Confounded by their own lies
By
Manuel E. Yepe Read Spanish Version
A
U.S. journalist says that in the Cuban city of Bayamo he witnessed "a
communist experiment [that] is letting average government workers
[…] enjoy a few things that only foreigners and moneyed Cubans can
usually afford: a good burger, a kicking jazz bar, and stiff
cocktails."
It is not surprising that a U.S. citizen,
subjected by the mass media to the idea that only the capitalist
order and the consumer society offer worldly pleasures, might express
himself the way this journalist did when witnessing the efforts of a
socialist society to find ways to enrich the spiritual life of its
citizens while rejecting the cruel exclusions that come with
capitalism.
The
socialist goal that Cuba has developed for the past half-a-century
has had to deal with much more than embargoes and slanders. In fact,
it has been subjected to the most inhumane harassment and constant
pressures, necessitating much defensive creativity to counteract the
disproportion in resources between the aggressor and the victim.
When the U.S. blockade against the Cuban people began, even
before the victory of the insurrection in January 1959, the people’s
unity and the inborn inventive ability of Cubans, along with their
leaders’ wise direction, were supported by the solidarity of all the
oppressed peoples of the world and, above all, of the governments of
countries where anti-imperialist revolutions had earlier come to
power.
The
collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist camp dealt
Cuba a blow that could have demolished it. Those nations, in fact,
came under U.S. hegemony, at least temporarily, which meant a
reinforcement of the blockade, the attacks, and the threats of
isolation. "A double blockade!" the Cubans called the
situation before them.
To resist it, the communist
organization that is the vanguard of the revolution and the Cuban
government directed the strategy of "the special period."
This
has been a titanic task, because in many ways the "special
period" is still in effect. The U.S. government decided to take
advantage of the situation to intensify the blockade. New measures
were taken to cripple the island’s economic activities so as to
finally throttle it and bring it back into the fold.
Some of
the most important measures adopted to deal with "the special
period," in an effort to overcome the U.S. government’s
additional offensive, involved concessions to the market, which led
to the rise of some unwanted inequalities.
(It
is said that, in times of crisis, supporters of a centralized economy
turn to the market, while, in times of crisis, the advocates of the
most fundamentalist market-based capitalism try to solve their plight
by means of the state’s centralized intervention. If you don’t think
so, look at how the U.S. "establishment" has behaved
regarding its current credit and financial crisis.)
The
measures adopted by the Cuban government to accomplish the miracle of
surviving the crisis of the double blockade never meant that Cuba
sought or desired or accepted a regression to capitalism. Cubans
appreciate the "good life" enjoyed by citizens of the
privileged sector of the capitalist countries, but we mustn’t forget
that Cuba has fought and resisted half a century of attacks,
pressures, isolation, and slander to live in a society of equals.
What
journalist Will Weissert witnessed in Bayamo, according to his
article, distributed by The Associated Press on Oct. 4, 2008, is one
of many "communist experiments" to make the life of
citizens more pleasurable, without concessions to the opprobrious
inequalities that still endure and that must be eliminated, sooner
rather than later, so long as that can be done without jeopardizing
the continuity of the process of building socialism and constantly
improving it.
Because these are experiments, they might yield
the hoped-for results and thereby spread. Or they might not work and
be replaced by new experiments with the same goals.
There is
a reason why the Revolution is the mother of all changes!
