Side notes on the event occurred in Caimanera
especiales
The Revolution has met a phrase that spread panic among its enemies: “The order is given.” And some misinterpret it as they see, in that phrase, a call to violence.
But the truth is that the Revolution was born and emerged amid combats, and has survived by fighting (sometimes with fire arms, sometimes with political and moral weapons). Hence, “the order” as a term, is not aliened to the understanding of the Cuban people and it is not synonym of militarization, or calling to violence, but a concept of defense, to defend the Revolution. In other words, it would be like understanding “I am in a fight” as a statement of “I belong to the US Army or training to beat Mijaín López…So, if anyone tells you he or she is in a fight, do not tag it as a military conflict.
Having said that, why do those who do not speak out against the economic war of the United States against Cuba, and demand military invasions against their Homeland, do get into such a catharsis when a revolutionary appeal to the phrase "the order of combat has been given"? It may be that just because they are immoral, they believe everyone else is too, and we already know what "combat" means in the United States (let’s see how many Latin American countries have not been attacked by the Yankees).
The word “combat,” in the Cuban case, refers exclusively to defending the Revolution, not to generating a civil war that, curiously, would only benefit those who want a military intervention in Cuba. In any case, if you call yourself a revolutionary and you assume the same discourse as the counterrevolution —from Otaola, Ultrack, Paparazzi or Milanés, whatever that discourse may be— then please, review your condition and your concept of revolutionary. Although I make you spoiler: you are not!
Neither are you if you second the discourse line that, under the government's vision, everyone who protests is a counterrevolutionary. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has never said that; in fact, the government has always stated that most demonstrations do not have a political background.
Now, can a peaceful demand become a counterrevolutionary protest? Of course, and by various understandings:
When your protest ends in any violation of public order, intentionally or not, by those who generate or participate in it. Altering the right of citizens to tranquility is counterrevolution.
When you create a situation that is used by the enemy to manipulate the facts and validate, before national and international public opinion, that your protest aspires to overthrow the "dictatorship."
Both were the cases in Caimanera last Saturday, May 6. So let's stop romanticizing certain protests with paternalism and trying to normalize the dismantling of the Revolution due to tolerances accepted in other countries, which do not seem like the conditions of economic and media warfare imposed on us by the United States.
There is no comparison with the right to protest anywhere in the world. Neither the western press nor the White House assume the demonstrations in France, Chile or Greece as an uprising against "dictatorships"; but in the Cuban case, they do. Anyone who does not see that Cuba is measured by different standards than the rest of the world is, and will be, a political dwarf. And then it is convenient to learn history, which is not the same as "revising" history.
In any case, to confront what is improper, what is crooked, what seeks division and hatred among us, anti-Cuban hater, the bottom of "the order of combat" has always been pushed. It was not for nothing that it emerged in the history of Cuba from the first line of the National Anthem. But now we all run, not just the Bayamese!
Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff
Add new comment