[Marxism] "Winds of Change Blow Across Cuba" by Roger Burbach

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This appeared today on the CubaNews List.

Fascinating report on Cuba right now. I know the owner
of the bookstore he refers to, Eliecer, and have been
in his shop many times. He has thousands of books and
while his prices aren't cheap, he has the books you
may be looking for. I spent $50 CUC a couple of days
ago because he had things which were simply ones you
could not find anywhere else. 

Roger Burbach refers to TEMAS (Themes) arguably the
MOST interesting journal published here in Cuba and
remarkably, those of you who are Spanish-speakers can
read EVERY SINGLE ISSUE online because every one of the
articles they have ever published is online here:

http://www.temas.cult.cu/


CubaNews has translated a few of the articles from TEMAS
over the years, and we hope to bring more of them out in
English for the interest of our readers and others via
the Internet. The most recent was David Gonzalez Lopez's
marvelous look at Africa's influence on Cuba over the 
past fifty years. You can read that here:

Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
===================================================

Winds of Change Blow Across Cuba
By Roger Burbach
New America Media, News Analysis

Editor's Note: Cuba celebrated its 50th anniversary of the revolution as a
new administration moved into Washington with the promise of change, and as
the transition in Cuba's own government faces inevitable change, much of it
percolating up from the people. Roger Burbach is the director of the Center
for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the
University of California, Berkeley.

HAVANA, Cuba--The Cuban revolution is in a process of transition and
transformation as it marks its 50th anniversary. I have visited the country
every decade since the revolution?s triumph, and excepting the 60s, I have
never experienced the Cuban people more open and discursive about their
future. As Rafael Hernandez, the director of the widely read social and
cultural journal Temas tells me, ?We are rethinking the very nature of
society and what socialism means. A discussion is opening up on many fronts
over where we are headed, how property is to be defined, what is the role of
the market, and how we can achieve greater political participation,
particularly among the youth. Within the upper levels of the state and the
Communist party there is real resistance to this, but the debate has been
joined.?

To be sure there are many differences expressed over what the future of the
revolution holds under Raul Castro who replaced his brother Fidel as
president two and a half years ago. I watched Raul?s speech on the 50th
anniversary on TV at a café in Old Havana with a couple I first met 16 years
ago, both of whom work in the field of education. Adriana, at the end of the
speech comments, ?While Raul did not say much about the current moment, he
presented a good summation of what have been the revolution?s advances and
challenges.? She and her husband, Julio, take particular note of Raul?s
words that ?this is a revolution of the humble and for the humble:? The
leadership ?will never rob or betray this trust.?

Yaneli, the women who cooks at the house where I am staying, has a different
take. As I am reading Raul?s discourse over breakfast the next morning in
the official newspaper Granma, she glances over my shoulder, and I ask her
what she thinks of Raul?s speech. She says ?Nothing, its unimportant.? I
nod, understanding how she could view Raul?s words as platitudes meaning
little for her daily life. Then, as she is about to go back to the kitchen
she notices a photo in the paper of a ballet performance presented before
Raul?s speech that was dedicated to a political martyr of the revolution.
?Ah,? she says, ?one of the performers might be an instructor of my
12-year-old son who loves ballet. He has taken lessons at school since he
was six and has placed first in several competitive events.?

In old Havana I am struck by the presence on the streets and cafes of gays
and transvestites. They are not harassed by the police unless they sell
their favors to foreigners, who tend to be Italians, according to Adriana
and Julio. A toleration and discussion of sexual diversity became more wide
spread in 2006 when Raul?s daughter, Mariela Castro Espin, published a
special issue of the magazine she edits, ?Sexology and Society.? On the
inside of the cover page the very first words are: ?To be homosexual,
bisexual, transsexual or transvestite is not an illness or a perversity, nor
does it constitute any type of offense.? 

Much like the United States, many Cuban gays still feel oppressed by the
mores of their society. At a book store several blocs from the Havana Libre
Hotel, the old Havana Hilton of pre-revolutionary days, I meet Elieser, the
38-year-old owner of the stores? impressive collection of new and used
journals, magazines and books. I ask him what he has in the way of
analytical or critical publications on the revolution. He goes to grab
several boxes on the far side of the store, comes back, pushes close to me
and says ?You know we gays have been terribly abused and oppressed in Cuba.?
I move back a bit, making it clear I am not gay, but query empathetically
what he means. ?We have been arrested by the scores at night and thrown in
jail, even though no laws were broken.? When did this happen I ask. ?In the
1970?s,? he says.

?What about now, what do you think of Raul?? He responds, ?I like what he
says and think he is good for Cuba.? But he then goes on to lament that in
spite of the change in official attitudes a ?couple of my gay friends who
are teachers in schools are shunned and encounter discrimination in the
classroom.? 

Elieser then moves on to another point of contention in Cuba: ?Most of the
books I sell are in the convertible peso currency bought by foreigners like
you, so I am able to get along, but I can?t change them into dollars and go
to Miami. I will probably die with the United States always remaining a
dream to me.? I turn and am about to leave and he says, ?wait,? rushes into
the back of the store and brings me out the first four issues of Temas
published in 1995. He says ?these are of historic importance, they were
sharply attacked and criticized for being anti-revolutionary, but they paved
the way for the vital political developments that are taking place now.?

The most widespread and heated discussions one hears in Havana are not over
sexual rights or politics, but the economy, particularly agriculture and the
availability of food stuffs in the state and public markets. I arrange an
interview with Armando Nova, a leading agricultural economist at the Center
of Cuban Economic Studies. As we sit outside his office on a warm sunny
afternoon, he flat off declares, ?Our agricultural system is in crisis.
Sixty percent of the caloric intake and 62 percent of the protein consumed
by the average Cuban are imported.? Cuba is a rich agricultural country, yet
approximately half of its tillable agricultural land is in open pasture or
lays idle.

Nova goes on to describe the agricultural reforms that were introduced in
the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and cut off its food exports
as well as agricultural inputs from fertilizers to tractors and irrigation
systems. ?We encouraged urban and rural gardens for family consumption,
pushed cooperatives and allowed some free marketing that helped see us
through the difficult times. But the current system is an inefficient
mishmash.? It is comprised of state farms, state directed cooperatives, and
more autonomous cooperatives usually formed by peasants with ?no one knowing
from one year to the next what to expect in terms of government policies or
supplies,? he says. 

Added to this is the lack of an agricultural work force, as most of the
Cuban rural youth who have access to free education at all levels have no
interest in the long hours and back breaking labor of the fields, be it even
as independent farmers. The most shocking aspect of Cuban agriculture is the
collapse of sugar production. The country that served as a ?sugar bowl,?
first to the United States and then to the Soviet Union, today imports the
high caloric sweetener to meet the needs of its people.

In an effort to remedy the situation, new legislation was passed under Raul
last year that permits anyone to solicit the government for 10 hectares of
idle land that can be held and farmed in usufruct, i.e., for an indefinite
period of time. The new farmers have the right to work the land
independently and sell their produce on the open market. But the tendency is
to join a cooperative because of the availability of regularized inputs, not
because the state is trying to deny them access, but because the coops have
more purchasing clout. 

?As of October, says Nova, there have been 80,000 petitions submitted for
800,000 hectares of land.? He is hopeful, but says ?we still need to set up
an open market for the distribution of inputs, which at present are
allocated by the state at fixed prices.? He does not believe that all lands
should be thrown open to small scale farming; there are efficiencies in
state farms and state directed coops in the production of crops like sugar
cane, potatoes, and perhaps some areas of beef and poultry production.


Rafael Hernandez of Temas concurs with Nova?s perspective on the need to
open up the market to smaller producers in agriculture as well as commerce
and industry. When I ask him if this means Cuba is moving towards the
Chinese model, he responds that ?a group of technocrats are bent on narrowly
following in the economist tracks of the Chinese. But there are others like
me who argue that political reforms have to go hand in hand with economic
changes. Workers and small farmers need to participate in the discussion of
what political changes they would like to see from the bottom up in the
economy and the society around them. If we don?t have reforms in both areas,
our socialist future will be in jeopardy.?

Alvaro Alonso, a sociologist and the assistant director of the country?s
internationally renowned publishing house, Casa de las Americas, traces the
current opening to experimentation back to the ?Special Period? of the early
1990s. ?We had a dependency on the Soviet model, not unlike that which we
had before the revolution with the United States. The severe economic
hardship we experienced forced us to experiment in different forms of
production, and there was a greater push for political as well as economic
reforms from below.?

I ask Alonso if he thinks Cuba is more open under Raul then Fidel. ?Yes, but
not because Fidel imposed his views and ideology on others," he responds.
"He was such a brilliant revolutionary leader and thinker that others
deferred to him. They took as a starting point in their discussions or
writings what he had to say. Raul is not the same commanding figure, he
delegates authority, and does not dominate the political discussions. The
ferment for change is widespread as our society enters a broad participatory
dialogue over where we want to go.?
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=590f21b0eb
809fd4026a93d41db298d8




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