Cuba after Fidel: Saving Everything that Can Be Saved
“Change everything that can be changed”
HAVANA TIMES — Fidel Castro’s death hasn’t changed anything or rather, to not be black and white, it has changed very little in the island´s situation. The Commander-in-Chief wanted to spend the last decade of his life as a “soldier of ideas”, who didn’t intervene – at least publicly – in national matters.
During the early years of Raul Castro’s government, Fidel´s support was key in being able to launch the reforms process and to consolidate a new leadership to oversee this process, thereby also ensuring, a generational change, which would be essential for when all of the “historic” revolutionary figures disappear.
However, the General-President has already established himself in the seat of power and in just over a year, he’ll hand over the government to younger leaders. Vice-President Miguel Diaz Canel, who was born a year after Fidel and his bearded men triumphed with the Revolution, is the next in line to lead them.
Once the tears of Fidel’s followers dry and the drunken hang-over of his enemies passes by, Cuba will return to exactly where it was on Friday November 25th. With the same strengths and weaknesses, with the same wise decisions and mistakes.
The challenges that face Cubans right now are huge. The country is crossing a river, with the certainty that where they were they were unable to find prosperity but unsure of just how to cross the current or what they will find on the other shore.
The government hopes to be able to build a system which is politically socialist, economically thriving and ecologically sustainable. The task at hand would be gigantic for any country but is all that much more for a small island with few natural resources and under siege by the world’s greatest superpower.
To make matters worse, it has inherited a slow, inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy that stumbles along when any changes are made to try and sort out the national economy. The bureaucracy prefers to keep the river rough because that’s where they can fish out their privileges.
However, Cuba has also inherited its main strength from this previous system, a large reserve of human resources. Millions of caring people, professionally well-trained, with great natural talent and an ingenuity that will let them pass through the eye of a needle.
If they were given greater freedom to act, instead of having their hands tied together, workers in public sector companies would be able to shake off the bureaucrats and would become much more efficient, while the number of self-employed workers would increase and economic prosperity would be within people’s reach because of their work.
However, as long as the country crosses this river with its famous sluggishness, Cuba is losing a part of its greatest treasure. Thousands of young people, who are well-educated and want to work, allow themselves to be taken by the migratory current and will end up creating wealth for other countries.
Some people say that this is a brain drain but it seems more like an organ donation. And the worst thing is that along with this grey matter that the country is losing, the fertile orgasms of eggs and sperm that Cuba needs to not die off with an aging population are also being lost.
And it will be difficult for young people to settle down and establish themselves when they aren’t given space to participate and make decisions, beyond the formal approval process of policies drawn up by others. Cuba needs all of its “intelligence” to speed up this journey and to conceive a system that can be built.
The challenge that the country is facing is so large that it needs to open up spaces so that every Cuban who has a desire to work, can find a place. Where, inevitably, in search of their own prosperity, they will contribute to national prosperity, like Jose Marti once suggested.
Fidel and his bearded men are passing on a country with universal healthcare, education for all, a great and surprising development in culture and sports. However, they didn’t know how or were unable to build an efficient productive system to finance these achievements.
The country´s greatest challenge is to build a competent economy to sustain these social benefits. Otherwise, everything that has been achieved will slip through our fingers like sand, until one morning we will wake up and see that we have lost everything, that our hands are empty.
This long march towards the “promised land” can’t end nor should it end like this, the children and grandchildren of Cuba don’t deserve this, as well as those who are yet to be born, the descendants of Cubans who sacrificed everything because of their faith in being able to build a better future.
That is if you are of the Christian belief system. What about a belief in some other religious belief system?????
But Maxei, Communism and Socialism do have a history of bringing prosperity to a selected few. You say that power is in your opinion the worst vice. That lust for power and control was the key characteristic of Fidel Castro.
A few weeks ago I saw an Ecuadorian film which concerns one of the issues in Ravsberg’s article. A fiction film, “Vengo Volviendo” (“Here and There”) addresses the question of whether its young protagonist should stay, or emigrate, to the States. In the end, by growing a business in natural herbal medicines made by his grandmother, he decides to stay. Along the way, the devastating effects of emigration upon a whole generation of children left in Ecuador by their parents, under the care of their grandparents, aunts and uncles, or older sisters, is shown). The film is very layered, with stories within stories. The hope of the film is that more young Ecuadorians will remain in the motherland and that, through their efforts, they can make better lives for themselves. I liked the film so much I dragged several friends to see subsequent showings–and they liked it too. The scenery was spectacular. The film was made largely by non-professionals, with a few professional actors added to the mix. I recommend it.
I hope this film will be seen in Cuba (and, now that so many neighborhood movie houses, like up here, have closed, that it might find a larger audience by being shown on Cuban TV) and that it will influence at least some members of the milenial generation.
Nothing has changed and nothing will change as long as the Castro family communist regime is in power. Diaz-Canel the probable successor as President is yet another hard-bitten ardent supporter of the Leninist policies which have dragged Cuba down into an economic morass. Yes there are the grandiose projects like Mariel, but until the regime understands that a country’s economy is based upon its production, the poverty of the people will match the evident poverty of ideas and policies necessary to improve the living standards of Cuba.
The lesson that has now been learned is that without an economic means, socialism is a dead end. Reforms will either bring forth a more productive society or what remains will collapse. Trump has bigger fish to fry, so what Cubans can mostly expect from the new American President is nothing. They are on own to figure this out.
I look forward to seeing how Cuba progresses, and sincerely hope that it will do so without any outside interference or threats.