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Opinion

The New Family Code in Cuba: One More Step Towards the Abyss

As always, without a clear moral compass, and resorting to whatever needs to be done to stay in power, the regime has chosen the worst option.

Miami
Ruins of a playground in Havana.
Ruins of a playground in Havana. Diario de Cuba

They have tried to spin the "thing" to see whether people will buy it. Finally, with absolute power in hand, and a kind of repression not seen in more than 60 years, they have come to the conclusion that this is the moment to impose (there is no other way to put it) the new Family Code.

Once again the official body is acting like what it has been since Leninist times: an instrument of agitation and propaganda, to which we would add exclusive, and incontestable . There is no discordant voice that can oppose what is a long, poorly written and repetitive article that portends the approval - always unanimously - of this new law.

It is worth remembering those who are the first and almost the only parties responsible for having twisted the Cuban family into something that it should not be. If the excuse for Operation Peter Pan was somewhat exaggerated, the historical truth is that "the Revolution," from its inception, separated parents and children through scholarships and mobilizations. In a surreptitious way, the State began to supplant parents' main role in their children's upbringing, arrogating to itself the exclusive right to their ideological formation. Parents were told that they came from a backward, bourgeois society whose values were not those of the Communist future that they wanted to build.

The history of the regime's scholarships and their harmful effects on many young people has been well described in various texts. Although for some young people they meant an escape from restrictive tutelage, and for others a chance to eat, learn and dress better than in their own homes, in the end we have a society whose young people not only never learned good many good customs, but also tend towards conformity and double standards; that is, immorality.

The Communists did forge, in part, their New Man, but he was a pusillanimous being devoid of his own ideas and diluted in the mass. The anthropological harm suffered by at least two generations born during the regressive process has stemmed, undoubtedly, from the damage done to the Cuban family.

The family has been undercut not only because its essential role in the development of children, its natural right to choose how they are to be raised, has been wrested from it. This improper appropriation and supplanting of roles, as they have done with everything material and spiritual of a whole people, has reached the point of encouraging, for propaganda purposes, abortion and divorce.

In the Cuba we know, more human beings have died on abortion tables than in all the wars combined. Even respecting those who believe that abortion is a woman's right, and do not believe in the rights of the unborn, abortion on the Island is a contraceptive method that practiced with extreme flippancy. A habitual question asked by doctors learning of a pregnancy is "Are you going to get it out?". The "thing", which is a living being, receives the same treatment as a tumor or a decayed tooth.

Divorce has also been encouraged as something "normal", like a loaded gun, carried "just in case." With the marriage card, ones carries the divorce card in another pocket. Counselors and psychologists dedicated to therapies to help struggling couples are rare. Rather, the advice tends to be just the opposite. As a result, there abound families made up of an extensive tribe of husbands, wives, stepfathers, stepmothers, sons and stepsons all dwelling in the same cave, like something out Gugulandia, the humorous comic strip set in prehistory.

The profusion of abortions in Cuba, and the precariousness of marriage and family, with two and more generations living in the same house, by necessity, has caused both the active and the replacement populations to dwindle, to which emigration must be added, which, while not something exclusive to Cuba, for the reasons stated above means that by the next decade almost a quarter of the country's population will be of retirement age.

It is also worth remembering that the regime is using family members as hostages. Many who escape from the prison/island are punished by barring their families from emigrating. There have even been family rescues worthy of a Hollywood script, with planes, boats and trips taken in disguise. Until very recently families could not emigrate together if someone was a doctor or health worker; meanwhile, professionals in this very field were sent to Venezuela and other countries.

For those of us who completed "internationalist missions," it was always curious that aid workers from other countries brought their families with them, while we semi-slave Cubans were always alone. The dangers of war or kidnappings were cited. This is something that has not prevented two doctors from remaining in the hands of their kidnappers for several years. As always, there is one aim: control. The "internationalist" is vulnerable as long as his family is on the prison/island.

Same-sex marriage, something that caused a big stir in Cuba's sexist, misogynistic and uncouth high society, seems to be the main ingredient in this mess. Its inclusion in the laws of the Republic, and nothing else, is the effective cause of the new Family Code. As always, the Cuban regime, without a clear moral compass, and doing what needs to be done, has made the worst possible decision.

With the Family Code, in which, of course, not everything is bad (common-law marriages and other legal provisions are included) a further step will be taken towards moral emptiness by not recognizing the value of life as an ethical principle, a clear and responsible definition of the limits of abortion and its consequences, the inviolability of families' right to choose what they want their children to be taught; the preservation of marriage, as far as possible; and the indivisibility of the family due to immigration issues, politics, and even work.

Without hesitation, Cuban leaders will pass whatever laws they want and need to remain in power. No one will object, although "the subject will be discussed by specialists" in every area. Meanwhile, Cuba is racked by Covid-19 and by apathy, due to the inability of its leaders to seek real solutions. People do not live by laws, meetings and rallies alone. They should have learned that on 11-J.

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