Cuba’s real rebels take to the streets
LOTS of idiots still admire Cuba, believing the propaganda of its nasty, despotic junta. I think this is because so many of the former student revolutionaries of the 1960s imagine themselves in beards and fatigues riding at the head of a triumphant revolutionary parade into the fallen citadels of conservative, Christian civilisation.
The truth about Cuba – that it is a miserable, rationed secret-police state that even has first-class money for the elite and second-class money for its ordinary people – has always been unwelcome.
So has the fact that this potentially wealthy country is run by dreary middle-aged bureaucrats, fearful of their subjects, with brains of solid Marxist concrete, about as rebellious and romantic as a public lavatory. Yet the youthful, barricade-storming image must still be maintained. Its official radio station, a conduit of weary, censored propaganda, is called Rebel Radio.
But now a real rebellion against these self-styled rebels has broken out on the streets of Havana. It looks to me like a proper uprising from below, not orchestrated by anybody.
And the admirers of Castro’s squalid state – who still litter the BBC, the universities, the schools, the media and the Civil Service – don’t know what to do or say. For they do not want to admit that, like the man they long admired, they have themselves become an intolerant, inflexible ruling class.