50 Years and Counting

I've reproduced below two of the articles which I've written to mark the lustrums of the Cuban Revolution. As I re-typed them after 20 years from the yellowed clippings, I was finishing the sentences from memory although I had not read the articles in as many years. It is not because I have a prodigious memory, because I don't anymore; but because the facts and my responses to them have not changed in decades.

Nothing is more constant and immutable than barbarism if left unopposed. Castroism, of course, has not just been let alone: it has been encouraged, nurtured and flattered since before 1959. The ignoble savages have been transformed into noble savages; the police state into a welfare state; and the victims of Communism into the villains. But even if it had been otherwise and the world had condemned what it still praises, nothing would have changed in Cuba either. To expect the Castro regime to evolve into anything better than itself is like expecting Genghis Khan to turn into Marcus Aurelius.

Fifty years might as well be eternity, and in the life of a man it practically is. Hope springs eternal, too, they say; but, in our case, to no effect, since every year it defrauds us. No prospect, however pernicious to the regime's stability, ever rebounds to our country's favor. Not the fall of the Soviet Union; not Castro's zombie state; not natural or man-made disasters; not the financial collapse of Cuba's Western creditors and enablers. In fact, if we looked at every reason for hope as a reason for despair, we might be more miserable but shall be closer to the truth in every case.

Some believe that Castro made a pact with the devil to secure power. It's as good an explanation as any for something so unnatural and perverse as the Castro regime. Yet such a compact hardly seems necessary since God has made his sympathies amply known over the last 50 years by allowing every human wrong to be inflicted on our people without mercy or surcease. I have remarked before that I believe Cubans to be God's new "Chosen People," chosen for the same reason that the Jews were — to prove how faith can transcend reality, and the suffering of yesterday and today be transformed into the hope of tomorrow. Perhaps, like the Jews, we may also have to wait 2000 years for our national redemption. I am certainly more sure that it will come in 2000 years than in 10, 20 or 30 more, but even if it came that "soon," it will find most of us in the grave.

Once a year, at least, we should stare at the truth even if it blinds us for the rest of the year.

Is everything lost?

Everything was lost a long time ago.

The fact that confronts us today is that it may never be recovered.