The inertia of Cuban politics

By Jesús Arboleya Cervera

HAVANA – Inertia is one of nature’s most mysterious forces. It is an innate condition of matter that is expressed in the resistance of bodies to any change in their movement, either in speed or direction.

On occasion, inertia slows down acceleration, but in others serves as a driving force against the forces that attempt to halt those moving bodies.

Though Newton did not make it clear, inertia is expressed in political processes, just as it is in physics. Sometimes it appears as an obstacle to a necessary change, but other times it absorbs the impulse it gets from new forces, so it can defeat the resistance of those forces that attempt to halt political changes.

Much has been said about the “inertia” of Cuban politics, in a negative sense, and, yes, there have been moments when resistance to the changes advocated by the nation’s leaders has prevailed. But there have also been advances in areas that seemed unchangeable, propelling the process with greater or lesser speed in the desired direction.

I have the impression that, because of their significance on a social scale, the immigration reforms recently passed in Cuba have been the most relevant of those propellants. They have broken psychological barriers that concern the very concept of the changes and now act as fuel for the changes.

For years, there was talk of a new immigration reform that never jelled because of fear of its consequences. Not surprising, if we consider that the immigration problem affects Cuba’s entire social fabric, national security and foreign policy. It was one of the most controversial issues in Cuba’s contemporary history.

At a certain moment, the decision to emigrate defined the opposing political camps and was the tool par excellence of U.S. policy to build the social foundation of the counter-revolution, undermine the island’s human resources and discredit the revolutionary base on an international scale.

Emigration had a destabilizing impact on a familial scale; it created dramatic human consequences and contained very deep ideological connotations. All this generated a very negative view of emigration and a policy intended to reduce it as much as possible or to limit the ties between the population and those who abandoned the island.

The social transformations created by emigration in the very perception of Cuban society propitiated new conditions and a change in attitude that counseled modifications in the existing policy. However, old conceptions, resentments and accumulated prejudices acted as a formidable force that, against all logic, resisted the changes by arguing the negative results that emigration presumably would create for Cuba.

In reality, much broader concepts were debated on this topic, regarding the very organization of the political system and the role of the State in controlling the life of citizens. As Raúl Castro has said, they led to the imposition of a great number of regulations and restrictions – many of them irrational and counterproductive – whose final result was to unnecessarily affect people’s sense of freedom.

Measures that were apparently basic – such as selling a car or a house, renting a room in a hotel or owning a cell phone – had major repercussions precisely because they were contrary to the prevailing logic.   

Finally, a decision was made to undertake the immigration reforms and that was enough to topple many of the myths that propped up the anachronism.

What appeared to be the most restrictive of the new measures, such as the control over the emigration of professionals and the ban on trips by so-called “dissidents,” have been enforced so loosely that they lead us to think that they weren’t worth mentioning.

The emigration steps are so simple and expeditious that getting a passport is easier than getting a driver’s license. Like in all other parts of the world, the only barrier to travel is having the money to do it and getting a visa from the country of destination.

There is no talk about a mass exodus. There is no trauma about perpetual separation and almost no one has to ask a boss for authorization to leave the country. Those who can materialize their plans – rather than tolerance, which implies benevolence toward something that’s presumably wrong – find an understanding generated by everyday affairs.

Even the members of the Communist Party can take advantage of the new law, something that does not imply a questioning of their political militancy.

An immediate political effect is that, as it happens to any emigrant from any other country, many people will find out that emigration is not as simple as propaganda led them to believe. This is especially true once the manipulation has ended that fed the myth of “exceptionality” in the case of Cuba. Thus ends one of the principal ingredients of U.S. policy against Cuba, which now ponders how to react to the new reality.

More important still, the normalcy of a process that some people presumed to be traumatic demonstrates the solidity of the Cuban political system, notwithstanding its insufficiencies and deficiencies. It also demonstrates the maturity of citizens to decide their fate by themselves without alienating themselves from the interests of their motherland. This applies to many other aspects of their life.

We are witnessing an example of the impact that bold political decisions like this one has on the change in mindset needed to make the transformations required by the nation. We are confident that Cuban society is prepared for this, despite the external and internal forces that act against it.

Emigration reform seems to have been the push that was needed to make inertia work against all attempts at paralysis. It is a propellant for a force that, by every indication, will be unstoppable, with the velocity and direction required by its very nature.

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