On the First and Other Worlds I’ve Known

Martin Guevara* 

HAVANA TIMES — In the course of years – and for different reasons – I’ve ended up living in First, Second and Third World countries. The first label continues to refer to developed capitalist countries, the second was used to refer to developed or quickly developing socialist nations and the third is still used to describe underdeveloped or slowly developing societies.

Though these categories are rather vague and broad-encompassing, as evidenced by the fact that Brazil and Bangladesh (or the United States and Luxembourg) are placed in the same sack, there were a number of subtle but concrete characteristics that the nations in these groups shared.

Many of the differences, contradictions and ironic situations one came across in these countries struck me as flagrant, funny and curious. There was one bit of irony whose evident, I dare say chromatic repercussions proved impossible to hide and which struck me was particularly curious. Today, when the revolutionary enthusiasm of those days has all but dissipated (though the growling of some dinosaurs can still be heard), it continues to prove eminently dramatic.

The countries whose national selections have no foreign athletes – not even athletes from neighboring countries – are generally those that went through the dictatorial experiments headed by the former USSR, including the republics that made up that sordid union.
The only European countries whose national soccer selections have no immigrants are those which were once allegedly the champions of universal solidarity among the world’s proletariat.

England, France, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Germany and even Italy (which first resisted the opening of its borders) all count foreign immigrants as their children. The Russians only have Russians, the Poles only Poles, the Serbs do not even have Croatian players, the Hungarians only Magyars. The same holds for the Bulgarians, Latvians and Estonians, not to mention the former Soviet republics.

Not one foreign player – let alone one from the United States – can be found on Cuba’s baseball teams. Dominican teams also tend not to mingle with players from around the neighborhood. By contrast, US teams have some of Cuba’s and the Dominican Republic’s best players.

Judging from the players’ appearances, one could venture a superficial observation and conclude that a baseball player’s class background is of no importance to investors, who are rather inclined to select the genetic makeup they feel can guarantee a handful of good homeruns. This gives the working class a clear advantage, just as other classes have advantages in a game such as chess, where managers seek players who are more prone to dealing check-mates than knock-outs or homeruns.

From the overwhelming contrast between the immigrants from these two different societies, one could infer that the proletariat might be interested in things other than those were taught at our lobotomizing academies for ideological indoctrination – things that have more to do with pleasure, comfort, vanity, idleness, rest and leisure, the shames of virtue.

Real socialism, the socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat – these appear to have been, not only failed absurdities, a protracted experience of oppression that knew no parallel, having been born of a misguided, illusory and impossible premise, but also the greatest scam and joke that the needy have ever been subjected to, recalling the way in which Rome went from being Jesus’ executioner to his most fervent defender.

At the very least, it is altogether curious how there isn’t a single representative of the capitalist proletariat who, having emigrated to any of the former socialist nations, or those that still painstakingly remain afloat, for political reasons, or stayed in those countries a minute longer than they had to after being allowed to return to their place of origin, or how none of their descendants chose to stay in these.

It is curious that no waves of US citizens ever requested asylum in the Soviet Union, North Korea or Cuba, and I am not referring to wealthy individuals but to the many homeless and exploited people there. There are also (of course) no English, French or Spanish protesters who want to spend a single day as a Cuban, ex-Soviet, Polish or Vietnamese citizen.

Not even Africa’s poor, subjected to the most precarious living conditions, ever set their sights on the borders of the worker and peasant homelands (such as the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania or Algiers, Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, when these experienced socialist revolutions). Nor did Guatemalans, Costa Ricans, Salvadorians or Mexicans make any attempt to illegally enter the paradise of the humble that Nicaragua was declared to be, nor did Pakistanis or Indians ever flock to the Soviet Republics.

Such figures find a stark contrast in the overwhelming number of people who, despite the hardships colonialism caused them in their countries or ethnic groups of origin, not only do not condemn the metropoli one bit but descend upon them like flies on intestinal residues.

We can come to one of two possible conclusions.

Either these two tpyes of societies are very different from what we were taught, or human beings – the proletariat included, and particularly – aren’t that different from a perishable and slightly useful mechanical instrument made of plastic, impermeable to any moral precept.

At any rate, it would seem human beings, including the working class, having both time and freedom of choice, do not aim at destroying the bourgeoisie, distributing goods fairly and promoting moral incentives and class solidarity, but rather end up sympathizing with options that include respect for the individual, freedom of opinion and movement and also become – why not – rather unconditional supporters of having a few bucks in their pockets, substitutes for eternal love and universal peace, which seem to be taking their time to get here.
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(*) Visit the blog of Martin Guevara.