February 25, 1997. El Nuevo Herald.
By Raul Rivero
They wish to look towards the future, but the government turns their heads towards the past.
Havana is, particularly the elements of the Cuban landscape, in physical decline. Then, the devastation of the spirit, the uncertainty and the fear, a fear which the State spreads without rationing from San Antonio to Maisi.
Even as totalitarianism is lacking in imagination and creativity, the many needs force you to think and invent things. Already the mass media doesn't limit itself to the old maxim of divide and conquer. No. Now there are new slogans, emerging from a balancing act, methods which, if not authentic and pure, they are imported, and support themselves on the terrible formula: engender fear and you will prevail.
Hence the ruthless apparatus of cheap politics which emerges, daily, over Cubans to prove to him that the world in which he lives is a Caribbean parcel within an earthly paradise. And thus, also the patient work of the official press to make up a chaotic future, catastrophic, and infernal which would befall this country if the Communist Party were to abandon us, if the champions of the alleged reduction of infant mortality rates were to abandon power.
It is what we call, to scare. To create a climate of distrust and of refusal of any type of change, because, in the end, as the philosophy of paralysis indicates, "it is better the bad, but known, than the good yet to be met". It is nothing but a perverse game of manipulation, and the multiplied voice of the omnipresent and sage father, severe and cautious, which calls to immobility, to subservience and blind obedience.
But it is, to be sure, a shoddy message, without much thought, carved through the machete at the press bureaus of radio and television which always have, for the man on the street, an aberrant and populist translation: "Stay on base, buddy, it is for your own good".
There's not a single strike in Honduras, Pakistan, Seul or Montego Bay which the national press doesn't highlight. There's the image of the starving black child, who must now be nearing 30, a truly painful sight, which has been seen on Cuban screens more than some of the best actors in the country.
The poverty of the world in first place, along with the sight of robust leaders, local farmers happy and healthy, wearing their guayaberas and mustaches, swearing on Karl Marx that the next plan will really show results. Men and women repeating for the television cameras and microphones some saying which they learned in school, which now is nothing more than a mechanical and twisted innocence.
The people wish to look forward, towards the future, but the government turns their heads towards the past and face them with cloudy images of Batista's dictatorship so that they feel that here, in today's Cuba, rationed of bread and of self expression, divided and without a path, they are truly happy. Such is the fear proposed by a state through speeches, articles, news and television spots.
But there's another fear which is also a proposal of the state and it is not geared to the (general) population. It is the one geared to those Cubans who did not believe, do not believe, and will not believe the tricks of the propaganda. For such a herd of misfits, for those unbelievers there's a more direct mechanism which has, as its instrument, not the official journalists, but rather the officials of the political police. For such mistifts, for such unbelievers are the warnings, the dungeons, the threats of jail or exile. For them, the repudiation rallies, the slap on the face, the daily terror, the insults and humilliations.
To all of these state unleashed fears we must add those which all men hold within: the simple fact of being alive, the security of their family and that of their friends, the length of the night and putting their signature on an article in Havana.
(c) CubaPress
Copyright (c) 1997 El Nuevo Herald