In this 2020 the crisis is in Cuba; the time has come for new and terminal “maleconazos” uprisings

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
January 9, 2020

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Cuba’s economic, social and political situation portrays an actual reality of misery, crisis, violation of human rights, oppression and of a total breakdown of such magnitude that the beginning of this new year foretells that in 2020, the crisis is in Cuba.  A communist economic system, parasitic and corrupt, in a subjugated yet more effervescent society who is more informed through technological advances, who is nearing a boiling point, and who is tired of an exhausted tyrannical political direction and the serious internal conflicts resulting therefrom, coincides this is the time for new and terminal uprisings.

Cuba, the dictatorship exporter of destabilization and violence who for over six decades has provoked confrontations and overthrows, who musters guerrillas, practices terrorism, and traffics in narcotics, is the current head of a Transnational Organized Crime dictatorships’ group called “Castrochavism”.  A group who, with an antiimperialist rhetoric, is the greatest interventionist and aggressor of all states throughout the Americas and who starts the year 2020 with all indicators that its time has come to take its own poison.

The term “maleconazo” describes “the demonstrations against the dictatorship that took place in Cuba on 5 August of 1994 that are considered as the most serious popular rebellion against the Castroist regime”.   The maleconazo was triggered by Cuban authorities’ interdiction of four boats loaded with Cuban emigrants navigating, without permission, toward the coasts of the United States.  A multitude of people gathered at Havana’s waterfront (Malecon) protesting, and confronting with slogans against the communist regime.  The brutal repression by the state’s security officials clad in civilian clothing and the presence of Fidel Castro who called on the people to “win the streets and defeat the statelessness of demonstrators” were able to put this situation under control but left the historic sign that “the dictatorship is vulnerable”.

The maleconazo was a spontaneous revolt that was caused by the situation of misery and deprivation caused by the “special period in time of peace” unleashed by the disappearance of the Soviet Union that left the parasite state of Cuba destitute, unable to meet even the most minimum needs of the population.  From the dictatorship’s point of view, the “maleconazo” is the feared popular reaction that places its indefinite tenure in power at risk, it is the nightmare the regime does not want to be repeated.  The dictatorship in Cuba is horrified that the “maleconazo” may come back and be spread.

The reality is that without Venezuela’s oil, without the human trafficking of slave physicians and other professionals, with the loss of its sources of income by the departure of Lula and Rouseff from power in Brazil, of Correa in Ecuador, of Morales in Bolivia, with growing sanctions for human rights’ violations and with its stubbornness to keep subjugating Venezuela, Cuba’s economy cannot survive, even as the narco-state begun in the seventies with Pablo Escobar and Roberto Suarez.  The dictatorship’s current conditions are so critical as that of the nineties and constantly worsen, despite the relief that may represent Argentina’s complicity with the new Kirchner/Fernandez government and Mexico’s with Lopez Obrador, and that of Spain.

The communications’ revolution the world lives through due to the internet, cellular phones and beyond, is a liberation instrument for oppressed peoples, such as the Cuban people.  The contact with the island’s overseas world is a factor that erodes the dictatorship’s omnipotence

The dictatorship’s decrepitude with Fidel dead and with Raul Castro forced by his age to apparent and partial transfers of power, opened the fight for the privileges and riches that each position grants to corrupt elites of all dictatorships.   The simulation of constitutional reform and the designation of a Prime Minister reveal the abnormal crackles of a centralist and totalitarian system that is crumbling due to natural internal succession strife.  Power groups, families, perks and positions face -within the dictatorship- new generations in the Organized Crime’s structure.

For Cuba’s dictatorship all is growing internal weaknesses and external threats.  Having had its attacks to destabilize democracies in the region exposed and controlled, Cuba’s threats now turn against it.  In these recently past years, they have suffocated and disguised several internal protests, but more are coming that are “social, economic demands that repudiate the dictatorial abuse”.  It is not an ideological matter; it is a depleted system.  The time for new and terminal maleconazos against the Castroist system throughout Cuba’s territory has arrived, and 2020 will prove it.

*Attorney & Political Scientist.  Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com  Sunday, January 5th, 2020

Translated from Spanish by:  Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.