Few Expectations / Fernando Dámaso

  1. I remember the Isle of Pines, for years now renamed the Isle of Youth, as an exotic place that lived up to its name, in addition to cattle, citrus, huge melons, Japanese and American families and thousands of parrots. Also there was the Las Casas river, the ferry dock, Nueva Gerona and its free zone, La Fe, the black sand beach, the Lanier Swamp, Siguanea, El Abra, where Martí lived, the Model Prison and the Colony Hotel.
  2. These days, reading the newspaper Granma, I find two interesting facts. The first has to do with the considerable deterioration of livestock. Of more than 300 dairies now largely abandoned, the industry faces today trying to bring back 25 of these facilities of which, they’ve managed to finish only 15. This has resulted in a deficit of more than 100,000 liters of milk (I don’t know the time frame). Due to the lack of raw materials, Milk Products Company is working at only 20% of its industrial capacity. The second fact is that 80% of remaining forest estate lands are invaded by the marabou weed. The pine forest industry, already depressed by decades of neglect, also faces two fundamental problems, shortage of raw materials and the deterioration of the machinery, leaving the industry virtually paralyzed by the lack of flat files and the critical situation with regard to the allocation of fuel.
  3. The journalist, critical in his two articles about the existing reality, write nothing about responsibilities. Presumably if it is due to decades of neglect, as is well described, those responsible will not be one, two or three temporary staff. The bar, as in the sport of high jumping, should be raised much higher. It is not my goal to play the role of inquisitor.
  4. These are simple examples (there are hundreds of them), that the economic model has never worked, does not work, will still not work with updates, adjustments and substitutions of additions. We must go deeper, if we do not want these situations to continue on a repeating cycle.
  5. That implemented and proposed so far does not meet expectations. It is simple economic theory, taken from old manuals of political economy, and a compendium of good intentions for a better future. That’s fine for ideological training courses, but has nothing to do with real solutions to the problems of the nation.

December 9, 2010