Cuba in memory

By: Pedro Corzo - 29/09/2025

Guest columnist.
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Memory can play tricks on us, but there are situations and experiences that we never forget, even if we try.

The experiences of the early years of the triumph of the Castro insurrection are still very fresh in my mind, so when Radio Martí proposed that I do a program and asked what it would be called, I decided I would write an article with that name and address topics that the new generations of Cubans probably ignore.

In the first weeks of 1959, Castro's bloody populism resorted to dividing the population into revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries. Media outlets were confiscated and placed under the absolute control of the new officials, and a propaganda campaign in favor of Fidel Castro was launched in a country that had ample resources in this sector.

Over time, religions, particularly the Catholic Church, a former ally, became a mortal enemy. Castro wanted no God but himself; he always saw himself as supreme, the master of lives and property, a status accorded him by many of his compatriots and foreigners.

Sectarianism spread, a kind of warning that was complemented by rallies condemning those who left the country, practiced a religion, or opposed Castro's proposals. Months later, denunciation became institutionalized with an intense campaign in favor of the diabolical Committees for the Defense of the Revolution as paradigms, parallel to a campaign of victimization by the government to justify the massive confiscations of large industries and companies that had led the country to undeniable progress.

Of course, all the incidents I remember were framed in massive rallies that began and ended worshipping Fidel Castro and the revolution, with slogans repeated in the streets and in the media, such as, "This is your house, Fidel," "If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list," and the most outrageous of all, "Elections for what?", simultaneously with a campaign of systematic and permanent intimidation, based on massive repression that has extended for more than 66 years with no sign of ending.

Freedom of information and expression, threatened since January 1, 1959, was abolished in the symbolic burial of the newspaper Diario de la Marina, a disgraceful act perpetrated by university students under the guidance of brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, whose supporters lit bonfires of books like the one witnessed by writer José Antonio Albertini on Paseo de la Paz in the city of Santa Clara.

The background to that clamor of henchmen worshipping the new master, which very few wanted to listen to, was the sound of rifle fire in front of the firing squad whose surroundings were covered in blood, as former political prisoner Olga Morgan told me in an interview. When she was arrested and taken to the firing squad at La Cabaña, where her husband, Commander William Morgan, had been killed a few days earlier.

Fidel Castro flooded the country with populist and demagogic policies that promoted a false sense of social justice. While he passed laws like Law 270, quickly repealed, or provided free clothing and shoes to workers, people who left the country were subject to confiscations that included their homes, vehicles, and bank accounts, including even a ring, chain, or any personal belongings of any value.

The process demanded absolute control of the economy to impose the totalitarian system, so on March 13, 1968, in the so-called Revolutionary Offensive, fulfilling Fidel Castro's mandate, almost 80,000 commercial establishments were expropriated by the state, many of which were closed, leaving Cubans, by divine decree of the supreme leader, to be solely and exclusively state employees.

This government action led the country to absolute economic inefficiency. The decline in the supply of products and services hit the population hard. Poverty spread and deepened, and dependence on the USSR and the socialist bloc in general deepened, while the Castro brothers sent thousands of their compatriots to die as mercenaries in Moscow's imperial wars, which Fidel embraced to pay off his debt to the Soviet Union with Cuban blood.

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