Fernando Ravsberg*

Panel for the Cuban television program “Circle of Trust. “

HAVANA TIMES — On Sunday, I was invited to be part of the panel for the Cuban television program Circulo de la Confianza (“Circle of Trust”), organized at Havana’s Fabrica de Arte cultural center. The topic discussed was progress: what the concept meant, whether Cuba was making any progress with its current reforms and what we ought to do to have progress in the future.

Despite the rather dense nature of the topic, the room was full of Cubans of all ages and stayed that way till the very end. Many expressed very well-argued opinions, but the comment that received the loudest applause was the idea that no progress can be had without citizen participation.

I again heard people say they wished Cuba could become a “normal country”, and was surprised to hear them maintain that this entailed giving everyone access to the Internet, having a salary that affords people a decent life and that allows them to travel to other parts of the world.

With the exception of Cuba, child labor is “normal” in nearly all of Latin America.

I think it is very positive that Cubans should aspire to a kind of progress that benefits everyone and not merely a minority, but, if they achieved this, they would not be a “normal country” but the exception in a region that boats of the unique privilege of having the starkest inequalities on the planet.

Some of the world’s largest fortunes co-exist with the most terrible of abject poverty in our continent. A telling example of this is Brazil, the region’s great economic power, where Lula and Dilma have just pulled 40 million people out of extreme poverty and still have a lot of work ahead of them.

Those who speak about Cuba becoming a “normal country” should not be thinking about the normality of Holland, Sweden or Canada.

Levels of violence in Cuba are well below those common in the region.

It would be complete madness to expect an underdeveloped country with very few natural resources to reach such levels of wellbeing.

The only “normality” Cuba could attain in the short or mid-term is the kind we find in the region, in Latin America, where not everyone benefits from progress, many receive salaries that aren’t enough to get through the month and only a minority has access to the Internet or the luxury of traveling to other countries.

Latin American societies tolerate child labor and children on the streets, without a roof over their heads, schools or medical attention. This is “normal life” for millions of people living in the slums, favelas and shantytowns of the continent.

During a trip to Peru, I visited the Ica desert, an oasis with an Internet connection whose speed, coming from Cuba, left me startled. Among the dunes of this same desert, right in the middle of nowhere, we also came upon a shanty.

In the Peruvian desert of Ica, there’s a better Internet connection than in Cuba and a shantytown in the middle of nowhere.

The normal state of affairs in our continent is extreme violence: safety has become an electoral campaign issue even in peaceful Uruguay. The examples of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil or El Salvador are more than familiar to us.

I know that, as a foreigner, I have no say as to where Cubans should be headed, but I can nonetheless express the wish that Cuba not become a “normal country” but rather an anomaly, where progress benefits all citizens.

I want for all Cubans to have access to the Internet, to be able to travel freely and, most importantly, have a salary that will allow them to lead decorous lives. That said, I don’t want for health, education, services for children or the safety of citizens to be sacrificed on the altar of “progress.”

To impel progress together without losing what has been gained is the great challenge facing Cuban society, and the aim will only be reached if everyone sets out to build a “different country”, a country that is different from others in the region and different from what Cuba has been to date.

Such progress, as the audience expressed during the debate, must involve everyone in the decision-making processes. This does not guarantee heading in the right direction but it is always more difficult to go astray when the path is decided by everyone.
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(*) Visit the blog of Fernando Ravsberg.

 


31 thoughts on “Normality and Progress in Cuba

  • To clarify, I am suggesting that a large number of Cubans who aspire to leave Cuba do not have a preference as to where they want to go. They just want out.

  • Your first sentence is a “yes,” but your second sentence is a “no.”

  • Quick to misjudge private business? After 77 years, I have a plenitude of examples of Capitalistic Private Businesses. Boeing, Enron, Exxon, Standard Oil, The coal mining in West VA, Nuclear Power Plants built on known earthquake faults… The list is endless.

    We bail out Banks, Airlines and General Motors, while the real income, adjusted for inflation, of Workers is now below that of the 1960s. Apparently you have missed the truism about US Politicians, noticed by most Citizens in the US: We have the best Government money can buy!

    It should shame all who give a damn – and maybe it does, based on some of the posts I read here…

  • On paper you nailed it. But in the real Cuba, that’s all crap. Education? As long as you buy a fan for the classroom, and a gift for the teacher. Not to mention the cost of buying the exams. What is it that Fidel loved to say?….”University is for revolutionaries”. That means “think the way we tell you to think or else”. Cuban Health care? Bed sheets and working toilets not included. The Policlinico near my favorite casa particular in Havana floods when it rains! Listen, I could go down your list and trash every one of your “few” but why bother? If you can mention monthly income in Cuba with a straight face, you are beyond help. To call what the libreta provides “a modest provision of basic foodstuffs” is an insult to the Cuban people who can barely squeeze a week out of these provisions and have to lie, cheat and steal to eat the rest of the month. You must be drunk on Castro Kool-Aid.

  • To name a few…. The right to education (including post secondary which includes a small monthly stipend); the right to health care for all (including transportation, surgery, medications); the right to child care for working parents; the right to a modest provision of basic foodstuffs over and above monthly income (by way of the famous “libreta” that is portrayed as a ration card in the US, which is provided to all citizens equally); the right to participate in barrio, community, provincial and national elected bodies to influence priorities and plans and discuss solutions to problems; the right to develop one’s cultural, artistic and professional skills in a system that guarantees equal opportunity for all based on demonstrated interest and capabilities, regardless of financial circumstances.

  • Freedom of assembly, free speech, private property rights, and so on. Which of these basic human rights do you respect more in Cuba than in the US?

  • It would be fair. However, many Cubans in Cuba would disagree from the perspective of ‘anywhere is better than here’.

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