Cuba in the totalitarian bureaucracy

By: Pedro Corzo - 19/05/2024

Guest columnist.
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Upon coming to power, Castro's populism broke the numerous fundamental components of a free society, one of the first being the right to life and freedom of information and citizen expression.

Parallel to the executions, the newspapers, accused of being close to the deposed regime of Fulgencio Batista, “Alerta”, “Pueblo”, “Ataja” and “Tiempo” were looted and expropriated, in addition to being handed over to supporters of the Castros to become into spokespersons for the new ruling party, such as the newspapers “Combate” and “Revolucion”, the latter, under the command of Carlos Franqui with its 6-inch headlines that demanded a wall.

Twelve months later, editions of the Diario de la Marina, copies of the Prensa Libre newspapers, Life and Times magazines, and selections from Readers Digest were burned in the Cuban capital on January 25. In May, there was no free press in Cuba, an event took place that showed the degree of servility of a sector of society that arranged the symbolic burial of the Diario de la Marina, dean of the national press.

In Cuba, not only was freedom of the press eliminated, but the organs that honored it were extinguished; no republican newspaper survived Castroism either in name or informative quality.

The media, written press, radio and television, were placed at the service of tyranny, becoming a reflection of the pharaonic dreams of the Castro brothers and transmitters of aberrant government slogans.

Journalism was, at times, with the complicit participation of many communicators, due to self-censorship or by their conversion to officials, an objective to be destroyed in order to impose with greater impunity the totalitarian system in gestation.

Due to these painful realities, I consider it important to highlight the work carried out by independent Cuban journalists who for decades have risked their lives and precarious freedoms, to report on the institutional violation of citizens' rights, as well as the limited media that have been willing. confront the criminal actions of Castro's absolutism as the newspaper 14ymedio has done over the last ten years.

Cuban independent journalists and the few media outlets that have served in this task during these long six decades have carved out a niche of honor, both for the courage shown to endure repression and for the quality and fairness of their information.

For decades on the Island there was only doctrinal journalism, absent of criticism and questioning of government action, also closed to any information or analysis that the authority could consider threatening to its interests.

The Cuban journalist became media. He became a spokesperson for official slogans. In singer of real or supposed achievements of the ruling class. His judgment was subject to political correctness. The information, the telling of an event, became a chronicle of what was convenient for the authority and the journalist who strove not to be repressed and to keep his job before a single owner, the party-state.

This situation, which was evolving into a positive change, took a radical turn when 14ymedio came to light with extreme modesty. Many of us did not realize this milestone that occurred within Cuba, at a time when the country began a readjustment process as a consequence of the exhaustion of totalitarianism.

These last ten years have been of great loss for the dictatorship, it is true that they still hold power, but they are in complete moral and material bankruptcy.

Transitioning from the charismatic totalitarianism of Fidel Castro, to the military absolutism of Raúl, finally to the bureaucratic totalitarianism represented and led by the inept Miguel Diaz Canel, is incontrovertible evidence that the regime is at a crossroads that can be fatal to its survival.

This decade within the darkness reveals lights of change. The population has shown its disenchantment in the most important popular protests since January 1, 1959, the prisons imprison more than a thousand pro-democracy activists, most of them much younger than the screen dictator Diaz Canel, and the regime intends to reinvent itself by establishing economic practices. contrary to its essence, events that independent and 14ymedio journalists have covered with dignity.

Far away, but with admiration and respect, on this anniversary of 14ymedio, I dedicate this saying by Jose Martí that accurately reflects my feelings: "Only those who know about journalism, and the cost of selflessness, can truly estimate the energy, the tenacity, the sacrifices, prudence, the strength of character that reveals the appearance of an honest and free newspaper".

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