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Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Culture of the Big Stick / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

The Culture of the Big Stick / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
Jeovany J. Vega, Translator: Unstated
Foto: Orlando Luis Pardo

Faced with the interference of the Yankees and the European Union:
UNITY! Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Something very serious happens in a country where people live by stealth
and avoid criticizing the decisions of their government, where the
transcendent issues are spoken in a whisper, quietly monitoring the
environment, just in case; where so many do not consider honest labor as
the only morally legitimate source to earn the bread they will put in
the mouths of their children.

Something very serious happens in a country where Parliament unanimously
supports provisions to undermine the welfare of their people and keeps
intact laws whose practicality expired long ago. Something very serious
happens where unions betray their purpose and becomes the point of a
spear capable of lodging itself in a worker's back; where,
paradoxically, beating people is legitimized as a way of ensuring the
freedom of man.

What is presented by the Cuban government as a monolithic consensus, as
unanimous support for its line of thought, is nothing more than
paralyzing fear, which reduces the individual to zero, shuts off his
voice with an overwhelming power before which he knows he is completely
helpless.

Because if something has become typical in Cuba it is the culture of
hard blow. Every time convincing arguments have failed to implement any
particular action or policy … there goes the whack that is reluctant to
accept any decision so "democratically" taken!

For what I say, my example is very illustrative. When the then Minister
of Public Health received that demand for attention from 300 workers in
his sector with respect to wages, 5 minutes would have been enough to
give a response a few paragraphs, which, regardless of its content,
would have been correct, but far from this he chose not to respond ever,
and months later along comes… the cudgel of the caves! So here I am five
years later, still disqualified, struggling to recover my profession and
denouncing the injustice.

Now, knowing the tiger by his stripes, I sense they are paving the way
to neutralize this little matter of the bloggers. As they have
demonstrated repeatedly that they do not know any other way to resolve
disputes, it would not surprise me were they to lash out at any moment,
using whatever variant of the wide spectrum they possess, be it through
the typical raid, through individualized attacks, creating diplomatic
friction with some embassy that offers a breach to the Internet to the
Cuban strictly deprived of this service by his own Government.

Any excuse will serve to get that nail out of the shoe. Something tells
me that they are about to show their big claws.

June 16 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=15678

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