This has been an exciting week, as I was caught up in an operative of the Special Police while leaving the bar of the Saint John Hotel in the Vedado district. My crime was to drink a coffee and converse with a journalism student who I was helping with his final thesis.
I live in a neighborhood of Cubans, one which seemed like a tranquil place. However I realized I’m surrounded by “deserters” – the man who worked for Cubana Airlines, a love-struck doctor, our dentist, a boxing champion and half a volleyball squad.
Granma newspaper online features an article Friday on the meaning of “on the left,” which in Cuba is an expression quite different from what it might imply in other countries. Journalist Silvia Martinez points out that the phenomenon described is very common in Cuban society and she sees the participation and/or complicity of people at all levels.
For months we’ve been hearing a song by Charanga Habanera that made the list of top hits across the country. The lead singer directs his words toward his ex-girlfriend, who has emigrated from Cuba to live in Miami – in the United States (or in “the Yuma,” like many Cubans say).
Many left wing analysts and leaders have been identifying the causes of their losses in the activities of the right wing and imperialism. Few look at what they themselves didn’t do well or assessed incorrectly, or what conditions existed that did or didn’t permit this or that left movement to advance. What steps they took that possibly facilitated the actions of the right wing and imperialism, what programs are insufficient to inspire popular support, and other questions of that type.
I’m not a faithful follower of the popular Brazilian soap operas shown on Cuban TV. However, a character in the current soap, La Favorita, has inspired me to spend a few minutes watching that series at least once a week. I admire Ze Bob, a young journalist who constantly criticizes the corrupt legislator Romildo Rosa, and who doesn’t fear being beaten or murdered in the defense of his ideas.
Some comrades speak of members of cooperatives and self-employed individuals as if they were capitalists. One should remember that capitalism is based on wage-labor and on someone exploiting another person’s labor power, from which comes surplus value. This is the dynamic law of capitalism.
A distinguished Cuban intellectual who resides in New York wrote to me disappointed by a well-known “verbal reformist” —a comrade of days gone by— who spent several minutes at a forum in Pittsburgh explaining that the only obstacle that his fellow Cubans face in traveling is obtaining a visa from the destination country.
If this conference translates into true dialogue, and not a monologue or secret meetings of the privileged, the forum will discuss issues of the normalization of immigration, which is a concern to most Cubans and whose reform is a matter under the exclusive authority (in the sense of power and capacity) of the Cuban state.
Over the weekend, Cuban President Fidel Castro published his third commentary since the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. The senior advisor to the government of his brother Raul Castro writes on the work of the Cuban medical brigades including the participation of doctors from Haiti and other countries.