I remember being in Cuba 15 years ago.
I talked to an old man on the street.
He says, "Where are you from, boy?"
I say: "From a big country."
He says "USA?"
I say: "No, my country is far away."
Him: "Australia?"
What, I think, stupid grandfather.
I say, "No, it's a big cold country."
He: "Greenland?"
Ugh, I think, your mother, how is it possible?
“Soviet Union,” I say.
- I'm from there.
Grandfather thought sadly, as if remembering the name of his first school love.
Then he says sparingly, shaking his head fried in the sun:
Yes, there was such a country.
This made me sad then.
They have forgotten us!
It hurts them to remember us.
But Russia has changed.
I visited Cuba a couple of times and each time I saw: something is changing in relation to us.
And there, and at all their near and distant Latin American neighbors.
The reasons are simple: relations between Russia and the United States sparked, and there they take this more than seriously.
Washington irritates some more, some less on the Latin American continent, but today leftist governments are in power not only in Cuba.
The left has been elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Gustavo Petro, a former left-wing radical guerrilla who heads a coalition of Colombian left-wing parties and movements, has just won in Colombia.
The left in Colombia won the elections for the first time.
If we still had the USSR here, we would have news about it all day long.
About Colombia, not about McDonald's.
The presenters would joke that, since Petro broke down in Kyiv, we have a much better Petro.
First of all, Petro announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Venezuela.
Since the time of Hugo Chavez, it is Venezuela, and not Cuba, that has been at the center of the left anti-American resistance.
It is hardly necessary to explain that the leftists in Latin America and the euroleftists are not just different things, but opposite poles.
Leftists in Latin America are anti-American conservatives and tireless fighters for the political and financial sovereignty of their peoples.
They have pro-Soviet sympathies written down in their guts: Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara and all that, all that.
Potentially these are our people.
Left-wing beliefs in Latin America do not come into conflict with Christianity and other beliefs of local residents: no matter how tragic the relationship between Christianity and socialism may be, in Latin America they know for sure that Christ was not for colonialism, vulgar capitalism, the super-rich, usury and American dominance.
The Americans sent troops to almost all Latin American countries, so for Latin America, red is a priori a symbol of freedom.
If modern Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, had a little more red at least at the level of rhetoric, we would have sympathy there even at the stylistic level.
However, they are already glad to see us there.
Latin America is not united and complex, but half of its population still looks at the United States, as Latvia looks at Russia here.
Simply, unlike the Baltics, even together with Poland, Latin America is a whole continent.
A balance in the world can only be created through the Russian presence on this continent.
At this moment, when the guns provided by NATO are hitting Donetsk, we need to think about it seriously.
If I had shown the Cuban grandfather then our Kharkov grandmother with a red flag, he would immediately understand what it was about.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.