Cubans value 2022 and look forward to the new year (V)

The regime's mask fell; nobody believes in them. bees memes (Amed Rodríguez), comedian and tourist guide. He resides in South Africa.

As long as this dictatorship in our Cuba continues to exist, all the years to come will be years of misery, hunger, repression and lack of freedom. 2022 was a sad year for Cuba, it was a year where many lives were lost due to the negligence of the dictatorship; like the explosion of the Saratoga hotel, the fire of Supertanqueros de Matanzas. A difficult year for our people but the good thing about 2022 was that the regime's mask fell; Nobody believes in them anymore, we Cubans hate that abusive dictatorship more and more every day.

For 2023 I do not expect anything good, because as I said before, as long as that dictatorship is in power, the years to come will be sad and full of tragedies and pain, but I always maintain the hope that our people will rise up and we will achieve the freedom that all Cubans - inside and outside of Cuba - we long for... Homeland and Life!

The people with the boot on their head. Esperanza Ruiz, Speech Therapist. Lives in Argentina.

In 2022, the decline of values, precariousness, contradictions between citizens, disillusionment, disorganization, lack of order and shame, fear, disinterest, and servility to those who keep the people with the boot on their heads prevailed; Endless exodus, sadness of those who are inside and outside, endless agony that does not know when it will end or how.

By 2023 we will have the same and even more acute; without exaggerating. It hurts me a lot to say...

Government doomsayers and pamphleteers also left. Siro Barracks, journalist. He resides in the United States.

2022 was a year of disappointment and disenchantment for millions of Cubans. If 2021 was the year of the cry for freedom; With the Cuban people as the main protagonist, 2022 was the demonstration that within the socio-communist-repressive bubble, there will never be freedom or economic well-being. Dozens of government doomsayers and pamphleteers also left Cuba and many took refuge in the country that, through letters, microphones and cameras, they hated, criticized and attacked so much.

2023 will be the year of reaffirmation that what happened in 2022 was not a coincidence, but a necessity. The confirmation that - from within, and within socialism - there is no possible reform; Therefore, Cubans will continue to emigrate and the country will continue to commit to its future, with an increasingly reduced workforce.

In summer the blackouts will return, once again the thermoelectric plants will break down and once again the officials will come to the public arena to ask you once again! a vote of confidence to a people increasingly disenchanted with their leaders.

Failure of Castroism and success of exile. Lilo Vilaplana, filmmaker. He resides in the United States.

2022 ratified the failure of the Castro regime in Cuba and the successes of Cuban exiles, who not only work for their prosperity, but also support their family who suffer repression, misery and terror in Cuba.

The massive escape of Cubans to the United States, in search of freedom, is a sign that the regime has nothing to offer a people who are tired of speeches, promises, lies and family division.

By 2023 I only wish for the end of the communist dictatorship in Cuba, so that our homeland can become a normal country; without political prisoners, like the more than a thousand currently imprisoned, for thinking differently and daring to say it.

Diri-gentes from indi-gentes. Pablo Socorro, journalist and editor. He resides in the United States.

2022 was the year of the definitive loss of all hope and the collapse of faith in every sense.

2023 will be the Year of escape in search of the new faith, that of the Relative abroad, who helps the survivors.

The corrupt socialist kleptocracy will continue to cling to power; because giving it up would be their disappearance as a social class. After 64 years and so much fighting for supposed equality, Cuba is today a country with two social classes: the leaders and the indigent.

Cuba, territory of supercharged violence. Manuel Cuesta Morúa, historian, leader of Arco Progresista and member of the Steering Committee of D Frente. He resides in Cuba.

2022 deepened and revealed - at the same time - the three trends that had been developing in Cuba at different times: the collapse of the country, the sociological bankruptcy of the nation and the intellectual rickets of the vision of the State.

The new Penal Code is the codification of State damage to civil society and turns Cuba into a territory of feedback violence; including a naked imperialist realignment with Russia and China, which liquidated the entire anti-imperialist narrative of the last 63 years.

A trend, somewhat amusing, tends to personalize the problems in the figure of the unelected president of Cuba. Certainly, the guy is the epitome of incompetence, but the problem has to do with the notion, the idea and the reality of the one party.

By 2023, he hoped that Cuban civil society will be able to articulate proposals and alternatives for a citizenry that is increasingly democratic in its projection and attitudes, ready for change and more prepared than the elite that governs it badly.

I am meaning that 2023 can solidify, crystallize and make more visible the predominant social currents in Cuban society. It is important to remember that those who govern Cuba constitute only 0.6% of the population. A small group within the other minority of around 1.5%, now without the consensus of the plural majorities of society.

Castroism is a stationary hurricane, which devours everything that comes in its way. Luis de la Paz, writer and journalist. He resides in the United States.

Unfortunately, 2022 was for Cuba an intensified continuation of what that country has been since 1959, a fierce tyranny whose only real purpose is to maintain power. Everything that has happened in between is clumsy and crazy improvisations, which have only led to failures, each one more disastrous than the last and hopeless for ordinary Cubans.

Let us remember some of the names for the years in Cuba: “Year of Planning” (1962), Year of Organization (1963), Year of the Economy (1964), Year of Agriculture (1965), Year of Decisive Effort ( 1969), Year of 10 Million (1970), Year of Productivity (1971) and Year of the Energy Revolution in Cuba (2006), among others.

The Castro regime is cyclical, it revolves around the same, so there is no possibility of change, it is a stationary hurricane, devouring everything that is put in its path. The only thing that makes a country prosper is the market economy and freedom. Of course, for the Cuban government these are untouchable issues.

In 2023, Cuba - as a nation - will continue to be a country of beggars and the Cuban a possible emigrant to save what little remains of his life.

Cuba in the hands of a useless and criminal caste. Jorge Luis Rodríguez Reyes, editor and journalist. He resides in the United States.

We need as a nation to place ourselves in the state we really are: we lack democracy, freedom and prosperity. And it is essential to reconcile Martí's ideal: "with everyone and for the good of all." Another perspective is to repeat the failure we suffered.

We are a working country; You just have to see how the Cubans make their way in other lands. The drama is that Cuba is in the hands of a useless and criminal caste. We must take away the country that belongs to everyone. Gandhi is the way.

2022 showed that 11-J was no exception. Juan Antonio Blanco, academic and former diplomat. He resides in the United States.

2022, with more than three thousand popular protests, demonstrated that the national rebellion of July 11, 2021, was not a historical exception. The collapse of the energy system marked thetipping point (turning point) of the Cuban totalitarian mafia model. Nothing is the same now. Society cannot stabilize and function in the 21st century with occasional flashes of light from floating boats. In two words: in 2022 the governance system collapsed but not the power of the oligarchy supported by the MININT and GAESA. They are still there.

In 2023, a window of opportunity opens for about twelve to twenty-four months for a radical change that is now inevitable in the system, but that does not mean that democracy is inevitable. The oligarchy can transform the collapsed Cuban model of a totalitarian mafia State into another equally mafia-like one but with a market, as is happening in Russia.

There is more than one possible future for Cuba. The one that finally materializes from 2023 will not do so due to inexorable laws of History, but rather because it will be the practical result of the confrontation on the island between the very dissimilar and still lacking coordination of democratic forces and the autocratic oligarchy in which it now divisions appear. Finally, as a historian, one cannot leave out of the analysis the possibility that a “black swan” may arise in the near future, a chance event that changes the course of events and trends that until then were considered the most probable.

Any negotiation with Havana must include concrete commitments to political progress and human rights. Yaxys Cires Dib, lawyer, director of Strategy of the Cuban Observatory of Human and Social Rights. He resides in Panama.

In 2023, the national and international situation will be complex, especially from an economic point of view. The financial bankruptcy of the Cuban regime will deepen, with the help provided by the Latin American and European socialist blocs, which already have enough national problems to solve, not being enough.

China uses a double game; reflection of the distrust he feels towards the Cuban communists. However, as on other occasions, the international left will want to deepen the dynamic that has been developing between the North American and Cuban governments, unrelated to the demand for real political and economic changes.

In order not to repeat the mistakes of previous bilateral processes and not leave the feeling of a dead end for Cubans, these must be subject to concrete commitments on the part of Havana in political and human rights matters. Precisely the demands of young people, civic activists, opponents and a good part of the Cuban people, who have been expressing for several years, unequivocally, the changes that the country needs...

There is no area of national life that escapes decadence. Despite sophisticated or violent repression, hundreds of political prisoners, “exemplary” sentences, new laws to punish the exercise of rights and a strategy to destroy civil society and the opposition, many Cubans take advantage of the streets, social networks and social and even the manipulated electoral processes to send a clear message of rejection of the regime.

According to our latest report on the State of Social Rights, young people refer significantly more to the political system as Cuba's main problem, and rate the government's economic and social management as very negative. The youth do not believe in the system and everything indicates that it is something irreversible.