The Question from Rene Gonzalez of “Cuban Five” Spy Fame

By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES – For those who have been following Cuba’s reality with a sharp eye for some time, it doesn’t escape suspicion that Rene Gonzalez is the preferred hero of our beloved Miguel Diaz-Canel.

A member of the famous group of the Cuban Five, as were known the State Security agents who spied for several years in the United States until being captured, tried, and eventually exchanged and returned to Cuba, Rene’s is a curious case.

Unlike his comrades, some with important positions in the government, he occasionally drops opinions that are, at the very least, controversial, especially coming from him, a confessed defender of the regime who most of the time adheres to the traditional discourse that the US blockade is the main cause of the country’s economic crisis.

This week, a post of his went viral in which he asked, “Does anyone know how many people in Cuba actually produce value, and how many idlers per capita there are to subsidize?”

It’s not that the rest of us never asked ourselves the same question, but it’s striking that it comes from him, who, for starters, I don’t know what he produces, and who is surrounded by thousands of parasites like him.

Just like the leaders from the high echelons to the municipalities, including a slew of top bureaucrats, he is provided with a car, gasoline, and food, a decent house (the real one, the one the Constitution says all Cubans should have) and other perks whose costs he and others pay with words, through their permanent propaganda work in favor of maintaining the status quo.

In every country, there may be people who are unemployed, who don’t contribute income through taxes or other means, but at least they do so by consuming their basic needs, as they manage to survive one way or another. I put more emphasis in the Cuban case on those who live off remittances sent by their relatives abroad, one of the main sources of foreign currency income for this nation.

This “idler” doesn’t produce value, but they also don’t take advantage of others to live, like the leaders of this country do, including the former political prisoner (Rene), even if he doesn’t officially hold any responsibility.

Nor does that “idler” citizen imply even a fifth of the cost to the State that a leader (not even a municipal one) spends on fuel, spare parts, food, drink, medical care, and everything needed to expand their belly to unimaginable limits. You just have to look at any meeting at those sitting on the stage and compare them with the emaciated audience who make up the majority in front of them.

Rene Gonzalez appears frequently in the media, whether to promote an activity of the Aviation Club he presides over or to talk about anything in an “exchange” with young people or workers anywhere in the country.

But from time to time, he takes to asking questions that cast doubt on whether things are really being done as they should, and his credibility shouldn’t be dismissed.

Maybe he didn’t think that the question would be a boomerang because he didn’t look in the mirror, but he’s not wrong.

He is the first who doesn’t produce value, understood as something tangible, and is another idler maintained by the Cuban people and exiles with the sweat off their brow. People like the small farmer who asked in another viral video how the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba can take the right to decide to whom he can sell a cow, milk, or crops to, and at what price.

This is someone of those who does produce value and maintains who knows how many idlers, but he is bothered by attempts to control what he produces, more out of habit because he really wants to continue doing the same thing all his life.

Then they wonder why nobody wants to work in agriculture or other physically demanding requirements when the first thing they should do is facilitate the efforts of these sources of value, as Rene wants.

Nobody can fall in love with the land to try to boost the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) if, instead of clearing the way for production, it is hindered by measures dictated from a bureau, as the hero says.

All these parasites who go from meeting to meeting asking the population for more sacrifices are the ones who use and abuse all the products of hated capitalism, and like consumerism more than communism (just look at the Ray-Ban glasses worn by General Raúl Castro without shame at the May 1 podium alongside the Head of State).

For the rest of the Cubans, everything that comes from the US Empire is the same as the Devil, but the leaders don’t want to dress, groom, or use anything that doesn’t come from there.

Of course, this won’t be discussed on Diaz-Canel’s podcast, which, by the way, this week was even more boring while discussing the topic of hydraulic resources and water supply in the country.

Returning to the famous question, it’s hard to quantify both the people who produce and the idlers, but the solution to stop it from being a problem is not hard.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.