News from nowhere
It’s been nearly a week since those lovable Castro brothers stomped all over the once-stellar careers of Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque, sending the two relatively young men into the Cuban equivalent of political death row.
And we still have no real idea what they are supposed to have done wrong – or when.
But it’s been fun watching the international media trying to explain the process by which two men that were until recently regarded by Western correspondents in Havana as logical heirs to the grand Castro dynasty become “counter revolutionaries” literally overnight.
They've tried hard but the the fact is that there is no rational explanation.
This is the way Fidel Castro and his slightly younger brother have always behaved, since the days in the Sierra Maestra. In their twisted, dictatorial paradise, there is room for only one and half tall poppies: the Castro brothers themselves. Sooner or later, everyone with even the slightest smell of ambition gets cut down, whether in a light plane on its way to Havana, in a jungle in Bolivia or in the utilitarian confines of the Palace of the Revolution in Havana.
No one is safe.
And guess what? The Castro brothers have always worked on the assumption that since they are in charge, they don't need to explain anything to anyone. Not to the Cuban people. Not even to that small but merry band of Castro apologists outside Cuba, who make a living out of unswerving support for the "revolution".
From these apologists – those who only the other day lauded the great work undertaken by Lage and Perez Roque - there has been nothing but silence. Stunned silence. And sadly for them, no instructions from Havana.
And we still have no real idea what they are supposed to have done wrong – or when.
But it’s been fun watching the international media trying to explain the process by which two men that were until recently regarded by Western correspondents in Havana as logical heirs to the grand Castro dynasty become “counter revolutionaries” literally overnight.
They've tried hard but the the fact is that there is no rational explanation.
This is the way Fidel Castro and his slightly younger brother have always behaved, since the days in the Sierra Maestra. In their twisted, dictatorial paradise, there is room for only one and half tall poppies: the Castro brothers themselves. Sooner or later, everyone with even the slightest smell of ambition gets cut down, whether in a light plane on its way to Havana, in a jungle in Bolivia or in the utilitarian confines of the Palace of the Revolution in Havana.
No one is safe.
And guess what? The Castro brothers have always worked on the assumption that since they are in charge, they don't need to explain anything to anyone. Not to the Cuban people. Not even to that small but merry band of Castro apologists outside Cuba, who make a living out of unswerving support for the "revolution".
From these apologists – those who only the other day lauded the great work undertaken by Lage and Perez Roque - there has been nothing but silence. Stunned silence. And sadly for them, no instructions from Havana.
posted by Luis M Garcia at 9:56 am
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