Tensions and Contradictions: Compliance Is Valued More Than Competence There are visible tensions and contradictions within the current administration, where the official discourse promoting merit-based recruitment through public examinations clashes with a reality shaped by unsuitable political appointments that have defined the management of positions of trust. The Challenge of Coherence: Merit for the People, […]
Ode to Selective Virtue – Part 2 Read Post »
A safe and well-paid shelter for the useless and unqualified. A safe and well-paid shelter for useless people without credentials. All political parties assume that, if they win elections, they will place their best people in positions of public responsibility. Then comes the dull reality of political bargaining, which quickly takes precedence over the public
Ode to Selective Virtue Read Post »
On the awakening of the sleepers and history’s judgment on collective madness It came to pass, reader, that after decades of staging this bloody farce and delirium for more than sixty years, the curtain began to fray from sheer exhaustion. The nations of the South, once the stage for “Operation Manuel” and the oil courtship
The Caribbean Theater of Marvels – Final chapter Read Post »
Of the Scribes of the Shadow and the Stripping of the Idols of Clay It came to pass, reader, that while the peoples of the South danced to the flute of the Bearded Knight, other men, more discreet and far less eloquent, devoted themselves to the monastic task of writing everything down. They were the
THE CARIBBEAN CABINET OF WONDERS – Chapter V Read Post »
And all of us, pawed over in the same mud Allow me, readers, a brief digression born of emotional discharge, before returning to Cuba.I am compelled by the detritus expelled from the mental sphincters of absurd and corrupt leaderships, escorting the funeral procession of Western economies in both hemispheres.Fidel’s Marxism proved to have an unexpected
The Revived Skeletons of Pretended Viceroys Read Post »
Of the Wells of Deceit and the Heir of Incendiary Rhetoric After years of sowing gunpowder winds, the island of the Bearded Knight finally discovered that utopias, though beautiful on paper, have the unfortunate habit of not providing food. Once fertile and cultivated, the nation had become a wasteland of ration cards, where freedom and
THE CARIBBEAN CABINET OF WONDERS – Chapter IV Read Post »
Of Cardboard Martyrs and the Infiltration of the Machine-Gun Gallant It came to pass, reader, that once the seed of discord had been sown, it had to be watered with something thicker than ink. It required the mystique of gunpowder. For it is well known that enthusiasm is a disease young militants contract through lack
THE CARIBBEAN MARVELS FARCE Read Post »
How a Bearded Hidalgo Sold Mirages for Gold and a Thirst for Blood to Prosperous Nations Let us allow Cervantes to lend fascination to the tale of this story. In a corner of the Ocean Sea, where the sun seems never to set upon the vanity of men, there emerged a tall-booted knight with torrential
THE CARIBBEAN CABINET OF MARVELS Read Post »
Pride is the satisfaction and self-indulgence derived from contemplating one’s own virtues while holding others in contempt. Pre-1959 Cuba was a country of profound contrasts. It was a nation with macroeconomic indicators and levels of urban modernity that much of the world envied, yet marked by deep social inequality and strong external dependency, which generated
It was Cuba – Part 2 Read Post »
Victim and executioner of its own people and of an entire region The first Spaniard to set foot on Cuban soil was Christopher Columbus, on October 28, 1492, landing in the eastern part of the island, in a place he called Bariay, and naming the island “Juana” in honor of the Catholic Monarchs, although he