Castro Versus Castro 
By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Translating Cuba
September 10, 2014

“Fuck Che! When I grow up I am going to be Fidel Castro!*” Alen Lauzán. (ALEN-LAUZAN.BLOGSPOT)

As long as the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) exists in Cuba, this secret and murderous organization, but in its turn legitimized by all the secret and murderous organizations in the world, regardless of ideologies or political rivalry in public (in private power always supports power); as long as the life of every Cuban depends on the vile will of another anonymous Cuban; as long as nobody questions this complicity by a returning and cheerful exile, businessmen avid to be ministers tomorrow, clergy blackmailed by their own flesh, and even by an opposition without pressure platforms and much less urge for power; as long as we just continue denouncing these clandestine citations from G-2, instead of recognizing that it is an incessant civil war of the State against its citizens, the Cuban nation has no chance of regenerating itself.

The Transition Program, agreed by the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL in Spanish) chaired by Oswaldo Payá, touched on the issue very early on. There would be no decent dialog as long as they didn’t open the archives of Evil and its agents confessed their crimes before the democratic justice that should come. As a consequence, State Security, by an order that could have only come from the Castro family, touched Oswaldo Payá, probably summarily processed in a Cuban place and executed in situ parajudicially.

All Cuban workers and unemployed Cubans, when they show themselves to be intelligent people, with desires for an active biography, have been, are, and will be interviewed by the political police of my country. It seems an exaggeration. Pardo’s paranoia. But you in your cowardly heart know well it’s not so. You know well that you were also called by them (whether you live on the Island or in its antipodes).

During my year and a half visiting the United States, I’ve been in contact with all the generations of exiles or emigrants or whatever they want to call themselves. A captive people that is no longer Cuban, since they can’t reside or participate in the social life of their previous country. Recognized stars of the stage and visual arts have confessed it to me. Geniuses of science have confessed it to me. Athletes or, to be exact, high-performance ex-athletes, have confessed it to me. The signature names of our music and literature also confessed it to me. G-2 frequents them all.

In principle, none of them has had any problem in Cuba. I knew many of them from Cuba and none told me anything about this facet of interlocutors of a Castroism of the catacombs, underground. My friends live there (perhaps they’ve ceased to be so from now on), happy to be almost protestors, while giving dozens of controversial interviews outside, provided they accept the annual interview with the official who looks after them, provided they follow the suggestions of their respective agents. Low profile perverse Fidel-ity, that ranges from threats thrown just as jokes, to the donation of a leg of mutton on the part of the authority when one of our loved ones fall into bed and is declared (gratis) as a terminal patient.

It’s much worse than this. In a single family I have found vedettes and executioners, poets and political experts, essayists and abusers. And beware of naming us, you asshole, because I could even kill when it comes to keep my family at peace. Castroism constitutes us today, is ubiquitous and for that very reason, it’s impossible to be located. Castroism concerns us all, except for the original Castros, who are about to die and their descendants will run away with their millions elsewhere.

In these blackmails we are all the complicit of all. It’s happening right now. They tell me new examples through the social networks from Havana. They ask me for advice and to remain silent. It’d be worse if I ever mention their names and situations. Moreover, those who reside abroad would sue me and put me to jail for moral damages and defamation if I dare to speak.

We are infamous up to this point. We have lived our whole lives in the times of Castro. We shall die, then, with the honors which correspond to the horror of being us (and not the Castros) the true Castro’s decrepit but yet demonic clan.

*Translator’s note: A reference to the chant children must repeat during school morning assembly: “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Ché!”

From Diario de Cuba

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