By Abel Prieto Jiménez on July 22, 2021
photo: Yusmilys Dubrosky
Yesterday the song Todo por ti by Pavel Urquiza and Daymé Arocena was released on YouTube. While insignificant as a work of art, they intend to make it work in terms of political propaganda. They used for the video clip images of “the people” when they lash out against a patrol car and against policemen who, most of the time, back down in the face of the people’s aggressions. Strange “repressive force” that has evidently received orders to avoid bloodshed.
The song speaks to Cuba: “What you need, Cuba, is that we give everything for you.” They call on her to wake up: “You have been blind for too long,” they say; but, fortunately, “your children have already fearlessly taken over the streets.” We are ready, they say, to “start over for you”.
What do they mean by “start over”? To tear down the work of the Cuban Revolution, erase it, suppress it, and return to 1958? Has our homeland lived blind for more than sixty years? Is the violent mob that appears in the video clip the one destined to open its eyes and save it? Or will the Yankee troops be the protagonists of the “humanitarian intervention” that they are calling for from Miami? Is that mob really “the people”? Are not the young people who support the struggle against covid-19 throughout the country part of our people? And the doctors, nurses, scientists, professionals of all branches, journalists, writers and artists, manual and intellectual workers and humble men and women who defend the tranquility of the citizenry day by day?
Revolutionary Cuba has always been willing to rectify its mistakes and to “change everything that must be changed”; but, of course, on the bases established in our Constitution, on the non-negotiable principles of sovereignty and socialism.
On the other hand, I am continually hearing from people overwhelmed by the daily torrent of insults, attacks and lies they receive on social networks. Many have decided to close their Facebook profiles or block, not without pain, family and friends. Some of them have literally become ill. I was told of a colleague who locked herself in her room, horrified, as if hatred could leap from cell phones and flood her own home. A young singer, committed to her homeland, very talented, has suffered a real lynching in the networks and media of the counterrevolution. She has felt isolated, depressed, alone. This irrational feeling that we revolutionaries are in a minority is what they are maliciously trying to sow among us to demoralize us.
Let us try to reason with everyone who is not “incorrigibly reactionary, incorrigibly counterrevolutionary”. We must listen to him in a civilized manner, give him reason where he is right, offer him all the information and all the arguments and propose to him to build a communication not contaminated by the toxic predominant in the networks. Let us avoid the temptation to hate. It is too easy and too degrading. Let’s put heart into this decisive moment.
Abel Prieto is the former President of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and twice Minister of Culture. He currently directs the Office of the Martiano Program and is the President of the José Martí Cultural Society.
Source: Cubadebate translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English