By Pedro Corzo (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – Freedom is by far the greatest good of the human being; hence the commitment to defend it as appropriate, a reason that forces us to be alert and not believe in redeemers who promise the salvation of our prerogatives, if we follow them like rats do the flute player. ##Behavior, which I fear, is being put into practice by many people in different parts of the world, when they arrange for individuals who are not subject to any control to decide about their lives, despite the fact that no one has the right to forget that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
What happens in countries like Cuba, with Castro-Díaz-Canel, in short, is 65 years of totalitarianism. The autocrats, Ortega-Murillo, in Nicaragua, 27 years of government in two periods. Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, 24 years of despotism between the two. Bolivia, with the phoney Evo Morales, 13 years in office with the aspiration of returning to government to perpetuate himself, which should be inadmissible to any honorable person who has self-respect.
These rulers achieved power thanks to the fact that to a large extent their peoples allowed it, either because they were confused by promises, well-spoken truths or the charm that can emanate from these subjects.
The will of the citizen majority folded to suggestive siren songs that promised, cunningly, to make the most paradoxical dreams come true, ceding, to achieve them, their citizens’ rights, in addition to practicing a criminal intolerance and plunging them into an aberrant indolence.
This reflection is the result of an experience, at a friend’s house, that left me dismayed, because I found intelligent people, with a great reputation for commitment to freedom and democracy, passionately defending Vladimir Putin, ignoring the persecution he executes against the opposition and the close relations he maintains with the Castro tyranny.
These friends and acquaintances, in my opinion very confused, justified the aggression against Ukraine. No one alluded to the presence of Cuban mercenaries there, nor to the fact that Putin, like the aforementioned autocrats, has been ruling Russia for 23 years, and that when he was not president he played at being prime minister.
All this demonstration was in a framework of severe criticism of President Joe Biden for his help to Ukraine. Needless to say, I do not sympathize with the president and his government, but I do believe that the support given to Ukraine is vital, just like the one offered to Israel and the one that can be given to Taiwan. They are countries that are in the first line of fire against predators who are a threat to everyone.
Of course, I couldn’t stay calm and entered the arena, with a friend who had already had that experience. They argued that the former KGB colonel was defending our values by attacking Ukraine. They repeated that fascism was a serious threat, as if the despots of any ideology were not, and that Putin was against the social currents that seek to replace the family, which may be true, but that does not justify a war of aggression like the one that the head of the Russian government sponsors, nor his alliance with Castroism.
It is difficult to neutralize this confusion that arises, in my opinion, in the laxity of many of us against those contrary to our rights and in allowing those same individuals to exercise them. Frivolty is burying us, along with our lack of interest in accessing conflicting and balanced information, even if we have access to it.
Those of us who have suffered regimes of force or imprisonment know that the power held by the army, regardless of the place they occupy in the chain of command, is destructive. Their ability to cause suffering is difficult to imagine, turning our desire to survive into an everyday odyssey.
I fervently believe in democracy with all its imperfections. Knowing that the authorities can be revoked, being able to get rid of the great man or the donkey that we wrongly chose. Being able to tell the subject who commands rifles and cannons that he is not in charge, that he was left without a job and it is time to leave, is a right that we are obliged to defend until the last breath.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba
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