Cuba

To talk about Cuba with you, we have to agree that we are on the same page.

To talk about Cuba with you, we have to be aware of a part of History.

But, as Brazilians, BEFORE talking about Cuba, we have to talk about the Passarela 9, or Footbridge 9. The Footbridge 9 is on Avenida Brasil (the biggest avenue in extension in Brazil, as well as the largest urban track of BR-101 road). There, in front of Complexo da Maré, a favela, the biggest one in Rio de Janeiro city.

A destroyed place, in ruins, with crack-heads and other drug users.

Who are these people?

They are the side effect your system has made. People for whom capitalism did not manage to bring paths and opportunities to come together.

We even need to talk about Maré. There are 160,000 people living in a place without sanitation, no quality food, no urban structure, who are treated like prisoners in a concentration camp. Maré is just one of Rio’s 1,024 favelas.

To talk about Cuba, we first need to talk about Kathlen. A young black woman, pregnant, murdered by the police, as a 23 years old, in front of her grandmother. She fell to the ground, dead.

We need to talk about 116 million hungry people. 36,000 women – victims of domestic violence, daily. About the death of young black men every 4 minutes. About app-delivery workers, neo-enslaved. About hospitals abandoned by the government. People dying from Covid-19 without oxygen. 24-hours-opened cemeteries in São Paulo.

We need to talk about 535,000 Covid-related deaths.

We even need to talk about the Capão Jazz Festival, a cultural festival organized in a suburban neighborhood which have not received financial support from the government because the musicians decided to criticize Bolsonaro’s fascism. They are now facing religious responses from fundamentalists, the conservative right.

Now we can start talking about Cuba.

First you need to understand your place in the world, then we talk about Cuba.

And to start talking about Cuba, you need to know who Jesse Helms and Dan Burton were, both from Donald Trump’s party. The US Embargo on Cuba, through the Helms-Burton Act, was a disproportionate US RESPONSE to the Cuban uprising that deposed Fulgencio Batista, the president of Cuba, in 1958. The Cuban Revolution, with Fidel Castro, the Argentinean Che Guevara and the people of Cuba, achieved its goal: to make the island independent of economic and political abuses from the USA.

If you don’t know anything about it, we can’t talk about Cuba.

Because two things are happening:

FIRST: The United States to this day, even though prohibiting all countries in the world to export to Cuba, does not accept the sovereignty of the Latin American and Caribbean people. Cuba is something that hurts the Empire, even today. Cuba is like that poor black woman who puts a knife on the white farmer’s throat.

SECOND: The US State Department has a blueprint for Latin America, and that’s why it supported ALL the dictatorships in the 1950s and 60s, and the coups – which include Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, and the far-right waves in Argentina and Brazil, everyone knows that Sergio Moro (Brazilian federal judge that condemned Lula to jail even without proof) was a “doormat” for the State Department, along with Deltan Dallangnol (Brazilian attorney that led the prosecution of Lula’s case).

The North Americans are interested in the destabilization of Latin America, so that they can take advantage of our economic fragility. Because CHINA, that holds more wealth than all countries in the world, excluding only the United States, the European Bloc and Japan – China has put its claws in Africa, and will make Africa its new consumer market.

And the United States will not enter Africa. They will not enter Europe. They will enter Latin America. We will be, and already are, the backyard of Washington’s abuses.

Biden recognizes Civil Rights. But, rights for HIS PEOPLE.

Biden respects women’s rights. But for the women of HIS PEOPLE.

Biden respects Black Lives Matter. But the black lives that matter are the ones of HIS PEOPLE.

We are the cucarachas, who will take it up the ass, again and again.

With a president who SALUTES TO THE FLAG OF UNITED STATES

He allowed North Americans to enter Brazil without a visa. While Brazilians in the same condition are deported from there.

All our networks are visible to the CIA. The CIA that plotted for João Goulart. For Dilma. Both elected presidents who suffered a coup in 1964 and in 2016, respectively.

Then, seeing demonstrators in Cuba at the protests, so called “great protests for freedom”, YOU NEED TO KNOW:

NO ONE IN THERE WAS BORN YESTERDAY, JUST YOU.

There are FAR-RIGHT groups in Cuba, articulated as the MBL in Brazil. Supported by Cubans from Miami, the bolso-minions from there, something like the Trumpkins or Trumpist. With this talk of “we have no freedom”, they forget that Cuba is not a country like any other, it is the only one that stood up AGAINST GOLIAS.

If people don’t want to bear the consequences of that choice, then, ok, protest.

And it seems to be the case.

But.

If you think capitalism will be a paradise,

Oh my child…

If Cuba tightens, it’s because it HAS NO CHOICE.

If Helms-Burton, this predatory law, doesn’t even go down with a black president, THEN FUCK Americans’ freedom of speech.

Because TODAY France celebrates the Fall of the Bastille.

It’s nice to see Europeans as being revolutionary and setting everything on fire.

But for Cubans, confronting the United States with Fidel, it is a crime.

People who send me a message asking me to take a stand, because it’s difficult there,

My friend, THAT’S WHAT WE CALL A FIGHT.

The wrong in this story IS NOT CUBA. Cuba is a victim of the Empire.

This Biden’s speech “oh, the people of Cuba cry out for freedom”

Seriously, Biden?

When the Black Panthers clamored for freedom, what did the FBI do to Fred Hampton, the Black Messiah?

When Malcolm X called for freedom, what did the FBI do to Malcolm?

When Rev. Dr. Luther King, Jr. called for freedom, what did the FBI do to Rev. Martin?

When George Floyd CALLED FOR AIR, what did the police do to him?

WHAT FREEDOM ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, BIDEN?

What freedom do people even have to enter the US?

What freedom have you taken to Iraq? To Afghanistan? To Vietnam?

Sit your ass down, Biden!

Stop your clowning, you old fart, and sign the end of Helms-Burton. Let the Island live!

Now,

for those of you who have stayed,

IT IS TRUE.

There is no paradise.

Cuba cannot be a paradise for the Brazilian left, nor the future capitalist paradise of the Brazilian right.

First, because Cuba does not belong to the Brazilian left, nor right.

Second, because yes, the stick is cracking in the back, and I’m not referring to the protests, for which I publicly say: I do not stand for.

But there are people with a very limited life indeed.

So, as it is, Cuba is not doing well.

I only disagree that the solution is the end of the regime, but rather, THE END OF THE HELMS-BURTON LAW.

Then, Cuba will receive investment, partnerships from all over the world. And the island will find relief from the pressure. And the people will be able to find a way that does not include eating out of the hands of the Americans.

The United States wants to do to Cuba what they did to Floyd. Asphyxiate.

The world should look to Cuba and make a bold decision to say fuck you to Helms-Burton. You guys have to learn to hate the game, not the player.

Much solidarity to the Cuban people, and to the courage that Cuba still has, to resist.

But, my friends: we Brazilians have no moral standing to talk about them.

We’re all shit. Really, really shitty.

We have a million of Cubas in Brazil.

In every favela, in every village.