Published by “Juventud Rebelde”, Sunday 10 July 2022
Author: Ricardo Ronquillo Bello, ronquillo@juventudrebelde.cu
Let us confess that it is, at least shocking or contradictory, when some speak of July 11 of last year in a tone of "celebration."
What should be celebrated?, would be the question that would immediately come to the fore. Perhaps the shock caused in many revolutionaries by the surprising events of that date in various cities of the country deserve a similar tone?
Gabriel García Márquez, who loved us as much as he knew us as a people and a society, would not be surprised if we add the date to our extensive calendar of celebrations. He once defined us as quite "laudatory", as well as "commemorative".
So much so, that the Cuban counterrevolution has taken to assimilating the propensity. Of course, as in certain animated Americans —coincidence, right!?—, trying to turn “the film upside down”, at the service of the burning pan of their interests.
So we will arrive at July 11 of this no less disturbing 2022 if not celebrating, at least remembering —it is unavoidable to do so— the implications of that date, with many certainties, but also with the doubts that it left pending.
The first and extraordinary certainty was summed up in a magnificent and fair phrase, turned into a declaration of principles, by the Cuban intellectuals gathered in the recently concluded National Council of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba: "Here we are."
It is said easy, although it was very difficult to achieve it. The Revolution was shot at "the jugular" —as we usually say popularly—, at a very dark moment last summer. The deadly COVID-19 in its acute phase, with medicinal oxygen —and many other oxygens— not only lacking, but also denying us, the electrical system at the beginning of an anxiety that, twelve months later, has not yet abated, and the vileness and imperial nonsense in its meanest and most chronic phase.
Manuel López Obrador, honorable and decent leader of this America of ours —stubborn promoter of the rebellion against the summit of exclusions in Los Angeles—, is not wrong in asking for the resistance and dignity of this people the world reverence it deserves.
The dignity of the Cuban, his indomitable gallantry and suspicion to discover the evil of those who seek to break him deserves a monument, which would be for so many peoples in their situation and condition.
Without pretentious spirits, or arrogance, it could be said that there is something to celebrate these days. I felt it during a visit the previous week to the Ciénaga de Zapata with two brothers from Cuba: Manolo de los Santos and Vijey Prashad.
In that unique place of geography and national history, the idea came to my mind that Cuba dealt another Girón to North American imperialism last July 11, this time in the swampy terrain of the political-communicational war, for the that we are not, nor are we yet, sufficiently affected. This is actually the first great imperial fiasco of this nature, when up to that moment they achieved, in other parts of the world, if not all their purposes, at least the bloodiest and most costly destabilization.
The consequences of similar projects are suffered or suffered in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia, to mention the most notorious attempts.
The involvement of numerous US officials in the riots of July 11 in Cuba is sufficiently documented, as well as the support and encouragement of the large social network platforms, which made it "the shovel" in a plan devised, financed and stimulated from the beginning abroad with the use of the most modern technology, the promotion of fake accounts, bots and trolls.
If in Girón it was in less than 72 hours, the popular response of July 11, under the leadership of the new revolutionary leadership, stopped dead, in less than 48 hours, to the well-described "vandalism coup" by the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in the aforementioned National Council.
Vandalism and revenge would have taken over the country had the revolutionary forces and leadership weakened in those grave circumstances. The order, peace and predominant solidarity and social love that we have enjoyed for so many years —even in the midst of a disturbing and irritating daily life— would have been transformed into the carnival of evil and hatred that many of the social networks transpire. with its right-wing influencers and replicators of all stripes.
But the defeat of the imploding plan fueled from abroad cannot cloud our "understandings" of the internal situation. One of the analyzes that we made in the program “Hablando Claro”, on Radio Rebelde, these days, is that contingency situations lead to the same responses, which do not always appear in time in all the red lights of the complex map of our reality.
The events of a year ago alert us, like nothing else, to that knock by Fidel, 60 years after he entered university, that the only thing that can destroy the Revolution would be his own mistakes.
In such confusing moments, the failure of sensitivity and even the commitment of certain individuals can be understood, what is inadmissible is institutional insensitivity to any of its scales.
It is urgent to continue relocating the benevolent —humanist— soul of the Revolution in the just political and economic geography of the nation. Correct the deformations without allowing us unjustifiable abandonment or alienation like the ones that contributed to detonate those disturbances.
The greatest test will be to fan the flame of regenerating humanism —essence of the authentic popular Revolution. It is no longer enough to resist, because it is an exhausting and incomplete condition, which is also imposed on us from outside, as another form of aggression.
As Díaz-Canel insists, it must be done creatively, as imposed by the harsh and contingency of the past 12 months and will be demanded, if we are realistic, by the times to come.
Instigation and destabilization must be overcome by creation, to make way for prosperity, as the other "saving vaccine" of our socialism. The latter can only be born from the laboratories of the most critical and profound introspection.
