by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

If there remains a revolutionary remnant in the world today, where the Communist flag appears to insult the sun's rays with its presence, that remnant is Castro's Cuba.

Communists, more or less everywhere, have been scared and disconcerted by the spectacular collapse of the Soviet bloc. A bloc that certain macro-capitalist mass media always boastfully presented as being the second international empire after the United States.

Now well, the fact that Soviet Russia - this Nation of tattered wretches reduced to being beggars by the cruelest of tyrannies - is suddenly pulverized, has represented a frightful psychological blow for Communists the world over.

Nevertheless, it is a consoling factor for all of them to see that in small Cuba there still burns a Communist Troy, irradiating to the three Americas - and even to Africa - her evil electro-political vibrations.

The Island-Prison of the Antilles, nonetheless, is submerged in chaos. Castro appears to be "without oxygen" and the only possible way out for his delicate situation is the propaganda support that he is getting from outside of Cuba.

In this sense, caravans of colorful foreigners have not hesitated to give him an indispensable support.

Even recently, happy spokesmen of the Brazilian Catholic left such as the Dominican, Fray Betto, and the ex-Franciscan, Fray Bofff, and others of the same persuasion, were there. Forming a choir with ecologists and tribalists, these "showmen" of liberation theology dedicated themselves to the same blah-blah-blah of always, whose expressions, more or less, goes as follows:

- "The people in Cuba are happy. There is misery, that is true. But, what is the difference between misery and poverty? And, in the final analysis, isn't a supportable poverty better than consumerism? Or, at least, is it not the lesser of two evils, since the population is not obliged to work so much, in order to produce another much? Does not the idleness that such a situation brings along with it have its attractions? And,

is this not better than the vertiginous escalator of the consumption civilization?"

Not able to present another defense of the Island-Prison, these apologists dedicate themselves to this lewd defense of miserableness. And it matters little to them that in this manner they contribute to the perpetuity of the brutalities, the cruelties and the crimes of Stalinist Communism, that failed in Eastern Europe.

In spite of all this, the greatest advantage of the current Cuban situation for the interests of International Communism is that it ends up being their flag bearer, while they attempt their metamorphosis throughout the world.

For the sake of comparison, let the reader imagine a submarine, in which the periscope, besides its optical function, serves also as a tube through which enters air that enables those inside the vessel to breathe.

Cuba, presently, is playing the role of that hypothetical periscope. In the middle of the submerged Communist crew, submerged in the waters of misery, diminished, disheartened and asphyxiated before the vision of the sinking of Russian Communism, the existence of Castro's Cuba brings oxygen to these lungs. In such fashion that if they breathe today it is because Castro breathes. And this is of great importance for the survival of Communism.

This article was published in "Covadonga Informa", Madrid, June 1992. Its author, Plinio Correa de Oliveira - eminent Catholic Brazilian thinker, and indefatigable fighter for Cuba's liberty - died October 3, 1995