Dialogues in a domino game
By Elsa Claro
Havana, may 18/2012
Cuba is moving pretty fast towards capitalism, though they say that the “reforms” are slow –
Everybody looked at the speaker with some reserve. The will to dissent is not always restricted to baseball.
–If you were talking about a mixed economy with market elements I would agree, but a change of system?
The first speaker makes an I-can- see-farther-than-that sort of gesture.
After skillfully stirring around the domino pieces, a third player intervenes:
–I see a bigger problem in the fact that changes have started after 20 years of Special Period. The decline of moral values…
–Eh, don´t give me that. There were always two-faced or stone-faced people…
–… what I intend to say is very well summarized by Fernando Martínez Heredia –the man interrupts the interruption pulling out a notebook:
“The purest efforts in the service of the community, the socialist revolutionary ideals and honest industriousness live together with an excessive appeal to selfishness, individualism and self-interested “give-and-take” behaviors. Corruption, inertia and bureaucracy threaten to corrode or hinder those initiatives meant to guarantee development, socioeconomic welfare and a fair distribution of wealth. Within Cuban society there is a huge cultural conflict between socialism and capitalism.”
–That´s what I said—triumphantly exults the first speaker.
–Look, there´s more tan just one concept in those phrases. You say that there´s a fast change of regime, but what I see is a slowness in certain transformations such as urban cooperatives…
–But that`s already on the move, gentlemen. Didn´t you watch it on T.V? A family business manufacturing and selling baby´s clothing and other stuff, like cradles or small chairs with an urinal…is that a small industry or not? Furthermore, private bakeries, don´t they require a variety of crafts working together?
–Excuse me, doctor, I´m on a different groove. As a mechanic I can tell you that they have to finally give the workshops to those who fix the cars, ah! And sell them the parts directly in order to stop theft.
–You´re right. A wholesaler market would be excellent, now listen to this: they should include professional jobs in the list of the self-employed. If you´re building a house, you can hire an architect just as you can hire a mason. It´s also true that some specialties are a delicate matter…
–That´s another story…but none of the variants so far established or projected really suggest that one is moving towards capitalism, slowly or fast. Martínez Heredia describes a very serious problem, warning about uncomfortable realities. There are some who only see the nice part of a capitalism already in crisis, not thinking that it will also affect them, though they can see the indignados everywhere and the police beating them up, they don´t think either that such a crisis could be “solved” with a war.
–Hey, stop philosophizing. Cuba is Cuba and the rest is different, I´m interested in what´s going on here, not on the other bank.
–Drop the bottle, man! You´re running short of inspiration.
They all smile and drink or gaze at their glasses in contemplation.
–Look at people selling their houses and cars in order to go into small business, some have relatives abroad to help, and some fail. That´s the way it has always been.
–Open your eyes, guys, it´s not with taxis and small restaurants renting rooms to tourists that a country is developed. It´s true what our friend here said about workshops and all that. I think that those with a university degree deserve the highest earnings.
–That will come when they raise salaries…
–I don´t doubt it, as I don´t doubt that it will take some time. The country is not so…look, if there´s something missing is an opening in the industry, workers must feel some sort of commitment. There are a few executives looking around for good commerce, current investments are on the rise and as my pal Martínez Heredia says here, the productive relations are being reorganized…
–Yeah, and the delay will bring about despair and…
–No, no, let me make myself clear. Minister Murillo talked about several new legislations, such as to eliminate still more prohibitions on the land lease in order to stimulate farmers…by the way, I heard that many farmers are selling their products in a direct manner and surely there will be some modifications to taxes, and that thing that worries you about urban cooperatives…
–Hey, I´m not living on the moon. I read that the National Association of Economists and Accountants asked for greater agility in the actualizing of the economic model. People are asking for it.
–Yeah, if professionals were making enough money they wouldn´t look for possibilities in self-employment.
–There you go again. And what about high revenues coming from biotechnology and other fields? That has a lot of possibilities today.
–One for the road? –asks the first speaker who doesn´t seem very interested in the new topic— I read the memoirs of Vitali Vorozhnikov, former Soviet ambassador in the island and he says that the Perestroika rather than real economic reforms brought about the destruction of a great country and a worthy social project.
–You know what, brother? Now you really sound like a drunk talking.
