Executioners in stampede

By: Pedro Corzo - 27/08/2024

Guest columnist.
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If the Cuban State is repressive and is led by a single political party, the Communist Party, that must mean that the militants of that party, especially if they hold some type of leadership, are also repressive. Those of us who have suffered the rigor of the Castro totalitarian regime can attest to the evil of its political and police officials, and of many others who enjoyed abusing their prerogatives, to the detriment of those who were not integrated into the despotism.

Perhaps not all officials have been victimizers, but all abusers acted on behalf of a State and a political party that has destroyed Cuba and Cubans. To the extreme, many executioners have decided to seek refuge in the country that they officially hated the most, and that not a few despaired of destroying in their years of Castro fervor, years in which they believed that the clacking of machine guns would silence the demands for freedom.

Victims are not obliged to forget and forgiveness is a personal decision of the person who has been abused. It is the perpetrator who must raise awareness that her crimes were beyond the idea that he claimed to defend. It is the predator who must admit his guilt, who is obliged to an act of public contrition.

The necessary reconciliation cannot come from the victim alone. It should not be a unilateral act of the one who was sacrificed and again, by virtue of his civic conscience, controls his passions and prefers the application of justice. A society that does not punish crime is founded on arbitrariness and therefore prone to new social or political crises.

The condescension received does not exempt the criminal from his legal responsibility. Acquittal does not imply impunity. Crime cannot be rewarded with oblivion. There must be a legal or moral sanction that warns potential rapists that crime does not pay.

Once again, the United States immigration authorities have confused me with the entry into the country of Manuel Menéndez Castellano, according to information, a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only party of a state considered terrorist by the White House, while On the island, more than one Cuban who fought the dictatorship has been denied a visa.

My confusion is so great that I echo a comment on social media, “At any moment they will install the CDRs and create a PCC nucleus right on 8th Street.” Being a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba is not an easy task; that position demands fidelity and blind obedience to the highest leadership, which, as we all know, has always acted based on its convenience, without respecting the most modest of citizen rights.

This reality has determined that the Cuban academic Juan Antonio Blanco has promoted a letter in which he asks the current repressors to have the dignity to cease their collaboration with the dictatorship and actively oppose its abuses. The document says: “Do not denounce your neighbor, do not participate in the repression of other citizens, do not hit or shoot other Cubans. Rectification can also begin by preventing new crimes by informing national and international human rights organizations of everything they know has been done or is being planned to repress the popular will.”

Mr. Menéndez Castellanos may not like being treated like this because I remember that when an official was told “sir,” he invariably responded: “You are wrong, the gentlemen went to Miami,” said in a derogatory and threatening tone.

This first secretary of the Communist Party in Cienfuegos, 1993-2003, according to the official Granma libel, must have people who defend him alleging his supposed innocence, an impossible condition in a position in which everything is controlled.

Predatory regimes, like the one Mr. Menéndez Castellano served, generate victims and perpetrators. Hate becomes a job and fear a disease from which not even the abusers themselves can escape. Living in a society where hating and fearing is a fundamental part of existence traumatizes everyone, including the guilty who choose to justify their abuses. Jose Martí was judgmental about these subjects when he wrote, “To see a crime calmly is to commit it.”

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