How Far Will We Allow Corruption Spread in Cuba?

Esteban Morales

HAVANA TIMES — When, between April and June, 2010, I wrote my two articles about corruption (“Corruption: The True Counterrevolution” and “The Mystery of the Holy Trinity: Corruption, Bureaucracy and Counterrevolution”), there was no shortage of people who asked me why I was delving into the issue and who said I was playing into the enemy’s hands by publicly addressing something the Party wanted to handle with the utmost discretion.

At the time, our press – let’s call it the “official press” – didn’t touch on the issue at all. Today, almost three years later, it still doesn’t. It only briefly mentions some things it has no choice but to publish. Despite this, people know what’s going on – as my grandmas always said, “There are no secrets under the sun.”

This is especially true in a world of fiber optics and telecommunication satellites, where the alternative press, relying on blogs, email messages and the Internet in general, systematically reports on everything the official press chooses not to publish.

I wonder why our press, in spite of the attention our government pays the issue of corruption, doesn’t publish anything about the phenomenon. Only on one occasion, some time ago, did they report on some cases with the names of the accused and their sentences.

Now, we know that there are hundreds of people facing trial on charges of corruption, and that this situation has even changed the racial make-up of the country’s population facing criminal charges, but we are given no details about how the proceedings are unfolding, much less the names of those accused.

Why do they insist on keeping these proceedings under “a cloak of discretion”? Who benefits from that?

I believe that this is not a matter of discretion (something senseless, at this point, as the situation has already become an open secret), and that the attitude of our press is already raising certain suspicions.

Could it be that, despite Raul Castro’s criticisms, there is someone at some level of power interested in keeping the issue a secret?

It is also highly interesting that we should hear people in Barcelona criticize the fact that corruption is being targeted so fiercely in Cuba. It would be good to know who those people’s friends on the island are.

Recently, the work Cuba has been doing to combat corruption was acknowledged internationally. We should not, however, content ourselves with that. We still have a long way to go before we can confidently say we have corruption under control.

The way in which corrupt government officials confess on camera that they stole State resources easily and with impunity, suggests a degree of chaos and complicity that inspires fear. It clearly reveals the existence of an administrative bureaucracy whose officials can be bribed with extraordinary ease.

It also shows us that we are dealing with mechanisms that can operate for a very long time and involve many different people, a veritable network that cannot be dismantled until such time as people who are not part of that network manage to penetrate it and break the chain of corruption.

The fact these corrupt mechanisms can operate for such a long time has no doubt to do with the importance that bribes have for officials. When they are unmasked, the losses are already considerable and practically irrecoverable, and the moral damage has already gnawed away even the foundations of the entity in question.

Generally speaking, nothing can be salvaged at that point, for the situation has somehow involved those who didn’t benefit directly from it, those who were simply waiting for an opportunity to do so or those who were aware of the situation but didn’t have the authority or moral capacity to put an end to it.

This is why, in one of my previous articles dealing with this issue, I pointed out how, now, we are beginning to see that the markets set up outside the premises of State shopping centers, where several individuals approach customers offering them all manner of products (from air conditioning units, through cans of paint to spare parts for cars and other items unavailable in State stores), are merely discrete extensions of the State market operating inside such stores.

Those who control this “fringe” market are quite simply the employees of those who provide them with the products taken from inside the store, products which come out of State warehouses.

As I also pointed out, the products offered at the entrance to State shopping centers cannot be sent in packages from Miami, and those who sell these products outside the store do not have the means to import them.

We are dealing, not with a simple illegal sale or stolen products, but with something more complex. The issue is that State officials who sell these products are placing these in the black market, where they become the owners and can establish prices that favor them, particularly in the case of merchandise that tends to run out quickly.

These mechanisms can only be controlled by the State officials who receive these products, manage their inventories in warehouses and have the administrative means of operating two markets, the State market and their own. They are also able to alter prices within State stores themselves, something that can only be accomplished with the participation of store employees.

Save for fraudulent practices, whereby certain functioning products are declared as broken, these mechanisms cannot be detected financially, as the prices which the products have really been sold at will never appear on official ledgers – only the person buying the product, who is charged more than the official market price, knows of this.

The customer, however, can never actually be sure whether the price they are paying (inside or outside the store) is the real market price of the product, for that price will never be made public. It will be kept a secret by the official, who calculates how much he can make out of it and what he has to declare to the State to go undetected.

Corruption therefore contaminates the State’s entire governing and political structure and has become a national security issue.

As such, it must be combatted by the government and persecuted with the full force of the law.

We are dealing with a phenomenon that ought to be punished in such a way as to prevent its recurrence and the re-establishment of the relations that gave rise to it, as well as its insertion within the bounds of international crime.

If corruption cannot be kept under control in the country, it can well begin to make common cause with drug trafficking, the illegal arms trade, mafia operations, human smuggling and even State terrorism.

Those who make a living off State resources a habit, illegally and continuously accumulating wealth, riches and power with impunity, will stop at nothing to continue living the good life, surrounded by such wealth and power. If corruption goes unchecked, thus, it can spawn crime and even result in political assassinations.

Efforts to put an end to corruption must be based on a system of collective participation. No bureaucratic apparatus suffices to combat it, as all bureaucracies tend to make common cause with corruption, to set up limits and arrive at compromises, while corruption spreads at the highest levels.

Therefore, in addition to State and government mechanisms designed to combat corruption, we need organized workers who support the harsh treatment of corruption and the monitoring of government proceedings, citizens who can act as the counterpart to State and government officials, prevent compromises and demand the transparency of all proceedings.

The very nature of bureaucracy tends to make it corrupt. Bureaucracy tends to appropriate State resources as though it owned them and, in the midst of the confusion (which we have not yet put behind us) between State and social property, the bureaucracy tends to shift the balance towards a top-down system and to make use, administer and even enjoy resources, forgetting, no few times, that such resources belong to the people, that they belong to society and not any State or government in particular.

Workers must therefore not allow any bureaucratic institution to combat corruption alone, without their direct participation and inspection.