Juan Valdés Paz: We must overcome conservative trends
The day after the Round Table TV program where Cuba’s president and first vice minister announced strategies for the country’s economic recovery, and the first two measures that would be implemented — elimination of the tax on the dollar and expansion of retail trade in freely convertible currencies — Juan Valdés Paz seemed to me the man with the most tenacious appreciation of our socio-political environment.
I asked the Cuban sociologist, recipient of the National Prize for Social and Humanistic Sciences, and who has dedicated his life to research and teaching, about the current process of reform. For those who have written about the socialist transition (since 1993), the processes of agrarian organization in Cuba, and more recently about the evolution of political power in the Cuban revolution, it is a must to look back, an elementary path if you want to understand the coordinates that have brought us here to today.
The term ‘reforms’ itself, he says, “is usually absent in official discourse and instead a terminology is used that is as vague as ‘changes,’ ‘transformations,’ ‘updating the model ’, etc. In the history of real socialism, the few reforms or reform policies have responded to economic crises or changes in the strategies of ‘socialist transition,’ such as in the Cuban experience. We can summarize that history by saying that, as we have seen, after the Revolution, what follow are the necessary reforms or the counter-revolution.”
The last Council of Ministers announced the resumption of the process of economic-social reforms that were approved at two congresses of the Cuban Communist Party, the 6th in 2011, and the 7th in 2016. What is your opinion?
Since the public consultations of 2010 and 2015, the VI and VII Congress and successive sessions of the National Assembly approved a series of programmatic documents —the ‘Guidelines,’ the ‘Conceptualization,’ and the ‘Axis of Development’ until the year 2030— geared towards the “updating of the economic model.” Later, between 2018 and 2019, a new Constitution of the Republic of Cuba was prepared and promulgated that contained numerous legal, political and social reforms, as well as its corresponding legislative schedule. These programs are today the basis of the reform process that began under the Raúl Castro Ruz presidency and is now under the leadership of President Díaz-Canel.
The Council of Ministers recently proposed a new stage for the reforms based on: a diagnosis of the situation; a strategy based on nine principles; a program of immediate measures for the post-pandemic economic recovery; and the medium- and long-term implementation of the previous programs of an economic model that overcomes the internal and external restrictions that currently limit the country’s economic development. The announced measures seek an immediate recovery of economic activities; the rescue of food security; a better performance of the external sector; and securing the necessary currencies for the operation of the economic and social activity. But these objectives cannot be achieved or integrated into a development strategy if the planned reforms are not carried out.
It should be noted that the implementation of these programs and measures demand not only the express political will to carry them forward, but the overcoming of all conservative resistance; the necessary comprehensiveness and sequentiality of its measures; as well as a correlation of political forces in favor of the reforms, which diminish conservative tendencies, statist ideologies, hindrances of the civil service, etc., in favor of the support of public opinion and social mobilization.
This is not the first time that these principles are presented as the desired path for the country. But until now no concrete steps have been taken in this direction, or not in the comprehensive manner required. We also know from experience that the issue of implementation and its details, beyond the announcements, is essential. How do you assess the context in which these changes are announced?
This new stage of economic reforms happens in a context characterized by the global impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; the permanent and growing hostility of the United States towards the Island, particularly in everything related to the blockade and the media campaigns; as well as the limitations persons living here will have to endure in the coming months.
Look at the attitude of the United States towards the current cycle of reforms of the Cuban Revolution. While the Obama administration, noting the failure of the policies followed against Cuba by nine previous Administrations and over sixty years, interpreted the reform policies initiated in 2008 as an extraordinary opportunity to subvert the revolutionary power installed in Cuba, in the middle- and long-terms, the Trump Administration has acted in a contrary manner dismantling the normalization measures of the Obama Administration and increasing pressure on the Island with the purpose of preventing Cuban reforms, perceiving that such reforms would make the Revolution definitely viable.
The dominant conservative and imperialist tendencies in the international system, promoters of the ongoing neoliberal globalization, are currently hampered by the rise of China and Russia as great powers, the loss of hegemony of the United States, and by the resistance of numerous other countries, among other causes. This has caused the geopolitics of the Obama and Trump administrations to reinforce their military, political, economic and media control over the American hemisphere. The right-wing sectors of the region’s governments, the siege of Venezuela, the greater hostility towards Cuba, etc., have placed the Cuban Revolution in a more adverse and uncertain situation.
On the other hand, the pandemic of this first half of 2020 has not only hit almost all societies on the planet, but has impacted the international system in all its dimensions putting more obstacles on the recovery of some.
In these contexts, the capacity of the Cuban regime to manage crisis situations has been tested once again, as well as the limitations to overcome its consequences. Hence the need to carry out the planned reforms in such a way that they make the socialist model of society viable in all contexts.
Recently an interview you gave Progreso Semanal in 2011 about agriculture in Cuba was again published [only in Spanish]. Almost a decade later your words seemed to have been spoken yesterday. On both occasions, the system of agricultural production appears to be the key to the comprehensive reform of our economy. What’s your opinion?
It has been said that among the reforms in progress are those related to the agrarian sector, which seems inevitable and of the highest priority. Without the comprehensive recovery of agriculture there will be no economic development in the country.
The reinstatement of the 2011 interview has shown its relevance to the extent that claims for a redesign of the country’s agrarian model are still pending. The problems present then — the low exploitation of the agricultural land fund, the poor recovery of the livestock and sugarcane sectors, the de-capitalization and low provision of goods, food insecurity, etc. — were added to the deficiencies of the model to overcome them and to achieve a new dynamic of agricultural, economic and ecologically sustainable development.
In that interview I mentioned things to consider in the redesign of the agrarian model, which we now could summarize as reforms: 1) consolidation of the emerging structure of possessions, completing the process of re-ownership; 2) autonomous organization of all forms of production, with priority to family and cooperative production; 3) definition and implementation of a new technical and agricultural model, with a sustainable base; 4) decentralized reorganization of technical and material assurance services for production; 5) reconversion of scientific-technical services, according to the new technological model, with emphasis on the production of bio-preparations; 6) reorganization of production marketing activities, limiting the state monopoly, putting collection activities on the market and diversifying the forms of marketing; 7) base the new model of state management of agriculture on the greatest possible territorial decentralization, or ‘municipalization’; 8) adaptation of agricultural planning to the self-management of producers and the growing weight of market and market relations; 9) establish a greater ascendancy of the territorial government and Assemblies of the Popular Power on the agricultural activities; 10) establish a system of incentives for production and work, based on positive and negative incentives, that is, benefits and sanctions.
The new agrarian model will be framed in the definitions and institutionality of the ongoing reform process, as well as in the specificity of its activities. But it will also have to gather the capacities that allow it to overcome the challenges posed by the effects on the ecosystem (soil, water, temperature, meteors, biodiversity, etc.).
