Cuba: The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary (Part III)
Cuba:
The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary (Part III)
‘The
blockade is an absolute contradiction’
Orestes
Martí – Manuel Alberto Ramy Read Spanish Version
An
interview with Michel Balivo
Balivo
is a Uruguayan intellectual who lives in Venezuela and contributes to
numerous progressive publications worldwide. His works appear in
prestigious publications from the improperly called "alternative
press" — a misnomer because it is the most objective medium
that cybernauts have to avoid the news "noises" and
"blanks" that the so-called "major media" offer
them in a shamelessly manipulative manner. Balivo’s works cover
topics of great relevance, with the touch of necessary humanism, and
they frequently are illustrated with drawings by the Andalusian Juan
Kalvellido.
The
series of interviews he did at one time with his friend Gloria La
Riva ("The
Five; A legal aberration or a political game?") are
constantly consulted and frequently quoted by people who are
interested in the situation of the five Cubans arbitrarily kept in
U.S. prisons. "Sighting
on the future, I aim to the left," a
personal interview with this outstanding intellectual, has been
reproduced in a large number of Web sites.
Michel
Balivo is precisely our next subject. We ask him:
Cuba
nears the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of its
Revolution. Did you live through that event? How do you remember it?
Balivo:
I was very young when it happened and I lived it from Uruguay, my
native country. I remember it as a wave in the swirling sea of those
days, very similar, although less accelerated and less global than
today. Vietnam, the hippies, their colors and flowers, their "make
love, not war," Mao and the Chinese revolution, Fidel Castro,
Che Guevara, the electrifying Bay of Pigs. The leftist ideas bursting
through the world. In those days, every student was anti-Yankee and
anti-imperialist. The urban or suburban guerrillas throughout
America. The ensuing brutal repression.
It
was a stage that disarticulated the tranquil and cyclical continuity
of the collective conscience, opening it to global, planetary
interaction, laying the foundations of the current economic
structure. A before-and-after the 1960s. The erudites opined that
there was nothing new under the sun and that what happened then would
not be remembered. Those of us living today are proving the erudites
wrong.
What
influence did the Cuban Revolution have in your social surroundings?
Balivo:
I live in Venezuela and like to point out the life strength that the
Cuban Revolution has instilled in the Bolivarian Revolution. Thanks
to its doctors, educators, athletes, most of the missions have been
possible. Especially the mission to provide handicapped people with
equal treatment and give them whatever they need to become active and
participating citizens. I also hugely value the example that life is
not just money and comforts. The revolution is, to whoever wishes to
hear it, a living testimony that to a human being adversity is merely
a force to be dominated and channeled for the good of social service.
What
do you think about the U.S. blockade against Cuba? Would you counsel
the new administration in Washington to lift the blockade, in answer
to the demands of the international public opinion, especially to the
results of the votes at the United Nations?
Balivo:
I believe that the blockade is an absolute contradiction and that —
whether the new administration lifts it or not — it is in fact being
lifted. To want to do something is one thing; being able to do
something is a different story. The young people have grown up and no
longer obey the shouts of their elders. What was possible under
certain temporary conditions will not be possible forever.
What
do you consider the "pending assignments" of the Cuban
revolutionary process? What do you expect from the Cuban Revolution
in the next several years?
Balivo:
I would say that what predominates today is not local circumstances.
Therefore, while the cultural and economic history of each human
group contains variations, they are not as important as the greater,
collective conditions to which we must inescapably give an answer
today.
This
greater condition (which we all know and does not require a detailed
explanation) is precisely what propitiates and facilitates mechanisms
of integration like the ALBA, founded five years ago by Cuba and
Venezuela and that today has six members and several observers, among
them Russia, China and Iran.
Today,
more than ever, we need alternate operative models that enable the
complementation and development of nations. This can no longer be a
national and isolated destiny. That is why I believe that, beyond
national histories (which obviously are the impulse and point of
departure of these initiatives) we would do well to give preference
to the attempts to integrate nations or enable them to march in step.
Many
say that, if they were Venezuelans, they would vote for Chávez. I
say that the economic siege Cuba has been subjected to is a historic
accident and that when you are obliged by circumstances to live in
some sort of captivity you develop secondary, substitutional
characteristics that do not exist in a free existence.
If
I were Cuban, I would wish to freely join the continental and
planetary process that Latin America and the world are living
through. I would like to overtake and leave behind the deep mark that
that accident has left in the psyche. The destiny of people is to
leave behind the culture of fear and violence, thus balancing their
individualities with what is essential and common to every human
being. And not fixing upon and enshrining a historic moment.
