Cuba’s Future: How to Prepare Ourselves for a Hurricane Worse than Sandy

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES — If we’re to believe science and our biological temperature sensors, industrial civilization and the world we live in as a whole will be gasping for air in less than two decades. The shortage of raw materials, the ecological catastrophe and the trauma of falling from so high will turn everything we know upside down.

In economically poor countries that import their sources of energy, the mess will be felt a little sooner. Here, in Cuba, it will begin as soon as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela slips and falls.

With such dark clouds already looming above us, shouldn’t we be covering up our windows with boards or something like that? Do Cuba’s leaders at the very least regard this hypothesis as a possibility? Are they correctly informing the people about a future that does not look too good?

I would be prudent not to bet on it. The Castros already got us into a mess one time making us believe the socialist bloc would last forever. History threatens to repeat itself. What do General/President Raul Castro and his team of advisors think about the current oil and climate panorama?

If we follow the trail of State investment in Cuba, we can discern how those who still hold the reins think. They don’t strike me as worried. Rather, one gets the sense that they are getting ready for a new era of fat cattle, and hotels and golf courses at full capacity, prosperous international trade and harbors replete with yachts.

The decision to spend our meager resources to doll up the country for the great ballroom dance of dollars and Yuans strikes me as an extremely dangerous bet. Would you build a palace (and I am also thinking about a sophisticated fields of solar panels here) with a hurricane practically at your doorstep?

Another way of getting to understand the Cuban government’s vision of the future is reading Cuba’s official press. Granma (the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party), Orbe (published by Prensa Latina), Telesur (the official television channel of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) and others who applaud every step towards development (measured on the basis of the GDP) taken by progressive governments, led by Russia and China, and sing praises every time a new oil rig begins operations.

All of this indicates, dear friends, that our own technocrats aren’t looking far into the future and they are very likely to get us into yet another big mess.

If, in spite of their optimistic predictions, the storm triggers, what they are most likely to do is to impose a kind of police and citizen control on us – not because they are particularly evil or stupid, but because that is the logic of power. They look after their own interests. We should do the same.

What is to be done, then?

I’ll continue to address the issue in my next post.