(May 22, 2023) Cuba Siglo 21 reiterates its warning of last January about Russian interference in the island and the dangerous mutations and alliances it is promoting in Cuba’s immediate future.
Moscow and Havana are implementing a strategic fraud before Washington and Brussels: to sell as an “opening” in Cuba what is nothing more than the transition to a mafia State with a controlled market economy like Putin’s. It is necessary to be aware of the gravity of this historical moment and act accordingly.
At the request of an emissary from the Kremlin, Diaz Canel has declared that a road map will be prepared asap to adapt all national legislation to the changes Russia is asking them to make in it. Not those demanded by the people in the streets on July 11, but by Putin from Moscow.
For Raul Castro and his team of mediocres, no agreement of the past congresses of the CCP and the Assemblies of People’s Power is worth more than achieving at any cost a readjustment with the Russian masters. It is particularly humiliating and shameful to announce the will to reform all the legislation at the behest of a foreign power which, to top it all off, is waging at this very moment a genocidal and imperialist war of aggression against a sovereign country in Europe.
The Cuban regime was so far offering support to Moscow on two war fronts against Kiev: diplomacy and disinformation. Now it has been announced that military cooperation has also begun on the territory of Belarus – to ensure that the MININT is properly trained to crush any democratic popular revolution on the island as Putin previously did precisely in Belarus. Of course, Russia is not going to take the burden of Cuba on its shoulders and then lose what it has invested, either because they do not pay or because its Caribbean ally finally collapses.
Every day it becomes more likely that the Kremlin will seek a rotational, fluid and flexible military presence on the island through vessels of its navy carrying cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Such a move would be a way for Putin to save face in case of a very likely debacle in Ukraine. After all, he blamed NATO for provoking this war by approaching its weapons to Russian territory and this move would supposedly be a way to pay in kind. This eventuality was examined by General Rafael del Pino in our Dossier No 6.
These recent events clearly reflect how Havana values and comparatively prioritizes the Russians over the Cuban people and its diaspora. The speed with which the acceptance of Russian investments in MSMEs is announced, customs taxes are cleared, the unprecedented offer of land for three decades in usufruct, the granting of extraordinary tax exemptions, plus the intertwining of its banks with Cuban banks (which will help both countries under sanctions to evade them and launder money), show three key aspects of the regime in its final stage: 1. The deep despise the Cuban government feels towards the Cuban people and its Diaspora, 2. The unconditional obedience of the Cuban government to Russian imperialism and 3. The desperation the Cuban elite feel in the face of the likely and everyday more probable downfall of their power over society.
Meanwhile, the cost of some consular procedures is reduced for Cubans living abroad in order to make it easier for them to travel to the island more often and spend their money on tourism. These crumbs do nothing to alter the exclusion from national life of several million Cubans and the total exile of hundreds of thousands of blacklisted citizens who are even denied the possibility of visiting the country where they were born.
The objective of Cubans abroad at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century is none other than that of the rest of the Nation of which they are a part: To achieve a democratic, prosperous and free country in which all Cubans can participate. It is not reduced to achieving economic crumbs in the cost of consular procedures but to recover the country that was taken away from them since 1959 by means of violence. This can only be achieved by means of a radical transformation that puts an end to all the obstacles and discriminations that broke the nation in two halves and have prevented it from coming back together to promote the country’s development.
The millions of excluded and exiled Cubans should not allow spurious pro-Castro solidarity organizations, artificially constructed and directed from Havana, to pretend to represent them. These are serious times, not for clowning around.
In this critical hour, the Diaspora -those millions of Cubans excluded from the national political and economic life and the hundreds of thousands on the black list who are denied even to visit the country where they were born- beyond the multiple organizations of political opposition to Castroism that are part of it, could and should take a stand as a collective actor to face this new betrayal of national sovereignty.
Putin’s Havana lackeys do not believe in the potential of Cubans to achieve development. They have always looked for an external patron. We Cubans believe in our own strength to begin to develop -in freedom- a prosperous country. To this end, as a transnational nation, we have sufficient financial, human and social capital for the takeoff.
Given the new risks that are looming for the future of the nation, Cuba Siglo 21 announces the publication of Dossier No. 7 “The Cuban Diaspora: exiled, excluded and engine of the future” where it analyzes the fundamental role that Cubans living abroad could play in the current times the country is going through.
The road map of the Russian lackeys in Havana must be confronted with another road map that reflects the interests of the Nation. For decent Cubans, inside and outside the island, it is time to achieve freedom and not be subjected again to powers of proven colonial vocation.
Download in pdf Dossier No 7. The Cuban Diaspora: exiled, excluded and engine of the future
Summary of Dossier No. 7 The Cuban Diaspora: exiled, excluded and engine of the future
Sin “gusanos” no hay país, by Emilio Morales
