The world is asking what changes Raul Castro will bring to the people of Cuba now that he´s replaced Fidel as President. Raul Castro has been running the secret police in Cuba for over 40 years, why should we expect he´ll bring any change?
Raul was seconded in the 1960´s to learn his trade with the East German secret police, known to all who feared their intrusions into every aspect of German life as the infamous STASI. Google that term and you´ll pick up the core of the policies of terror and secrecy that Raul brought home to Havana, and has practiced and improved upon ever since.
STASI methods were more subtle than say the Nazi Gestapo or the KGB, but even more terrifying. They infiltrated families, schools and all aspects of East German society with informants; they made it your patriotic duty to inform on your parents, your children, your wife, your teachers and anyone else who seemed a remote threat to the East German high command. You never knew with whom you were really speaking to or in whom you could place your trust and confidence.
The strength of this brand of secret terror is that it provides an easy, cheap way to nip ideas of dissent, revolt or sedition in the very early stages. This is what Fidel was most concerned with . . . stopping a counter revolution before it could gain any traction with the masses; and the job was given to brother Raul to implement the STASI system in Cuba.
What broke the back of this form of secrecy and terror in East Germany will do the same in Cuba if we give it an equal opportunity.
It isn´t possible to operate a successful modern economy without the freedom and liberty to make business and social decisions. All of Eastern Europe threw off the yoke of Soviet tyranny when it became clear the people of those countries were missing out on a quality of life that the Western world took for granted. Athletes returning from Olympic competition, access to information from Western sources, and the proven failure of communism to compete with freedom in the marketplace, all bore the same message and down came the Berlin Wall.
Only in Cuba, North Korea and Iran does this code of secret police terror run the show today. Only in those places are American business people kept out (by our own government in the case of Cuba I´m ashamed to say).
So don´t expect any change in Cuba so long as Raul is in charge and the American Embargo is still in place. Removing the Embargo might topple Cuba´s Berlin Wall with a year or two, but what American politician has a sufficient sense of history to see that?
www.jaylillie.com
Stasi
Stasi Officers
Stasi HQ now a new Hotel
under construction by
