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The Flotilla of Shamelessness in Cuba

By Melissa Cordero Novo (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES — The theme park that Cuba seems to be for people like Spanish politician Pablo Iglesias and so many others who beat their chests and claim to speak for Cubans has opened its doors. Profiting from others’ suffering might have limits imposed by ethics and shame, but there is everything in the flotilla that has landed on the island except that. Everything except solidarity. Everything except respect. There is, however, plenty of opportunism, brazenness, insolence, and cynicism.

While the delegation—beaming with happiness at spending a few days in the “Caribbean socialist bastion”—settles into luxury rooms likely lit by generators or solar panels, every building around that hotel, every home, every clinic, and every school is in darkness. And not a single one of them questions why.

Meanwhile, the National Electric System shut down for the seventh time in a year and a half. Yet the flotilla did not feel it. Did they even know?

The image is simple: these people who did not have to go to the island to send donations—and who, by the way, could have sent them much earlier without making so much noise—trample every Cuban who today has no electricity. They stand atop the ruins of the country to gaze in awe at the landscape of disaster, pat each other on the back, and convince themselves of the absurd lie and the disaster they themselves are helping to stage.

From up there, all they do is tell the Cubans below to keep resisting because they need them for causes that do not align with what they claim to defend. They need the Cuban people to be martyrs incapable of escaping their reality—docile, obedient martyrs with visible blood and bodies shattered by the imperialist power—so they can approach them, watch........

© Havana Times