Irony bites hard when you’re a “dissident” with ambitions of getting rich from capitalism, as some Cubans formerly living in Spain are now finding out, to their great chagrin:
The crisis of capitalism wasn’t on their agendas. The dream became a nightmare. Some are now going to the US, and others back to Cuba (the communist hellhole).
Many Cuban relatives, who in their heyday made headlines in the lamestream media, have opted to return to Cuba after not receiving the economic support the Spanish authorities promised them. Return to Cuba is not allowed, however, to the ex-prisoners, since the Cuban government bars would-be counterrevolutionaries who have worked for mafias and US interests.
Of the 767 persons received between July 13, 2010 and April of last year, 34 are ex-prisoners and some 185 family members who have opted to exile themselves outside of Spain, according to data collected by the Cuban Human Rights Observatory (OCDH).
The key cause of this exodus is the economic crisis, along with the decision of the right-wing PP government not to extend the integration program put in place by the former minister of the Exterior, Miguel Angel Moratinos, of the previous (PSOE) government, due to budget cuts.
The reception plan, co-ordinated by the Red Cross and the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR), was one year long, proroguable to six months. It consisted of the rental of a home (700 euros), maintenance (180 euros per family member), schooling, transportation, and medical assistance.
The program cost the Spanish government some 13 million euros, according to sources in the Ministry of External Affairs and Co-operation.
With the collaboration of OCDH, a hundred families have agreed to the minimum income stipend of 500 euros, and whose granting depends on the Autonomous Communities. Those receiving no subsidies from the state or the ACs have denounced their situation as being one of “total neglect”.
Some ex-prisoners have entrenched their protest from last April with an encampement outside the ministry of the Exterior. The group includes ten or so ex-prisoners, from the latest group to arrive in Madrid, who feel “betrayed” by the previous government and the current one, according to Douglas Faxas, sentenced to 20 years in prison for piracy, illegal possession of weapons, and theft.
“The one responsible was that one from the PSOE, for having betrayed us, and this one, from the PP, for having thrown us in the street claiming to be a friend of Cuban dissidents,” complained Faxas.
Translation mine.
Meanwhile, Cubans on the island can only look at this (and believe me, they ARE reading this same report!) and shake their heads. See, this is why they HAD a revolution, and why they continue to support their socialist system. Which, need I note, is NOT subject to the fluctuations of the global money markets and the artificially-generated European debt “crisis”, unlike so many capitalist ones…
Quite the contrast with the awfulness of the Special Period, when it seemed like everything Fidel and Che fought for was crumbling all around them, one flimsy jury-built Miami-bound raft at a time. Then, it was impoverished folks taking life in their own hands to try to get to Gringolandia, where all the dinero was. Now, it’s the “exiles” trying to get back home from not-so-sunny Spain…assuming “home” will still have them.
And that means the formerly imprisoned counterrevolutionaries and common criminals are still shit out of luck, por supuesto.
Hi Sabina,
Hilarious and so on point, as always! You rock! Thank you for being. I have forwarded this to a friend from Alicante.
I need to catch up with your blog. The heat in the midwest is messing with my brain though. Of course global warming is just a massive liberal konspiracy so that Al Gore can sell more books and movies.
People fleeing poverty in Cuba is supposedly an indictment of Cuban socialism.
People fleeing poverty from throughout the rest of Latin America is just a reason to tighten the American border, and nothing else, it seems.