There’s been lots of talk about raul castro maybe following the Chinese economic model lately, but there’s a better model made in China that can be followed:
The incident began when about 300 people, including some who were dissatisfied with a police report on the death of a 17-year-old girl, started to gather at about 4 p.m. on Saturday at the county government and public security bureau.
The police report said Li Shufen, an eighth grader, had drowned herself. However, her family insisted she was raped and killed.
The crowd swelled and reached as many as 30,000 people at one point.Eventually, they charged into the police building, smashed office facilities, burnt vehicles and later some of them broke into the building of the county government and set about destroying facilities there.
I wonder what it would take to get 30,000 angry Cubans storming police and government offices. . .
Read the whole story here.
Well I think the article brings up a good question. After so many years of oppresion why do the Cuban people continue to take it in the ass. I don’t know the answer and I don’t expect a clear answer. Although I’ve always been taught that freedom is something you fight for and give your life for.
Could it be that Cubans have been completely brainwashed over the years and they don’t know any better?
readytoshoot:
I think that question could be reasonably asked of any people living under the heel of a tyrant, be it Iraq (until recently) or any one of a number of African nations (Zimbabwe being the most festering and obvious example this particular minute).
I also think you answered your own question: 99% of humanity is not willing to die for their beliefs/own benefit or that of their heirs (hell, people aren’t willing to give up even the most mundane of pleasures to make a point or change for the better).
As it stands, it’s much easier to wail and moan and wait for the hero to ride in on the white horse to rescue them from the rogue band of ass-rapists (and, from there of course, the hero is denigrated, defenestrated and castigated by those that, as he was saddling up, were wildly cheering him on).
Good point ECM, i guess that is why I feel that Cuba will stay as status quo.
Yet people are willing to die getting on flimsy rafts and abandoning the island! They will risk their lives to get to the US, but not for Cuba’s freedom. And there you have the biggest sin of the communist dictatorship in Cuba – they have made cubans lose the love of their homeland. What other answer is there? You risk death to flee, but won’t risk death by staying and fighting?
I don’t think the Cubans who leave have “lost the love of their homeland” – they just want a better future for their children, and who can blame them?
One of my Cuban friends (now living outside) says that Cubans are basically passive by nature, very conservative. Then, how would you get so many people together to act? How would you trust anyone? Cubans have been taught to wear a mask in public. So how would you organize any rebellion? And who would want to risk getting jailed or shot? Easier to jump on a raft and take that risk.
I, too, dont think Cubans that leave Cuba lose their love for their homeland. This blog and all the others and their respective readers and commenters are living proof that love is not lost.
Now, Mariana, I dont know where your friend got that passive by nature thing, but, at least in my experience, Cubans are anything but. There’s bloody history from way back when with los Mambises to Los Brigadistas and los del escambray that disprove that statement.
I certainly cant say exactly hw Cubans would go about getting together in clandestine meetings and all that, but where there is a will, there is a way. Its just that simple. I refusse to believe that such an industrious people that can do things like make a boat out of a buick cant find a way to meet cladestinely and work for their own good.
Val, Yeah, it’s frustrating. Cubans get together to figure out how to get food, but not how to overthrow the government. For one thing, where would they get the weapons?
Weapons are not needed people. Yes they help, but it’s not needed….Shit Castro took over Cuba without firing a single shot…He and his cronies didn’t start firing shots until he had control.
I myself wasn’t born in Cuba, I’ve visited family twice and for shits and giggles I went to the University of Havana (What a joke) for three months…No I didn’t go for some communist meeting or to have sex with the unfortunate women who have to sell themselves to make ends meet. I went so sympathizers can’t try and tell me what Cuba is like, This Cubanito went from tip to tip town to town, I’ve seen it all. Hell I even visited my cousin who was in jail at the time for stealing or carrying contraband can’t remember the reason. Oh just as an FYI – on departure from the island the Cuban secret police took all of my photos…it was back in 2000, I was still a student so I really couldn’t afford a digital camera, which it would of been easier to hide the memory disks.
We make not like to admit it, but more Cubans on the island are willing to risk their life for the USA than for CUBA.
Part of the reason is that they know what the USA stands for, and they know what CUBA stands for, but more primarily is that the Cuban regime has done more than an excellent job in brainwashing and creating a docile population.
Sure, you have the very few that wont conform, but the rest, they are the wearers of the ‘two masks’ – that is all they know.
In WWII when they liberated the concentration camps in Germany, the inmates did not run out to fight the Germans. Besides being physically weak, they were also emotionally weak and zombie-like in total acceptance of their situation. I would say that, sadly, the same holds true for Cuba.