Category: Fernando Damaso

Using some data available here and in Brazil, we can derive the following table: 8,500 doctors x 4,000 dollars per month is equivalent to 34 million dollars per month, which multiplied by 12 months of the year gives us the figure of 408 million dollars.

To this figure should be subtracted the 5%, which is paid to the Pan American Health Organization, that is 20,400,00 dollars, leaving 387,600,000 dollars.

To this new figure should also be subtracted the amount of $400 per month for each of the 8,500 doctors, which is what the Cuban government paid them (200 in Brazil for expenses and 200 deposited in an account in Cuba, available to them only after they complete the mission), or 3,400,000 dollars per month, which multiplied by the 12 months of the year equals 40,800,000 dollars.

Summing up: of the 408 million dollars that Brazil paid annually, 20,400,000 went to the Pan American Health Organization, 40,800,000 went to payments to the doctors and the Cuban government kept 346,800,000 dollars per year. A lucrative business!

In short, the two main approaches of the new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro were: to subject doctors to an examination, which is a common practice in most countries that hire foreign professionals, and to pay the salaries directly to the doctors. This second approach seems to have been the real trigger of the hasty decision of the Cuban authorities to order their withdrawal from the Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program.

The conditions could have been accepted, even if Cuban doctors received their salaries directly, due to the unjust current tax system in Cuba. The doctors would have had to pay the Cuban government 50% of the profits exceeding $2,000 per year.

It is true that the authorities would not have received the 34 million dollars a month, but they would have received 17 million and, annually, discounting  the 5% to the Pan American Health Organization (20,400,000 dollars), they would have received 50% of the amount paid to the doctors (193,800,000 dollars). Something is more than nothing!

I do not deny the right of the Cuban authorities to throw a tantrum over the millions of dollars they will stop receiving, but we must speak clearly without so much humanistic rhetoric, which recalls the arguments of the “soap opera novels” of the forties and fifties, with too much crying and melodrama.

Nor do I deny that Cuban doctors miss their patients, but it seems that they also miss the 400 dollars a month the Cuban government paid them for their work in Brazil, which was much more than the 40-60 dollars a month they receive working in Cuba, and which allowed them to satisfy some of their accumulated personal and family needs.

Let’s be clear about this!

*Translator’s note: El teque is Cuban slang for the unrefrained barrage of official rhetoric.

2. The writer maintains that the people had no say in government because in the first elections, which took place in 1901, a voter had to be over twenty-one years of age (a requirement in most countries at this time), know how to read and have assets in excess of two-hundred fifty pesos, with exceptions granted to those who had fought in the Liberation Army.

This is of little consequence considering that electoral laws evolved and were later amended in response to changing times. Subsequent elections in fact saw massive citizen participation. The author also forgets to mention that, although women’s suffrage did not exist during this period, it was granted in 1937, with Cuba being one of the first countries to do so.

But where exactly did those who occupied political office come from if not from among the people themselves? Were they perhaps extraterrestrials?

3. Citing force fragmentation and foreign interference, the author mocks the “free” elections to which Cubans were formerly entitled, claiming that the multi-party system was no guarantee of democracy. Yet the one-party system is? Furthermore, in the final years of the Republic 85% of the economy was in Cuban hands, including 60% of sugar production. I do not know how the author concludes that 75% of productive capacity was in foreign hands.

4. In writing about political and administrative corruption, the author accuses everyone of being “thieves and embezzlers, though they had been thought to be incorruptible.” No one denies that there were such people, just as there were also many who were not. Havana mayor Manuel Fernández Supervielle committed suicide in 1947 after he was unable to fulfill a campaign promise.

Today there is an abundance of corrupt officials, perhaps even more than before, though their cases are not reported in Granma. They are imbedded in various powerful agencies but none of them is committing suicide or apologizing to citizens for mistakes they made.

In his final argument, the writer affirms that the country was ultimately unable to change, a claim that is completely false. The Cuba in 1901 bears no resemblance to the Cuba of 1958. From an unhealthy, disease-ridden country, it was transformed into a country with the best health and education indices in Latin America, as well as the one with the lowest rate of illiteracy.

Economic development took off and in 1958 it ranked 29th among the world’s most developed economies. All this led to the emergence and growth of a large, powerful middle class, raising living standards for a majority of Cubans.

It affected mainly those in urban areas, where 75% of the population lived, with development being much slower for the remaining 25% living in rural areas.

This wealth led to the construction of schools, hospitals, factories, housing, highways, bridges, streets, avenues and all manner of modern construction, placing Cuba in an enviable position relative to the rest of Latin America. Its labor laws and constitution were the most advanced for their time and served as examples to many countries for years.

I recommend that, the next time this gossip columnist is ordered to write about the evils of Cuba under the Republic, he at least does some research and enlightens himself so as to avoid writing nonsense and looking ridiculous. It is a matter of etiquette and respect for oneself and for the readers.

On another point, Article 3 raises the absurd and unnatural demand that the established system is “irrevocable,” a “straitjacket” directed against future generations, who do not have to respect or comply with what is decided here, but will decide on their own, according to the situation that they live in.

As if all this were not enough, it states that “Citizens have the right to fight by all means, including armed struggle, when no other recourse is possible, against anyone who attempts to overthrow the political, social and economic order established by this Constitution.”

It is ironic that those who overthrew the order established by the 1940 Constitution, having promised that they would enforce it and respect it, try, with a warlike spirit, to prevent that event from repeating itself when new Cubans decide to do so. It is good to remember that, as recent history shows, failed regimes fall by the weight of their errors and incompetence.

This article seems more to be part of a doctrinal document of the Communist Party than of a Constitution, both in its content and its form.

These impositions and arbitrary demands, unfortunately, not only appear in Article 3, but are disseminated throughout the entire constitutional project, product of the simplistic and dogmatic vision of society, under which it has been developed. A document with these characteristics is born sentenced to enjoy a short life.

The link between wages-production-markets-consumption is the one that can help to cut the “Gordian knot” of our economy although, for now, it is clear that no one dares to do so, because political interests predominate over economic interests.

This economic anomaly, together with many other absurdities, imposed on Cuban society, has discouraged citizens’ initiative and the development of more efficient and modern forms of production. Meanwhile, the authorities, rather than solving the great problems they have created, concern themselves with prosecuting and punishing everything that demonstrates the economic inefficiency of socialism: the lack of productivity, the low quality of the goods produces, theft, corruption, embezzlement, losses and constant failures that characterizes it. It is the story of the “tree that is born crooked and its trunk never straightens.”

Meanwhile, our pro-government economists continue to invent formulas, ignoring the many successful experiences applied by different countries around the world.

*Translator’s note: Cuba has two official currencies, the Cuban Peso (CUP) and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), with the latter being worth 25 times more than the former.  Most wages are paid in CUP but many products are only sold in CUC. The rationing system, it is generally agreed, only provides enough food — at extremely low prices but of limited types — for about 10 days per month.

For this, time, workforce and material resources are lacking. In addition, we cannot do in a year what was left undone for six decades.

Therefore, it is foreseeable, accustomed as we are to these massive cyclical marathons, that everything will be concentrated on rescuing some of the other important facilities, mainly in Old Havana, Plaza and Playa, the privileged municipalities, renovating some parks and painting the facades (never the side or rear walls) of the buildings in the main streets and avenues, as “showcases.”

It has been announced that Chinatown will be rescued, where there are very few Chinese left, mainly with an eye to the tourists. Will Chinese be imported to inhabit it? Will they be authorized to run private businesses? A Chinatown without active Chinese would be a mockery.

The “deep city,” that formed by the remaining municipalities, except the avenue that joins the José Martí international airport to the city in the Boyeros Municipality, which will surely be used as a showcase, will receive only a few crumbs of the feast. This will be compensated with a lot of music, rum and beer in the days of the celebration, so that the sorrows are forgotten.

Once the marathon is over and the goals have been met by all the participating agencies and institutions, political events will be held with the most notable to reward the work done, flags and certificates will be handed out, and so on until the next anniversary.

We must pray that nature will not spoil the party with the visit of a hurricane in September or October, months in which they usually visit us every year, because then the 500th Anniversary would be sad.

The National Council of Culture, the Cuban Radio and Television Institute and the universities are good examples. But not only was the artistic and intellectual sector was affected: in workplaces, institutions of secondary and pre-university education, mass governmental organizations (the so-called current civil society), military units and, as was logical, in the Party and in the Union of Young Communists themselves, many Cubans with different sexual preferences were publicly questioned and expelled.

The Military Units in Aid of Production, the infamous UMAP, interned not only homosexuals, but also those who wore long hair, wore tight trousers or listened to the music of The Beatles, because these later behaviors were considered “attributes” of the former. Those who professed some religion also fell in the raids.

The facts are there and also the many lives destroyed. None of the primary leaders has asked for forgiveness from the Cuban people for all these barbarities.

In these critical moments the Party, unanimously, supported and executed all these arbitrary measures promulgated by its leaders, although now, also unanimously, under the influence of the daughter of the current First Secretary (Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro), it proclaims itself a defender of sexual diversity and even of marriage between persons of the same sex.

These extremist swings in its history, together with many other well-known ones, invalidate the Party establishing itself in the constitution as a “leading force of society and of the state.”

3. From having, in 1837, the first railroad in Ibero-America and the third in the world, it now has the worst railroad, with obsolescence in railroads and equipment, incapable of even working badly and providing an elementary service. The same has happened with vehicular transport in roads and towns and cities, with roads in terrible condition and insufficient car parking.

4. From having, in 1958, important light industry, where more than 10,000 different articles were manufactured, which satisfied most of the national demand, today everything has to be imported, including items as simple as toilet paper, detergents and jams.

5. From being a hygienic country, characterized by cleanliness and the state of conservation of its towns and cities, it has become an unhygienic, dirty country with ruined buildings, with 45% of the homes at the national level, in a “bad and regular” state.

There are many more economic, political and social reasons to demonstrate the nonviability, shown by chain of failures of socialism in Cuba, but these five are more than enough.

In short, socialism has shown its unviability wherever it has been tried, including China and Vietnam, where they have had to adopt the market economy to get out of arrears and achieve development, although they still maintain their political-partisan status.

Among the striking features of the new document are the abandonment of communism as a goal and the ratification of socialism as “irrevocable,” the acceptance of dual nationality, marriage between two people regardless of gender, acceptance of various forms of private property (while favoring socialist property), limitations on property (though not on wealth that is legally obtained), and the reestablishment of the offices of President of the Republic, Vice-President and Prime Minister as well as provincial governorships and city mayors. Compared to the previous constitution this is a clearly a step forward though not as significant as Cubans would like.

In order for this constitution to be the constitution for all Cubans and not just for one political party, it must undergo some changes:

• Eliminate wording from Article 3 that mandates the irrevocability of socialism and socio-political system that has existed since the revolution. No constitution should define as irrevocable or untouchable certain articles since all are subject to change with the passage of time and under new socio-political considerations.

• Eliminate wording from Article 5 stating that the communist party “is the major guiding force of society and the state.” If the constitution is the “law of laws,” no political party can be above it, not even the so-called “sole party.” No party can put itself above the nation unless those who created it believe it to be a religion on par with Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, which would be absurd. And if, as Article 97 states, “the National Assembly of People’s Power is the supreme organ of state power,” it is contradictory that the sole political party, which represents only a minority of the Cuban people, should be the guiding force of society and the state as Article 5 states.

• Establish in Article 14 unrestricted political pluralism and legalize all manner of organizations, not just those which are organized and controlled by the state. A political party is no more than an organization in which citizens, to a greater or lesser degree, join together out of common economic, political and social interests with the goal of putting them into practice through the exercise of power achieved through free elections in which a majority of voters express their will.

• Grant in Article 21 private property the same status and rights as state property.*

Discussion and analysis by the population of the already approved constitution will be more or less democratic; the same cannot be said of its drafting.

 *Translator’s note: Article 21 of the proposed new Cuban constitution identifies six forms of property ownership, including “socialist” and “private.” The former allows for very broad control of the means of production. While ownership of private property also allows for such control, it has traditionally been much more severely limited, typically to very small private businesses.