The revolutionary project must be nourished

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cuba:
The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary

The
revolutionary project must be nourished

An
interview with Jesús Arboleya

‘One
of the things every revolution, including the Cuban revolution, must
constantly do is to redefine its goals and rebuild the social
consensus.’

Orestes
Martí – Manuel Alberto Ramy                                    Read Spanish Version  

Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria – Havana, Cuba—Santiago, Chile.

Jesús
Arboleya Cervera (born 1948), a professor of history at the
University of Havana, was for several years a member of the Cuban
diplomatic corps, serving in his country’s mission to the United
Nations and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. He has written
important articles and books about U.S.-Cuba relations, the
counter-revolution that uses Miami as a base, and the Cuban émigré
community in Florida. In the academic world, professor Arboleya is
considered to be one of the best-qualified experts in those topics.
In 2004, he won the main award of the international contest Thinking
Against the Current with his book The
Coming Revolution.
Periodically, he has published articles in the bilingual weekly
Progreso Weekly/Semanal. Currently, he contributes to the Chilean
daily La Nación, among other publications.

Cuba
is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its revolution. Did you live
through that event? If so, how do you remember it?

Arboleya:
On Jan. 1, 1959, I was 11 years old. I remember being awakened early
in the morning by the noise of the crowds. From the balcony of my
house, I could watch the demonstrations of popular joy that announced
the fall of the dictatorship. My parents tried to keep me from
rushing to the street, but I managed to do it. What drew my attention
the most was the bashing of the street parking meters. Although I
understand that collecting the proceeds from parking meters was a
source of revenue for important officials in the regime, I wonder why
so much fury was directed at the meters. After all, in terms of
plunder, they didn’t hold that much money. The people who destroyed
them did not seem to own automobiles and there were other, more
symbolic things they could have destroyed, yet they didn’t. That was
because of the climate of respect for property and life, guaranteed
by the revolutionaries from the very beginning. But that’s the way
revolutions are. Sometimes, they are strange. Just as the first
measure of the Paris commune was to suspend the baking of bread in
the morning, the first thing the Cubans did was to smash the parking
meters.

¿What
influence did the Cuban revolution have in your social environment?

Arboleya:
I was the first in my family (which wasn’t at all small) to graduate
from the university. Still, compared with my childhood chums, I came
from an educated home, because my father and an aunt were teachers.
That will give you an idea of the way Cuban society developed since
1959. At least for me, it is the yardstick with which I measure the
results of the revolutionary process, beyond statistics, which can be
deceiving because they don’t reflect the essence of things.
Obviously, now we are better educated, healthier, more united. We are
far from the virtues Che used to characterize "the New Man,"
but I think that in general we are better people, and that justifies
the effort we’ve made.

What’s
your opinion of the U.S. blockade against Cuba? Would you advice the
new U.S. administration to lift it, in response to the demand from
international public opinion, especially in view of the voting held
at the United Nations?

Arboleya:
I would say that the blockade is a despicable measure, even in the
contest of armed confrontation (in fact, blockading is forbidden by
the international rules of war), and I wouldn’t be saying anything
new. Rather, I would point out that the blockade is what remains (at
least the most evident remnant) of a policy designed 50 years ago to
destroy the Cuban Revolution, a policy that tried almost all
conceivable forms of aggression against Cuba. Seen thus, the blockade
is an archeological example of U.S. impotence in the face of the
resistance shown by the Cuban people. To lift it would be not only an
act of ethics and justice but also an intelligent measure by the U.S.
leaders to repair their own prestige.

What
do you consider to be the "pending task" of the Cuban
revolutionary process?

Arboleya:
The Cuban Revolution has many "pending tasks" because it is
a living process, a constant generator of new expectations.
Obviously, the goals set 50 years ago (many of them achieved and even
exceeded) are to the current goals, and that places us before a
dialectic contradiction that is not at all strange; it’s called
development.

So
it happens that when we look backward we’re satisfied and when we
look forward, the opposite happens. To some, this is a symptom of the
erosion of the Revolution; but history’s best engine has been
dissatisfaction. The trick is how to channel it. I don’t like the
concept of "thanks to the Revolution," or "the
Revolution gave us this, that or the other," as if the
Revolution were a tree from which we pluck fruit.

The
revolutions have to be conscious processes by the masses, otherwise
they’re not revolutions. Revolutions don’t give anything; on the
contrary, the people give themselves to them, delivering huge quotas
of willingness, devotion and sacrifice in the quest of human
improvement. Such quests become collective, even in the case of
bourgeois revolutions that cultivate individualism. For that reason,
one of the things that every revolution, even the Cuban revolution,
must constantly do is to redefine its goals and rebuild the social
consensus in the search for these new objectives. This implies a high
dose of subjectivity, what we call conscience.

What
do you expect from the Cuban Revolution in the next several years?

Arboleya:
The expectations of the Revolution are the expectations of the people
who carry it out and depend on the articulation of the consensus I
spoke about earlier. Obviously, the improvement of the economic
situation is a priority, but it’s not a precondition. As Pablo
González Casanova said, we have to learn to differentiate the
"project" from the "process," because it is the
clarity of the project that agglutinates us, regardless of the
difficulties we always face in the process of executing it.

For
that reason, leaving aside the means necessary to solve the daily
problems (which are indispensable but circumstantial), I believe the
Cuban Revolution needs new ideas to nourish the original
revolutionary project, whose bases have demonstrated tremendous
solidity but — as a consequence of the development of life itself
and of its own successes — are no longer sufficient. It is not easy
at all. In barely 20 years, real socialism was blown to smithereens
first; neoliberal capitalism exploded later, leaving the world
without the points of reference that guided the various movements.

The
thing to do, therefore, is to build a new project of society, and the
challenge to the Cuban Revolution is to contribute to that effort. In
fact, I don’t think it has any alternative. Either it does so or it
ceases to be a revolution, with disastrous consequences for the
future of the Cuban nation and the rest of the Third World, since the
Cuban revolution has been the revolution of "that" world.

Orestes
Martí is a Cuban-Spanish writer and journalist. Manuel Alberto Ramy
is Havana bureau chief for Radio Progreso Alternativa and editor of
Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.