This January 1 happened to be the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban revolution. On this day in 1959, the dictator Fulgencio Batista boarded a plane out of Havana, and Fidel Castro began a triumphal march toward that city, bearing with him the adoration and hopes of his countrymen. Fifty years later, Castro is a dead man walking, and so is the country he has treated like his private domain for all these long, long decades.
Imagine how it must feel. We Americans get heartily sick of our presidents well short of their eighth year in office: sick of the same slogans, mannerisms, the same faces. Multiply that by 50 years -- then multiply again by a cult of personality that allows the "maximum leader" to prattle on for six or seven hours on national TV, and by a police state that places spies on every block, every apartment complex, every office, every sports activity, everywhere. Today's slogans were first mouthed long before most people in Cuba were born; its's all they have ever heard. Today's faces of men in power marched in with Castro an eternity ago.
-Vulgar Morality
My father, the author of the above quoted blog post, once talked about how he adapted in the early days after he came from Cuba. He said that going from Batista to Castro, from Castro to exile from his home country, he simply began to assume that there were few things you could take for granted, few things that might not change. But for almost fifty years, Fidel Castro remained unmoved.
Fidel Castro is no doubt a political genius but also a despotic monster: a dreadful combination for all those who have lived all these decades at his beck and call. I pass in silence the Western artists and intellectuals who have lionized him as a man of the people while he ruled like an oriental despot. I presume they knew not what they said. But we who live in freedom, when we look at our quiet streets, our sturdy homes, our well-stocked stores and supermarkets, when we consider our ability to come and go, should give a thought to the Cubans, who have grown to middle age without the living experience of such luxuries.
Go on over and
read the whole post.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment