Fidel Castro was born ninety-five years ago, so what is left of his revolution?

Today, August 13, exactly one month and two days after the “historic” July 11 protests, marks the 95th anniversary of his birth. Fidel Castro RoseFor the fourth time since sunset in 2016, “Commander Un Gife” has entered, as the regime’s rhetoric wants, “forever.” And the anniversary surprises Cuba in the midst of a still incomprehensible ford, lost in the apparent calm – or in the disguised tension – of a calm still full of memories The storm just passed Meanwhile, he still could not guess the times and the strength of what would definitely come. In Cuba, everything changed and everything remained unabated equal to itself. The same words, the same gestures, the same scenarios, the same festivity.

There are no celebrations. Any concentration of people is strongly discouraged these days. Partly because Cuba is going through its worst moment since the explosion pandemic. This is partly because after July 11, every gathering of people risks turning into the opposite of what it was meant to be. But above all, As he remembers two days ago granma front page paperFidel left himself, long before his departure, to his successors Very accurate instructions On the modalities of self-worship: no pompous celebrations, no demonstrations, no processions or ceremonies. In particularAnd No tracesor busts, statues, squares bearing his name, tombstones, or memorial plaques of any kind. A choice, this – or rather, an order – that can be expected for followers of the cult is nothing more than A heroic testament to personal humility, a display of humility which is in turn a proven evidence of the unparalleled innate greatness of the “líder máximo”.

Or that humility is in fact nothing but, since it is easy to argue secularly quite the opposite. That is: it is nothing more than a means of ensuring – in a world where landmarks and streets, everywhere, are dedicated to “dogs, pigs, and cobblers” – this greatness shines in an unmistakably bright light. the myth Fidel – this is the essence of the liturgy – he must live, not in marble, but in the daily reality of his revolution, in the breath of the nation he created, powerfully (Granma still remembers it), from that “I’m Fidel”, I Fidel, and with him, in December 2016, The “Leader in the Carrion” was accompanied by a huge crowd From Havana to the cemetery of Santa Iphigenia in Santiago de Cuba, where it has since rested in a very sober mausoleum whose round shape explicitly resembles the famous “wheat de maize”, a grain of corn, quoted in a saying attributed to the “messenger of independence” Jose Marti. The one in which the “toda la gloria del mundo cabe” contains all the glory of the world.

Fidel is Cuba and Fidel’s Cuba. This is what the sect wants. That’s no longer athletes, in these Olympic days, with medals from Tokyo They remembered dedicating their victories to Fidel. This too, albeit in other and less religious terms, What does history say?. Fidel Castro was—and still is for better or worse, even more than Martí who died in battle before Cuba liberated itself from the yoke of Spain—the central figure in the formation of the Cuban national state, and its first independence. Passed through the fight against Spanish colonialism then against US imperialism. Fidel and his revolution are truly, in many ways and essential, the independence of Cuba. However, if we look at Cuba which celebrates today, in the center of Ford, without parades and without traces, – wounded, hungry and angry – on the 95th birthday of its founder, it is precisely the word “subordination”, or rather an overlap Three unsolved addiction The phenomenon that best illustrates the island’s past, present and future. Its greatness is, above all now, its tragedies.

It is clear that the first addiction, very specific and basic – an addiction, like a kind of broken time machine, concerns both Cuba and Cuba against Fidel – from the US ban, a fact that has held, for more than half a century, its causes and can be summed up in three simple and sequential adjectives: Unfair, outdated, stupid. It is precisely for this reason – because it is unfair, outdated and stupid – for so many years every year in a regular, quasi-referendum condemned by the United Nations Assembly.

The second dependency is the chronic dependency in which it contradicts its raison d’être, the revolution condemned the Cuban economy, first to a kind of utopian mind and – in its own way – a noble cause. And then, much less noble, to ensure one’s survival authoritarian regimeUnable, due to a complex mixture of causes and effects, to create wealth and freedom. Economics reformulates the famous economic theory Petro Seravaproduces, as those who have lived through the reality of food rationing for six decades know, Addiction by addiction.

The “corns of corn” that Fidel left in Cuba are not, in fact, those that embody all the glory of the world, but what the Cuban economy cannot produce, and which are mostly imported (with embargo restrictions), distributed through the notorious “notebook” To the population, which in turn depends on rationing – food and every other commodity. This is precisely the reason free of rights.

I will write about these dependencies, in more detail, in a future post.