Who is the Enemy?
By José Daniel Ferrer on Facebook - November 16, 2016

From today, November 16, and until the next 18, the antidemocratic regime of Raúl Castro will be conducting the so-called Strategic Exercise “Bastión (Bulwark) 2016¨. Three days of costly military exercises (plus two "Days of Defense"), in a nation mired in poverty and where almost nothing works properly: food, housing, transportation, health, etc., are all in crisis. According to the regime, the general aim of these exercises is "to continue raising the level of readiness and cohesion of the command and communication organs at all levels -the troops, the economy and the whole people- to take on enemy actions".

 But, who is the enemy? Many thought that after the generous gestures of the Obama administration towards the longest tyranny that the American continent has ever known, Raul Castro would have a more reasonable outlook. But it has not been that way. No dictator, unless he decides to end his dictatorship, sets aside his warlike rhetoric. Dictatorships always need an enemy to blame for their grave mistakes and enormous guilt. If it does not exist - and almost never exists -, they invent it.

 These military exercises began in the late 1980s when Republican Ronald Reagan won the United States presidential election. Reagan then made the Soviet Empire very nervous with his Strategic Defense Initiative, which contributed to the fall of the "Evil Empire". In 1989, when the Castros saw communism in Europe had started to collapse, they decided to suspend the "bastions" to concentrate on a real enemy, the offspring of their mistaken decisions: the "Special Period", the most serious crisis suffered by our people since our independence in 1902.

 It was not until 2004 that they resumed these unnecessary military exercises. According to Fidel Castro and his spokespersons, this time “the concept of using air defense units and tanks for the defense of the capital city were applied to resist the enemy invasion. This made us think that the "enemy" was Haiti, because it is difficult to reconcile to the idea that they truly think that with those old-fashioned means - and they have certainly spent huge resources on weapons - they can take on a US air attack.

 In 2008 they again postponed the "Bastion" for that year, this time by the passage of three hurricanes by Cuban territory: Ike, Gustav and Paloma. Any misinformed observer might think that was a noble decision, but alas!, the following year they were spending huge resources and energies in their military exercises while thousands of families remained without a solution for the severe damage left by those powerful episodes, that clashed against mostly dilapidated homes. Let's not forget the amount of cement and other building materials wasted in air-shelters in the 1980s.

 In 2012 again, they postponed the "bastion" for the following year because of hurricane Sandy. Four years later many families remain homeless. Another mighty cyclone, Matthew, has just left hundreds of families with no roof and no-thing, but this time they will have their "bastion". No postponement this time. Could it be more important to keep the Cuban people terrified and to tell Trump that we are prepared for war than to deal with the victims’ devastation?

 Again they come with worn out and laughable terms like "military invulnerability" and "the War of the Whole People". Vulnerable we are indeed to the hunger and misery caused by their own regime. The war of all the people is for our immediate subsistence. War is to survive in such an inhumane system.

 Since 1990 to date we have seen so many armed forces and Ministry of Interior officers and variously tiered officials to escape to the nation that for so many years we have been told is the enemy, and once free they express their true feelings: That the enemy is Castroism, that deprives us of our rights and forces us to live in misery; the enemy is Castroism, that lies to us and tells us that the enemy is elsewhere.

 José Daniel Ferrer García.
 General Coordinator, Patriotic Union of Cuba, (UNPACU).