Living,Thinking,and Fighting at a Complex Juncture

History is the whole of time, but there are defining moments in which its contradictions are condensed and events—sometimes progressive, sometimes regressive—precipitate. These moments are the products of multiple factors, and it is best to live them with the greatest awareness of what is happening—to direct our efforts and contribute so that the maelstrom moves in the direction we believe to be the correct one. This is the challenge for those committed to a particular sense of history. We each bear responsibility for our actions and their consequences.

For some time many of us have been insisting on the urgent need to enact the changes that Cuba requires rather than leaving them as mere proposals confined to controversial academic texts. In essence, if not completely, these ideas have become social agreements between society and the governing party, laid out in the new constitution and the “Conceptualization of the Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development,” to mention just two of the major texts. Bringing these crucial agreements to life is a necessity, even in light of the tremendously complex current moment and the time that has been lost. I myself have expressed the following two ideas, among others: that the necessary changes (already addressed and discussed at length) are, in fact, a matter of national security and that time is of the essence.

As is evidenced by recent events, the situation is very complex, and the impact of the pandemic leaves us with limited opportunity for action. However, in spite of this and the genocidal blockade, we must act imaginatively, boldly, flexibly, and firmly. If anyone says that we lack the resources to implement such changes, the answer is that it is precisely in order to obtain those resources that we must move forward with them.

One of the main answers to our current situation lies in the economy. The current economic system is obsolete, limits the productive capacities of society, and needs to be reformed. This is now as widely recognized as truth (at least formally) as it was once rejected, but the progressiveness and comprehensiveness of the reform remain insufficient. There is no doubt that there are internal forces and conservative interests that oppose these changes. The President of the Republic himself has expressed this emphatically, in one way or another, on more than one occasion.

However, it is increasingly apparent that the problem, which is rooted in the economy, cannot be reduced to that sphere. We need to understand the unrest of the people, how tired they are of the tremendous difficulties of everyday life—to see beyond the root causes, accentuated as they are by a form of systematic aggression that is more and more obvious. Increasing this unrest is the purpose of that aggression. The blockade is not everything, but it does affect everything. Genocidal, criminal, and opportunistic and conducted by an immense power in the midst of a situation as complex as the current pandemic, isn’t this what it is meant to do? Exacerbate the difficulties as much as possible, generalize the malaise, and turn the economic crisis into a political crisis that topples the “regime” and replaces it with one that is more docile for these foreign interests? Indeed, it has been politically described this way ever since it was implemented six decades ago. The challenge (which we have met) was to neutralize its main proposition. That challenge remains today but under circumstances that, for many reasons, are more complex.

The simultaneous public protests in various parts of the country on July 11 are undoubtedly part of an organized action against the government—this is everywhere evident—but it is based on real, objective unrest, on daily difficulties and shortages of all sorts. And while these have been largely provoked, they are also the result of our own inadequacies. It would be a mistake to undertake a simplistic or one-sided reading of these events. We are indeed suffering from powerful and perverse aggression, but we must also acknowledge our own mistakes and inadequacies, and these are not few.

As I have said, the moment calls for imagination, boldness, flexibility, and firmness in a political sense. We must listen and engage in dialogue with those who seek it and not give an inch to proimperialist reaction. We must also be self-critical. Again: the blockade affects everything, but it is not everything. We are now paying for former delays and paralysis. I think we need to understand this honestly and critically.

Cuba has achieved an extraordinary feat in the face of a tremendous pandemic affecting the whole globe. Our scientists have created effective vaccines under the worst conditions imaginable. They have practically done their lab work in the trenches, deprived of the minimal resources enjoyed by scientists all over the world. A country that has achieved this is not to be underestimated. And up to now we have achieved so many other things. However, as events have shown, this is not enough. The pandemic has continued despite the vaccines, in some parts of the country increasing exponentially. We have faced it with whatever resources are available, but hospital rooms are full and patients are uncomfortable. I think we must continue to allocate all available resources to this issue, addressing the necessary balances. For example, the province of Matanzas, one of the most affected areas, is also among those with the largest concentration of hotels. Some of these hotels could be used as temporary hospitals at no cost and without entirely suspending appropriately monitored tourist activity. The government has recently announced that this strategy is now being implemented. At the same time, and without the slightest acknowledgment of the demagogic and cynical “aid” promoted by those who support the blockade, we could call for even greater international solidarity in a world that morally owes Cuba so much.

We could seek new businesses to substantially increase supplies in the (one hopes temporary) convertible-currency stores in exchange for maintaining a reasonable amount of stock in the national-currency stores, especially food and basic necessities. There might be, for example, big Chinese companies interested in access to a domestic foreign-currency Cuban market. We could temporarily give them the convertible-currency stores if, in exchange for the profits, they would supply the national-currency stores, leaving additional income for the national economy. If there were profits and payments involved, companies would surely be interested and guarantee supply, in addition to the advantages of the expected geopolitical interest. I also believe that the situation calls for a tactical change in current investment policy, from hotels to the production and import of food and medicine. If there are reasons preventing such a move, could we know what they are? Most important, we must continue hastening the economic reform already discussed ad nauseam, which will increase not only production but also inclusion.

We must do it all: fight the pandemic, make firm progress on reform, and ensure our national security. The solution cannot be partial; it has to be comprehensive. To the strategic nature of the transformation we must add the emergency aspects of the situation. It is difficult, and it is complicated. Impossible it is not.

By way of digression: because of its recent anniversary, we have heard a lot about Fidel’s 1961 speech to the intelligentsia. Of course, every historical event must be analyzed within its specific circumstances, but its transcendental aspects—those that go beyond its time—are also important. I think those words were not exclusively directed to the intelligentsia or solely meant for the definition of cultural policy. This was a political discourse on the revolutionary process in general, with an important lesson regarding politics and ideological politics as a whole: “Give up only what is incorrigibly counterrevolutionary” (I would add “incorrigibly proimperialist”),“Within the Revolution everything, against the Revolution nothing,” and other slogans seek to give the revolutionary process the broadest possible basis for popular consensus. Of course, Fidel also expressed the right of the Revolution to defend itself and the sovereignty of the country.

However, we have seen that, more than once, over time and especially recently, even the official media have promoted exclusionary rhetoric, with strict and narrow definitions that attack what should constitute the broad basis for the process of change. They reject and stigmatize any minimally critical position (whether correct or incorrect, often the former), regardless of the fact that it is a legitimate part of what society thinks, including a large group of people that is neither incorrigibly counterrevolutionary nor proimperialist or even procapitalist. I believe that this is no minor detail. Consensus is essential for the viability of any revolution—the more so in Cuba, which is located on a small island and lacks sufficient resources and important international alliances neighboring a country that is both hostile and monstrous (monstrous in both its size and its conduct). Consensus is as necessary as oxygen is to life and is not achieved by force, especially in a world as complex as our current one. New generations have politically come of age after the shock wave of the socialist disaster in Europe, with the manipulative impact of social networks, etc. In addition to our willingness to struggle intellectually and physically against perverse and asymmetrical aggression aimed at our country, we must open up to broader, more inclusive, more constructive, and more self-critical dialogue whenever necessary. Let us not confuse firmness with arrogance.

As far as ideas are concerned, we know there are no absolute certainties. If the collapse of European socialism served any purpose, was it not so that we could learn our lesson? Is this a question that we must ask ourselves every day? We have only a few fundamental certainties: that the sovereignty of the nation is unassailable; that social justice is a value fundamental to any “true” revolution; that an economic system that favors development, progress, and material well-being is essential or the Revolution is an impossible dream; that, in the case of Cuba, socialism is the only alternative that can guarantee all of the above; that we must act in terms of our own history. Everything else—the landing, the roads, the shapes, the routes, the policies to make it possible—is part of the uncertainties we must face, debate, and resolve without dogmatism, aiming at inclusion, understanding, and critical sense. I insist: arrogance, born of ignorance and chauvinism, has little to offer us on this path and in fact might be helpful if the intention were to go in the opposite direction.

I agree that there are defining moments when we must be clear about where we stand and with whom—in other words, where and with whom we will never stand. Cuba has been facing this dilemma for centuries, since the “ancestral” times of annexation to the “modern” and “postmodern” modes that, while minor, still survive and are gaining strength on the other side of the strait as well as among regrettable local support groups. The forces of annexation do not lack financial resources. I believe that there should be no confusion or ambivalence in this regard: we must know the history.

I believe that what happened recently is a wake-up call. We must defend sovereignty, but, above all, we must reflect so we that can continue on the correct path and move forward—including everything that is possible, everything within the national project (sovereignty, social justice, economic and democratic development) and nothing against the national project. Geography and history have placed our small archipelago in a very difficult place when it comes to consolidating our national project, but we have been fighting the wind and the tide since the nineteenth century to do so. While we have come a long way, the path remains ahead and is not irreversible. Here are the challenges. This generation, most of this generation, the best of this generation must step up: there is a lot at stake.