24,455 days of tyranny

By: Pedro Corzo - 07/01/2026

Guest columnist.
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Please excuse the personal nature of this column, but my country, the homeland of Jose Martí, has just turned 67 years old under a system of oppression that has only brought misfortune and sorrow to Cubans and to peoples like those of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, who have also been subjected to hatred and envy, disguised in a discourse of justice and bread, without forgetting that many others like Colombia, Uruguay, and Argentina suffered Castro's subversion in its most cruel form.

Castroism has been particularly disastrous for Cubans, but various parts of the world suffer its infamous consequences. Several African countries endured Castro's military occupation, and all Latin American states, to some extent, have resisted terrorism and drug trafficking, inspired by the chimera of island totalitarianism.

Despite that bitter truth, I am very proud to have been born in Cuba, and to have fought against the Castro regime practically since they took power; however, I cannot help but feel ashamed that the tyranny has subjugated the Cuban people for so many years despite those executed, killed in combat, disappeared, and imprisoned.

More than six decades after the tyranny began, I remain convinced, contrary to what some of my compatriots think, that we ourselves built the tomb in which we find ourselves. It is true that many have fought against the disgrace, but there has also been no shortage of accomplices in the ignominy who, for miserable advantages, continue to act as professional perpetrators and abusers, miserable subjects who lend themselves to serving as executioners in the prisons or as judges in the spurious courts of the dictatorship.

Today's sorrow is not new; it dates back to the fateful year of 1959, when a significant number of Cubans were naive enough to believe all the promises of a university gang member, a man with more than one murder to his name and associated with more than one gangster, who, to top it all off, had never worked a day in his life. A habitual vagrant who later had the audacity to enact an Anti-Vagrancy Law in the Republic he destroyed.

The country was divided. Hatred took hold of many. Sectarianism and discrimination grew, and perversity and betrayal flourished. In many homes, family love relinquished its prerogatives and was replaced by an unfamiliar resentment.

A large segment of the population was charmed by a repetitive discourse that made them believe that only they made the decisions, that Castro, whom they called Fidel, was a friend incapable of committing evil.

Meanwhile, another group, smaller but more astute, with knowledge and moral values, accepted responsibilities which they renounced shortly after when they realized that there were no good intentions on that road to hell, without lacking third parties, lacking moral scruples, intoxicated with ambitions and with full knowledge of the national reality who accepted the new rules set by the Moncada brotherhood.

Fidel and Raúl Castro seized power based on lies and manipulation. They promised bread and freedom, justice and popular sovereignty, even going so far as to have their followers disguise themselves as believers to quell the scandal of the firing squads and thus spread the belief that past injustices could be compensated with new ones.

The oppression suffered by Cubans is unparalleled in this hemisphere. The six decades and seven years of the Castro autocracy were sustained for 49 years by the dean of the world's dictators, Fidel Castro, who simultaneously held power while establishing a family caste that controls the lives and property of all islanders, now managed by Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel, an incredibly inept and incapable individual than the disastrous brothers.

It must always be said, there has never been a shortage of Cubans in the fight against tyranny, citizens willing to give their lives to regain freedom even without ever having enjoyed it, as happens to those hundreds of young people imprisoned for demanding their rights and who were born decades after the Castro family took power.

My generation is convinced that totalitarianism will come to an end. We have great faith in those who have never stopped fighting for freedom and civil rights. However, many of us are not sure that we will be able to see the beauty of the beaches of exile when we say goodbye to them!

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».