Fernando Ravsberg

A group of international journalists were invited by the World Tourism Organization to their Central American trade fair (CATM) held in Panama, and in this context we visited Kuna Yala, an autonomous region inhabited by the Kuna community. Many of the things I saw among the Kuna surprised me. One was to find a nation where people, and especially their political leaders, talked to me with respect and even admiration for both Havana and Washington at the same time.

Recently I got my hands on an economic analysis of Cuba from a Western embassy, a study that paints a very different picture from what we’re accustomed to hearing.

A few days ago while walking through Old Havana, I saw the police trying to stop some neighborhood kids from playing soccer in a park. There were five simultaneous games underway that were almost completely preventing the activities of other people.

I ran into two friends who were euphoric. One of them can finally put the title of his Russian Lada car in his name. The other can now transfer his car ownership to his daughter “without having to die.”

The Romans weren’t the ones who invented municipalities as local institutions, but they understood the need to develop political structures capable of maintaining the unity of their empire. The Cuban model, to the contrary, is so centralized that almost nothing is done without authorization from Havana.

It takes some effort to believe that Washington is seriously thinking they’ll succeed at securing a pardon for Alan Gross by simply saying that if Havana wants “warmer relations with the United States” they should free him. It’s as if they’ve tried to sow hopes using the strategy of the invisible carrot.

If Cuba doesn’t have today a better connection to the Internet, it’s not because of the “blockade by the Americans” or because “the communists limit freedom of information.” The true reason lies with a much more powerful enemy: A corrupt bureaucratic class.