By Ariel Hidalgo
HAVANA TIMES – Based on what we have seen in Venezuela since Maduro’s capture up to the present—almost two months—and what followed afterward: the rise of Delsy Rodriguez to the presidency with Washington’s approval, a slow-motion release of political prisoners without guarantees they won’t be re-arrested, the persistence of dictatorial structures—a kind of madurismo without Maduro—and President Trump’s control over that country’s oil (not in vain did he publish his photograph as president of Venezuela), it seems to me like an image of what could happen in Cuba, as he himself says: “a friendly takeover of Cuba,” also taking into account what has been reaching us up to today about an alleged cabinet made up of figures from the regime.
I do not want to be a spoiler, and I am sure that Cuba’s freedom is closer than ever, but one must not trust blindly in the promises of representatives of a foreign power. Is that the only alternative? The July 11 uprising was not organized by anyone—not by dissidents, not by the CIA, nor by Cubans in Miami—and yet it shook the foundations of power. Did it fail?
We can lament the repression and the imprisonments with draconian sentences, but the massive demonstrations in dozens of cities constituted a political victory, because they marked the beginning of a process leading to another revolution—a word many do not like, but whose meaning is very simple: radical change. Ask yourselves how long it has been since there were radical changes in Cuba. It has been a long time. Nothing changes; they only implement reforms that lead nowhere in order to preserve a system that everyone knows—even they themselves—that it is a failure. And yet they do nothing to change it and improve the people’s conditions.
Why? Because they fear the people. Those demonstrations not only shook the foundations of the regime, but also the consciousness of many people who until then could not conceive that something like that could happen. Above all, because they know what a pre-revolutionary process is. In the 1950s, that process lasted five and a half years, from the assault on the Moncada Barracks to the dictator’s flight. Although such processes do not all last the same length of time, they generally differ by a few months more or less. And this one has already been going on for just under five years.
What will its outcome be? That will depend on the decisions the government cabinet makes before that probable social explosion. They know that if such an explosion occurs and they repress it brutally, they will be handing the powerful neighbor a silver-plated excuse for intervention.
So it would be wiser to prevent it. How? By arresting dissidents or preventing them from leaving their homes? We have already said that it is not the dissidents who provoke it; rather, these uprisings are spontaneous, triggered more by the leadership itself through its mistaken policies. They cannot station guards outside the homes of millions of people. By cutting off the internet? They cannot keep it suspended indefinitely. And since no one can foresee when that explosion will occur, the first spark will be inevitable—wherever it happens—and there will be no time to cut the internet and prevent the news from spreading across the country in just seconds.
Therefore, the only solution to prevent it is to change policy so clearly that everyone becomes convinced that this time it is not about cosmetic changes that change nothing, but about addressing the essence of the problems: freeing all political prisoners and engaging in dialogue—not with the external enemy, but with the dissidents, who have already become spokespersons for the people. If they cannot stop the new revolution that threatens them from below, then they should join it from above.
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