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Raul Rivero. Posted on Wed, Apr. 03, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
HAVANA -- The citizens of Cuba, particularly the young generations, who peek
daily into the media to check what's happening here and abroad instead are
watching the mise-en-scne of a tragical-realism play.
It's a new genre that grows wild in the twilight of totalitarianism and is
born of an urgent concubinage, a belated pregnancy and a delivery by forceps.
Before us is the fruit of a senile relationship between socialist realism
and its exuberant Caribbean cousin -- magical realism. It is a union that
dictates the need to alter the costumes and rejuvenate the faces, without losing
the essence or loosening the grip.
So, the goon with the proletarian placards is stuffed into a suit, outfitted
with a pair of fine eyeglasses and a necktie of Chinese silk and sent forth to
defend the achievements of almost half a century.
Nobody can tell how many years of democratic education, of promoting
pluralism and respecting other people's ideas must pass before Cuba finally
lives in a civilized manner, after these daily carnivals of character
assassination and verbal throat-slashing in Cuba's state-run Mesa Redonda TV
show.
Experts will have to resort to providential formulas to make people here
understand that all over the world, citizens have the right to defend themselves
if they're insulted in public, to expound their ideas if they're criticized in
absentia and to reply to any attacks, no matter whence they come.
Specialists and psychologists will have to intervene to banish from
political debate and public appearances statements, common here, such as, ''As
everyone well knows, this man is a scoundrel and a traitor'' -- without knowing
why anyone should know it.
How long will it take before people here understand that it is deceitful,
inadmissible and illegal for the state to use the public's money to pay someone
to read us news-wire reports, excerpts of articles and fragments of interviews
to push us into a state of mind -- and, what's worse, to whip us into contempt
and hatred?
Where will Cuba find the patience and wisdom to erase from its life this
chess game of slyness, to forget the tone -- halfway between neighborhood bully
and hero of world independence -- used to address the faceless and unanimous
crowds? How many teachers will have to labor before we learn to opine without
having to wait for the pronouncements handed down by the state through office
corridors to public squares and the streets?
We'll have to work hard to dissolve that propensity to the semantic gallows
that is swiftly erected here daily to destroy anyone, native-born or foreign,
who does not behave as someone faithfully enamored of the lofty ideals that
inspire the island's masters.
Whoever listens to and watches those lynchings by the media unconsciously
enters a room without lights or doors and is diminished as a person.
I will not attempt to defend -- for no defense is needed -- the two most
recent victims of those attacks: Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda
and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich -- or the leaders of the
opposition and the exile community, who are the targets of the endemic hatred of
those in power in Cuba.
I only identify the method and the wounds inflicted on the Cuban nation by
the realist spawn that is released here every morning to go hunting -- in the
city and the countryside.
Raúl Rivero is an independent journalist in Cuba. | 
