Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado
It is nobody's secret that we Cubans are comiendo el cable ("eating the
cable"). This is an expression of the popular argot in Cuba used to
allude to a person or group that is going through a hard time, that
feels itself to be a victim of neglect and that accumulates many
unresolved needs. Many cannot visualize a horizon where satisfying
their needs doesn't entail moving beyond our borders; others, have the
luck of belonging, maybe even from a seminal accident, to the
olive-green royalty, and enjoy the benefits that their relatives or
contacts trained in the ideology of the chat in time and the public and
opportune praises for the historical leader can allow them.
They are the children and grandchildren of the so called Revolution, the
paragon of "those who don't traffic in influences" nor do they stoop to
oligarchic behaviors to establish their own — because it would be
immoral to practice that which led them to armed struggle first and then
to power; those who are models of loyalty and its problems, as long as
they haven't committed a disloyalty or problem of principles, who
minimize themselves through a thoughtful gift and stereotype it as an
antic, never as corruption.
They are the descendents and unconditionals of the sharks who fear
freedom of information, those called to work side-by-side with the
foreign investors, those enabled to occupy a position that results in
juicy returns with "enemy money" in the accounts that they probably have
overseas providing for the inevitable change, while Cuban workers are
exploited with symbolic salaries and a currency turned evil.
Despite the official excessive secrecy that they have turned into
tradition, by different means the comments of a new scandal of
corruption reach them, associated with the higher echelons and reliable
businessmen installed by the nomenklatura in mixed enterprises and
foreign corporations.
The fiber optic conduit that left Venezuela, arrived in our territory in
February this year, and should have been operational in July, but it was
a disaster because those chosen by the authorities were so busy planting
dollars in their own financial grove, that they bought the cheapest
technological cable, one without the shielding required to protect
against bites from sharks that inhabit the Caribbean.
Hasn't it been a policy directed by the caste of the country that
products be acquired elsewhere so we can save our currency reserves?
There is also talk about the abduction of funds destined for the cable's
activation, that have frozen its implementation. I don't know if this
is real or if it's an information cocktail that they allowed to filter
to continue violating Cubans' rights to the internet.
In any event, any skullduggery by the state elites and their partisans
is credible when they train their chosen in the practice of their
capitalism. It is also rumored in Havana that the media grave weighing
in this matter is due to the lineage of those involved and their
hangers-on, and that soon they will get the blow required in such cases.
To simple citizens, we who know of unripe and ripe, we get spoiled and
it looks as if we continue to be witnesses to the crumbling of this deja
vu dictatorship and the immobility they hold on to, like the chrysalis
of rock discordant with the modern world's democratic symphony
Our anguish to scream sticks in our throats; but the death rattles of
the model are so evident that the opportunists of the upper class
leadership risk exchanging their Communist party red cards for green
paper money, and we wonder how many more of these are hidden, still
shouting out empty slogans in exchange for favors, which is to sin
against ideology. While these hindrances of a discredited system fatten
their personal fortunes with their influences and their false doctrine,
we ordinary Cubans the true sharks that for these last few decades eat
the cable of hope, and of undelivered promises that, in a model like
this, will never come.
Translated by: lapizcero
October 4 2011
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