ABSTRACT
The Communists know how to use an obscene language with which they establish nuances between formal and real freedom. The formal ones are not worth anything: freedom of expression, freedom to set up political parties and organize parliaments, freedom to question the state or dogmas in force. Freedom always entails a series of personal decisions. One always fears the state, and rightly so. Fear's counterpart is slippery: dissimulation. Cuba is today a country of dissimulators. Sex is not a middle-of-the-road issue. In Cuba, the virile and chivalrous Communist caste marches in countercurrent. In Cuba, homosexuality used to be an anal fixation. In Cuba, priests have not been hanged from street lamps and nuns have not been raped. With less temporal power but perhaps more popular support than the church, there existed in Cuba a religious cult of African origin, almost always syncretized with a collection of Catholic saints. Cuban Protestants were relatively few but enjoyed great prestige.
