As bureaucratic offices at the grassroots level, with their time-worn tables and crumpled files, the storefronts of the OFICODA branches constitute a complete symbol of a social paradigm or model. At these facilities, various officials —usually women— are in charge of keeping a list of everyone who has permanent residency in the area.
I’m glad that in the middle of Moore’s masterful and amusing demonstration of today’s disastrous capitalist crisis (comparing it to the good times in which his parents lived), Moore inserted sequences on alternatives to the current bourgeois system.
Last Friday morning I happened to be riding in a car where the driver was listening to “Making Radio”, the morning program of a national Cuban radio station. The program’s commentator had selected the theme of the Internet for his broadcasting message.
He was saying that despite all the hype received by that cybernetic network of networks as a supposedly democratic space for free expression, there are significant topics that the net distorts.
One of the posters displayed a large “@” symbol, alluding to the need for digital connection to articulate the struggles for greater freedom and to communicate the messages of diverse movements committed to addressing the social problems in Cuba and around the planet.
When we speak about the content and quality of education (basically in the humanities and social sciences, but also in other subjects) this involves a problem that is fairly “globalized,” but one that obviously has its distinctive Cuban facets here.
When I studied in England a couple of years ago, my neighbor in the room next door was a pretty young Northern Irish woman named Laura who worked as an elementary school teacher. On one occasion I asked her how in such a multicultural city as London the problem of teaching world history to kids of diverse ethnic origins and religious affiliations was approached.
I asked myself: Why aren’t we as voters able to find out how our future delegates propose to solve the problems of our neighborhoods? What do they think about the situation of the country and the paths to improving it? What do they intend to do in the municipal assemblies and the popular councils?
A curious Cuban documentary is being passed around from hand to hand on USB memory sticks. Made by young people here, it consists of short interviews of people ranging from adolescents to middle-agers, a variety of people, with most of the film related to Cuban education.
What this means is that prior to the secret balloting that will take place this Sunday April 25, there’s has been a filter: only those candidates will go on the ballot who received a majority (relative) expressed by a show of hands in an open vote.
I’m not exactly an environmentalist, but I believe that what environmentalists are doing is vitally important. Especially because they’re able —often better than other activists— to sensitize people with regard to controversial causes; because without sensibility, life becomes insipid and selfish, regardless of how good a social system.