By Miguel Coyula

HAVANA TIMES — “It looks like Artificial Intelligence,” was the comment of a Democratic US American friend when he saw the photo of young Cubans wearing red MCGA caps (Make Cuba Great Again). Certainly, when I saw the image, I instinctively felt a deep sense of strangeness. First I thought the caps were a collage, then that it had been done in Miami. Later I considered the possibility that the Cuban regime had created it with AI to discredit the internal opposition.

But in reality, the image contained a much more disturbing artificiality, whose projection almost bordered on cognitive dissonance. After nearly 70 years under the most recent and enduring dictatorship, young Cubans were alluding to a symbol that has become dogma of another authoritarian, quasi-fascist government. “Isms” almost always lead to a creed, a religion. The heralds of communism and capitalism preach dogmas that some follow fanatically; for others, the definitions of left and right are exchanged at convenience in an increasingly short-lived way.

Just to mention a few aspects: Donald Trump (once a member of the Democratic Party) is today a convicted president; he has supported the genocide in Gaza; he is responsible for freeing his followers who stormed the Capitol, resulting in the death of police officer Brian Sicknick. Two more recent deaths are those of citizens Renee Good and Alex Petrie, whose uniformed killers have yet to be judged. ICE, Trump’s personal army, has spread xenophobia and repression, deporting (including self-deportations) more than three million immigrants, including Cubans.........

© Havana Times