When standing still is going backward

By
Luis Sexto                                                                          Read Spanish Version
sexto@enet.cu

From
Juventud Rebelde

Many
of us could share a common experience. Both today and yesterday
(i.e., about 15 or 20 years ago), we used to hear people say: "We
have to make concessions." What they meant was that if we had to
legally establish or re-establish self-employment it was because life
forced us to turn back, "to make concessions."

Listening
to that statement — which we did often at meetings or interviews —
we asked ourselves: "Concessions about what?" We didn’t
have to linger too long on the reasons or on the theory to answer:
"Concessions about what we wish and desire." In other
words, for those who saw in state property the acme of perfection,
autonomous individual work meant a detour forced upon us by
circumstances.

Let
us not discuss now whether state property is better than any other,
or whether that pattern truly socializes property. Let us analyze the
idea that any realistic decision, any response to the demands of
social life that doesn’t coincide with what we have been doing for a
while implies a "gesture of concession," a minor evil that
we can rewind tomorrow, like a video cassette. Could that be the
explanation for a conduct that we almost unanimously describe as
"zigzagging"?

To
write, to comment on our society’s affairs implies repeating oneself.
Our problems today are the same we had yesterday. And I admit that
much of what I wrote in Bohemia between 1990 and 1997 I have repeated
in this column. But the coincidences don’t mean that I’m taking the
easy way out. Upon re-reading my columns, I realize that I had to
repeat myself so as not to lose my identity, because occasionally
someone tried to confuse me.

In
response to an article of mine against the danger of dogmatism (which
usually invalidates the healthy "heresy"), someone wrote
that I went "from dogma to the praise of heresy," that is,
that I, a dogmatic old man, had assumed heretical positions for
opportunistic purposes. At the time, I did not reply. Today, I
mention the incident only to explain that I was forced to re-read my
writings. And I found that even in the 1990s I was writing against
dogma and lies, against immobility, unanimity and corruption. Moral:
Someone can judge you without even reading you.

That’s
not the issue, of course. Rather, our issue is based on the
perception that the great problem of Cuban society has been to find
efficiency and effectiveness (not the same thing) in an environment
of justice, equality and freedom. So, the preconceived schemes cannot
dictate the standards. Are we forgetting the dialectics? Do we not
realize that, when we judge reality, we do away with the most precise
tools and replace them with willful manifestations that are the
equivalent of "I’m going that way because I want to"?

Concessions
may have to be defined on the basis of the person or thing for whom
they’re made. For example, if the experience accumulated in our
deteriorating circumstances indicates that big agricultural companies
are not recommended and that wise minds counsel that family or
individual labor be cooperativized or encouraged, why should we
insist on that which does not prosper or that which needs an excess
of resources for completion?

Is
a "concession" a step backward? Or is it the creation of
formulas that promise progress in concrete accomplishments, not in
dreams? Of course, the man who is accustomed to issue dictates from
his office or from his Jeep — what to sow, how to harvest — may be
distressed to see producers gaining autonomy, gaining the ability to
make their own decisions.

In
the end, concessions can be made only to those who enjoy the
shortages, the insufficiencies, the inabilities of Cuban socialism.
Recently, while reading the opinions of U.S. officials, journalists
or their minions, I have noticed that they object to every democratic
or progressive measure that is adopted in Cuba. "Oh, yes — but
no." Sure they complain. They have lost the "concession"
of immobility.

In
my modest opinion, what some people call "a step backward"
when it doesn’t match their habitual schemes or what they consider
more convenient (ideology-wise), but it promotes movement, deserves
to be called progress. Standing on something that doesn’t move
forward is the equivalent of moving backward. Therefore, progress has
to be whatever renews hope and faith, whatever spurs labor. Anything
else is theory and needs to be debated further.

Luis
Sexto, a Cuban journalist, is a regular columnist for Juventud
Rebelde.