News SOS for Journalists Latin America Culture

Photos Photo of the Day Videos

Cuban President Diaz-Canel Knows No Shame

HAVANA TIMES – It really isn’t all that surprising at this point, but Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s recent interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo demonstrated once again that he has no shame.

It is always worth remembering that the interviewer is never someone chosen on the spur of the moment, but rather someone thoroughly vetted by State Security, with a left-wing profile. The problem is that “the left” increasingly finds itself without arguments to defend this dictatorship.

As usual, much of the conversation was devoted to blaming the US government for all the problems afflicting Cuba, and there was no shortage of bravado when the president declared that he was not afraid of being captured by US forces—just as Venezuela’s strongman Nicolas Maduro had done months before being dragged from his hideout in his pajamas, at a significant cost in Cuban lives.

This kind of cheap bravado suggests that the prospects for negotiations between the two countries have faded and that Cuba’s leaders believe they can dig in and survive US pressure without making political changes—or that Mr. President is no longer at the negotiating table, as has long been suspected.

One detail about the interview seems to have gone unnoticed, judging by the reactions I have seen in the media and on social networks: he does not even know for certain when his term ends. In other words, it makes no difference to him, because he knows it does not depend on him, but on whoever put him in that position. If he has to leave tomorrow, he will do so with the same ease with which he would remain in power for another 30 years.

But what I really want to address are just a few points from his answers that I believe are key to understanding the Cuban reality.

The first is that when he was asked whether Cuba could hold out without an agreement with the United States, he replied: “We have no alternative but to resist. We........

© Havana Times