From our Bureau of Valiantly Troublesome Priests
Father Alberto Reyes is at it again, blasting away at the repressive dictatorship that has enslaved the Cuban people for the past 65 years. To some extent, his latest challenge to Castro, Inc.’s hegemony lays blame for the island’s enslavement on those Cubans who have been comfortable with the dictatorship’s paternalism. Basically, he’s telling Cubans to stop acting like little children.
A few weeks ago, he also blamed Cuba’s dictatorship for causing the “loss of values” that have created a recent crime wave. If you are a praying person, please pray for Father Reyes. Castro, Inc. is surely bound to punish his outspokenness. Read the full text of Father Alberto’s post below, loosely translated from CiberCuba.
“I’ve been thinking… (LVIII) by Alberto Reyes Pías
I’ve been thinking about ‘depaternalization’
Within the universe of what seems good, but is not, one of the jewels in the crown is paternalism: ‘I assume you, I support you, I take care of you.’ In theory it even seems tender, but it is destructive and malevolent.
To begin with, paternalism annuls you, makes you useless, turns you into a passive and dependent being, with the aggravating factor of generating a person in whom the spirit of deservingness and begging come together: ‘I deserve… free study, health free, the subsidized basic basket…’ but, since I depend on the care of dad State, I sit and wait for it to give me and, when it doesn’t arrive, or what does arrive is rubbish, at most I complain about the ‘non-compliance’ ‘, when in reality I should claim my right to make my way through life without having to depend on anyone.
On the other hand, nothing in this world is neutral, and paternalism is no exception. If we analyze it coldly, paternalism would be a specter to flee from, because what benefit can it bring to making the other dependent, and hanging it around their neck like a perennial weight, when the most logical thing would be to be free to have to take care of the truly vulnerable?
But paternalism is a weapon of dominance and submission. From speeches of love he makes us dependent, so that he can later use us as a support for his power.
As a people, we did not know how to see it coming, or we did not want to see it, but it does not make sense now to enter into those speeches. These are not times for complaints but for solutions, and it is time to look at our own lives and those of our children to begin to recover what was taken from us, and teach our children to grow in a different mentality.
Because there is a lot to recover.
We need to recover education, which was taken away from us when we were dazzled with the example of the ‘proletarian’, of the ‘town’ man far from ‘bourgeois’ behavior such as being clean, speaking correctly, treating others with courtesy, respecting different criteria. …
We need to recover the values that taught us to distinguish good from evil and did not subject good to ideological criteria.
We need to recover the capacity for self-determination, to decide what we want to do, how we want to live, and fight for it, without having to submit to imposed models.
We need to recover the truth, and lose the fear of ‘dedoctrinating’ our children, and teach them to question the ideological discourses they receive in the only school instruction to which they have access.
We need to recover civic protagonism, that student, university and worker protagonism that is so praised when talking about the generation that prominently opposed the Batista dictatorship and so demonized when those same attitudes are shown against the current dictatorship.
We need to recover faith, Christmas, Holy Week, the presence of the Church in the lives of these people.
“We need to get rid of a State that boasts of being generous and increasingly immerses us in a miserable life while continuing to invite us to passively wait for what it never intended to give us, what will never be given to us.”
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I SAY AMEN TO ALL THIS GOOD FATHER HAS SAID. It needs to be repeated in every corner of Cuba. It needs to be shouted from every street corner. These words are the path to freedom, prosperity and joy. WAKE UP!!