For Harold, with regards to his response to El Pais.
I have posted on other occasions and I said I studied history. And as I’ve grown old (55 soon), I have become increasingly interested in World War II and the Cold War. Until 1989 I read one approach, since then I have been able to access another. With both, I have set my conclusions which are not from an expert. The history of the Soviet Union has been very poorly told, so many Cubans have a hard time understanding how it could disappear and how today the communists in Russia did not receive votes after having unanimous support in the past.
Many Cubans who studied there or traveled there know of the profound problems of Soviet society, where fear and repression were always latent. Why something might go like this? Because the power ended up concentrated in a leader whose word was order and who brooked no argument. Why can that happen? Because when you find no opposition to your ideas and you are surrounded by a court of fanatics and opportunists, you end up believing you are infallible … lesson to be learned … precisely because of copying the Soviet defects we have an inefficient economy, a bloated bureaucracy, widespread corruption, and a catatonic immobility that cannot even galvanize itself before the sentence: Either we fix it or we sink.
The press that should act as a watchdog of social interests, became obedient and triumphalist, but the design didn’t also have room for a press capable of criticizing those most responsible nor, in the state of workers and farmers, did workers and farmers have to the levers of power. I agree, Marxism went wrong from the beginning with the contributions of the single party and democratic centralism, as well as Russia which did not have the economic conditions.
If I would have a crystal ball, I would say that the future belongs entirely to socialism, but not to Real Socialism, nor to those who now have names, and it will be a future very much in the future. As Marx said, the economic and social formations must be exhausted before giving way to a new one.
Harold, I will leave out the theme of social classes, the rich in Cuba are not the dissidents, I tell you that I live in one of the best neighborhoods in the capital, and that does not lend itself to jokes, I live here since 1958 so I have seen fly by those who left and those who arrived later, I said my age up above. Greetings to everyone.
Translated by: L. Rodriguez
March 21 2011
