Versión Español
Spanish – The longest dictatorship on the American continent is still in control after 60 years, thanks mainly to its job of infiltration in civil society that “purges” the streets of dissidents.
Its latest target was a 77-year-old woman who sells peanuts in the streets out of necessity, thus dismantling the propaganda of a welfare state that supposedly guarantees the care of all its inhabitants.
The visibly malnourished state of the lady, as well as her testimony, makes it clear that Cuba is not the utopia that its defenders claim.
The informers serving the regime, or “chivatones” as the opposition refers to them, reported this “counter-revolutionary” to the police because she exposes to the tourists the fact that the Cubans are suffering without necessities.
Two women, who claimed to work in the education sector, rebuked the older woman for not asking the government for help and instead receiving clothes and money from tourists. They screamed at her, saying that 5% of their salary went to the service of older people like her and questioned her for speaking ill about the government.
The allocation of funds that the regime steals from state employees is not public information because publishing official statistics is a mandate of the dictatorship.
The old lady had hand-wrapped peanut packages. She testified before cameras that she had been selling them for 30 years. She maintains that she does not harm anyone. Apparently, she is damaging the image of the regime, and her action was reason enough to be reported to the police.
According to the logic of state employees, it was reprehensible for a woman to work autonomously, rather than being dependent on the state and therefore on the taxpayer. Meanwhile, they think it is respectable to live at the expense of others, as they do working for the regime.
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Latin American tourists residing in California, U.S. filmed the video. The outrage was massive. The informers accused them of being “counter-revolutionaries.” It didn’t take long for reactions to start pouring on the internet. Some internet-users claimed that the women screaming at the elderly lady were, in fact, government agents disguised as a civilians to portray the false image to the world that everything is well in Cuba.
The constitution allows for an attack, even armed assault, against opponents of the regime
Faced with the digital age and the ease of transmitting news via the telephone, the communist dictatorship faces a new challenge. It cannot control the transmission of news as it used to. So they filter videos like this and multiply the number of people who can observe how the regime treats citizens.
“Citizens have the right to fight by all means, including armed struggle, when no other recourse is possible, against anyone who attempts to overthrow the political, social, and economic order established by this constitution,” dictates the new Cuban constitution. Moreover, it refers to the “irrevocable” character of socialism with this order.
Thus, there exists a disciplinary system within civil society whereby civilians can take it upon themselves to “correct” others, and in case they are unable to persuade, they can appeal to the security forces.
There’s a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution on every block
The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) was created in Havana on September 28, 1960, to guarantee both the functioning and the perpetuity of the regime. Their role is to collectively monitor external interference and acts of destabilization of the prevailing political system.
Of the 12 million Cubans, more than half are members of the CDR: 7.6 million members in favor of socialism. In other words, a large part of the population ensures their survival by keeping the dictatorship afloat.
Each block has a CDR, and this operates at a neighborhood, provincial, national, and even parliamentary scale. It also assures a source of work for Cubans in the service of the revolution. It provides a minimum wage, recently increased to 16 dollars a month; a fact that the “chivatona” highlights in the video as something positive.
Public employees earn miserable wages. Meanwhile, according to Forbes magazine, Fidel Castro left an inheritance of 900 million USD, an outlandish amount in contrast to a civil society with an average wage that rose to 42 USD a few weeks ago (not the same as the minimum wage of 16 USD) due to the inability of Cubans to acquire essential goods with any less.
Elian Gonzalez, from rafter to Defense Committee leader
Thus, the leader of the revolution was getting rich for half a century while his subjects were impoverished. At least two million Cubans have escaped from the island, crossing shark-infested waters on a raft, due to poverty and political persecution.
Among them is Elian Gonzalez, a child whose mother died as she drowned while trying to escape from Cuba. He was returned to Cuba at the behest of his father. There, as an adult, he became the leader of the CDR in his area.
“I don’t profess any religion, but if I did, my God would be Fidel Castro.”
Fifteen years after his rescue on the high seas, Gonzalez was interviewed by Granma, the regime’s official media. “Fidel Castro is like a father to me,” he declared, “I don’t profess any religion, but if I did, my God would be Fidel Castro,” he added.
In conclusion, the network of state control that runs from the Assembly to the streets ensures that no one goes against the regime and constitutionally validates ideological persecution and even aggression against opponents.
The constitution openly endorses the persecution of the so-called counter-revolutionaries, and the civil society loyal to the regime is complicit.
