his total failure.
Among the many "qualities" of this Commander in Chief of lies, who by the
way, is one of the richest men in the world, the first one is being
shameless because somebody else in his place, in order to have a lower
position in that trash can of history that he himself so frequently refers
to, would have already killed himself for having betrayed his country and
his people, destroying the former and ruining the lives of the latter.
MARIO J TORRES DECEMBER 2004
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