From Carlos Saladrigas, the man who last year called on Latin American countries to help the Castro dictatorship “create riches” in order to “sustain” Fidel’s revolution, we now learn from a speech he gave this past Friday in Cuba to a crowd including Cuban regime officials, that Cubans who disagree with his plan to save the Cuban dictatorship are “hysterical.”
Apparently, Saladrigas is not just referring to the irascible hardline intransigents in Miami. He also classifies Cubans on the island who are part of the opposition and do not adopt his plan to save the Castro dictatorship as hysterical as well. The same Cubans, it should be noted, that while Saladrigas enjoys VIP treatment in Cuba courtesy of the regime, they are being beaten mercilessly by Cuban State Security and many of them have spent years in political prisons suffering torture and humiliation.
But to Saladrigas they are nothing but a hysterical bunch that should shut up. It should come as no surprise to anyone that his philosophy is the same philosophy the Castro regime subscribes to.
Via Mexico’s Milenio, Carlos Saladrigas in his own words (my translation):
[…] In an auditorium filled with some 200 people — a rare happening in Cuba — made up of religious officials, academics, and other government sympathizers as well as dissidents, journalists, and the curious, Saladrigas put forward his ideas and answered questions for an hour and a half.
According to his vision, the majority of the Cuban exile community “has concluded that it is not ethical or sustainable to maintain policies or postures of isolation, alienation, and economic sanctions that harm our people and much less do it through interference by a foreign country that in the end do not justify the means.”
The United States has maintained an embargo on the island since 1962. “We need to change, the governments, the exile community, and the opposition,” and confront the “hysterical individuals,” so much in the Cuban diaspora as on the island, said the businessman.
“These hysterical individuals are the enlightened ones who in a sheer show of arrogance they believe themselves to be the owners of the absolute truth (…) an intolerant group that does not permit other voices to be heard,” the “ultra-conservative” who “will be relegated to becoming observers, not participants in history,” he said.
Hmmmmmm… “Hysterical,” that’s a new one in the regime’s propaganda war, its incessant campaign to move exiles and dissenters so far out the circle of reasoned discourse that no one will take us seriously and discard anything when say about Cuba.
We can now add “hysterical” to “unreasonable,” “batistiano,” “hate-filled,” “emotional,” “rightwinger,” “fascists,” “troglodytes,” and “banana republican.”
By the way, isn’t that picture of Saladrigas a hoot? He looks like a man with a heavy burdon, a cross that he must bear. Ah, the mainstream media, always willing to chill for any self-styled leader [even if he has no followers] that supports engagement with castro.
You know, I’m pretty immune to certain things because of my extreme cynicism about the world we live in, but this just left me slack-jawed. What is it about money and power that turns men into these vile creatures? Seriously. Is there anybody out there that can answer this for me?
One word, George, drives individuals like Saladrigas — GREED.
I know that’s part of it, but there’s something else, something deeper. This is a total betrayal of the most fundamental values a human being can have. Loyalty, decency, integrity, honesty. It is a marriage of convenience with evil. We’ve seen it before, of course, with businessmen and evil regimes — Germany in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s and ’40s — but there’s something else going on here I can’t quite peg…
But of course. Well, at least he didn’t say “Chihuahuas” or “gusanos,” though I suppose those terms are a bit trite by now. Anyhow, the clearer he makes himself, the better–and it can’t get much clearer than this. Still, he’s apparently a Catholic in excellent standing with the RCC in South Florida, and I expect in Cuba. He’s connected to Belén, the upscale Jesuit prep school in Miami which counts among its alumni one Joe García (remember him?) and, in its pre-revolutionary Cuban version, one Fidel Castro. He recently held forth at a church-sponsored conference in Hialeah, in the presence of the highly touted Father Conrado who was visiting from Cuba, and when some hysterical types in the audience got a bit, you know, disrespectful, Father Conrado duly scolded them. Needless to say, Saladrigas must be a great comfort and shining role model for good little Cubans everywhere, not to mention greatly appreciated by Cuba experts who share his disdain for “those people.”
It turns out that the auditorium or hall where he spoke in Havana is named after Felix Varela, a notoriously hysterical, intransigent and troublesome 19th century priest deeply committed to Cuban independence, very much out of step with the pro-Spain Catholic hierarchy at the time. He wound up an exile in the US, where he died. Ah, the irony, not to say the nausea.
But, hey, it could have been worse. He could have said “History will absolve me,” like our Nosferatu, I mean, the Maximum Undead, I mean, the excommunicated apostate who’s apparently on excellent terms with the Pope. Really, you can’t make this shit up. No wonder Cuba can’t get out of the toilet.
George, I expect it goes beyond mere greed. He’s already quite well off, thank you, and he has to know he looks seriously bad to a lot of people. Not unlike Cardinal Ortega. In other words, I think there’s more here than meets the eye, because it’s not supposed to. He can talk about history all he wants, but history can be a bitch.
At any rate, I’m sure there’s some law that says there MUST be suitably prominent Cubans like Saladrigas, if nothing else for the benefit and convenience of the MSM. To paraphrase Voltaire, if such Cubans did not exist, the media would have to invent them.
This nothing new. Saladrigas has always been an unsavory character. Like the old saying goes… “Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres”. How do you thing he made his millions?????
Where does these people come from? What rock do they crawl from under? Why do they get such prominence? Why does the mainstream media give them a platform from whence to spew hate, propaganda and lies? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question.
Let me see, in the past: Bernardo Benes, Alfredo Duran, Ramon Cernuda, Magda Montiel, Gloria Estefan [on and off, depending on what type of mood the bitch is in], Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, and now Saladrigas.
I think it’s a form of internalized self-hate projected outward. The very same mental disorder so apparent in the left’s destructive tendencies. I also think a large number of these individuals were baby-boomers who were over indulged as children who are still acting out their rage because they are entitled to more, always more… The left is their perfect sanctuary for their hate and violence; the idea of building a utopia for those beneath them makes them feel like god, the perfect antidote to self-loathing. Look at fidel.
Ziva,
You’re absolutely right. Self-hatred plays a big part in their actions. In fact, I remember an article that I once read on the loathsome Magda Montiel. If I remember correctly, it was written by someone who either knew her in high school, or was familiar with her early life. Among other things, he described a young girl who rejected her Cubanness from early on. Not only did she refuse to date Cubans, she also only hung around “Americans.” And who hasn’t detected self-loathing in the articles of Ana Menendez who even makes fun of Cuban traditions, while it is the accepted standard to celebrate diversity, this equine looking writer denigrates those traditions that come from her own background. The signs are all there. Max Castro used to deride Cubans so much that one would have thought that he belonged to a hate group, etc…
What is saddest is that these self-loathers don’t understand as much as they want to separate themselves from the bunch that in denigrating their co-nationalists, they are in part denigrating themselves. Or maybe they do understand. As you say, it’s self-hatred, so they want to destroy that part of themselves that they reject.
George: dittos to most of the above, but for more basic answers, you might want to check out the 1st and 3rd chapters of Romans in the NT, that have a concise but naked description of human nature; it’s innate in us to do the wrong thing, though we also have built-in consciences and the knowledge that things are right and wrong. Ultimately, it’s a choice. I’ve never bought into the self-hatred thing, though it depends how you define it; if it means these people don’t want to identify with Cuban suffering and turn against it, I will accept that. But they don’t hate themselves, they LOVE themselves; that’s why they don’t want to pay any personal price — it’s self-love and adoration that pushes them to reject anything that hurts. Losers, all. Nothing new here, history is filled with detractors of all colors and persuasions.
What’s being discussed is not really self-hatred but frustration, anger and resentment at being part of a non-dominant minority that is neither “correct” nor “cool” and is subject to prejudice, disdain, vilification and exclusion. The problem is not the self, but rather its perception of being unfairly stuck and burdened with belonging to the wrong group, which is seen as a liability, a handicap and an embarrassment.
The self can try to falsify its identity, but that can be difficult to pull off and sustain, and it could backfire badly if discovered. The other option is to admit belonging to the problematic minority but openly and even blatantly set one’s self above and beyond it, making it very clear that one is not “like that” and both rejects it and transcends it—that one has, in fact, overcome it.
Ultimately, of course, this is a pathological response and a form of weakness or insecurity, and it is hardly limited to Cubans. As Honey can no doubt attest, there are Jewish examples, including one Karl Marx. Anytime somebody feels unjustly saddled with being this or that, the reaction can be to throw it off or negate it by becoming its antithesis. Needless to say, this is dysfunctional, and it is bound to have bad results, sometimes disastrous ones. All we can do is recognize the afflicted and act accordingly.