Reflections on a Resignation

I awoke this morning to the news that fifo had resigned. I reacted the way most Cubans, here and on the island, did, that is it didn't much matter. I can imagine the chagrin of the media types when they got to the Versailles and not much was going on. Sure, the news was on everyone's lips, and a small demonstration had materialized by afternoon, but none of the mass outpouring of crazy Cubans they had counted on. That's because Cubans know that nothing has changed. Cuba remains in chains. Even if Raul's much vaunted gonnabe reforms turn Havana into Beijing au sud, the people will remain enslaved.

Later, though, I couldn't help it. I am Cuban, given to all the passionate excesses in which we are prone to indulge. I felt elated, had a metaphorical bounce in my step. After all, he's in the can at the curb on his way to the dust heap of history. Sure, there would have been a certain satisfaction in seeing him deposed, reviled, tried for crimes against humanity. Heck, I would have settled for drawing and quartering. But the Lord ever works in mysterious ways. If he isn't dead already, resigning probably killed him, narcissist that he has always been- so much so that rather than voluntarily resigning, I can more easily picture his being resigned by those he thought were his faithful minions. In any case, stick a fork in him. He's done, rendered impotent by the one force no dictator, no potentate can defeat. I guess in the end, he couldn't equivocate with the fiend.

My momentary joy was quickly succeeded by fatigue. It has been a long, hard slog: carrying the pain of family and friends, of my people; constantly defending who and what I am; having to instruct everyone I meet because those institutions I should be able to count on to convey truth- the schools, the media- failed me and every Cuban alive and some dead; and in these last years having to witness castroite propaganda bruited as truth by those very entities. And I am one of the fortunate ones, having been born here, never having experienced hunger, misery, or the fear of that knock in the middle of the night.

Whatever the future may hold for Cuba, I find there is a certain satisfaction after all. The handwriting is on the wall for the regime. History will destroy it. As I remember my Macbeth, about another usurper, the night is long that never finds the day.