Cuba & the Nation Builders

Armando Chaguaceda

The recent events in North Africa and the Middle East (which in cases like Egypt have already been clearly classified as revolutions) have destroyed several myths of academia and global politics, thus sowing doubt and fear in all species of opinion makers, movers and shakers.  This has also generated interpretations — more or less daring and substantial ones — on this side of the Atlantic including Cuba.

The rebelling populations didn’t make choices on their menu by selecting between political freedom, social justice and economic prosperity.  They knew that the plate of democracy would have to combine all three ingredients.

They demonstrated that authoritarianism (that privilege of control over consensus and the power to dictate the laws) has been the norm not only in regimes that are enemies of the West, but also in faithful allies that guarantee their interests and from time to time practice pseudo-democratic masquerades for the formal indulgence of Washington or Paris.

This is why the flight shoes of the irate demonstrators kick equally and without distinction against the butts of Ben Ali and Mubarak, or Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad.

The people now in rebellion didn’t want more guardians to veil their dreams inciting the scarecrows of terrorism or fundamentalism; instead, they sought open institutions for participation and universal rights.

They didn’t exhibit the menacing faces of atavistic and fearful communities; instead their expressions were those of transgressor societies that were modern, lay and proud of their best traditions.  They have not gone for the formulas and gradual steps of those conservatives who offered to recycle the faces of their repressors from the day before yesterday (who have become “men who are indispensable for change”) nor were they taken in by the opportunist speeches of the powers that sought — up until the final moment — to swim in all waters.

And if that weren’t enough, the protesters have filled the plazas, factories and cyberspace, combining firmness with creativity (“excuse any inconvenience, we were building Egypt” read a sign by one of the volunteer rubble collectors), and the capacity to sacrifice with the effective use of the new technologies (Facebook, Twitter).

They have taken the control of their lives with the astonishing and exciting self-organizing capacity that they demonstrated when maintaining the safety, food provision and sanitary conditions in the emblematic Tahrir Square, detaining government agents and forcing the positive neutrality of the armed forces.  They have returned the word “revolution” to us, which had seemed exiled from the lexicon of rational post-modernity.

And in Cuba?

In the face of a similar avalanche of events, some have ventured to predict the possibility (and the desire) of other uprisings being produced in today’s Cuba.  However I believe that several factors exist that makes that unlikely in the immediate future.

A revolt requires a collective subject, which in these countries has been the youth, to a good degree well-educated (with university training) but lacking desirable options for their future.  In this aspect in particular, the demographic structure of Cuba has a much smaller number of youths than in the countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East, though the problems of these contemporaries resemble each other to a great extent: high expectations combined with low incomes and limited opportunities for personal realization, etc.

Another key element is the existence of alternative communication networks of sufficient social penetration/coverage.  On the island, access to the Internet (e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and cable TV is precarious, and the mass media are strictly subject to official policies under precise instructions.

Nevertheless, I’ll venture to say that the access to the web will surely be expanded (the cable connection from Venezuela has now arrived and it will ultimately multiply the bandwidth that is available today by thousands of times).  Despite the censorship, this will bring much more information, virtual interaction by people and less government control over their opinions.

Nor can one ignore the differences between authoritarian governments like those that have collapsed in Tunisia and Egypt — supported by West — and Cuba’s.  The island’s government, though having eroded, can still turn to the call for the defense of the nation’s sovereignty in the face of its neighboring power, its traditional oppressor.  In Cuba, the USA is an internal political issue.

This has been absorbed by a more or less broad sector of the population.  Moreover, let’s not forget that by its nature state socialism (what reigns in Cuba) has a greater capacity (and vocation) to control and — like Jurgen Habermas said — to colonize society in a way incomparably superior to African and Arab governments without appealing to actual, massive and naked violence.

Nevertheless, on the island there’s “something cooking,” and its face is to the future.

As long as the announced reforms open a space for private initiative and relieve the cumulative demand for goods and services, they will allow a breath of fresh air for both the national economy and the pockets of many families.  In that sense they are positive.  But when they end up insufficient to absorb the tide of unemployed people who will be swept into the labor market in the short term, this portends a situation that can increase poverty and a pattern of inequality beyond what is socially acceptable.

If that situation becomes irreversible (and is accompanied by a growth in privileges and repression by those in power) it could incite people to express themselves against the policies pursued and the regime in force.

In that direction, with the increased participation of the military factor in the economy and in politics, its behavior towards the population, professional ethos and ideological commitments could become modified.  There could be an increase in the military’s role as a factor of social control, which would be to the detriment of the vision of the army as “the people in uniforms,” a force not apt for repression.

It will be necessary to see the difference in the attitude of young recruits and the officialdom in a conjuncture of social and/or immigration crisis, which is always lying in wait – as was demonstrated in 1994 by the “Maleconazo” [a violent outbreak on the Malecon seawall].

The radical erosion (or dismantling) of the revolutionary social contract established between the Cuban government and the population (which traded massive social services for political loyalty) would drastically modify the terms of legitimacy and governability in Cuba (in fact this has already begun).

Let’s hope that the immediate futures of Cuba do not travel through a perverse swap of autonomy and social justice, sovereignty and development that puts us in the arms of the neighboring power or tears the country apart in a civil strife.

From the responsibility, altruism and creativity of all the actors in play (the government and the opposition, the citizenry and the international community) will depend whether Cuban National Hero Jose Marti’s project of a nation “with all and for the wellbeing of all” doesn’t drown in new “days of anger,” under the burning Caribbean sun.