Raúl Castro vs. corruption
By Roberto G. Peralo
From the blog La Joven Cuba (LJC)
MATANZAS – Raúl Castro’s speech before the National Assembly on Dec. 23 was interesting. The most important of the several topics he touched on, in my opinion, was corruption.
I share with Raúl the idea of looking at corruption as the most serious problem we face and the most difficult to solve. But I disagree with him on one topic and shall develop my views as follows:
Corruption in history
The manager of the recreational center “Cuba Libre” makes available his place for a birthday party for the son of Bolaños, director of “Empresa Integral.” He includes some food, beverages and audio. No money changes hand. Working relations that have lasted several years and have created ties of friendship, are enough.
Months earlier, Contreras, manager of “Cuba Libre,” was faced with the difficult task of repairing his home. Through his friend Bolaños, he obtained a few sacks of cement and a couple of boxes of tiles that he couldn’t afford on the wages he earned.
These stories are repeated daily in all areas of Cuba’s socioeconomic life. “Help me with” some cement blocks to build a fence; a can of paint for a wall in my house; two cases of beer for my daughter’s wedding; five liters of gasoline so I can take my mother to the doctor; an appointment with the dentist so I won’t have to stand in line; dinner with my family in a hotel buffet.
Does this behavior qualify under the definition of “corruption”? When Raúl launched his war on corruption, did he mean to include these leaders and workers in his black list?
The way it works
In this pattern of behavior, a contract is made that includes no legal document whatsoever; only the knowledge that “I did you a favor because I solved a problem for you,” thus creating a commitment between the parties. That way, a web of obligations and favors is spun between chiefs and subordinates or leaders in the same hierarchy or managers of different sectors of the economy. Within the web lurk cronyism, influence-peddling and power, in the style of the Sicilian mafia.
Money seldom surfaces as a means of exchange, only small amounts of products or services that are diverted to satisfy individual needs. When the director offers one of these “favors,” he is obligated to involve some of his subordinates, the warehouse chief, the book-keeper, the janitor, and so on. Who has the moral right and the authority to prevent those workers from “solving” their needs as well? The whole thing becomes a vicious circle.
Causes and conditions
Reading the article “A Sociological Approach to the Problem of Corruption in Cuba,” published in the blog La Joven Cuba, causes me to reflect. As a simple university professor, I earn a salary that’s a lot higher than that of the university’s Dean, although six levels of management structure exist between the Dean and myself. How can the Dean reduce that difference in income with a subordinate who has a lot fewer responsibilities and work load?
As society acquires a higher cultural level, human needs increase proportionally. There’s no other way to meet those needs because, no matter how hard you try, your income will remain the same and you will passively observe how others who perform the same job as you, or an easier job, earn the same as you, or more than you.
The impunity and authoritarianism shown by the bosses and administrators also influence directly the nature of the counterparts, the labor union or the Party nucleus. In most cases, their members are trapped in the same web, losing the only weapon they have: their exemplariness and their moral.
Audits cannot detect this phenomenon because it is generated in a very small scale. There are hundreds of accounting methods to wipe out fingerprints. Besides, when two or more people get involved (which happens in most cases) the internal control system ceases to work, becomes vulnerable.
Absurdity is reached when these methods of corruption are used for things other than personal problems, to perform administrative tasks, when the existing regulations and bureaucracy put the brakes on the process of entrepreneurship. Will it continue to be corruption?
This is a generalized phenomenon in our society. Raúl may be as implacable and radical as he wishes, but that’s not enough to put an end to this phenomenon. He might slow it down for a while, but if the causes that generate and motivate it remain intact, and the conditions that foster it don’t change, it will rise again like the phoenix.
Raúl’s words will be mere slogans and this campaign against corruption will end up, as many others, on the list of our failures.
Roberto G. Peralo, 31, is co-founder of the blog La Joven Cuba (The Young Cuba). He is a university teacher in Matanzas province.
