Cuba / Cuban Affairs

El Consejo para la Transición Democrática en Cuba (CTDC) manifiesta su profunda alegría tras conocer el anuncio de María Corina Machado, galardonada con el Premio Nobel de la Paz 2025.

María Corina ha demostrado con firmeza y constancia un liderazgo inequívoco uniendo a la oposición venezolana en un proyecto común.

Su lucha incansable por una transición democrática en Venezuela le ha convertido en un referente de resistencia democrática en la región abriendo un horizonte de inspiración para otras naciones que luchan por la libertad como Cuba.

 Para nosotros, como cubanos, este premio representa también una esperanza compartida: la de que la valentía, el compromiso y la lucha cívica y pacífica por la democracia son caminos posibles para conquistar la libertad de nuestros pueblos.

I’ve been thinking about how we were tamed… and how we could be tamed again.

More than 66 years have passed since January 1, 1959. That Cuba of 1959 was not perfect—no nation ever is or will be, because human creations always carry some imperfection.

It was a Cuba that needed change, but that was moving toward it, because despite our mistakes we were a thriving society, growing not only economically but also in political and social awareness.

How was it that that island, with so much human potential, so much social life, so much political effervescence, came to be turned into a prison of misery and hopelessness?

Any society can be “tamed”; any people can be manipulated if one knows how to do it and has the right ingredients.

 In Cuba, the ingredients were ready: we were a people desperate to free ourselves from Batista’s dictatorship, and we have always sinned by being a caudillo-oriented people. And a caudillo arose among us—dazzling, hypnotic.

 The rest was just applying a script. I cannot assert that Fidel was inspired by the Nazi propaganda manual written by Joseph Goebbels. But what is evident is that its principles took shape on this Caribbean soil.

He estado pensando en cómo nos domesticaron… y podrían volvernos a domesticar I

Han pasado más de 66 años desde el primero de enero de 1959. Aquella Cuba no era perfecta, como ninguna nación lo es ni lo será nunca, porque las creaciones humanas siempre tienen algo de imperfecto.

Era una Cuba que necesitaba cambios, pero que caminaba hacia ellos, porque a pesar de nuestros errores, éramos una sociedad pujante, que crecía no sólo en lo económico sino en conciencia política y social.

¿Cómo fue que aquella isla con tanto potencial humano, con tanta vida social, con tanta efervescencia política, llegó a convertirse en una cárcel de miseria y desesperanza?

Toda sociedad puede ser “domesticada”, todo pueblo puede ser manipulado, si se sabe cómo hacerlo y si se tienen los ingredientes adecuados.

En Cuba, los ingredientes estaban servidos: éramos un pueblo desesperado por vernos libres de la dictadura de Batista, y hemos pecado siempre de ser un pueblo caudillista, y un caudillo se elevó entre nosotros, deslumbrante, hipnótico.

El resto, era sólo aplicar un guion. No puedo afirmar que Fidel se haya inspirado en el Manual de propaganda nazi escrito por Joseph Goebbels. Pero lo que sí es evidente es que sus principios tomaron cuerpo en esta tierra del Caribe.

I have been thinking about José Gabriel Barrenechea and his fellow political prisoners.

I don’t know if it’s because of his unpronounceable last name, or because of his serenely manly image, or because of the horror of not being allowed to accompany his mother at her death, or because of the inexcusable silence of the Cuban intellectual community… I don’t know if it’s because of one of these reasons or the convergence of them all, but the truth is that Barrenechea has become close to us, he has seeped into our souls, and even many of us who did not know him have begun to feel for him the deep sympathy that a people develop when faced with the dignified stance of a man confronting stark injustice, vulgar abuse, and political vengeance.

Encrucijada, November 7, 2024: more than 48 hours without power—more than two days without electricity! And the only thing people did was bang on pots and shout: “We want electric power!” Anywhere else in the world, at the very least they would have set fire to the government building.

But in Cuba things are different, in Cuba the principle of 90 over 10 always applies, which says that, when a reaction seems disproportionate, 10% corresponds to what actually happened, and 90% corresponds to what lies underneath, hidden, what is not said but is in reality what people feel , or what people are thinking so the government treats this protest with a disproportionate reaction.