The Cost of Communism: Why The Cuban Outcry Matters For All of Us
This week, thousands upon thousands of Cubans are taking to the streets making an outcry for “libertad”. Freedom. In today’s world, various ideas of what it means to have freedom are being pathologically spewed from all kinds of ‘woke’ hostilities – from ethnic tension to sex/gender identity and onward. Yet the Cubans really know what it means to have and lose their freedom -beyond all the hype, rhetoric and proverbial “wokeness” of today’s media streams. Since 1959, they have experienced what I call “The Cost of Communism”.
Much like an insidious disease that slowly and quietly ravages a tender, innocent plant, communism has slowly taken over, infiltrated, and ravaged the freedom and ability to pursue the joys of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the Cuban people which capitalist economies help flourish.
I visited Cuba under the Castro regime. I brought a delegation there to study entrepreneurship in Cuba. While there, I experienced what it was like to have my freedom and rights taken away. I was detained, interrogated, followed, and barely able to leave the country because of my geopolitical interest. I witnessed throngs of young people rounded up into a military truck and arrested for “prostitution” because they were offering to guide tourists around Cuba in exchange for money to buy shampoo and other necessities. Why? Because in Cuba, people are barely able to survive. The government controls them under communism by limiting their access to food, resources and communication. Less than 5% of the population pursued entrepreneurship, not as private enterprise, but as personally-run business.
The ability to attain and maintain a livelihood is essential to catapult people and nations from a life of poverty a life of prosperity. This is as true for victims of dictatorships as it is for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and other predatory relationships. In all of these cases, a predator threatens, extorts and demeans them for the sake of oppressive, empty and vain power and control. Hopefully Cuba’s outcry will ultimately serve to help them find a road to true freedom and free enterprise.
Cuba’s outcry matters for all of us because when a nation’s government becomes more powerful than its people, democracy cannot flourish. It slowly and quietly gains a chokehold on our freedom, ultimately taking our voice away. We cannot let that happen. We must pursue freedom, life and liberty for all while also safeguarding our own basic, God-given, inalienable rights.
Mandy Seymour has a B.A in International Studies with a concentration in Latin America from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. She holds a certification in Entrepreneurship Essentials from Harvard Business School (online). Mandy specializes in prevention and awareness of predatory relationships and life beyond abuse. She is author of The Gift: A Deeper Understanding of Love.
