The Relevance of a Dialogue Today in Cuba
When it comes, the “change” will not be fraudulent because it will happen in the light at a negotiation table.
By Reinaldo Escobar (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – In political terms an initiative can be convenient but inopportune, and vice versa. It must also be viable. The proposal for Cuba for a dialogue between the Government and the opposition fluctuates at these extremes.
Two answers, from opposite sides, are repeated in the face of the proposal for a dialogue:
“It is inadmissible that pro-democracy patriots sit down to talk with the dictators who decreed that ’the combat order be given’ to suppress the popular protests of July 11, 2021.”
“It is inadmissible that the revolutionaries who defend socialism and the sovereignty of the homeland against the aggressions of imperialism sit down to talk to their paid lackeys.”
These negatives have so many supporters on both sides that it is very difficult not to give up, even before developing arguments in favor of a dialogue.
Like swallows or the flu, from time to time these ideas return to the debate stage. Two colleagues from the independent press, Luis Cino and René Gómez Manzano, have recently addressed the issue. Also in an interview published in this newspaper with the Polish journalist and writer Adam Michnik, this controversial matter was raised from the perspective of a man who actively participated in a process of transition to democracy.
For Cino, who recognizes that it is unlikely that the dictatorship will want to sit down and talk with its opponents, “there are risks that, in the absence of other options, are worth running,” with the eventual gain that the regime recognizes the opposition.” He believes that “the dictatorship will see all its possibilities exhausted and face the imminence of a popular outbreak of incalculable magnitude, on top of the particularly hostile Trump Administration, with Cuban-American Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.”
Cino warns that “the pro-democratic opposition must be clear about the direction, the goals to which it aspires. To do this, rather than with the regime, they must dialogue and agree, at least on their basic points and demands, with all the actors, both in Cuba and in exile.”
For his part, Gómez Manzano believes that Cino is in a hurry and that the moment of dialogue will be more propitious “when, in the ranks of the same single Party, those who are aware of an irrefutable truth become the majority: that the system is unfeasible and unsustainable”; however, at this moment “that essential aspect is not seen in Cuba, not even remotely!”
Manzano thinks it’s a good move to draw attention to “the need to negotiate with the regime, only not now with the one that declares itself to in ’continuity’. It is absolutely immobile and clings to power with an intensity that a limpet would envy.”
Five years ago I published in this newspaper an extensive, detailed (and somewhat pretentious) text on this matter where I warned that “to talk about dialogue, in the context of Cuba in the first decade of the 21st century, you have to steel yourself, replace all the fuses, secure the safety net and, if possible, pay life insurance in advance.”
The only thing that has changed since then is that the dominant historical generation has come closer to its extinction, and the living conditions of the population and the productive capacity of the country have plummeted even more. The demonstrations of 11 July 2021 also entered the equation, and in our neighbor’s house a government team is being installed that will not pull punches with the Cuban dictatorship.
These new aspects show the imperative need for “the change” to finally occur, which must go beyond the “changes” or cosmetic reforms that the regime could bring.
The change is not intended to be fraudulent because its birth will occur at a negotiation table. As we said yesterday, “the alternatives to dialogue are the overthrow of the dictatorship in a violent way (foreign invasion, popular uprising, coup d’état), with its inevitable consequence of death and ruin; the meek acceptance of waiting for the heirs of the heirs, in a remote future, to make some reforms; or, leave this Island forever.”
Mimicking Luis Cino’s arguments today, I think that if these continue being the alternatives, it’s worth running the risk of trying to have a dialogue.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.