|
Carlos Alberto Montaner. Posted on Mon, Jul. 22, 2002 in
The Miami Herald.
The comandante issued the call, and Cubans paraded for three days, shouting
frenetically in favor of communism.
The comandante gave the order, and nine million people signed a document
asking that no change ever be made in that marvelous political and economic
system that has brought them so much happiness.
The comandante arranged it so the Cuban Parliament, by unanimous vote,
turned into a constitutional rule the people's sacred desire to remain enslaved.
Cuba will be communist till the end of time.
Why this strange ceremony of unconditional allegiance to the system? Because
Fidel Castro sees clear symptoms of demoralization within the ruling high
command. The men who manage the madhouse -- Carlos Lage, José Luis Rodríguez,
Ricardo Cabrisas, Marcos Portal -- know that the economic situation has no
solution. There are neither credits nor reserves. There's no way to pay off the
enormous debts. The country produces less than half of what it needs to survive,
and there are no resources to import the crude oil, food and medicine required.
The bankruptcy is total.
So, the question becomes inevitable: Why is Castro so insistent that Cuba be
the last communist country in the world, even though most Cubans starve while
accomplishing that dumb ''feat''? The answer has to do with the comandante's
psychological and emotional needs.
KIDNAP THE FUTURE
Castro is a narcissistic psychopath, inflexibly stultified, who in his youth
adopted a certain moral vision of the world; he won't allow reality spoil that
vision. Some 50 years ago, during the Cold War, Castro appropriated a
''revolutionary'' reading of society's problems (''capitalism and imperialism
are the cause of our ills'') and perceived himself as the heroic reformer
destined to alter the course of history. His is the St. George complex. His
mission is to slay the dragon. If someone says that dragons don't exist, well
then, no doubt that that someone is an agent of the fire-belching beast.
That's the great paradox of what just happened in Cuba. The ratification of
communism for all eternity is not a maneuver against the democrats but a way to
bar the path to the reformers who wait, silent and impatient, for the
comandante's death to tear down that monstrous abomination of misery, prison
cells and arbitrariness.
What Castro intends is to kidnap the future, freeze it and thereby ensure
that his historic memory will be that of a triumphant hero, not of a failed
Messiah.
Castro is struggling for his glory. He doesn't want what happened to Lenin
and Stalin, Tito or Ceauscescu, to happen to him. To Castro, life has meaning
only if he is perceived as being the great hero who was right. To rectify the
course of the revolution would be a way to disqualify him. Never mind that ''the
revolution'' was in truth a brutal and pauperizing experience; that reality can
always be painted over with a thousand sophisms. What's important is to sustain
it, because to amend it is a way to psychologically destroy St. George.
It is not true that Castro is unconcerned by the judgment of history.
Nothing preoccupies him more than his mummy, his statue on horseback, his
depiction in books. Death surely approaches, and he's horrified at the thought
that the Cubans (and the world) will remove his bust from the pantheon and fling
it into the trash can.
Unfortunately, the ''eternization'' of communism in Cuba has components
other than a constitutional reform. As part of his effort to isolate Cuba from
any ''bad influences,'' Castro prefers to pit his government against the entire
planet. That will be part of his legacy.
That explains his insults to Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Russia, the
European Union and the United States. He fears contact with other nations and
prefers to sever those links before they can encourage transformation in the
country.
Will Castro manage to halt all changes beyond his death with this kind of
''padlock law'' designed to paralyze the nation? Of course not. The attitude of
the millions of Cubans who asked for ''communism forever'' and the attitude of
the parliament deputies who servilely turned that petition into a law are a
ritual game of obedience, a multitudinous ceremony of vassalage performed to
please a caudillo who fears that his position in history has been devalued.
Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, in a Freudian slip, made it
clear how worthless these totalitarian gestures are, when he recalled that,
shortly before the disappearance of the Soviet Union, 70 percent of the Soviets
voted for its continuance.
It makes no difference what Castro does to try to impede Cuba's evolution
toward political and economic freedom. That will come -- inevitably.
Carlos Alberto Montaner is an author, journalist, university professor and
lecturer.
www.firmaspress.com | 
