Reports from Cuba: Secrecy

By Regina Coyula in Translating Cuba:

Secrecy

http://lamalaletraen.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/regina1.jpg?w=300&h=199The ruling elite accustomed themselves to living in secrecy, with that phrase, “Silence, the enemy is listening,” so convinced that all information about their lives was a matter of state, disrespecting public opinion, including that which sympathizers still have, with silence around the life (or death) of Fidel Castro.

This can only happen in a country that feels no obligation to offer explanations and where the journalists do not dare to do their job. It’s not serious to try to justify that such discretion is essential because it involves a man against whom hundreds of attacks were planned (though they never got close). Today this person is a sick old man, retired from public service, whose image for years now is always deferred and in photos.

Nor do I believe that Raul Castro needs time to prepare anything, because he controls the power and if there are cracks in the corridors of power, military counterintelligence should keep the General-President (HIS ministry) updated about the operative situation.

Fidel Castro occupied so many hours of television and so many headlines; in short, he dominated the media, that it’s logical, given the information vacuum, that his health status should be the object of all sorts of speculations.

1 thought on “Reports from Cuba: Secrecy”

  1. For all practical purposes, Fidel died a good while back. By this point, he’s like a distant memory; nobody in Cuba will feel much differently when he’s officially dead. His designated heir as dictator doesn’t have to prepare much except the funeral extravaganza, primarily for foreign consumption, and he’s had plenty of time to get everything ready. In other words, by now, Fidel is largely irrelevant on the island–a decrepit, senile old relic everyone knows can die at any minute and has, in fact, lived longer than expected.

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