Cuba: The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary (II)
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Cuba:
The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary (II)
‘…we’d
have to be very prudent before predicting immediacy.’
By
Orestes Martí – Manuel Alberto Ramy
Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria – Havana, Cuba.
An
interview with Aurelio Alonso.
Aurelio
Alonso (born Aug. 12, 1939), Cuban, sociologist, a profound scholar
of the reality of his country. In the 1960s, he was member of the
editorial board of the famous, controversial and defunct magazine
Critical Thought (1967-1971), a publication devoted to discussing
revolutionary thought and practice, including the Cuban revolution,
from a Marxist viewpoint. At present, he is deputy editor of the
magazine Casa de Las Américas. Among his books, the most outstanding
are Church
and Politics (2000)
and The
Labyrinth After the Wall Fell (2006).
As an essayist, he has published hundreds of articles in the most
diverse international media.
Cuba
approaches the celebration of its 50th anniversary. Did you live
through that event? If so, how do you remember it?
I
find it difficult to say that I did not live through the victory;
physically, I was not here. As I have mentioned on other occasions, I
was finishing my education at a college in New Jersey. However,
during the first several months of the establishment of the
revolutionary power, my parents mailed me the daily newspapers and
the magazine Bohemia in almost-weekly packages, so I could follow the
events, step by step. Not to mention our correspondence and telephone
calls, which became more frequent. I think my academic performance
suffered at the end, but I wasn’t overly worried.
So,
what I lived with much clarity was the perception of the tension
between that whirlwind of newborn sovereignty on the island and the
intransigence of those who believed that it was up to them to decide
what should be done after victory. The urgency of a return to Cuba
became obsessive in me, as I realized that I wasn’t on the side of
the net where I should be. But I also returned burdened by doubts,
which I could only dismiss by getting involved in the process.
What
influence has the Cuban Revolution had in our social environment?
It
is difficult to talk about "social environment" without
fixing boundaries. Overall, the Cuban Revolution generated an
extremely intense shake-up of our social surroundings, beyond the
personal environment. The radicalness of the economic and social
reforms was not limited to agrarian property and real estate, as we
all know, but touched the entire economic spectrum during the first
several years. And it touched the entire social configuration,
because nothing can touch the economy with such force without
affecting the relationships among its actors, both individual and
collective. I confess that I lived that process with conviction,
identifying myself with every action compatible with the socialist
course, particularly to the degree that it became identifiable with
the reaction to the United States’ hostile posture or that it
reflected a show of sovereignty.
What
is your opinion of the American blockade around Cuba? Would you
advise the incoming U.S. administration to lift it, in response to
the pleas from international public opinion, especially as reflected
in the United Nations’ votes?
So
as not to turn my reply into an article (a lot has been written about
this), I shall simply say that the blockade is an act of
unjustifiable force by the major power against a dependent country.
It isn’t admissible, not even under the argument that it wanted to
remove, short-term, an abominable or despotic government repudiated
by the people. History showed that despotism was a trick and that
repudiation would not work. And that the blockade, far from removing
the government, would impose conditions of material asphyxiation on
the people.
This
willingness to turn it into a genocidal act is revealed, in my
opinion, during the change from Kennedy to Johnson. The reiteration
and universalization of the repudiation to the blockade in the
international concert have left the United States isolated in the
U.N. General Assembly; the blockade has become a scandalous
arbitrariness and imposition of force.
The
issue of the blockade is at the heart of the Cuba policy that any
President-elect arriving at the White House must face. It is the
defining issue. The question of the Guantánamo Base is linked to the
history of territorial usurpation and now to State-sponsored
terrorism. The judicial and penal arbitrariness that surrounds the
process of the five Cubans in U.S. prisons demands a sustained clamor
against injustice. But when we talk about the blockade we talk about
the strategic configuration of a hostile policy, of the matrix of a
specific power relationship.
It
is not possible to predict how the new Democratic administration will
behave in that respect. But we know that there are areas where a more
flexible projection would be equally welcomed within the United
States. I think it would be good to pick up the issue where it was
before Kennedy was assassinated, if we accept the version of French
journalist Jean Daniel, who in those days carried to Fidel an
appreciation that a conversation, an exchange about positions and
perspectives, relationships and principles, could be initiated.
What
do you consider the "pending task" of the Cuban
revolutionary process?
The
"pending task" of the Cuban revolutionary process is so big
that it doesn’t fit in one answer. And don’t think I say this because
of its setbacks, errors, deformations and failures. I say it
primarily because I begin with the immensity of what I would call the
"completed task," which we must begin with in order to the
consistent with the question. I shall not read a litany of punctual
observations; I shall limit myself to sketch a challenge of four
interrelated dimensions, with or without a blockade hanging over our
heads.
In
the economic dimension, the entire gamut of future reforms should be
built on the outlook of a change of structure that will break away
from the identification of socialization with nationalization and
with the centrist fundamentalism of the administration; a change that
will admit the diversity of forms of property as an organic element
of a desirable socialist economy; a re-evaluation of the role of
self-employment, and a decentralization at the levels of province and
municipality. Political institutionalism must evolve toward new forms
of democracy. I say new because in no way should we try to return to
the old forms. I think of a socialism born of democracy, and a
democracy born of socialism.
The
collapse of the East is a demonstration that socialism cannot hold up
without democracy. This would imply a decisive specific weight of
escalated participation in the levels of decision, which is far from
attained. I think that the formation for participation, for
efficiency, for de-alienation leaves much to be desired when it’s
compared with what has been achieved for solidarity. On the ethical
plane, advances and stagnations coexist. We must resume the struggle
for The New Man, and, among other things, this implies removing the
desire for an automobile (which the capitalist 20th Century imposed
as an emblem of the way of life) from the center of aspirations of a
human being. And we must install the culture of the environment. I
believe in a lot of other things, but there is no space for that now.
Let me make clear that I am only expressing my opinions and in no way
making predictions.
What
are your expectations from the Revolution in the next several years?
It
is difficult to estimate "the next several years" in
figures. If we guide ourselves by the vacillations and even the
interruptions that have affected the reform processes, and by other
breakdowns in consistency, we’d have to be very prudent before
predicting immediacy. Quite a few of us have been disappointed by the
slowness and reticence, even if we understand the virtue of prudence.
On the other hand, if we take into consideration the fact that we’re
in a period of generational change, with a strong professional
capital in every sector including the economy, and with a generalized
socialist conviction, I think we could bank on our ingenuity,
creativity and talent without reducing our sense of militancy. I
think that the opening, and the call to expressing opinion, criticism
and debate that was issued in 2007 are important signs — if we can
sustain them, if we don’t lose them, and let them become tributaries
to our socialist culture. That’s where things will emerge from, in
one way or another. I’m optimistic.
Orestes
Martí is a Cuban-Spanish writer and journalist. Manuel Alberto Ramy
is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and editor of
Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.
