Did they run or were they driven?
Last week US State Department officials announced — with glee — that Cuba's future is "a prolonged, slow decline waiting for a catastrophe". They remained coy about their commitment to ensuring this becomes a reality.
Scenting blood and quickly in for the kill, Time magazine ran as its cover story: "Castro's Cuba: the end of the dream". In this deceitful piece it is necessary to plough through six pages of text outlining Cuba's dire economic problems to find reference to the US's 32-year-old economic blockade of the island — and then this is not blamed for any of the country's woes. The UN's recently voted opposition to the blockade was not worthy of mention.
In the same week the establishment media trumpeted stories of 39 athletes "defecting" from the Cuban squad competing in the annual Central American and Caribbean games, in Puerto Rico.
The media omitted to highlight that the Cuban delegation had been assailed by agents "offering huge amounts of money and other facilities to go to the US. Nor did they publish that Cuba won the games, with 881 athletes attending and winning 227 gold medals", the Cuban consul to Australia, Marcelino Fajardo, told this paper.
Cubans are the only economic refugees welcomed into the US. Why? "The US sees it as being extremely important to prevent the development of the revolution and to deprive the Cuban people of the benefits of the revolution", Fajardo says.
Cubans are being gradually impoverished as part of US government policy, and then the media offer as evidence of mass dissatisfaction a beat-up story of a small number of athletes leaving, after being offered financial inducement to do so.
The journalists assigned to the article in Time couldn't conceal their incredulity though: "But Cubans still believe that Castro's revolution has given them something to lose". This sentiment was reported to them as "the achievements of the revolution", which they tell us is "code for cradle-to-grave health care, free and universal education, and generous social-security payments. Castro brought these benefits to millions who had almost nothing before the revolution ..." And that's their crime!
The survival of their revolution matters to the Cuban people, and for that they are being forced to pay dearly by the US. This uneven battle is not one in which we can remain neutral. The Cuban people have not given up the struggle to remain independent, and they deserve the support of all those to whom democracy and justice have any meaning.