Search Results for: Haroldo Dilla

The Catholic Church is usually conservative, undemocratic, elitist and exclusionary. But ours (here in Cuba) — that’s to say, its leaders — have acted this way in such a blatantly arrogant fashion, and whenever presented with an opportunity to place themselves on the wrong side of history, they’ve always done it.

My fear is that we are beginning to experience another phase of the history of this city. The “socialist” city (mediocre and boring) is giving way to another city whose “brand” is precisely the metropolitan situation that was denied for five decades – with its glamor, mysteries and nights of sequins and sex.

Wilman Villar has left us another tragic example that freedom, as Manuel Azaña once said, doesn’t simply free people – it makes them human. There is very little information available about Villar’s case, and what does exist is very confusing (as always occurs in systems where information is a privilege and not a right).

If there is something that needs to be recognized about Cuba’s leaders, particularly Fidel Castro, it’s their unparalleled talent to retain power, whether by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing.

This issue will be particularly difficult to solve for Cuba’s leaders. Moreover, the disparity between spokespeople themselves, crying out for changes that never come, could indicate internal contradictions within the elite. The fact is that if Cubans could travel without asking permission, be free to decide the dates of their coming and going, and travel without having to pay for expensive consular services the Cuban government currently demands, this would be taking an important step in dismantling the authoritarian political system.

This is the moment in which one wonders, if this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. But above all, how much will have to paid by us — ourselves, our families, our friends — for this belated capitalist restoration, like Cuesta Morua said, for casinos and gangs.

One of the political facts that has surprised me most in the recent period is the number of people, networks and organizations on the left that have adopted critical positions towards Raul Castro’s “updating” of the Cuban economic model.

It appears that a romance with no future has been struck in Cuba between the party bureaucracy and military technocrats, who apparently started their maiden voyage with the most recent party congress (April 2011).

There can be no taboo or de-prioritized subjects. Issues such as democracy and participation, social autonomy, systems of political representation, political pluralism, freedom, and so on are all as vital as economic performance.

The recent authorization given to different types of cooperatives to sell products directly to the tourism industry is positive. However, in politics, the Cuban government will only concede what’s necessary to assure that its economic model functions on its behalf.