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Cuba: The cruel anachronism
Buenos Aires Herald. January
26, 2004. ProCubaLibre.
Cuba's regime is a twenty-first century
anachronism, but its detractors and supporters
continue to make the reactionary revolution
a constant controversy. Argentine journalist
and writer Sylvina Walger, one of five (with
Marcos Aguinis, Juan José Sebreli,
Fernando Ruiz and María Saenz Quesada)
signatories of a letter to Foreign Minister
Rafael Bielsa asking that Argentina support
Cuban dissidents by inviting them to the
embassy in Havana, remarked that many people
do not criticize Fidel Castro for fear of
being seen as pro-George Bush. This sounds
fatuous, but true. Within a day, one commentator
described Walger as an agent for rightwing
interests. Latin America has been divided
on Cuba always. The distinguished artists
and literary lions of the continent split,
in 1971, over the show trial ordered by
Castro against the late author Heberto Padilla,
who was accused of attacking the Cuban Revolution
in a book of poems. That rift among intellectuals
still marks relations today.
But from those early stages, the split
has become ridiculous. It is hard to see
how support for Cuba can still be upheld
- even if dressed as anti-US rather than
for Cuba - when Fidel Castro executed and
had life sentences imposed on dissidents
responsible for offences which did not go
beyond cautious criticism in March last
year. More recently, Castro banned access
to Internet to all but a few authorized
toadies in the interests of avoiding contamination
of the revolution. There seems little to
justify continuing sympathy for an aging
tyrant whose outdated aim is to preserve
his island like something out of a science
fiction novel. The extreme nature of the
fantasy has a local link in the campaign
by a Cuban born Argentine doctor, Roberto
Quiñones, to get his mother, scientist
Hilda Molina, allowed out of Cuba to visit
her grandchildren in Buenos Aires. A spokesman
for the regime explained that the visa denial
was based on the fact that "her brain
belongs to the state." Yet there are
still many Latin Americans who travel the
world as self-proclaimed ambassadors for
a symbolic liberated homeland in the island.
It seems regrettable that Argentina's Foreign
Ministry has been unable to rise above the
antiquated controversy. In October last
year, minister Rafael Bielsa visited Havana
and refused to meet dissidents. European
diplomats meet them regularly. Surely, by
now, with the romance of the revolution
dried up, the Foreign Ministry could see
its way to fair treatment for those who
disagree with Castro.
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