The revolution is not in crisis. The revolution itself is a perennial crisis and a chronic illness.
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, July 2, 2024 — Fidel Castro did not want to call the great Cuban debacle of the 1990s a crisis. He preferred the euphemism “Special Period.” He used the term twenty times during his speech on September 28, 1990 along with the tagline “in times of peace.” He made his audience’s heads spin with talk pf sweet potatoes and cassava that had been harvested nine months late yet had not dried out. When one looks back at his speeches dispassionately, one wonders how our parents came to believe in the commandante’s “consummate genius.” Clearly, his genius was in direct proportion to our stupidity.
The Royal Spanish Academy dictionary has two definitions for the word “crisis.” The first refers to “a profound change with important consequences in a process or a situation, or in the manner in which they are observed.” The second meaning indicates the “sudden intensification of a disease’s symptoms.” When we talk about the Cuban economy, the latter seems to better align with our own experience. The revolution is not in crisis. The revolution itself is a perennial crisis and a chronic illness.
In April 2019 Raúl Castro was frightening everyone with the prospect of a return to the Special Period. The measures he announced at the time now seem like a precursor to to every package of new legislation that has followed.
All the government’s fanfare masks preparations for the crisis Venezuela will experience following presidential elections on July 28
The specter of the Special Period arouses so much public anxiety that party ideologues advised Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel to avoid mentioning it. Like crossword creators, they have been puzzling out different ways to describe the crisis. In September 2019, the anointed president began talking about a situation that was “simply energetic,” describing it as “temporary.” Faced with a barrage of criticism over this, he casually mentioned a few days later that the situation could be permanent.
As the Mexican singer/songwriter Juan Gabriel would say, that’s how it goes. Currency unification and the Covid pandemic combined to expose the ineptitude and haplessness of the Castros’ heir, though, this time, widespread frustration led to the biggest public protest in our country’s history on 11 July 2019. They say that Díaz-Canel, once a fan of Communist-sponsored neighborhood street parties, now can’t stand listening to Julio Iglesias.
The crisis has gone from being a “contingency” to something worthy of a Hollywood premier: an “economy at war!” At this point, one imagines Soviet T-55 tanks transporting ration baskets and the regime’s last ten fighter planes firing rounds of grocery store bread.
If this crisis is the same as previous ones, why change the name? Why use this term at a time marked by real conflagration? Not even Fidel at his most reckless was ever so foolish. At least when he used war-time terminology, he was subtle enough to clarify that it was being done “in peace-time” to avoid poking the bear during a moment of extreme internal weakness.
It is not at all certain that, after Maduro’s eventual fall, the Castro-Canel regime will also crumble
The world’s press has reported the news without giving it too much importance or wasting one drop of ink talking about the U.S. embargo. For example, Spain’s “El País” preferred to quote the economist Pedro Monreal to help explain the subject to its readers. It cites bureaucracy and inefficient management of state institutions as some of the causes. On the other hand, the Cuban government insists that it is a matter of “correcting distortions.” All indications are that that, when they use the verb “to correct,” they are referring to the Royal Academy’s sixth definition of this word, which means to expel excrement.
All the government’s fanfare mask preparations for the crisis Venezuela will experience following presidential elections on July 28. There is no way for Cuba to emerge from the process unscathed. If Maduro loses, it’s all over. If Maduro steals the election, the public outcry will be so great that the sound of protestors banging pots and pans in the streets of Caracas will be heard back in Havana. Anyone with at least a passing knowledge of the Venezuelan situation knows that Maduro does not even have the support of his country’s Communist Party, which describes him as a gangster who brought about a national tragedy.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that, after Maduro’s eventual fall, the Castro-Canel regime will crumble also. Some heads will roll and replacements will eventually be found for Alejandro Gil, the former economics minister who was summarily removed from office last February. The heads have been falling for more than sixty years but the abyss is so deep that they have not yet hit bottom. Just in case, Díaz-Canel has already prepared a long list of new euphemisms for his next crisis.
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