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Opinion

They stole Christmas, they stole Cuba

The Castroist fantasy of prosperous socialism is dispelled by old cars without fuel, depressing schools with even more depressing teachers, hospitals with more cockroaches than doctors, and thermoelectric plants that only turn back on to break down again.

La Habana
A blackout in Havana.
A blackout in Havana. Diario de Cuba

Castroism has outdone itself. Seen from the cosmos, the sleeping green caiman appears flickering like a semi-burned-out Christmas tree with one or another branch occasionally lighting up, more due to short-circuits than parties, only enjoyed today by the heirs of those who banned parties as bourgeois and decadent, like the Beatles, Virgilio Piñera and individual thought. For everyone else there are blackouts, light-ups, and more blackouts, hunger, pretending to work... and fleeing.

Let's not waste words repeating the electricity generation shortfalls that the regime's spokesmen quantify each dawn like roosters of the darkness, those black numbers say nothing about the daily agony of millions of Cubans who, almost without realizing it, have regressed from the 20th century (Cuba never entered the 21st) to the 12th century, the  Dark Ages, when they cooked with firewood whenever they could find something to eat, and drank water from infected wells; when restful sleep was a luxury available only to the wealthy with ventilation, and plagues of rats, mosquitoes, cockroaches, tax collectors and other vermin decimated populations in the name of the king... currently the first secretary of the Party, being paid by GAESA.

We have crossed a Rubicon, reaching daily generation shortfalls greater than the generation itself, as for the republican Rome of Caesar, for the Castros' Cuba, the die is also cast. There is no salvation possible when the ships have been burned. One can only to stick to the plan of looting every last man and the last dime, while Cubans, like men in Plato's cave, observe shadows on stones and believe that this is reality, that to live in chains is to live, and that without chains there is no life possible.

Some, "playing into the hands of imperialism," wonder where the Mexican oil, Russian donations and Chinese solar power plants are, and also insinuate that we are again alone, as in 1989, because the Bolivarian revolution also went up in smoke, sinking into the same oblivion of deceitful utopias with which Fidel Castro blinded people, making them stare at a never-present future that of blinding luminosity... but let's leave it there, as it is depressing to talk about light on this island/dark cavern... the mosquitoes are feasting on my legs.  

No one can explain how we got here. Where did the Revolution go wrong? Is it Fidel's fault, Raúl's...? Díaz-Canel's? No, the puppets are guilty of tying down the cow's leg, but they are not the ones who killed it.

But, as with almost everything complex, for this there is also a simple explanation: the concrete decision of a man who, like many others who have shaped history, despite their own intelligence and that of others, stepped up on the pedestal of his own ego and, from where he believed that no one could touch him, changed the course of history, without caring about the consequences. These types may then justify their psychopathic selfishness with lofty nationalistic, racial, humanitarian, or ideological justifications, or any other that the people accept, when, in fact, they were driven by their own egos. Power and glory; that glory that does not fit in a kernel of corn or in the swollen chest of so many criminal saviors.

When the world woke up from Marxist socialism, Fidel Castro decided that he would not budge an inch to imperialism, and, with the same contempt for Cubans shown by his accomplice/victim Ernesto Guevara, concluding that the historical, geographical and sociological conditions of Cuba were not similar to those of China, Vietnam or any of those countries recently liberated  from Moscow's yoke, he decided that his Caribbean estate would not withstand the free market or good relations with the Yankees, so he stayed the course into this storm in which we are drowning today.

Suicide, madness, pride? Didn't he know (as the rest of humanity already did) that that system was dysfunctional? Of course he was. After 30 years and more billions in Soviet resources than the silver extracted from the mines of Potosi, Fidel the Destroyer was more aware than anyone that socialism did not work for the people, but for him, his power, and his estate there was no better option...so, to hell with the people.

Decline  was inevitable and the commander always knew it, but it didn't matter, because he had someone to blame (the Yankees, of course) and he had time, enough time to occasionally freeload off another "best friend" of the Revolution.   Above all, he had enough time for the country to limp along thanks to the capital accumulated by  "aid" from the USSR, plus what was stolen through "nationalizations." After me, The Flood.

Since 1989 we have been devouring ourselves. With rare exceptions, in most of these years Cuba has consumed more than it has invested, which has been paid for by external debt/scam, and an easily disguised  internal debt (until Murillo  tried to fix it) in an economy in which prices only reflect what the bureaucracy needs, although this entails suffering the most inefficient economy anywhere.

Thus have we reached the end of the rainbow, between a lack of capital and unhealthy investments in tourism, the fantasy of a prosperous socialism is dispelled by old cars without spare parts or fuel, depressing schools with even more depressing teachers, hospitals with more cockroaches than doctors and medicines, sugar plants rotting in the middle of fields overgrown with marabou, and thermoelectric plants that only turn on to break down again. They call this final phase a "wartime economy."

Socialism, as everywhere else, apart from taking away Christmas, only brought Cuba backwardness and greater inequality. And if on the Island it has been maintained, barely, it is because our socialist mafia, unlike China's or Vietnam's, views adopting a capitalist economy as too dangerous.

This being a small country so close to the USA, first Fidel Castro and then his heirs gambled it all on socialism, and zero on capitalism, even knowing that it would not work, but in the meantime they would still be there, calling the shots, getting rich, and amassing hotels before the inevitable, because this is going to fall, like a spinning top; or like a Christmas tree that goes out, bulb by bulb.

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