By René Vázquez Díaz on July 12, 2021
photo: Bill Hackwell
Imagine, for a moment, the hive of U.S. government officials who have worked loyally, since 1960, to make Cuban children, the elderly and the sick of a tiny country suffer unspeakably, in order to punish with impunity and subdue its civilian population. Imagine the massive number of officials who, now more than ever, continue to carry out this daily work to enforce measures against shipping companies and financial institutions around the world, so that family-to-family remittances do not reach the island of Cuba, nor the essential credits, nor the fuel needed for agriculture, transportation and electricity for hospitals.
They are normal men and women, who play tennis and eat hamburgers, hug their children and grandchildren, watch television like everyone else and then impeccably fulfill their duty of tormenting the normal citizens of a country they do not know, and for which they profess a diffused contempt mixed with an inevitable ingredient of admiration. For every day of their lives these officials do the same as their predecessors in office since 1960 have, implementing the silent aggression of the commercial, financial and diplomatic blockade with the simple aim of inflicting pain, death, deprivation and suffering among the human beings attacked in Cuba. The practical implementation of the blockade renders unnecessary the explosions, invasions and landings that were already carried out in the past, and historically defeated by that same people. Those kinds of defeats caused casualties and such a deep consternation in the almighty aggressor that it has not ceased since then.
Imperial consternation, excuse that contradictory expression. A racist empire of immeasurable power, dismayed by a mestizo and peaceful people, who instead of military bases, cannons and bombs have doctors halfway around the world fighting diseases, and who have been able to create their own vaccines to save lives against the pandemic? Imperial consternation. I consider that strange phrase appropriate to understand the vindictive and criminal mentality behind Washington’s impotence with regard to such dangerous people as my nephews, my friends and compatriots who are victims of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act in the cities and the coasts of Cuba, where there is not a single child without hospitals and schools.
The blockade against Cuba morally undermines the principles of International Law. The issue of human rights, from whatever angle it is analyzed, is in itself a forceful manifesto against U.S. policy against Cuba. All those imperial employees, be they Americans or Cubans salaried by them, know that their war against my nephews and friends is unwinnable. That is precisely why it is highly profitable and curiously disgusting. For I speak of an imperial consternation that is not based on the damage caused by them in the bosom of a hitherto invincible people, but because of the already epic historical ridicule of all those officials who, in reality, act as office soldiers. They are not fanatics. They only exercise a fanaticism based on the effort of domination over an indomitable population. Their evil is banal and sadly well documented.
Now imagine for a moment the Cuban mercenaries who, in the United States and other parts of the world -both as employees of the aggressor and as simple citizens with a very limited perception of the world and of their own country- support the blockade against the civilian population of Cuba. This support exposes a cowardly and fratricidal attitude of complicity with the worst interests of a foreign power. I have said it before and I repeat it. The wickedness of these mercenaries cannot even be described as banal.
Source: La Pupila Insomne, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – English