I Guess It’s Muerte

Patria o Muerte (Fatherland or Death).

That’s the forsaken totalitarian ultimatum that I’ve heard since I was born from Fidel Castro Ruz.

A lot of Cuban blood has been spilled for that island.

Most Cubans are nationalistic, unapologetically so. The flag, the anthem, all the symbols of our land are like divine entities. The palm trees are our pride. The soil, red like the blood of our many patriots, is red and sacred. If you don’t get that, you never will and this paragraph will sound like the corniest, stupidest thing you ever read. Sorry, sorry you don’t get it.

And now, to finish the total and utter destruction of what we Cubans hold sacred, this band of thugs that rules Cuba, has decided they have the right to surrender our flag to the highest bidder.

Signs of this travesty have been visible for sometime now. Carlos Lage once stated that Cuba and Venezuela had two presidents, Castro and Chavez, and when Hugo Chavez visited Cuba last moth to celebrate Che’s “feast day” he talked about his dream of creating a “federation”. But these statements were so ridiculous that they were taken as jokes prompting yours truly to muse whether I was now a Cubazuelan refugee or a Venecuban exile. Lies from communists, jokes from clowns-nothing too unusual.

But now, it looks like its for real. We have Felipe Pérez Roque in New York declaring that Cuba would be willing to surrender “its sovereignty and its flag” to join some as yet unformed Latin American block. Has Roque gone rogue? Is this a Talibanic move behind Raul’s back in the presumed behind the scenes power struggle between the Fidelistas and the Raulistas? I doubt it.

So I guess it’s “Muerte”, “Death”, because it’s no longer “Patria”, “Fatherland”.

The revolution has died by its own hand-by suicide only it has decided to take the country with it.

So what does this mean for the long suffering Cubans stuck in the island? The only thing the revolution ever gave them was their birthright-being Cuban. Castro’s whole totalitarian farce revolved around Cuba’s sovereignty. All the scarcity, hunger and hardships were justified as sacrifices for Cuba’s sovereignty, for the “Patria” who always had the big, bad, Yankee wolf at the door huffing and puffing, eager to tear the house down and sacrifice the “Patria” at the altar of Capitalism. B.S., I know, but nationalistic B.S. nonetheless, designed to appeal to the Cuban psyche.

So what now? What are these people formerly known as Cubans supposed to sacrifice for now? Hugo Chavez? a Bolivarian Empire? The United Socialist States of Soviet Amerika? Is the “new man” that the revolution created so apathetic and materialistic that he no longer holds the “Patria” sacred? I doubt it.

If this travesty of integrating Cuba into Chavez’s Pan-American Federation goes through, it may very well act as a catalyst to unite the people formerly known as Cubans inside the island with the Exiles formerly known as Cubans living outside the island to put aside differences and fight for the common cause of Cuban sovereignty. For a flag, for a palm tree, for some red earth. That, we all have in common.

Again if you don’t get it, you never will and I’m sorry you don’t.