CASTRO THE MYTHICAL

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                   No oppressor is good, and no oppressed is bad

Fidel, I do not want to offend you, but I am asking myself how come you let Nelson Mandela overtake you...

The apartheid regime of South Africa was maybe more cruel than the one laying to waste Cuba under the thumb of Batista and of his mafiosi yankees. Under the inspiration of the CIA (her again!), the criminals who were ransacking and pillaging South Africa took hold of Mandela and had him imprisoned. For 27 years, he suffered hell. But in jail, Mandela grew up, so much so that in the eyes of the people he became a hero as popular as you in Cuba.   

When he came out of that inferno, he could have only to snap his fingers so that the people rise up and make a stew with the oppressors. But Nelson did not chose that path. He chose to initiate a revolution light years away from yours. Animated by an inner strength that he had developed in jail, he categorically refused to fight hate with hate, lying with lying, injustice with injustice, tyranny with tyranny.  

You also, my dear Fidel, you could have done something similar. You hold up to the Yankee Empire and you became the standard of the oppressed of the world. Yet, by the pathways that you followed, you were not always a great man. You acted, sad to say, as a delinquent. It is true that you realized many good things, but the enthusiasts of Pablo Escobar say the same thing of their hero who was still a huge bandit…

Never did you admit to one sole error. Humility was not your strongest point; that is the strength of the great.  Mandela took 27 years to discover that strength, and he became great.  

You Fidel, through your courage, you won the heart of your people. You freed them from illiteracy and you offered them the best medicine in the world. You sent legions of Cuban doctors and teachers to be of help in abandoned regions of many depressed countries. But you also led wars, small ones and bigger ones, that were questionable.  One of them, it seems, would have contributed to the liberation of South Africa. Mandela must have expressed his gratitude to you for that help. Great!  

The worst still is that you abused your own people.

Under the pretext to liberate them and protect them, you took your people hostage. You brainwashed, humiliated and submitted them to silence and to hunger. The USA was boycotting you, that is true, but the rest of the planet sided with you. You could make business with the majority of the world’s countries. In spite of that, you let your people stagnate. You sent to the firing squad and let rot in your gaols thousands of Cubans. You pushed back into exile thousands of others (they were not all followers of Batista neither agents of the CIA). Thousands of your people went out to sea on makeshift boats in the hope of earning their freedom; hundreds among them ended in the belly of sharks. Those people were not all traitors to their country. They simply wanted to live. 

In your revolution project, you see, there was no place for anyone else but you. And in your great revolution which claimed to be liberating, only one thing was missing: freedom. A mere detail, of course… Should I tell you that I am not talking about the freedom of consuming which is a real madness in the capitalist world, but about the ordinary freedom which sets apart the human being from a puppet?      

My dear Fidel, as a symbol of resistance to the piggyness of the Great U.S. Octopus, I give you 10 on 10, and I place you between Martí and Bolívar. Yet, because of some movements in your head that have cause much innocent and useless pain and death, I am sorry to have to place you between Pinochet and no other one but …Batista. Sorry!   

This does not please me, I can assure you, since I respect you and I respect those among your people who sincerely love you. From the bottom of my heart, I would wish that Mandela would interfere in the case and find for you a place outside the club of all the Neros of History. I would appreciate that he would keep you far away also from the scoundrels who made attempts on your life 638 times (maybe not because you were a bad boy but rather because you did not belong to their gang...). Much work for Mandela. 

Reflecting on your life, allow me three words for those who have the desire to save the world and wish to avoid stupidities:     

1-   Either left wing or right wing, no oppressor is good. And no oppressed is bad. Oppression is always an evil, even for the best of causes. 

2-   Good or evil, every human being is greater than the most marvelous of ideologies or the most holy of religions.   

3-   Connected to a deep-rooted commitment for justice and freedom, forgiveness is, like humility, the other human force which makes a human being really great.  

                                                  ¡VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

   
                                                                                                  Eloy Roy
Translated from the French by Jacques Bourdages