From the Guinness records to Doña Eutimia’s ‘paladar’

Between bureaucrats and brutocrats

By Manuel Alberto Ramy

HAVANA – Last May, Cuban Erick Hernández set a Guinness record when he kicked a soccer ball for 12 hours and 5 minutes without losing control of it. His success was trumpeted by all the national media. How nice.

One month earlier, in April, José Castelar Cairo, popularly known as Cueto, set his fifth Guinness record when he twisted the world’s longest cigar: 81 meters 80 centimeters. The length of a block in Havana’s Rampa. Deservedly, Cueto was featured on television and the printed media.

In March 2011, another Cuban, Yeniseidys Soto García set another Guinness record when she walked 400 yards holding a soccer ball between her legs while carrying a 50-kilogram weight on her shoulders. An unquestionable feat, duly publicized.

Every success by a compatriot deserves public recognition, no matter whether he or she kicks a ball for hours or rides the tallest bicycle in the city.  

Barely one week ago, the important American magazine Newsweek published a list of the “101 best places to eat around the world.” Fifty-three international chefs made their choices, region by region. The only place selected in our country is the paladar (private restaurant) Doña Eutimia, on Callejón del Chorro, near Cathedral Square. I repeat: it is the only Cuban eatery among the world’s 101 best. And it so happens that the most highly praised dish is the very Cuban “ropa vieja” – shredded beef and vegetables.

I’m still waiting for a mention on Cuba’s printed press or a brief report on Cuban TV about the honor paid to this paladar. And while I wait (perhaps futilely) and compare its treatment with that given to the well-deserved Guinness awards given to other compatriots, I can’t help wondering and pondering about the official silence.

The importance of a well-deserved distinction should not be kept silent but be recognized nationwide. The simplest way to say it is that this information is part of the motivation for tourists to visit various cities in the planet, in this case a reason to come eat in our city. In the specific case of this restaurant, it encourages tourists to tour the area and its other attractions, spreading good will and business all around.

Delving deeper into the official silence, I wonder if we aren’t witnessing a manifestation of the spiritual pettiness that dwells in people and places, the process of human smallness that, if it cannot make the world’s longest cigar or be recognized as Cuba’s best restaurant, hides the merit. “Hush, shush, silence, tell no one,” as an old Spanish song said.

My other nagging doubt is not far from the previous one. Doña Eutimia’s is a paladar, that is, a private – not state-run – restaurant. There are plenty of the latter and they’re good, but they were not selected by Newsweek. And this is where pettiness merges with the “brutocracy” allied (and sometimes coexistent) with the bureaucracy: Should we publicize the independent economic efforts?

While the bureaucracy is bound to lose power as a result of the updating of the economy and public administration, the brutocracy does not see beyond its flat nose, incapable of detecting how the good smell of a plate of ropa vieja carries a whiff of the “Actualization of the Economic Model.”

The opening of the economy, in this case in the food and service business, has resulted in the success achieved by this paladar or private restaurant, whatever you call it. Behind that international recognition there is a policy that paved the road for good performance and better service for the public. And that is the official policy. Or is it only for some?

In the first quarter of this year, Vice President Marino Murillo, the man responsible for the economic reform, told the media that by 2015 between 40 percent and 45 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would come from the non-state sector. Weeks later, Esteban Lazo, Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, made the same statement.

These are important statements because they underline that, while the state-run sector will continue to be the key sector (especially in strategic areas), several forms of ownership and management will contribute to the creation of the nation’s wealth, including urban cooperatives. Apparently, these will not be limited only to the service sector.

To market and publicize the products of the “actualization” or the reform process would seem to be something logical, part of the dynamics. Why not do it? Is it a question of the image of the triumphant model – in this case a private enterprise? Do some people identify the simple recognition of a micro-microenterprise (I’m not exaggerating) with the defeat of a socialist project of renewal, like the one approved by the guidelines of the latest Congress of the Cuban Communist Party?

To view the mechanisms and economic tools that are needed and mistake them for the essence of a system is pitiful. How sad that the media kept silent! The paladar’s success – unheralded but honest and deserved – is what the process of change is all about.     

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