In a previous piece I wrote about the many tasks that a State gastronomy, or food service, worker has to perform in this country in order to carry out their job. This isn’t an isolated instance. The service and the quality of the products that are offered by the State food establishments leave much to be desired, although we should recognize that things have improved in relation to the decade of the nineties.
Pepe gets up every day at five in the morning so he can use the bathroom before everyone else in the house does (three adults and a child), and he leaves before eight. His work, a cafeteria for construction workers, is four or five bus stops from his home. Most of the time he prefers to walk and gets to the job by nine o’clock at the latest.
Formerly serving as a warehouse in the port of Havana, the facility was rescued and restored. By redesigning and dividing it into cubicles, it now has ample space for the exhibition of artwork and the circulation of visitors – without crowding. The gallery even has cafes and restaurants with views of the bay, which offer an attractive panorama for relaxation, recreation, and meetings between friends or business contacts.
The Copenhagen Summit is now knocking on our doors. However, due fundamentally to the irresponsibility of the major powers (those both imperial and emerging), who are the principal emitters of polluting gases, world leaders have not reached the necessary consensus prior to this conference.
These were nothing other than acts of volunteer labor, for which I will receive no money or medals – nor does that interest me. When participating —of my own will— in each of those activities, I felt it was worthwhile when it was really voluntary and the objective was to do something useful, without fear or opportunism behind it.
I think that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as well as the “exploited…all over the world”, by extending unconditional political support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.
The problem of racism was, and is, essentially a problem of power. This is especially in the sense of power being an element in the capacity for decision-making and action. In this manner, the existence of hierarchy and the concentration of power condition the possibility for the existence of discrimination. Dispersed power, distributed power and -especially- distributed and socialized economic and political power would eliminate the conditions that facilitate racial discrimination (as well as other social problems).
At some moment of my childhood, I learned that Cuba could be reduced to the City of Havana, and that the rest is just countryside; that those of us born here are Havanans, while those who come from other provinces are “Palestinians,” a word that puts people from eastern provinces into the same sack. Once I asked why they were called “Palestinians,” and somebody told me that it was because they were searching for the Promised Land.
Your article is unacceptable because it’s unacceptable to exempt the State from its responsibility for the reigning paternalism when it was precisely the State that engendered it. I don’t have the soul of a spokesperson, but I feel repulsion for the irresponsible individuals (of whom, unfortunately, there are quite a few) who presume the right to speak on behalf of the Cuban people without their consent.I will limit myself to relating my personal situation, knowing that it corresponds to that of a large percentage of the Cuban population.
No true revolutionary is willing to support the reverse of the Cuban Revolution or the restoration of private capitalism, be it from the forces of the right or from the bureaucracy. However, nor can we agree on repressing with violence those who simply express a different thought, or those who wish to peacefully express their points of views, even if we don’t agree with them.