Cuba doesn’t need a Castro clone
From The Washington Post:
In Havana on Dec. 20, a group of artists and activists were preparing to perform a piece titled “Psychosis.” The plot concerns a person enclosed in a very small space, showing signs of madness, who wants to leave.
The play was inspired by events in 2010 at a psychiatric hospital in Havana, where 26 patients died of hunger and cold. The story is obviously a metaphor about the regime of the Castros, who have ruled the island for nearly six decades, intolerant of dissent and free speech. In the performance, there were to be allusions to Raúl Castro and terms such as “dictatorship.”
Predictably, before the performance, authorities swooped detained the director, as well as the chief actor. Also arrested was activist Lia Villares. Before her release, authorities warned her sharply against any activity on behalf of Cuba Decide.
The movement advocates a plebiscite for free elections and free speech in Cuba and is led by Rosa María Payá Acevedo, whose father, Oswaldo Payá, championed the Varela Project seeking these goals in earlier years. Oswaldo Payá, who was killed in a suspicious 2012 car wreck, founded the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba. The movement’s current national co-ordinator, Eduardo Cardet, a doctor, was arrested in November 2016 for criticizing Fidel Castro a few days after his death. Recently, he was moved to a notorious prison in Havana and then beaten brutally.
This is how Fidel and now Raúl Castro have kept their hold on power: with fists and force. But the Castro era is at a new crossroads. Raúl Castro, 86, who has been president for a decade, has pledged to step down this year, at the end of his second term. Recently, he delayed his departure from February to April. His modest economic reforms, allowing for limited activity outside the control of the state, have stalled, while Cuba’s oil lifeline from Venezuela has all but collapsed. Now, Castro is looking to Russia for oil and relief.
What Cuba really needs is not more Castro, or a hand-picked clone to prolong the deprivations of socialism and dictatorship. What the island’s long-suffering people should get is a genuine chance to decide their own future, one where they can perform a play called “Psychosis” without arrests and fear.