I often ask myself how far the stupidity of Cuban leaders can go, but I can never quite predict those limits – they always end up surprising me. One case in point is the recent measures taken against street vendors to try and control the price of farm products. As is customary, their solution was to restrict and limit…rather than socialize.
What we have witnessed fifty-six years after the revolution is that, in effect, Cuba has definitively ceased to be a viable solution for the left (so much so, that all measures aimed to “update” Cuba’s economic model have a markedly neoliberal slant and continue to support State monopoly).
Science and its adherents allow themselves the leeway that they deny to other forms of knowledge: the possibility of existing and of making mistakes. Institutionalized medical science is perhaps the most hypocritical of all the branches of science, because their hypocrisy not infrequently ends up buried in the grave.
I feel obliged to reply to Veronica Vega’s recent post, as I consider it an example of how coloniality and epistemic racism operate at the subjective level. I understand Vega’s concerns, but I find her analysis biased and lacking in rigor.
A number of comments to my previous post – as well as other posts and their corresponding comments – suggest to me that we could profit from delving more deeply into the concept of “coloniality” as a means of formulating a new, Cuban society that is more just and inclusive.
Havana Times blogger Isbel Diaz’ recent experiences with Cuban State Security agents at the airport prompts me to introduce a concept that I believe describes current social oppression in Cuba precisely: coloniality. This concept appears to be absent from debates among “unconventional Cuban dissidents.”
I think that encouraging this type of debate within what I call “Cuba’s unconventional dissident community” (the new Left and anarchist groups) can be an interesting experience, because Podemos is giving the traditional Left a number of lessons, not only in Europe and Spain, but also at the international level.
Are there alternatives to the State neoliberalism that is being installed as the socio-economic model in Cuba? Are there alternatives to becoming an accomplice of the anti-ecological and socially unjust global civilization model?
The problem with the notion of “development” in any of the disguises we’ve known so far (economic, human or sustainable development) is that it is an insatiable project, in which “the things we have at home” are never enough.
To expand on my previous post dealing with the central role the concept of “sustainable development” has played in the legitimation of Cuba’s current economic policies, I now wish to delve more deeply into the traps inherent to the concept and its potential to promote neo-liberalism in the country.