“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Mimi Whitefield is a writer from The Miami Herald, that always gets a front page spot for her articles about Cuba and the changes vis a vis the relations with the US and potential changes in that oppressive system. All her impressions about the economic future of that country, including small entrepreneurs, attraction for tourism, among others, seemed to have been written by the Castro’s public relations firm. In her latest commentary she writes about the oncoming visit by Pope Francis to Cuba. I confess, that after the first few paragraphs of her piece of writing I stop reading because it feels like a facsimile of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. She starts by establishing the there is a “rapprochement” between Cuba and our country. This nice French word signals “the development of friendlier relations between countries or groups of people who have been enemies”. In this instance, the only “friend” has been the governments of Obama towards the Castro’s, who have only, continued their threats, demands, and repression to their people, as a response. Then Alice, sorry Mimi, takes as a serious possibility Raul Castro’s statement of “being so impressed by the Pope, that he might consider a return to the church”. Also she believes that the Catholic Church is “in the process of becoming a force in Cuban civil society”. What Cuban civil society?
There will come a time that Alice, sorry Mimi, will come out of “Wonderland”, and realize that Cuba is not a country, it is a piece of beautiful land in the Caribbean that is ruled as personal property by the Castro family, its elite, and bureaucracy, and at the death of the present owners younger members of the family will take over.
Helping the rulers economically, recognizing their legitimacy, visits by dignitaries and Pope Francis, and placing the flag they stole from the Republic of Cuba in Washington, is not going to help the enslaved population and will not start the process for the only solution, the demise of the Castro regime. Regardless of Mimi’s and others efforts to the contrary, we the Cubans that lived in freedom will never believe in “Wonderland”, or fall for the existing propaganda.
Fernando J. Milanes, MD
