The other change in mindset
By Aurelio Pedroso
HAVANA – The government and the Communist Party have been asking us for some time now to do something as complex and hard to explain (also to accomplish) as changing our mindset, as developing a different mentality. Their attitude is not much different from their summonses from philosophical positions to the effects of everyday life.
In Cuba, many people are already thinking in other ways and manners. The most important catalyst has been the strengthening of private ownership, which – translated into countryside parlance – has only one meaning. Though as old as the wheel, this refrain has gained a significant importance as we look to the immediate future: “The master’s eye fattens the horse” – things go better under the owner’s care.
In other words, what’s mine comes first, like the slogans for local beverages that imitate Coca-Cola or Seven-Up, but also like that nationalist slogan that introduced the new tourism authorities in the early 1960s, complete with a catchy tune: “See Cuba first; other countries later.”
Entrepreneurship grows daily and we shouldn’t be surprised if the number of self-employed Cubans soon reaches 400,000. Official figures recently revealed that the top lines of business for entrepreneurs were transportation, food supply and home rentals – three real headaches for the government.
The concept of ownership is shaping up slowly and correctly, in my opinion. After many years, the urban and rural population is becoming aware of the feeling of ownership, which carries a commitment to discipline and the care of what, in the end, will benefit the family.
It will also benefit society, because, along with “my business, my cafeteria, my land, my shop, my enterprise, my barbershop,” there are tax revenues that go to the government, to fund health care, education, social security and other services, like in any other country on this planet.
As in the world of cigars or wines, if the blend works, greater and better efforts can be expected.
Those idealists who prefer a conservative socialism may not like it, but entrepreneurship means more efficiency, more productivity, less pilfering and, hopefully, less corruption, that pandemic that many suffer under the most varied ways to run a nation.
That’s how things are happening in Cuba. Enterprises are on a display case, ready to be looked at, calculated and set up as true privilege for those who perform them with their feet on the ground, not from a distant and cold office in some European capital.
For the record, there is some criticism, because there’s always people who can’t see the forest for the trees. But someone will come, with the best intentions in the world and a good compass in his hands to show us the right direction, the course to be taken by this ship with more than 12 million people aboard.
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