Alan Gross

Alan Gross / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Posted on January 26, 2015

The Silence of Alan Gross
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

We live not in the civilization of media, but of the mediocre. And from
there directly we inhabit the miserable.

Cubans desperately need witnesses to our tragedy. In the absence of
politicians on the Island, we pin our hopes on any alternative voice:
bloggers, musicians, graffiti artists, performers, etc.

Just recently a supposed North American hostage has been released. Alan
Gross completed his role in the democratic-totalitarian theater of
legitimization of the Castro dictatorship. He is now free, but he
remains stuck in the labyrinth of his lawyers and the six-figure
compensation with which they have invited him to recuperate and remain
reticent. In the United States, he will not for one moment stop being a
true hostage.

Cubans therefore ask why Alan Gross does not speak to us. Does he not
feel shame for his irresponsibility towards our nation? He has not asked
for forgiveness–that is, if he were to consider himself guilty. Nor has
he accused his olive-green tormentors who, according to him, drove him
to the point of suicide and stole five of the possibly fewer years of
life he will now enjoy in liberty.

Alan Gross was another of our sterile hopes for drawing attention to the
criminal cruelty that hangs over every Cuban. But he has come out–along
with his unhinged gaze–determined not to expend even one drop of saliva
on the Revolution. He is the "sixth hero"* of this complicit comedy of
trade and trickery. And he has no problem with the G-2.

Thus is perpetuated the impunity of the 56-year-old regime imposed upon
Cuba by a gerontocracy and by millions of North Americans–and soon, by
the "millions" of the North Americans. Except for the Cubans–including
the agents of influence and the spies–socialism is loved in America.
This is consummate statistics. And the month of muteness of Alan Gross
is one of its most sensational symptoms.

Why does he keep silent, and what is he silencing, our USAID contractor
in Havana? How was his trial behind closed doors? Was he tortured
physically and verbally? What are the repressive buildings like
inside, where he was disappeared even from his biography? With whom
would Alan Gross speak in Cuba, and what did he know of the world during
his time on the scaffold in unreal time? While in Cuba was he threatened
with death or the death of his family if he did not cooperate? And, now,
in the United States, what is the retaining wall that keeps him
betraying us, while saving the very regime that destroyed him?

The meat grinder will not cease even when the Castro regime falls. There
is no justice that can withstand such violence and vileness which were
inculcated in us, between paternalism and panic. The world will never be
as scared of the Castros as we are, their executors who in turn will be
executed. Among the people there are too many Alan Grosses.

*Translator's Note: The five Cuban spies who were serving prison terms
in the US and were released in December, 2014, are labeled in Cuban
government propaganda as "The Five Heroes."

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

13 January 2015

Source: Alan GGross / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/alan-ggross-orlando-luis-pardo-lazo/