Something smells different in Cuba
tags:
* Cuba
* anarchism
* state socialism
May 4th, 2008 by MLC-ista
Mayday statement of Cuban anarchists about the post-Fidel situation and
the prospects for anarchism and workers' control in Cuba.
With respect to the situation in Cuba these past few weeks, the Cuban
Libertarian Movement – MLC (affinity group of Cuban anarchists in exile)
speaks up to answer the unknowns and the challenges facing Cuban
society. Ours is the voice of uncompromising commitment to freedom,
equality and solidarity that has always been the sound of the Cuban
anarchists.
Indeed, something begins to smell different in Cuba; perhaps in tune
with the flavor of the post-Fidel era. For starters, that verbosity that
filled all spaces until the 26 of July of 2006 is no longer there, where
it was heard for almost half a century. Since then, the prostrate
"commander" has begun to write, but we all know that the written word
doesn't have the same spell as the spoken word and even less when it is
elusive, erratic and lacking in interest to anybody who thinks outside
of the personality cult. Maybe that is why so many, more than was
foreseen, in the streets, in clandestine films, in household blogs, show
a desire to liberate the people's voice from the ties that bounded it.
Even the first violins in the governmental orchestra, surely egged on by
the same old confidential and carefully whispered commentaries growing
louder by the day, have no choice but to recognize what would have been
unthinkable years ago. Vice-president Carlos Lage, for example, recently
proclaimed at the VII congress of the UNEAC (National Union of Cuban
Writers and Artists): "The dual morality, the prohibitions, a press that
doesn't write of our reality as we would like to, the unwelcome
inequalities, our dilapidated infrastructure, are wounds of war, but of
a war we have won."
(http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/siento-hoy-mas-orgulloso-nunca-escritores-artistas-cuba).
It's transition language, no doubt, since they can't even keep alive
much longer those moribund triumphal bellicose airs after admitting that
the wounds are too many and too severe for a political regime
self-conceived and presented to the world as "revolutionary" and
"socialist"; even admitting that the military victory only means keeping
the elite in power.
Even more direct and piercing than Lage's was the language used by
Alfredo Guevara in the aforementioned congress of the UNEAC, charging
against undeniable stalwarts of "revolutionary" pride such as the
educational achievements. About them, Guevara asked himself: "Can the
primary, secondary and pre-university schools, such as they have become,
managed by absurd criteria and ignorant of elementary pedagogic and
psychological principles, violating family rights, be the forming mold
for children and adolescents, and hence of the future?" He answers that
"it can never be solidly built out of dogma, stubbornness, ignorance of
reality or by dismissing whistleblowers and the citizen****p". This is a
clear show of disconformities and even sorrow that Guevara quickly
extended to the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television –under the
direct supervision of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party
– whose offices he called "neo-colonial media with its stupid
programming dominated by such enormous ignorance that they don't even
know they are allies of capitalism in their obscene manifestation"
(http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/peor-enemigo-revoluciones-ignorancia).
Such discourses, however, in spite of their virulence and their bitter
complaints, don't quite criticize in depth the whole power scheme nor
disturb its survival.
Old perfume in new bottles?
The web of power doesn't seem to have changed too much besides the loss
of its charismatic component. There will no longer be a Moses to guide
the people through the Red Sea nor to angrily smash the tablets, and
everybody knows there is no marketing campaign capable of rendering Raul
Castro a seducer. Therefore, the state's discourse, suddenly deprived of
its most inspiring flights of fancy, doesn't have any other recourse
than minimal sincerity and appeals to efficiency.
Today everybody knows – and now by word of the highest hierarchy of the
State or its press – that Cuba can't produce enough food for its
population, that agriculture is in a ruinous situation without immediate
solution, that the trans****tation system is ancient, that a good ****tion
of the population of Havana able to work doesn't even bother to obtain
employment because it's just not worth the trouble!
(http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2008/03/21/nacional/artic10.html)
that
there continues to be a deficit in water trans****t, etc. Everybody also
knows about the "excess of prohibitions and legal measures that hurt
more than they help" because, a few months before Lage, the then acting
and later elected, President Raul Castro said it that way in person
during his year-end speech at the National Assembly of Popular Power
(http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2007/diciembre/sabado29/deseo-e.html)
Nobody doubts that this all has to change and there are very few
remaining that have not yet become aware that credit is for a finite
time and patience runs thin. For the great majority of the people the
changes have to be now –hic et nunc, they would say in Latin- or they
will never happen.
But of course, those changes are in the hands of the same people who
should take responsibility for the situation and that's why you can't
expect much from intelligences and attitudes that up to now they haven't
been able to demonstrate. For this reason the "changes" that have been
proposed are trivial: permits for the sale of certain medicines in the
neighborhood pharmacies or cell phones which until yesterday were only
available from a friend visiting from abroad, permits for farmers to buy
agricultural tools, seeds and fertilizer! And also for the permanent use
of unproductive state land, permits for computer access, DVD's and car
alarms for those with convertible currency, and also allowing Cubans to
stay at the hotels that up top now were reserved exclusively for foreign
tourists. What is surprising is not the fact that such prohibitions have
been lifted but that such mundane things have been prohibited at all!
Meanwhile, there's a fundamental permit among so many others we still
don't have: Cubans will have to wait a while longer so that a trip
abroad will not constitute a via crucis.
The old "commander" stirs in anger or anguish in his convalescent bed
and in a letter to the UNEAC congress he expresses the annoyance that an
eventual flood of appliances would provoke in him: "Can we even
guarantee mental and physical health with the unknown effects of so many
electromagnetic waves for which neither the human body nor the human
mind have evolved?. The UNEAC congress can not fail to address these
t***** issues",
(http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/carta-fidel-vii-congreso-uneac).
His
apocalyptic roaring is significant; mostly because he himself has been
during all these years the Cuban most exposed to such "electromagnetic
waves". On the other hand there is a certain enigmatic tone in his
exhortation to a congress of intellectuals and artists to take on a
subject for which, in principle, other disciplines would be better
suited to handle. Is it a last minute search for allies; a dramatic call
for help to those who share his authoritarian atavisms?
Beyond these comings and goings, it's time to get used to the idea that
the coming avalanche of "liberties" is not general and even less
constitutes an abandonment of the harsh punitive measures or of the
classic and absurd prohibitions: not paying your bus fare, with its
attendant disturbance may be considered an "act of vandalism" that will
land its perpetrators in jail
(http://www.noticiasdeautobus/tag/sucesos/page/11/),
while those who
want to have their own blog will be blocked under the assumption that,
by its circulation and use of certain programs, they may endanger
"national security"
(http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/potro-salvaje-tumbo-blog-yoani-revista-consenso).
Some prohibitions, considered "excessive", begin to fall on their own
weight, but none of that for the time being enables the
institutionalized promotion of essential freedoms; amply demonstrated by
the harassment of counter-cultural youth initiatives. We can show as
evidence the citations and "inconveniences" suffered by the rock band
****o para Ricardo and in particular the harassment of its lead singer
Gorki Aguila.
Self-management: aroma of freedom and equality in solidarity
Something smells different in Cuba, yes; but not enough to harbor too
many illusions about the strategy for change that seems to guide the
steps of the fossilized "vanguard". In our view, the current flexibility
is due to certain basic political and economic reasons. Among the
political reasons, it's worthwhile to note in the first place the need
to make it understood that a change of orientation is taking place and
that such change is the telltale sign of the transition from one Castro
to another; and second, it's urgent to encourage minimal expectations in
a population that has begun to show with increasing clarity its growing
discontent. Among the economic reasons these measures are geared to
obtaining additional dollars to revitalize the state's coffers that are
in no condition to finance the im****tation of basic needs and for which
the large Venezuelan subsidy is not enough; a contribution of foreign
currency not everybody can afford. Betting mid-term the most frantic
search surely consists of finding a way for the nation to recover lost
productivity levels and food self-sufficiency before the situation
really gets unbearable. Along this road, and not as the result of a
coherent project, it is a matter of adopting the "Chinese model" in
combination with other initiatives along the "Vietnamese model", as has
been recognized by Omar Everleny, university professor and high level
director of the Center for the Study of Cuban Economy
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latinamerica/newsid7325000/7325340.stm).
Meanwhile, Raul Castro was more eloquent in his year-end speech and
together with his wishes for a happy 2008, he said goodbye with the
vanguard "materialist" equivalent of governmental hocus pocus: "Let's
work hard!"
(http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2007/diciembresabado29/deseo-e.html).
The political regime wants to show a more flexible face, but that
doesn't seem to be anything other than a self-preservation tactic;
something that the stubbornness and pride of the "commander in chief"
had not allowed up to now. The extensive network of State repression and
control is intact but, even so, we must celebrate that in Cuba there is
a healthy tendency to broadcast a discourse different from the official
one: one with a different content, different shades, and different
rhythm, via other media that are not those still strictly controlled by
the government. For the time being, criticism of the complete control of
the economy by the state and the mayhem produced during long decades by
centralized planning as well as the radical feeling of alienation that
the Cuban workers feel towards the "socialist" production structure have
led some analysts to return to self-management proposals; about which we
anarchists have something to say.
The first thing we have to say is that self-management is not a cosmetic
nor a band aid but rather an integral conception totally against private
or state capitalism; an idea that rivals any other model of production,
distribution and trade and which exists as a whole, without impediments
or caveats, only as much as it can be generalized to all spheres of
society. In short, self-management can not be understood as a test tube
baby, as some practice worthy only of minimalist and isolated
experimentation but as a model for relations between free, equal beings
in solidarity, capable of deciding, individually and collectively, the
affairs of their lives. Just as centralized state planning and market
competitiveness require totality, a self-managed economy also wants to
be plenary, seeking expression on levels that are not purely economical
but include people's whole lives. Self-management is not a decoration
but a principle, is not a model for the occasion but a liberating and
revolutionary project by which people can re-invent Cuban society.
Thus, many of us fear that the seditious "self-management" proposals
circulating around Cuba can't go further than the search for a renewed
identification of the workers with the state's enterprises aimed at
increasing productivity, something the government may concede with a
dropper to small agricultural cooperatives connected with the food
industry. That is why it is not generalized and genuine self-management
but another turn of the governmental screw that allows the elite the
power to extend its time frame and to renew its capacity to control the
workers.
Self-management, as we anarchists understand it, can't even be thought
of if it isn't based on widespread people's freedom and autonomy for
grass roots organizations. To put it clearly: those seditious
"self-managers" manifesting in Cuba today will only appreciate one part
of the problem as long as they're not capable of seeing that
self-management is not possible in a repressive milieu with an exuberant
military and police apparatus, with a monopoly by the only party over
all the mechanisms of expression and decision making and with a
perpetual disciplinary alignment of "mass" organizations with the power
elite. As long as this doesn't change, it is true that something begins
to smell different in Cuba but it is also true that the government
continues to act as the most efficient deodorant. Once again we'll have
to opt not for faith in the worn out machinery of domination but in
trusting people's capacity for conquering and expanding their own spaces
of freedom. To remember these things on such emblematic occasion as May
Day is for the Cuban Libertarian Movement another signature of its
dedication to anarchism and socialism; it is our emotional evocation of
our far away roots and above all a committed reaffirmation of a horizon
of freedom in unmistakable brother/sisterhood with all the people
worldwide who struggle for their freedom.
Cuban Libertarian Movement - Mayday 2008
[For more information about the Cuban Libertarian Movement go see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Libertarian_Movement.
Or Google Cuban
Libertarian Movement.]
http://libcom.org/news/something-smells-different-cuba-04052008
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