Does D.C. Stand for “Donate to Castro?”

Does D.C. Stand for "Donate to Castro?" / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Posted on May 13, 2014

Snoozing on the Washington, D.C. subway early one morning with my dreams
still flitting between Franz Kafka and Stephen King after a evening
filled with nightmares of State Security bursting into the apartment I'm
staying in—which is near to where they shot The Exorcist—I finally wake
up when I see the CubaNow banners through the train's windows.

CubaNow is a media campaign run by a group of young Cuban-Americans who
prefer not to disclose the source of their funding. Their secrecy echoes
the recent scandal of USAID's not "undercover" but "discrete" operations
with the ZunZuneo project, an SMS network designed to work in Cuba.
Their secrecy is also a reminder of the opacity with which the Havana
government operates, in its domestic matters that ought to be in public
view, as well as its smuggling of weapons on civilian ships, and its
spies in the United States disguised as scholars, entrepreneurs, and
even Pentagon analysts.

It's curious how similar the political propaganda is starting to look in
the capital cities of those two once irreconcilable enemies.

Perhaps CubaNow is a part of the pressures that President Obama needs to
feel before he takes each controversial step, even though his
administration has already shown enough signs of goodwill towards
Castro's Cuba, as these banners implicitly recognize. For their part,
the leaders over in the Plaza de la Revolución have always rejected any
rapprochement that does not fit with their monolithic model for
continued power.

"It's time to try something new," suggest the CubaNow banners. Also,
"It's time to bring the discussion of politics between the United States
and Cuba into the 21st century." Then they add a quote from the blogger
and famous Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez, plus a photo that I took of her.

As far as I know, we were never asked whether we wanted to lend our
support to this campaign. As compensation, CubaNow ought to do a better
job of launching itself in today's Cuba, where the people need something
more than economic concessions, in a denaturalized nation that has lived
for 55 years under a single press, a single party, and a single person.

From Sampsonia Way Magazine

12 May 2014

Source: "Does D.C. Stand for "Donate to Castro?" / Orlando Luis Pardo
Lazo | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/does-d-c-stand-for-donate-to-castro-orlando-luis-pardo-lazo/