My guest post today is from Angel Santiesteban, a Cuban writer whose work has been published in more than 15 countries. His blog from Cuba is titled, The Children Nobody Wanted.
The Reflection in the Mirror: Castro and Mubarak
by Angel Santiesteban
The newspaper Granma, official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, which also controls the rest of the official media as is common in totalitarian regimes, announces that demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are a response to his thirty years in power.
The news seems to mock Cubans. The Castro government is already threatening to reach double that figure at the helm of the country, leading to ever growing poverty and scarcity.
Common sense, however, seems to fail authorities because a certain logic dictates that they shouldn't publish this image of Mubarak--their reflection in the mirror. Thirty years in power in the Egyptian nation is bad, but fifty-three years for the Cuban dictatorship is good?
Mubarak declared, according to an interview on the American network ABC, that his departure from power would lead the country into chaos. "I hate to see Egyptians fighting among themselves." It's hard to know whether all dictators are the same by nature or if they studied the same manual.
What's laughable--if such a thing were possible--is that they mock themselves, they defy the most basic common sense. Mubarak and Fidel Castro imagine themselves to be gods, chosen ones, capable of guiding their people if not to prosperity, at least to "dignity." They have no bread to offer but they try to swindle us with populist ideology. The tragedy is that the price of their love of power is paid by their people.
Also, recently, we have the "bread intifada" in Tunisia, a rebellion against a government that, as the official Cuban press describes it, has been "entrenched in power for 23 years." In Yemen something similar is happening. In the Ivory Coast the population demands respect for the outcome of its elections. Sudan votes in a referendum of self-determination. Peoples, risking their destiny, tired of being deceived, launch themselves like cannon fodder to impose their will.
Just a few hours ago, national television claimed that representatives from the Mubarak government were holding talks with the opposition. The key question is when will the Castros' government accept democracy, admit the opposition, and stop ignoring plans that could heal the present national crisis.
Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian whose death sparked the wave of riots that are shaking the Arab world today, died like Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Neither of them had any other alternative.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a new compilation blog with Yoani, Angel Santiesteban, and other Cuban bloggers in English.
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did nothing like this but gathered all gangs under one single organization: Castrofascism.
Castro only posed for the press as from-a-jeep-ruling-monarch in few occasions, in fact he has been world's most afraid dictator, he is the one with the larger security guard and the most elaborated security schedule, never sleeping-working-eating in the same place and time. The one with more doubles running the country at same time and the one that more killing intents faced from his people in world's history. For same reason Castro has been the Cuban dictator that more publics and secrets mansions owns in Cuba and outland. Properties, business and monies all around the world belonging to Castro’s clan placed this bloody and criminal tyrant among the 10 richest persons in the world.
The only accurate thing in your comment is about health services CUBA (and not the castrofascism) offers to the Cubans. It is CUBA the source of this health system that existed long before castrofascism kiddnaped our beautiful country. This system was so strong and wonderful that even a destructive force like a totalitarian tyranny has not destroyed it completely but just partially. In such way we have now that castrofascism could bring down Cuba’s infantile mortality rate from the place # 13 world ranking in 1958 to the place # 28 last year according UN data.