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In Cuba, the Terminal Stage of Communism Is a Mafia

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

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/p/in-cuba-the-terminal-stage-of-communism

Excerpt:

.....Though neither the Cuban nor the U.S. government has confirmed it, the raging rumor in Cuba is that Ocana, the Tampa smuggler, worked for Gil. It may be that the latter isn’t being punished for corruption but for being caught at it. That doesn’t alter the awkward fact of Díaz-Canel’s and Marrero Cruz’s participation, however. Their fate, I would think, rests in Raúl Castro’s hands. The old totalitarian’s last ambition should be to die in bed—but one never knows with the Castros. Raúl may wish to take down the men who replaced him at the head of the government and party, in a sort of senile revolutionary Götterdämmerung.

Why are Cuba’s rulers intent on taking their wealth out of the country? The answer should be apparent. For all their power and luxury, these people are terrified of the future. To be a member of the Cuban ruling class is to perform, every day, a high-wire act over an active volcano. Since the courage provided by ideological fervor has dissipated, the only safe move is out.

The wreckage of the Cuban economy really can’t be exaggerated. The perpetual blackouts are an apt symbol of a country that is headed for the dark ages. For the first time since the revolution, Cuba is begging the United Nations for food aid. Nearly half a million persons have fled the island in despair during the last two years—that’s 4% of the population, the equivalent of more than 12 million Americans. Yet the failure cascade is moving faster than the capacity to emigrate. People feel trapped and hopeless. The volcano is growling. Despite the words we use, national economies never actually implode—but the regimes that exploit and mismanage them often do.

Rage and Despair on the Cuban Web

At the same time, the Cuban public has found its voice. That is the second radical transformation of Cuban society. Despite the blackouts and the poor connectivity, large numbers of Cubans are venting online. I have no idea how this happens, but the web in Cuba has turned into an immense chorus of anger and disgust.

The old digital dissidents have a more professional look. Yoani Sánchez, one-time blogmother to a tiny sect of online Cubans, presently runs “14ymedio,” a news site indispensable to anyone looking for reliable information about the country. The tone of the site is measured but unquestionably anti-regime.

Yamil Cuéllar, we have seen, can put together high-quality investigative documentaries, posted on YouTube, in which his contempt for the system is expressed in earthy Cubanisms. Cuéllar’s relentless attacks on the government and predictions of its imminent fall make one wonder: Why is this man not in prison? The most likely answer, once again, is a crisis of nerve at the top. Regime enforcers don’t want to be caught striking the wrong pose when the volcano blows.

Most moving are the expressions of little-known individuals trapped in the catastrophe of a failed utopia, trying to make sense of the nightmare of everyday life. Those unable to flee Cuba today escape to the web. They post on Facebook and X, they exchange links and opinions on WhatsApp, they complain of the dark and the heat and the mosquitos at night, they mock the regime, they pray to God for consolation. “How lucky we Cubans are that we can go to the web!” reads a Facebook post. “That’s the end of the state monopoly over information!” During a blackout, one poster asks, “Where can we protest?” Another answers: “Right here.”

Cynicism toward the authorities is absolute. “They’re trying to do damage control and offer Alejandro Gil’s head on a silver platter.” “This was a plan, this wasn’t about errors, this was a plan to destroy from within everything we had believed and built.” Amid a volley of emojis, one wag claimed on Facebook that the words of the communist anthem, the “Internationale,” had been written about Cubans: “Arise, wretched of the earth, stand up you slaves without bread ...”

Once the jokes and the defiance stop, we are confronted with the awful spectacle of human existence in a state of pure desperation. “Of course I’m unwell with blackouts of 15 hours one day and eight hours the next. I feel dissociated, I’m not well. I think I’m entering into insanity,” a woman wrote. A poster warned: “This can’t continue indefinitely.”

If, for the moment, the internet in Cuba is a refuge, it takes little imagination to see how it can become a mustering-place for revolt as has transpired elsewhere. Spontaneous protests, captured and transmitted via cellphone video, recently erupted in Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo and other cities in the east of the country. Unrest still simmers as of this moment. All that’s needed is a single mobilizing incident: a spark sufficient to ignite the conflagration.

Meanwhile, dominos will continue to fall. In Tampa, there will be a verdict in the Ocana case and a public report from U.S. authorities, naming names. The purge will resume its erratic progress, snaring officials below, sideways and possibly above Alejandro Gil, as the regime proceeds to devour itself. Gil will be convicted out of his own mouth—probably of taking money from the CIA, so the historic monstrosity that is the Cuban economy can be blamed on “the enemy.” The constellation of political and economic forces that make possible Cuéllar’s Cienfuegos mafia will lose substance, wobble and fade like a hallucination.

Karl Marx taught that the final stage of socialism is communism. We have learned from the evidence of Cuba that the terminal stage of communism is a heedless gangsterism. After that, the deluge.