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From: Newsmax

Cuba’s Popular Revolt, an Opportunity Not to Be Missed

By Luis Fleischman

After more than 62 years of authoritarian rule, totalitarian control and reduction of civil liberties to zero, the Cuban people have legitimately chosen sedition against the evil government in the name of the common good.

The Cuban people know the government will be repressing with all its might. But they lost fear providing a scenario resembling the images seen in 1989 in the former communist countries and the past decade, during the Arab Spring.

People have reached a point where they say that their “normal” situation is no longer sustainable and even death is a better choice than slavery. The slogan “Give me Liberty or give me Death” has turned more accurate than ever before.

The Cuban people’s rebellion broke with the COVID crisis, bringing more deaths than the government is willing to admit. A regime that forever has claimed to be a medical powerhouse for export found itself in a situation where Cubans got sicker and sicker, and deaths increased.

But that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Cubans have lived under severe restrictions. Unable to pursue free economic activities, unable to speak their minds freely, prisoners of conscience filled the jails spending decades incarcerated and mistreated.

The government has instructed its people how to think; it has defined what is right and what is wrong; it has deluged their minds with false propaganda and left most of the population in a state of poverty and misery.

This significant Cuban deprivation was not the result of the U.S embargo, as some Americans such as House Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks or CNN journalist Jim Acosta have stated or insinuated. This misery is the result of the fact that the government took away the natural creative energies of the people and stole the roles the market was supposed to undertake.

In communism, everything is owned and managed by the government. Such centralization usually ends in inefficiency, lack of productivity and consequently also repression.

Why is repression inevitable? Because it is necessary to suppress the natural tendencies of human beings to take the initiative. The state is above everything else and thus it concentrates tremendous power that inescapably leads to elite corruption.

Fidel Castro, the late leader of the Cuban socialist revolution, once said that the alternative to the Cuban regime is a failed country like Haiti. However, like Haiti, Cuba has been governed by an unaccountable ruling class that kept the people in a state of abjection.

As the state could not deliver the goods, it began a campaign of brainwashing and silencing dissenting voices. Thus, Cuba from the outset turned to be a government of hangmen.

The Cuban regime, like Iran and Venezuela, had a vision of expanding its revolution abroad. Thus, Cuba was an active exporter of social revolutions serving as a model for guerilla movements all across Latin America that believed in the Guevarist concept of armed struggle against capitalist regimes in the region.

Likewise, the Castro regime attempted directly to subvert countries such as Venezuela in the 1960s. This maneuver was successfully avoided by then-Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a firm believer in democracy.

After the fall of the Soviet Union (for whom protection and support were crucial to the regime’s survival), Cuba remained isolated for about a decade, refusing to adopt the reforms that other communist countries implemented.

Then Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution took place. Cuba not only benefitted from Chavez’s oil bonanza; in exchange, the Cuban regime provided all the necessary advice and know-how to the Venezuelan government to consolidate a totalitarian dictatorship.

To this day, the Maduro regime in Venezuela relies on Cuban advisers with tactics of repression and totalitarian rule initially learned from the East German Secret Police “Stasi,” the most effective oppressive agency of the Cold War years.

Let us note that the Stasi recruited ex-members of the SS, the Gestapo and other Nazi criminals to carry out its heinous activities.

Today, the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes not only constitute a threat to their societies. They are also a threat to the region, including to the United States. Both governments are associated with terrorist groups, rogue states and transnational crime.

Recently, President Joe Biden made clear that his goal is to contain the expanding influence of Russia and China in various areas. China and Russia both already backed the regime in different ways. Should the United States stay quiet?

I agree that military intervention may not be the most popular or the best idea. Still, the U.S can support activities of Cubans aimed at subverting the regime by providing logistical and financial aid.

Such support could include a second, this time more successful, Bay of Pigs. Likewise, a naval blockade of Cuba is another way to prevent external aid to the regime and contribute to its isolation.

At the same time the U.S government could establish a humanitarian corridor to provide food and anti-COVID vaccines to the Cuban people. Other pro-active ideas could be considered, but doing nothing should not be an option.

About Luis Fleischman

Luis Fleischman is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, the co-founder of the think-tank the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research. He is also the author of “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security,” and the author of a forthcoming book, “The Middle East Riddle: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Light of Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World,” to be published by New Academia.”