Lady Jags in Hell: The story of Cuba

Jul 03, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Guyana’s female football team is in action today at GCC. If you need to talk about the hell that they experienced in the failed, fascist state of Cuba, then talk to them. I believe they will speak to you. Some of them may not. They may still be livid or even traumatised at their Faustian nightmare in Cuba.
All, without exception, the members of Lady Jags live in modern countries where the deprivations the Cuban people endure are absent and this includes even the failed state of Guyana. Here are the facts as related to Kaieteur News by the Guyana Football Federation.
The team was treated like a bunch of criminals at the airport. This is truly amazing coming from a country where no one from another land in his/her right mind would choose to take up permanent residence. I would like to read the immigration statistics to see how many citizens of other countries have migrated to Cuba as permanent residents. Important to note is that a majority of Lady Jags players reside in North America. Do American citizens actually want to stay in Cuba illegally? So why were these women treated so humiliatingly. And to think that Guyanese complain of degrading mistreatment at the Barbados airport.
It took two hours before the entourage could be cleared by airport officials. Since when does a 10th rate country behave like this? Talk about Cuban arrogance!
Secondly, the hotel accommodation was worse than in times of war in other states. This should come as no surprise to those who study the economic collapse in Cuba. The dormitories of many universities where hundreds of Guyanese students are housed are in a semi-modern condition.
The toilets constantly overflow. The showers seldom work and the panes in the windows have disappeared. We had a son of a family friend studying in Cuba where he described a virtual hell while he lived in the dormitory.
Food shortage was the order of the day and those who had money couldn’t even get to buy soap and toothpaste because there was none in the shops. All of these things we had to send for him, including soap powder to do his laundry.
Interesting to note that the Guyanese students studying in Cuba are never sent to the universities in Havana and no Guyanese I know (I am speaking for me) is at the University of Havana except for the daughter of one of the PPP lords.
It is simply amazing that there has been no description of the semi-civilised ambience at the university dormitories in Cuba by those who have returned to Guyana.
According to the official from the football federation (see KN, July 1 edition), the apartments of team members were invaded by more than two dozen cats and dogs. This is characteristic of Kafkaesque territories where canine and feline shadows of the night are the constant inhabitants of Orwellian cocoons in which fascist leaders imprison their citizens.
And Cuba certainly exceeds the boundaries of fascist dehumanisation which dominated Eastern Europe, Italy and Germany in the first half of the 20th century.
The football administrator told the Kaieteur News that the toilets of the apartments backed up from day one and were never repaired.
Then came the horrible moment for Lady Jags. The team asked for food and water and didn’t get. This is Cuba under the 50 years of Castro’s rule.
Now here is a nasty description of Cuban communism. When Lady Jags arrived at the stadium where the Cubans were housed, team members asked to use the bathroom and were refused. This is Cuba humanism for you. This is the attitude of the new Cuban citizen that Castro created fifty years ago. Space has run out to provide more descriptions of the torture Lady Jags endured at the hands of the Cubans.
I long suspected that the Cubans were a horrible set of people. I got to know a few of them while working in Grenada under the Maurice Bishop Government and what those people told me certainly led me to conclude that Fidel Castro must go down as one of the 20th century most diabolical leaders.
It is a one of civilisation’s tantalising mysteries that this man could force his people into modern day slavery for fifty years without them rebelling against him and assigning a fate to him that the Romanian people did when they overthrew his friend in Rumania, Nicholas Ceausescu.
It is time the Cuban people remove Castro, his brother and the Communist Party and bring modernity and modernisation to Cuba.

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Lady Jags in Hell: The story of Cuba

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