The hypocritical indictment by the United States Department of Justice issued on May 20 against Raúl Castro Ruz, army general and one of the most representative figures of the Cuban Revolution, not only reflects the unpunished arrogance of one who feels strong and above the law, but perhaps also seeks to lend a touch of legitimacy to the criminal embargo that has lasted for decades and to the even more shameful coercive measures that have affected the defenseless population in recent months (240 since January). The population has been suffocated by a ferocious energy blockade imposed by the hegemonic power, the only result of which appears to have been to reduce almost all of the working masses to a near-subsistence level, pressed by the pressing need to obtain basic necessities and the constant threat of armed aggression.
A one-sided reading, far from the context in which the events unfolded, an indictment devoid of any legal standing (even assuming it to be true) and without a jurisdiction in which it could be applied, seeks to bring justice to an episode that in 1996 led to the downing of two aircraft belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a violent organization based in Miami. The downing occurred after repeated incursions and violations of Cuban airspace, violations repeatedly reported by Cuban authorities to US government agencies but repeatedly ignored by them. This is a symptom, at the very least, of a certain complicity, if not outright planning and subsidization. Moreover, this conduct is part of a long trajectory of attacks, sabotage, and attempted aggression that the US government has implemented since state socialism was imposed as the official religion in January 1959. One final act-for now-in the never-ending, controversial, and unresolved issue that has preoccupied the two countries for nearly seventy years. Even viewed from the purely legal perspective of international law, the United Nations Charter, and the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, this would be part of a legitimate defense of their airspace against what could be interpreted as acts of "terrorism," which the aforementioned organization allegedly carried out between 1994 and 1996, in defiance of US law. Moreover, this accusation comes after US forces for months dominated the Caribbean and Pacific, killing nearly two hundred people and kidnapping the president of Venezuela. This is a corollary to a doctrine that, supported by a massive military apparatus, seeks to apply political and economic pressure through the unilateral imposition of sanctions, aimed at redefining the region's geopolitical structure. Justified by the Attorney General's words, "If you kill Americans, we will prosecute you. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what office you hold," phrases that echo from historical times we thought were long gone, but which unfortunately are now resurfacing with ruthless logic even in other latitudes (see the Middle East). This extrajudicial, politically motivated set-up is intended to justify recent coercive measures that, operating at the economic level, produce their devastating effects directly on people's bodies. Evidently, this International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which expands existing sanctions (in violation, among other things, of Articles 1, 2, and 55 of the United Nations Charter and the 1992 resolution on the lifting of the blockade),It is part of a new phase of regional realignment that Washington appears to be redefining through a determined protagonism and a cynical use of what appear to be the sophisticated techniques of a new hybrid war: sanctions, tariffs, financial strangulation, international incrimination, media propaganda, and the extrajudicial use of its own justice. Meanwhile, however, old methods are also being resorted to, with the aircraft carrier Nimitz cruising undisturbed in the waters of the Antilles, awaiting developments.
Upon returning from his trip to the Vatican, whose unstated motivations likely included seeking an understanding with the deeply rooted Catholic world on the island, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin, just hours before the sanctions were announced, released a video directed at the now exhausted population: "Cuba is not governed by any revolution, but by GAESA, a state within a state, whose benefits are the prerogative of a small elite." This Business Administration Group in question, branded a carcinogenic organism parasitizing the national economy and blamed for the constant blackouts and shortages of fuel, food, and medicine , is a business consortium created in the 1990s with the aim of capturing foreign currency, which was beginning to flow in at that time following Fidel Castro's opening up to tourism and the introduction of dual currency ( pesos and dollars). Conceived by then-Defense Minister Raúl Castro, this holding company eventually encompassed a wide range of commercial and financial businesses, from hotels to diving centers, marinas to travel agencies. Since 2010, it has absorbed Cimex, a state-owned supermarket company, and hundreds of gas stations. It eventually became the owner of the International Financial Bank, one of the largest in the country, controlling 40-70% of the national economy through an empire estimated at $18 billion by 2025. On May 7, the Trump administration further tightened sanctions against GAESA and its official director, Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, citing national security concerns. On the 22nd, ICE arrested her sister in Miami under the same circumstances, thus attempting to target the Cuban military's finances. The actual impact of these measures on the stability of this business conglomerate remains a mystery, given the extreme opacity that has always surrounded it.
The energy blockade has reduced tourism, already in freefall, to almost zero, while remittances from abroad, estimated at $3.7 billion in 2019-the highest amount ever recorded-were expected to hover around $1.1 million in 2024, a 43% drop from the previous year. Meanwhile, Washington says it's ready to offer $100 million in humanitarian aid, while Rubio urges the population to decide on regime change: "A new Cuba, where any Cuban, not just GAESA, can open a bank or a construction company." Same recipe, this time cooked up with a Caribbean twist.
Cuba is experiencing a period of decadence which, although it can be traced back to the perìodo especialThe crisis, which began in the 1990s, is now experiencing an unprecedented resurgence affecting much of the population, resulting in a terrifying food crisis and an equally deplorable energy crisis. These are two aspects of a scenario where the procurement of basic necessities and recurring blackouts shape the patterns and rhythms of daily life. What is said of capitalism-that it is the planned management of scarcity-can rightly be applied on a local scale to Cuba and its regime, which has capitalized on highly refined governing techniques over the decades, but which today sees its authority progressively weakened thanks to a reawakening, albeit timid, of consciences, which translates into certain forms of communitarianism or popular solidarity that punctuate daily life. Meanwhile, the image of a benevolent father that Castroism has dispensed throughout its existence is fading. On the other hand, however, we should also consider the other side of the coin: the competition for survival and the various manifestations of selfishness that accompany it have also increased. At the same time, there has been an increase in state repression and an expansion of the political police's operational reach, which has led to an exponential increase in incarceration and the emergence of a genuine prison problem, with thousands of political prisoners to manage and the complex social consequences this entails. This has also raised awareness among entire sectors of society against the authoritarian management of public affairs that prohibits even the slightest possibility of reform, however mild. The state has responded with a series of social measures to address the needs of the most disadvantaged segments of the population, along with a large-scale propaganda campaign in an attempt to regain the aura of benevolence that has always characterized it. But in fact, what most defines the management of sovereignty continues to be, albeit in more disguised forms, the centralized administration of fear, which can count not only on one of the most efficient repressive apparatuses, but also on widespread disaffection and an almost total ignorance or disavowal of basic forms of organization and reaction to the prevailing despotic apparatus. A apparatus that can rely not only on the hoarding of economic and financial resources, but also on a progressive depopulation affecting the youngest age groups, who find in emigration the possibility of escaping from a condition that has become unsustainable but which has led to a demographic decline and a parallel consolidation of political conservatism. The feeble protests that occasionally surface are limited to a few cacerolazos.shouted out loud but lacking an organizational structure, an expression of a now endemic desperation shrouded in fatalism and resignation, in any case a far cry from the large mass demonstrations that took place four years ago, when it seemed that something was really moving. The anti-government protests of July 11, 2022, which began in San Antonio de Los Baños, just outside Havana, and Palma Soriano, in the eastern province of Santiago, and then spread to the main cities within twenty-four hours. Thousands of citizens from the most precarious sectors of Cuban society took to the streets, an event without precedent (except perhaps the so-called Maleconazo , in 1994), and which led to the arrest of 1,848 people, were also an expression of resistance to state domination and the various forms of prevailing authoritarianism that entire classes, groups, and individuals have sought to oppose, in all their complexity and despite attempts at co-optation by external or foreign forces, with the aim of demanding fragments of freedom and better living conditions. It was a push that came from the most marginalized segments of the working class-precarious workers, day laborers, the unemployed, and the multitudes of peasants living on the outskirts of large cities. They arrived in the wake of massive internal migration, but lacked the awareness of being a class. However, they cannot be characterized as a labor movement in the strict sense, lacking organization, traditional union or corporate forms, or even territorial organizations tied to work. Rather, they reflect the desperation of less well-off groups, influenced by the effects of government policies of recent decades that have led to an extreme atomization of the social fabric, and by the influence of a consumerist model originating from emigration, especially from the United States. Strictly speaking, therefore, we cannot speak of political forces; at most, unorganized social forces clashing with police forces, which are indeed extremely organized. Their meticulous work has succeeded in dismantling every form of dissent and political opposition in the country, leaving an even worse situation and ignoring the issue and the reasons that led to its explosion. The void felt today, the perceived impossibility of effecting political change from within, are most likely at the root of the great popularity Marco Rubio and Ambassador Mike Hammer currently enjoy, obviously in some sectors, and partly explain the sense of social impotence that pervades the island. According to a recent poll conducted by El Toque, an independent local body, it would appear that most Cubans (56% of those living on the island and 67% of those in the diaspora) view U.S. armed intervention favorably, or at least as the lesser evil in the face of advancing hunger. The Trump administration has held several discussions in recent months with President Díaz-Canel and his cabinet, and direct contact with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the former executive's nephew and the most zealous of his bodyguards. He is the son of the former director of GAESA, who was awarded the rank of general by Raúl Castro for his services to managing the company. The "crab," nicknamed "The Crab" due to a deformity in his hand, is said to have met several times in Mexico with the U.S. Secretary of State. If this were confirmed, it could be deduced that the US has chosen to negotiate with the military, at least with the more business-oriented sectors, rather than with the political ones, which, after decades of criminalizing dissent, now finds itself having to negotiate with the only available interlocutor: Yankee corporate power. Despite the rift within the armed forces, divided between a faction of senior generals with ties to the political leadership and the lower ranks most exposed to the effects of the crisis (disparagingly called "beans and rice," in reference to their diet), the White House seems willing to compromise, granting Castro the privilege of ensuring a smooth transition while granting the military leadership the right to dismantle the old political system and act as guarantors of the new order; a solution highly desired by the superpower, which certainly doesn't want trouble 144 kilometers from its shores. CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit in mid-May is also worth considering. It fueled speculation about Raúl's possible protection, which would remain untouched by any retaliation, and a possible regime change through a proxy, as happened in Venezuela. This solution would satisfy Trump and his more pragmatic entourage, who, with a cosmetic touch, would facilitate the covert entry of US capital. Much less so would the more hardline wing, led by Rubio, which has aspired to a radical transformation of society. The words of Marcell Felipe, director of the Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami, "we didn't fight for 67 years, with prisoners and deaths, to earn the right to invest under the rules of a communist regime," are shared by at least three Cuban-American members of Congress. The anxiety and fear of many, in Cuba and in exile, is that the time has come, due to a series of factors: the mid-term elections, the imminent presence of the football World Cup, Trump in the guise of the one who brought democracy,The new geopolitical configuration in the Western Hemisphere; but above all, because the Cuban people can no longer cope: children are no longer going to school, many have nothing to eat, several hospitals are unable to operate, others will soon close; medicines are in short supply while diseases are beginning to claim their first victims, men and women despair at a situation they perceive as surreal. On the stage of the history of this new millennium, the eternal comedy of the clash of powers plays out against the backdrop of the tragedy that starves and enslaves multitudes of proletarians, oppressed and subjugated, but not yet subjugated, to alien logics, whose devastating effects they feel firsthand.
Massimiliano Bonvissuto
https://umanitanova.org/la-perla-nera-dei-caraibi-cuba-scontro-di-poteri-sulla-pelle-degli-oppressi/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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