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03/19/13 -  EmilioIchikawa Blog (Miami) - Anti-Castroism: Being and Time (I)

Arnaldo M Fernandez

The recently formed Patriotic Union of Cuba (Spanish acronym: UNPACU) has been already advertised as "the most wise and consistent response to Raul Castro´s decision of remaining five more years in power." However, UNPACU simply re-grouped more or less the same dissidents as always, among them some who boasts of having -as if it were a profession or trade- "more than 20 years of experience." Thus, as they jumped to the anti-Castroism, the number three in current Castroism, Miguel Diaz-Canel, wasn´t yet member of the Party Central Committee. To top it all, Guillermo Fariñas let out it was the 12th occasion he attended "the launch of a new opposition." Since Fariñas and other UNPACU's militants showed the path for the people in 2011, so many political masks authorize to brand the opposition as Guillermo Cabrera Infante did in the case of Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo: a walking metamorphosis. For both EGM and the opposition it could be added that neither with the people nor on a path.

Anti-Castroism per se

The political power could be taken only by another social power. Just that Marxist. The sole power against the Castroit totalitarian state is the United States. Just that Plattist. The other opponents come from the amalgam made by the mass-media overseas, like the blogger that frightens the dictatorship (according to the Brazilian magazine Veja) or the freedom-and-democracy-loving Cuban people (according to Radio Marti et al).

No nation has the right to blame its rulers for exercising dictatorial powers during more than half a century. Castroism could be already approached in historical perspective: rather than persistent by force, Castroism seems appropriate to the Cuban nation, which got rid -in less than a decade each- from the former dictators Machado and Batista.

Anti-Castroism per se should be a consistent right wing Plattism: tightening the embargo until zero commerce, repealing the Cuban Adjustment and revoking the 20 thousand visas a year, dismantling the businesses in connection with Havana (for selling plane tickets, sending money and shipping parcels), closing down the SINA (and the SICUW), and cutting of the socialist tourism, a.k.a. academic and cultural exchange, with the rest of the embodiments from the accommodating spirit. Those who did not stand up for that before the White House and Capitol Hill, but would rather insist on expanding through the blogosphere, creating or supporting petitions and emergency appeals, writing open letters, sending money and items to the dissidents, denouncing abuses in Geneva or traveling to Indonesia in order to talk about the transition to democracy in Cuba, are not radical anti-Castroits: they´re just pretending.

Anti-Castroism for itself

>From the perspective of dictatorial power, the Castroism is consistent: "We would have to be expelled, declared idiots and inept to govern, if we spend time in dealing with a parliamentary discussion because ten thousand people want it, or even one hundred thousand. " (Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Biography, Simon&Schuster, 2009, page 427). Lacking of any social power, the anti-Castroism for itself is so inconsistent that it neither expels nor declares stupid and useless the petitions for making a democratic silk purse out of a totalitarian pig's ear. Furthermore, since the Varela Project up to the present day, all these petitions did not reach one hundred thousand signatures in total.

Even so, the anti-Castroism for itself blew its own trumpet: "There has not been a political initiative so efficient than the Varela Project [and] the new strategy consists precisely in keeping on working within the very tight scope of action provided by the constitution." It´s pretty nice a strategy imagining that under the Castroit constitution -as The Washington Post once stated- a petition like the Varela Project, supported by a little more than 10,000 signatures of Cuban citizens, "should have forced the National Assembly to permit a referendum." The Castroit constitution refers only twice to signatures: the one by the president of the National Assembly for promulgating a law (Article 81.ch), and the other one of the Head of State and Government for Law-Decrees and executive orders (Article 93.j).

But the anti-Castroits for themselves let off steam against anyone -e.g., by stigmatizing him or her as Castroit louse- who criticizes their useless actions together with their false leaders and even false martyrs. According to their criteria, even Jonathan Farrar, former (2008-2011) U.S. chief diplomat at SINA, would be also Castroit, because on April 15, 2009, he reported to Washington regarding the dissidents: "We will need to look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot the most likely successors to the Castro regime."