Notable & Emasculating 2: "Cubans Have No Balls"

"Besides a few very brave men, most of whom are either in jail or under constant government scrutiny and excessive repression, it seems that it's the women in Cuba who now have the balls to fight for change." -- Val Prieto, "Oppression in Cuba, BAH!," Babalú, July 24, 2008

Today I feel as those heroic editors that denounced the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South must have felt on the day that the Klansmen shed their hoods and marched down Main Street.

The evil which I have combatted here is no longer afraid to be exposed: it does not shun the light of day but seeks it. By proudly proclaiming its hatred for the Cuban people without the least dissimulation nor any attempt to evade responsibility for its opinions, Babalú has, in effect, shed its hood today. For over a year I have parsed and distilled Babalú's words and extracted the poison in its seemingly innocuous fare. There is no need to do that anymore. I have proved my case one hundred times but no prosecution is ever more final than an admission of guilt. The admission is not accompanied by contrition, however, which means that the evil has not been flushed from its covert but merely shown its bloody claws. Therefore, the struggle continues, though now none could dare to question the nature of the beast or the necessity of fighting it.

What is the purpose of Babalú?

To degrade the enslaved Cuban people.

To question its desire for freedom.

To mock the sacrifices it has made over 50 years to obtain it.

To brand them a race of cowards unworthy of commiseration.

To castrate them.

This is a primal urge found among animals and primitive peoples. But not only there. Reverend Jesse Jackson expressed the desire recently that Barack Obama be castrated. Because he feels threatened by him and fears that he might accomplish what was never even remotely possible for him, Jackson wants to punish Obama for reducing his stature and usurping his authority; in short, for making him irrelevant.

The Babalunians feel the same resentment towards the Cuban people and Cuban men in particular. They are the enemy, not Fidel Castro, because they represent the future. Val & Co. fear that they do not possess what will be required to affect that future or profit from it. There is something about the newcomers that wounds their own manhood to the quick and they are afraid of having to face a nation where they would be the newcomers. Val, in particular, has counselled Cubans in the past to become cannon fodder by allowing themselves to be imploded in his famous pressure cooker. He has called for rivers of blood because the blood of Cubans on the island is completely expendable to him. He has done everything except offer his own blood. It is obviously the responsibility of Cubans on the island to bleed and die for Val. He is deeply offended by their refusal to submit to his wishes after all that he has done for them. You know, the dead chickens and the coconuts and the anonymous midnight calls and the hours spent on his blog till his fingers were bloody stumps and everything else that he has done or had done to him in the last 5 years. Those who have actually suffered for Cuba, the Bay of Pigs veterans or former political prisoners, never show their scars or consider that these entitle them to more than right to live and die in a free country. It is inconceivable that they would ever suggest that their countrymen have "no balls" because they know otherwise; nor, in their hour of suffering, would they suggest that their dignity and pride as men be stripped from them.

But Val has seen the enemy and it is them. In fact, he considers Cubans their own worst enemy. Not Fidel, not Raúl, not the police state, not Communism itself; and certainly not the country that has abetted totalitarian rule in our own for 50 years. For Val, it is the Cuban people who are the architects of Castroism and must be punished for it even beyond the punishment that they have already endured. He alludes to what he calls their "excessive repression" at the hands of the Castro regime. I am sure that if Val was in charge of them he would find some level of repression that was just right.

I never used to believe that Cubans on the island could be afraid of their kinsmen in the Yuma. We are, as I've always said, one people divided by one tyrant. I am not so sure anymore. What would be the reaction of Cubans on the islasnd to Val's words? I should think their first reaction would be, Val who? Afterwards would come the outrage at one, however insignificant, who feels and expresses such contempt and hatred for the Cuban people. It is Cuban women, of course, who would be offended the most at this insult to their husbands, fathers and sons.

Anyone who questions the manhood of Cubans must, first, be completely ignorant of our history. The fear of appearing a fool would constrain anyone else from making such a despicable accusation. And there is something else that is required of such a fool: If he would question whether Cubans have balls he had better put his own on display and they had better be frigging cannonballs. And Val is no Biscet or Posada Carriles.


POSTSCRIPT:

George Moneo said much the same thing as Val in a comment on July 1 ("The Jewish women who fought in 1943 [at the Warsaw Ghetto] had more balls than I am seeing today in Cuba). Little minds do tend to feed off each other:

http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/2008/07/notable-emasculating-cubans-are-cowards.html