Live and learn

From
Havana                                                                          Read Spanish Version

Live
and learn

By
Manuel Alberto Ramy

Similar
sayings could be used to replace the headline above. For example,
"The world goes around and around." Or "The chickens
come home to roost." They all underline the irony contained in
the "rescue" measures now that "The bubble has burst.
Banks are immobilized.

Investors
lose faith. And the government intervenes because nobody else can do
it," as El Nuevo Herald reported on Sept. 22. In addition, the
newspaper published another article explaining that state
intervention — don’t look so surprised, yes, state intervention —
is nothing new in the history of the United States.

Until
now, the pooh-bahs from Washington and important international
financial institutions chastised those Latin American countries that,
when confronted by the crisis generated by neoliberal policies, were
forced to take interventionist measures.

Interventions
(a mortal sin) are the equivalent of communism, they said, adding
similar other labels.

History
has taken revenge, and the turn of events moves us to meditate. Those
who yesterday were harassed return the blows with elegant irony.

President
Cristina Fernández of Argentina told the media that she was
watching "how that First World, which others had painted as the
Mecca to which we should aspire, bursts like a bubble."

Cristina
knows what she’s talking about. The Argentines lived through
something similar. Do we not remember the financial, economic and
social catastrophe with which they bade goodbye to the past century
and welcomed the present one? And where did the obligatory
prescription come from? From the same people who today engage in what
many call "the rescue."

Brazilian
President Lula, described by some as a moderate, by others as a
pragmatist, told the AFP that he saw "sorrowfully how some very
important banks that used to issue opinions and told us what we
should or shouldn’t do, measuring the country risk, telling investors
whether Brazil was trustworthy or not, now are claiming bankruptcy
and calling creditors."

Will
the "professors" and authorities who whacked their restless
students have to learn from them now?

The
same French agency reports that New York University economics
professor Nouriel Roubini wrote that "with the nationalization
of AID, comrades [George W.] Bush, [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson
and [Federal Reserve chairman Ben] Bernanke welcome us to the USSA —
the United Socialist States of America."

With
a basic difference that was well defined by Professor Roubini, who
said "the United States is now the world’s largest insurance
company," with "socialism for the rich and Wall Street, the
place where benefits are privatized and losses are socialized."

If
you look at the website of Folha de São Paul for Sept. 21 (I
got the tip from the AFP), you can find an article by the important
columnist Clovis Rossi in which, with fine satire, he says that
"should this rhythmic march of state takeovers continue, Hugo
Chávez will change the label he pinned on Bush. Out with ‘the
devil,’ in with ‘comrade.’"

On
Sunday the 21st, during his program "Hello, president,"
Chávez said: "We no longer keep our reserves in the
United States. If we had kept them there, as we did seven years ago,
they would be in grave danger, because some major world banks are
collapsing, for example Lehman Brothers, which pleaded bankruptcy
after 180 years of existence." He added that Fidel Castro
alerted him to the problem by asking him where did Venezuela keep its
reserves.

I
suppose that Fidel Castro’s warning has two bases. One derives from
his correct perception of the crisis of the international financial
system, which he has been warning about for years. The other, which
is obvious because it comes from the experience of the Cuban process,
says that, if you’re going to make profound structural changes, don’t
keep your money where others can freeze it as a way to pressure you.

The
truth is that the United States’ handling of the crisis and its
historical justifications validate policies that several Latin
American countries have had to adopt as mechanisms of protection and
propulsion of development.

Perhaps
the crisis can be weathered, but only temporarily. Systemic problems
(and this seems to be one) demand profound answers, as well as
changes in the mentality and lifestyles that are shown to be
unsustainable and suicidal.

All
of us, countries and people, are in the same boat, and the boat is
foundering. There are no life savers or individual boats capable of
withstanding the waves or the struggles created by those who try to
climb aboard and survive a little longer. So we must assume
responsibilities and invent humanist models. A difficult task
confronts Cuba and those of us who believe in the possibility of
utopias: we must build those utopias in concert with all those who
believe that a better, fairer and more human world is possible.

To
resist has been and is heroic. To delve deeper in what we have
created and to broaden it will save the situation and make our
creation last.

Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.