Effect of Cuban Reforms

[lalenin]

More updates on changes in Cuba.

This week it was announced that Cuba would open up agriculture to foreign investments, much like it has already done for tourism.

And just yesterday it was announced that salaries would no longer have a top limit, and that compensation would be tied to productivity.

Both of these changes bring down two more sacre cows of Fidelismo.

[BrainGlutton]

Fascinating article by Jordana Timerman in The Nation:

When I traveled the country one year ago, Cubans were just beginning to think about a world after Fidel, after the Communist leader fell seriously ill in 2006 and world media pundits waited to run his obituaries. I had gone to Cuba, visiting the major cities and many of the towns that dot the island of some 11.4 million inhabitants, chasing a myth. For the US and Latin American left, Cuba exerts a fascinating appeal as the sole revolutionary success in a region historically battered by military dictatorships and economic crises. Growing up in Argentina, adolescent all-night conversations with my friends about our country’s dismal situation always ended with a comparison to the beauty of Cuban revolutionary ideals. Soccer fans emblazon Che Guevara’s image on their flags, and university intellectuals angrily defend the Cuban example. Yet, there is much to criticize, especially in terms of human rights and political repression. The island represents an uncomfortable nexus between an attempt at a more equitable society and the excesses of an undemocratic regime.

“The worst problems we have are food, transportation and housing,” said a blue-shirted clerk at a rations store just outside of Havana. As he spoke he also measured out the week’s ration of crackers for neighborhood women coming in one afternoon. He deftly put the plastic bags they brought with them on a scale and scooped in the appropriate portion of hard, round crackers, later checking off the appropriate slot on their ration booklets.

He explained very carefully the economic conundrum faced by most Cubans: “We get a basic food basket, and that’s very subsidized. It’s supposed to last a month, but it can’t, it lasts two weeks. So people have to get a little more, like at a farmers market or elsewhere. But that’s more expensive. You have to find a way, invent something.”

Behind the clerk, samples of items covered by the ration booklet, labeled with the negligible cost and how often families are entitled to each item, sat forlornly on the shelf: a cup of rice, one of beans, a carton of cigarettes, a bar of soap.

Asked about Castro’s eventual death, the clerk furrowed his brow. “I’m 42, I’ve never had another leader. I don’t know what happens,” he said with a shrug. And it is difficult for anybody to really know, he said. “There’s no free press here, you know.” And there can be no opposition “because there is only one party, and you have to do what they say, or else they make you disappear.” But one of the shriveled old women buying her rations interjects. “I saw what it was like before,” she said, showing her toothless gums and shaking her scarf-covered head. “I don’t want anything to change.”

<snip>

“Most leaders here have no idea what they’re leading. It’s the same to them if the bread gets here at six in the morning or at nine,” an engineer said to me one night while repairing the fridge. We were chatting with other acquaintances in the indoor patio of a colonial-style house in Sancti Spiritus, a sleepy provincial capital outside of the tourist beach circuit. Flies buzzed around scraps in the adjoining kitchen as we drank endless rounds of sugared coffee. The engineer, in his early 30s, had heavy bags under his eyes from working late hours as a repairman to make ends meet. “The Cuban system is good. We lack sophistication, but it’s good.”

A surgeon, dropping by for a family visit, partially agreed. He knew about the world that existed off-island, having traveled several times to Mexico and Spain for medical conferences, and he saw little benefit in becoming more like them. He sees little benefit to certain types of political freedom. When I asked this group of educated and engaged men if they desire political change, they all stopped mid-sentence to stare at me, as if I had lost my mind. As if I hadn’t understood what they just told me. The illusion of individual power to effect, held dear in liberal democracies, is missing here. Change is something some wait for anxiously, while others expect none or dread the idea–but should things change, it will be something done to people, not by people.

A drunk friend soon stumbles into the room, waving his Communist membership card under my nose and asking me if anything “outside” could possibly equal the marvels of the Cuban system. And with that, the political conversation was over.

[lalenin]

More news on Cuba. As reported in this Miami Herald article , there is a motion before the Cuban parliament to allow Cubans to travel abroad without a need to have a “white card”, or permission from the Cuban government. If this goes through it will be huge!

And in other news there is something going on in Cuba, very publicly, which seems to be designed to show that Fidel is truly out of the picture. On April 11th an opinion article by Luis Sexto, a writer in Juventud Rebelde, a Cuban newspaper, discussed the merits of the recently announced plan by Raul of allowing farmers to work on ununused government lands and sell their produce. Sexto writes that why would someone object to this plan, since the previous method was obviously not working. And he adds:

“Claro, al sujeto que se acostumbró a dictar, abroquelado en su buró o en su yipi, qué sembrar o cómo cosechar quizá le disguste que los productores ganen autonomía, capacidad de decisión…”

Translated:

“Of course, someone who is used to dictate, from behind a desk, or riding in his jeep what to plant and what to harvest, that someone will not be happy to have producers gain autonomy, or the capacity to make their own decisions…”

Clearly a dig to Fidel. So on the 15th Fidel writes his own response and publishes it in Granma, Cuba’s daily newspaper. Where he says, in part:

"Decidí escribir esta reflexión después de escuchar un comentario público divulgado por un medio masivo de la Revolución, que no voy a mencionar concretamente.

Hay que tener mucho cuidado con todo lo que se afirma, para no hacerle el juego a la ideología enemiga."

Translated:

"I decided to write this “reflexion” after listening to a public comentary diseminated in one of the Revolution’s mediums of mass communications, which I will not name.

We must be very careful of what we say, so that we do not play into the enemy’s ideology."

What’s great about this back and forth, is that just a few months ago Sexto’s article would not have been published, in fact it may not have even been written. And more significantly, if it had, he would have been quietly removed from his post, and sent to prison. Now not only is the citicism published, but so far at least, the only consequence has been a dissenting view published.

My God, that is so anglo-saxon!

[Ludovic]

@lalenin

Both of these changes bring down two more sacre cows of Fidelismo.

Mmmm, sucre cows.

[lalenin]

@Ludovic

Mmmm, sucre cows.

Man, one tries to use a little french…

[BrainGlutton]

@lalenin

Man, one tries to use a little french…

In Cuba, you can get a little French for just five pesos!