‘The good and bad in my life’

Cuba:
The Revolution reaches its 50th anniversary (Part VII)

‘The
good and bad in my life’

An
interview with Luis Sexto

Orestes
Martí – Manuel Alberto Ramy                                    Read Spanish Version  

Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria – Havana, Cuba

Luis
Sexto (born in 1945 in Remedios, Villa Clara) began his journalistic
career in 1972. He is a graduate of the Social Communications School
at the University of Havana. Was editor of the ideological and
cultural pages in the daily Trabajadores (Workers). Was culture news
editor and news editor at the Prensa Latina news agency. Worked in
the magazine Bohemia, where he wrote an opinion column for many
years. Participates in debate-and-opinion programs on national radio.
Is a professor at the Social Communications School at the University
of Havana. Has covered important events abroad. At present, he writes
for the daily Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) and has his own blog.

The
author of several books of poems, chronicles, accounts and techniques
of journalism, Luis Sexto is an intellectual with a renowned
independence of opinion. We ask him:

Cuba
has celebrated the 50th anniversary of the triumph of its Revolution.
Did you live through that event? How do you remember it?

Sexto:
In January 1959, I was a teenager, under 14. I remember that day
clearly. It seems the sun was shining with a different light. The joy
was massive, overflowing, indefatigable. Seven years of tyranny —
hunger, oppression, bloodshed — had brought the country together in
an almost unanimous will, therefore the triumph of the revolution was
a dream held and awaited by many. That Jan. 1 was a unique day in the
history of Cuba. It can never again be repeated.

What
influence has the Cuban Revolution had in your social environment?

Sexto:
I can say that everything I am is the work of the influence of the
revolution. And, paradoxically, the good and bad in my life are
related to the revolutionary process. My family was poor. Within the
revolution, my father secured a stable job for the first time; so did
my mother, and their income improved. However, seven years later, my
mother emigrated with my younger sister and later, gradually, my two
brothers left for Miami, even though they had jobs and opportunities
to study. My father and I were left behind.

My
family was victim of the migratory facilities the United States
grants Cubans. The temptation was very strong: from the richest
country in the world, a hand reached out to you and offered you a
life with more economic possibilities. As for me, the revolution
deepened my patriotic and cultural roots. So I remained here out of
my own free will, although I had opportunities to leave.

What
is your opinion of the U.S. blockade against Cuba? Would you counsel
the new U.S. administration to lift the blockade in response to the
demands of the international public opinion, especially the results
of the voting at the United Nations?

Sexto:
The American blockade has been a permanent act of war committed by a
gigantic country against a small and underdeveloped country. It is
the cause of many of the shortages and deficiencies in Cuba. It has
even conditioned a siege mentality that limits the Cubans’ thinking
and creativity. On the other hand, the blockade is not the only cause
of the precarious situation in Cuba’s socialist society. To some, it
can be a plausible alibi to explain away what has been left undone or
has been allowed to disappear.

The
blockade can be defeated principally from within, by organizing the
economy so it can generate wealth and stops surviving on little or
nothing. But that willingness is not enough. It seems to me that, for
the U.S. to rectify that act that violates international law, it
would be best if the new administration in the White House would
eliminate the strange and malevolent net that stretches an economic
and commercial blockade around Cuba. Maybe then the Americans would
vindicate themselves in some measure to the people of Cuba.

What
are the "pending tasks" of the Cuban revolutionary process?

Sexto:
Cuba needs to recreate itself, to reevaluate all its tasks, because
the ones it completed have deteriorated, have lost value, and the
ones that are pending need to be successfully completed forever. We
cannot live by justifying a recent past when we conquered only part
of the justice process. The revolution needs to reevaluate itself, to
renew itself, to discard what is worn out; it needs to look ahead
with a contemporary vision, in the light of the failure of
20th-Century socialism.

That
implies a readjustment in the role of the State, so it will move from
being a kind of factotum to being a regulator and a guarantor of the
economic issues, granting individuals an autonomy they do not have at
this time. Why are the fields choked by weeds? Why is industrial
productivity low and why are costs high? Why is the quality of
products and services so inadequate? Why doesn’t society become
horizontal instead of persisting on bureaucratic verticality?

The
productive forces need to unfetter themselves. The democracy needs to
revitalize itself. These are pending tasks. As for the future, it
seems to me that it must not allow foot-dragging. The revolution has
an unfinished task and therefore is in debt to more than three
generations. Above all, the revolution has a commitment to itself: it
has to last on earth, not in dreams.

What
do you expect from the Cuban Revolution in the next several years?

Sexto:
The worst calamity that could befall Cuba as a nation is the collapse
of the revolution. Even if the revolution has still not achieved its
full utopia, it remains a guarantee of the nation’s independence,
integrity and possible improvement. We know from experience and from
the prophetic vision of some of the most enlightened leaders of the
revolution that it can die from an internal poison. Corruption and
immobility can cause sclerosis. I am obliged, therefore, to believe
that the future will be different — Cuba in a revolution, but
renewed, without the bindings of dogma, confident of the loyalty of
its people and giving its people the means to defend and define their
future. Now then, the future begins tomorrow. Time is short.