Cuba/Dissidents: Air-conditioning in hell
By Alvaro F. Fernandez (Progreso Weekly)
“If they’d told me in Cuba of the crisis going on in this country, I would have stayed there.” -Cuban dissident now living in Spain
HAVANA TIMES – Life must be improving in hell. I know for a fact that some places there have air-conditioning.
I am not trying to make light of the situation currently faced by more than 100 Cuban dissidents, and their families, who in 2010 were transplanted to Spain after the European nation negotiated their freedom from prison.
But there’s a point to be made. Especially when one considers that in Miami live so many, for example, who espouse a daily litany that Cuba is a living hell.
Now it turns out that this Caribbean Hades beats living in Spain, a country mired in such a lousy economy that it makes Dante’s Inferno look tame. Especially if you’re not one of the 1 percent made famous by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I wish for a solution. I hate to see people suffer needlessly. Especially when there are children involved. And in the case of the dissidents in Spain there are many children and other family members in dire straits. Many of them without money, food and shelter.
And now some are asking to be returned to Cuba, which, according to my compatriots here in Miami, is the equivalent of hell.
Makes you wonder…
And contemplate: Quick questions and thoughts come to mind:
- If human rights are really the issue, why aren’t those who cry for the lack of them in Cuba not coming to the aid of these approximately 700 Cubans in Spain?
- Would this not be the ideal situation for the many groups and individuals who receive funding from the U.S. government for “their work in Cuba” to employ their millions received in order to help their fellow countrymen stuck in a precarious situation in Spain?
- Instead of insisting on wasting the millions and millions on Radio and TV Marti, which only helps to create employment and political acolytes in Miami for the likes of the Diaz-Balarts and Ros-Lehtinens, has any thought been given to using that money towards helping these Cubans in Spain?
(Fifty million dollars spread out over five years in monthly checks to 700 Cubans breaks down to approximately 1,200 a month each.)
- Where are those few dissidents so adept at manipulating the media, some now touring the world and receiving hefty checks for their human rights campaigns? Why have they shown little or no interest in our brothers and sisters down in their luck in Spain?
I am sure you the reader can come up with a few more of these questions.
The fact is that Cuba has its problems. Many of them. But it’s not the living hell some would like you to think it is. And backed by mostly U.S. dollars (tax dollars!), there’s an ongoing, 50-plus-year campaign to demonize anything that smacks of Cuba and its system. The traditional press has helped to sustain it.
And those 700-plus human beings now stuck in Spain with nowhere to go are simply collateral damage. The empire’s paid employees propelling this war of lies and half-truths. They feel compelled to use these persons, and then discard them when they no longer serve a propagandistic purpose.
So to answer my own question: The reason little interest is demonstrated for the Cuban dissidents in Spain is because they are no longer of use. They served their purpose a few years back. Now, as far as many are concerned, the less we hear of them… the better.
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For a related article in Progreso Weekly, see: Out on the street
It’s because he couldn’t (under)stand the irony:
“The irony is the ‘wonderful land of developed, free countries’ fail to create the minimum conditions for poor people to live and how a cop in a ‘good country’ repressed a fellow Cuban who tried to help his countrymen.
It is not his fault that he’s unemployed and cannot sustain his family. You tell him he’s a ‘lazy bum’ but if the exact same thing happened in Cuba you’d blame ‘the Castros’ and not him.
“Now we receive no aid of any kind,” the Cuban émigré told El País, adding that “if I had been told in Cuba what’s happening in Spain, I would have stayed home.”
And if this happened in Cuba, it would be in the front page of The New York Times.”
Normando Hernández was one of the Cuban dissidents arrested during the “Black Spring” of 2003 and exiled to Spain in 2010. He now lives in the US where he continues to work to improve the free access to information in Cuba.
http://www.freedomcollection.org/interviews/normando_hernndez/?vidid=707
I know of several Cubans who left Spain for the US and Canada. They are working and doing fine. Perhaps the difficulties these Cubans in Spain are experiencing are about themselves as much as the economic crisis in Europe.
Let’s be clear. The deal to send those dissidents to Spain was made in secret negotiations between the Spain Government, the catholic church and the regime. Obviously the deal went wrong to those 700-plus human beings who did not had a voice during the negotiations of their relieve. Now you are asking to the USA tax payers and the Cuban communities of the world to pay for the mistakes of the people involved in the deal. Why don’t you ask those who made the deal for a solution to the situation they created. Why now you ask to pass the bill to other instead of made the accountable for the terrible mistake made. They were the one who squeezed lemon.
What this article shows is that the previous Spanish government and the Cuban church misled and abused the dissidents coerced in to exile.
The current Spanish government lacks the means.
The massive interest and support for the dissidents that were allowed to travel shows international concern is as strong as ever, even growing.
maybe the Cuban regime should indeed be forced to allow all to return to Cuba as free people. They should never have been blackmailed in to leaving.
The 700 are lemons squeezed by imperialism . . . and now discarded.
Embattled Cuba’s problems can be solved, and hopefully they will be.
If the PCC can open its collective, creative eyes, and understand the essence of authentic, workable socialism, not only will those problems be solved, but the revolutionary Republic of Cuba will show the world a solution to all of its problems.
Maybe we should hear directly from the Cuban political prisoners who got
caught in this situation in Spain.
YOUTUBE: DOCUMENTARY/DOCUMENTAL (Spanish only): Video Documental sobre la
situación de ex presos políticos cubanos en España. Grabado con Canon 550D.
Realizado por Rubén Tejerina y Elio González. Música original de Fernando García
Munera. Voz en off de Danai Jimenez.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8G0vpgDFek
Lets put things into context about the situation of the Cuban political
prisoners sent into exile in Spain. Every Cuban citizen has a right to complain
about his/her government!
INTER PRESS SERVICE (IPS) : Cuban Dissidents in Spain Complain about
Cut-off in Aid
MÁLAGA, Spain, Apr 12 2012 (IPS) – A group of former political prisoners from Cuba and their family members gathered in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square and in front of the foreign ministry Tuesday to protest the unexpected cut-off in aid from the government.
Between July 2010 and April 2011, Spain took in 115 former political prisoners and 647 family members from Cuba, under an agreement between the Cuban government of Raúl Castro and the Spanish government of then socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
After granting them asylum, Zapatero established a one-year assistance plan providing them with housing, food, healthcare, transport, school materials and job training.
That programme was extended for six months, until January 2012. But the
government of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who took office in
December, did not approve a second extension.
Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union – 23 percent
– and is suffering a severe economic crisis that has forced the government to
make drastic spending cuts in all areas.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/04/cuban-dissidents-in-spain-complain-about-cut-off-in-aid/
I’m surprised Moses hasn’t made a comment from Langley yet. Perhaps he’s on vacation this week?