What kind of Negro are you?

Quick test to measure your knowledge about who’s who in the fight against racial oppression in Sweden: 

NAME	House Negro	Field Negro
Dilsa Demirbag-Sten
Halil Magnus Karaveli
Mauricio Rojas
Carlos Rojas Beskow
Masoud Kamali
H.M. Drottning Silvia
Alexandra Pascalidou
Douglas ”Dogge Doggelito” León
Thomas Gür
Paulina de los Reyes
Evin Rubar
Christian Catomeris
Luciano Astudillo
Maryam Yazdanfar

 

The future of Cuba

 

The year was 1994. Sven Öste, one of Sweden’s most respected journalists, decided to enjoy the hordes of intellectuals around the world using their knowledge and writing skills to put an end to Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.

 Sven Öste knew in fact quite a lot about world affairs, he had visited and reported from places like Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa, the US and of course Cuba. At the age of 69 he had seen quite a lot to believe he could deliver a fair verdict about the one year younger man in Havana.

In the autumn of 1994 the monthly magazine VI bursted out on its front-page: The Bell Tolls for Castro. The conclusion was that Fidel had once again been left alone and Cuba’s economic crisis was going to make the system to topple. Sven Öste had read Andres Oppenheimer’s book “Castro’s Final Hour: The Secret Story Behind The Coming Downfall Of Communist Cuba.”  

The writer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from Argentina working at The Miami Herald, came in 1992 to the conclusion that the collapse of the Soviet empire and the deterioration caused by Fidel Castro’s authoritarian rule were about to start a radical reaction from the Cuban masses against all he has done and stood for.

But the collapse and the people’s reaction didn’t happen. The bell didn’t toll. Sven Öste died in 1996. His heart could not make it any longer.  Anders Oppenheimer, born in 1951, is still vigorous and doing his best from his Florida base. He may perhaps be right now reading Brian Latell’s book “After Fidel, Updated Edition: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba’s Revolution”, an interesting book even if it does not really say that much about the future of Cuba.

And it is quite easy to understand why. Predicting the future is namely tricky business. Many peoples, nations and political systems are enduring and have more lives than a cat. That’s why it is stupid to try to kill them prior to the time’s resolute bell ultimately tolls – because it certainly does for all of us, at the end, when the time is right. Not before, not after – just then. So even for Fidel Castro, his revolution comrades and his ferocious critics at home and abroad.