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MARIO J. TORRES
Resources of a tyrant
Castro's permanence in the power
for more than 40 years has not been by mere chance but the result of many
factors on his favor that he has known to take advantage of, apart from his
total dedication of not yielding an apex in the absolute control of
everything that moves in the island, like a chess player persisting in not
losing a single piece through his strong repression system and for his
special genius in the manipulation and psychology of masses where everything
is valid as long as it is for the sake of keeping the power. Having as an
initial help with the examples of some of the bad Latin American
democracies, from the early years of the 60's, the future dictator filled
the expectations of all Cubans with different kinds of promises, plans and
hopes, following a system of stages in which, when these were not fulfilled,
-and this has been like this in all cases- another stage or "batch" of new
promises and goals to be attained accompanied by slogans, propaganda and
speeches was designed to make a system of cycles with the purpose of keeping
the people waiting for a welfare or well-being that would never arrive or
have them entertained with the motto or threat in turn at that moment; also
passing laws that he would later ban according to his strategy or
convenience.
Clear examples were the failure in the 10 million tons of sugar harvest
which he claimed would fix the economy with the production of that amount of
sugar, the crazy "feeding plans" where he pretended to be an expert
economist with the only result of wasting time, money and resources at the
end, the gigantic mobilization of masses to work in the countryside without
any knowledge on field work, only for the sake of evaluating their degree of
obedience, sending people to fight and work in other countries through bribe
and blackmail, giving the land to farmers in order to later take it all for
himself, stating slogans like " Weapons, ..what for?" and years later have
the whole people as an army, declaring he would turn all garrisons into
schools and now have the whole country as a huge garrison, constant changes
in the policy of patents and private salesmen with high fines on them for
violations on rules that were legal minutes before and were suddenly
changed, "seasonal" threats of imaginary "imminent Yankee invasions",
speaking of merits of a country to completely change for his own convenience
and say the opposite later , the creation and removal over and over of
farmers' markets and of everything that would be favorable for him at a
given moment and not later, like a fashion. Castro managed to make his
system as absolute as a religion or as the only existing option in the world
for Cubans, making the most use of other systems' shortcomings up to such an
extent that, still, for some Cubans, not being faithful to the system means
not being faithful to the homeland itself and this fact represents the
highest point of brainwashing.
The use of blackmail and bribe has also been a daily bread for the regime in
its quest of attaining its goals buying followers to their side or
recruiting informers with a good job or position, a career, a car or even a
telephone, which are things not commonly found in the island, or simply with
the immunity to be respected or the threat of retaliation, devouring the
chosen ones in a deep spider web with no way out and provoking an atmosphere
full of doubt and uncertainty where nobody knows who is who and no one
trusts anyone. This is a most important factor for the leader because the
formation of groups against him is more unlikely to take place due to this
environment of "fear to my neighbor". Also, it would anyhow be difficult to
do it taking into account the strict control and repression exerted on the
population by his false "mass organizations" such as the Committee for the
Defense of the Revolution, of which, there is one organization in each and
every block or street, city by city in the whole country. This organization
has a president (usually one of the blackmailed, bribed or pledged to the
system aiming to keep himself "clean" with it) and several assistants who
are devoted to watch every move and activity of all residents in the block
and who besides schedule activities as political meetings, "voluntary" work
, mandatory gardening or landscaping and night guards that have the purpose
of evaluating the degree of participation and attitude of every citizen and
from there to detect or mark the apathetic and idle ones to those "tasks" or
those who would not cooperate or participate and diagnose them with the new
syndrome of ideological deviation which means be considered as a potential
enemy to the "revolution".
These committees are complemented by similar controls existing in jobs and
schools through unions, the Communist Party, the Young Communist League and
in every sphere of social life with specialized organizations such as the
Federation of Cuban Women, the Union of Cuban Pioneers for children, the
Association of Cuban Farmers, the Militia of Territory Troops etc with the
final touch of the feared Ministry of the Interior or state security, whose
members are dressed up as normal workers spread over workplaces everywhere
all around the country which shows that anyone in Cuba can be an informer.
All this machinery moves the people to mandatory parades, political rallies
and all types of activities scheduled by the regime where many participate
for fear to repression or retaliation as losing their jobs, be politically
and socially marked as an "opposer" or an "enemy" or simply go to dark jail,
so like the story of the king with an invisible costume, everyone must say:
"Long live Castro", "Resist and overcome" or "Blame it on the Yankees"
instead of "I am hungry".
This is a real dictatorship and by no means a soft one because no one who
has never lived in Cuba may understand all this after a first explanation
and it is necessary to be very open minded, have a receptive mind and a good
imagination to be able to assimilate all these things such as how the
Commander elects himself; which is a tricky process that people used to
democracy would not understand, why it is that people cannot protest, among
many other "weird things".
The sense of mystery of the island goes beyond its borders and many Latin
Americans and Europeans are totally deceived the false propaganda of the
system and they think it is a just, right and fair cause because they
compare it with the imperfect regimes they know or with the injustice of the
world in general, without unfortunately realizing that Cuba is the cradle of
a too great injustice for them to assimilate as comparing bad with worse.
During all these decades, exile has been completely neutralized by Castro's
moves, where apart from having taken advantage of the lack of unity of
Cubans abroad, of internal contradictions, ambitions and antagonism among
most organizations against him and basically of the great mistake of not
having a unique leader as has historically occurred in every political
movement everywhere and through all the history of the world; and which, by
the way, is a most decisive factor for Castro's success and the exile's
failure, the Cuban leader has managed to use Cubans inside the island as
hostages or baits to force their relatives overseas to indirectly cooperate
to keep alive his special concentration camp.
MARIO J TORRES
MARCH 2004
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