Cuba inaugurates government in a decadent world

HAVANA – A new government has just been established in Cuba. What stands out is the fact that neither Fidel nor Raúl Castro are in the presidency, which implies a change of enormous transcendence for Cuban political life, although because of their origin and composition the new rulers establish a line of programmatic continuity with the Cuban revolutionary process.

The challenges that the new government will face when tackling the international situation are also similar. Ever since it reached its independence, the Cuban dilemma has been how to deal with U.S. hegemonic pretensions. Cuba was the northern neighbor’s first neocolony in the world and its dependent condition prevailed in bilateral relations until 1959.

From that moment on confrontation has prevailed. During Barack Obama’s administration steps were taken toward a coexistence that proved to be possible, but Donald Trump’s victory turned back the clock to their worst moments on those relations.

Nothing indicates that the Cuban elections will modify the U.S.’s current policy towards Cuba. In fact, that was what Mike Pence said during his visit to Peru on the occasion of the VIII Summit of the Americas, and the campaign of the Cuban-American right has been focused on disqualifying this electoral process.

For Donald Trump’s policy, these elections are not functional, since nothing indicates that it will imply the collapse of the Cuban system. For another, trying to live with the new government would harm the interests of his political allies in Miami and Trump is clamoring for friends to keep him afloat.

The new Cuban government assumes a program of transformations that will have to be carried out under the U.S. economic blockade, a suffocating pressure for the national economy, and in a climate of maximum hostility with the United States, which will surely imply a reinforcement of national security concerns, an objective limitation for the pace and scope of the planned reforms.

But the problem is not only confined to the bilateral situation, but to the confusion and instability that the United States is generating everywhere as a result of its unilateral actions and a philosophy of government that starts from the imposition of its beliefs through the use of force, threats and indiscriminate sanctions against third parties.

The current world presents a level of ungovernability that prevents anyone from feeling safe. It seems that no system or model of government is capable of handling the effects of capitalist globalization. Even Donald Trump complains about his impacts and wants to amend the bad. Faced with this reality, the mediocrity of politicians has become a plague, there are few great statesmen and the few who have the potential to be, have to delve in the mud that does not let them advance.

Democracy in Latin America is a joke. To stop what was called the progressive cycle, the most corrupt ended up judging corruption. Coups d’etat were channeled through the courts and parliaments, although the military has not stopped warning that if that does not work they are ready to rectify it. Millionaires buy presidencies, perhaps to entertain themselves or make more money. The big news media have become monopolies of social control and report what they want and how they want to to satisfy their political interests. There is no shame left in institutions like the OAS, who are accustomed to not having any.

The Venezuelan case becomes explosive. The alliance of the American and European right has been contracted against that country, even those ideologically less conservative have bowed to U.S. pressures, which in the case of Donald Trump does not rule out military intervention. What happens in Venezuela will have a direct impact on Cuba.

The most important variable in this equation will be Cuba itself. The new government is responsible for preserving national sovereignty, advancing the economy despite all the inconveniences and maintaining social benefits, renewing the national consensus, not weakening the country’s defense capacity and opening a space in a world that is not designed for socialism.

Since it once served as a gateway for the Western domination of the New World, Cuba has dragged its fate, sometimes cursed, that nothing universal is alien to it. Since Cuba is not foreign to the rest of the world. It is a difficult task for a government that carries the burden of historical significance that far exceeds the economic or military weight of this small archipelago located in the Caribbean Sea.