In Cuba, the Terminal Stage of Communism Is a Mafia

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/p/in-cuba-the-terminal-stage-of-communism ^ | 3/26/2024 | martin gurri

[bitt]

Regime corruption, economic collapse and public anger point to trouble ahead

On February 5, Mirtza Ocana, an American citizen of Cuban origin, arrived at Tampa International Airport from Havana and was arrested for attempting to smuggle more than $100,000 into the country. When questioned, Ocana confessed to having carried out 45 similar assignments since May 2023. The smuggling operation involved millions of dollars.

Because Cuba has slipped beneath the attention horizon of the news media, this incident attracted zero interest. Yet it posed a perplexing riddle. Cuba’s communist regime currently faces the most disastrous economic collapse in its long history of such failures. The reasons are many, but most immediately it’s a lack of foreign currency with which to buy food and fuel for the population. The Cuban economy resembles those broken-down cars from the ’50s still found on the streets of Havana: It produces little for internal consumption and almost nothing that can be sold abroad for hard currency.

Why, then, is the island now exporting dollars to the United States?

The search for an answer leads to two radical transformations that have taken place, largely unnoticed, in Cuba. The first concerns the regime, which has given up any revolutionary pretensions and become what ordinary Cubans call a “mafia.” Don’t think of the pushy American racketeers in the style of “Godfather II.” The mafia in Cuba is indistinguishable from the regime itself. The matter is naturally shrouded by fictions and smokescreens, but the godfather may well be the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

[RoosterRedux]

The Cuban commies, like every other commie, has no ‘care’ about feeding the people.

This is true about almost all career politicians. The government is a bureaucratic machine and bureaucracies care only about power and their continued existence.

The above is the reason why governments must be limited in power and scope.

[Regulator]

It’s normal. In fact, it’s the central feature of Communism.

It’s just a return to Feudalism.

The Party = The Aristocracy

The Land is owned by the Party. See above for who that is.

Peasants = Proletariat

The Proles still owe a significant fraction of their labor to the Party. See above for who that is.

The Party becomes a hereditary thugocracy. IOW, a “mafia”. Why would they allow anyone else into the gang? You only get jumped in if they think you are useful. Or you’re a better thug then they are.

Nothin’ new under the sun. It was only in America for about 80 years where it was different. Wasn’t bad for the next 50 years - still no tithes to the Big Man - but that ended in 1913, and the regression back to the Old Boss was complete.