Confused by Their Own Lies (about Cuba)

[IndianaGreen]

Confused by Their Own Lies

By Manuel E. Yepe


A US journalist says that in the Cuban city of Bayamo, "a communist experiment is letting average government workers in this eastern city enjoy a few things that only foreigners and moneyed Cubans can usually afford: a good burger, a kicking jazz bar, and stiff cocktails."

It is not surprising that a US citizen, told by the mass media that only the capitalist order and the consumer society offer worldly pleasures, might react the way this journalist did when witnessing the efforts of a socialist society to find ways to enrich the spiritual life of its citizens while avoiding the cruel exclusions that come with capitalism.

The socialist goal that Cuba has been working toward for half a century has had to deal with much more than embargoes and slanders. It has, in fact, been subjected to the most inhumane harassment and constant pressures, which have required a great deal of defensive creativity just to compensate for the disproportion in resources between the aggressor and the aggrieved.

When the US blockade against the Cuban people began, even before the victory of the insurrection in January 1959, the people's unity and the innate inventiveness of Cubans, along with the sagacity of their leadership, were buttressed by the solidarity of all the oppressed peoples of the world and, above all, by the support of the governments of countries where anti-imperialist revolutions had previously come to power.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist camp dealt a blow that could have devastated Cuba. That entire group of nations, in fact, at least temporarily, came under US hegemony, which strengthened the blockade, the attacks, and the dangers of isolation. "A blockade squared!" That is what Cubans called the situation that they faced.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7555/