The More Defeats, the More Triumphalism in the Cuban Leadership

Miguel Díaz-Canel this Thursday in the Plenary of the Communist Party of Cuba. (PCC)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 17 December 2021 — Miguel Díaz-Canel’s affirmation at the opening of the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Party that “this has been a year of victories,” is a reflection of the triumphalism that prevails at the highest level of power in Cuba.

Strictly speaking, the only victory that Díaz-Canel can congratulate himself on is that of continuing to sit in the chair that corresponds to the President of the Republic, despite the resounding failure of the Tarea ordenamiento* (Ordering Task), the unbridled growth of inflation, the shortage of essential products, the transportation crisis, the fall of the main indicators of public health, the deterioration of education, the collapse of civic values ​​and, above all, despite the hundreds of political prisoners prosecuted for exercising their right to protest.

In first place as proof of victory the president cited “having dismantled an intense and profound operation of aggression on the part of the empire[i.e. the United States], which opted to make us disappear” in reference (without mentioning them) to the protests of July 11 and the call for a Civic March for Change on November 15. He asserted that “we acted firmly, we did not give up, we did not hesitate, we did not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed, nor did we let ourselves be humiliated” and “we resisted all the attacks, but we resisted them in a creative way.” It is assumed that this creative way was the mobilization of thousands of military personnel and the reactivation of the rapid response brigades armed with clubs, to counteract a presumed social explosion.

The occurrence of solving the problem of high prices that suffocate the domestic economy through a political discussion with all producers and marketers and convincing them of the need to “renounce a certain level of profit, particular or collective, in order to lower prices” showed the voluntarism — the principle of relying on voluntary action to achieve desired ends — with which it is intended to face the situation.

Paradoxically, in parallel to these manifestations of “subjective idealism,” the third plenary session was the scene for its first secretary to launch the reappearance of Marxism-Leninism as the scientific method to which it will be necessary to appeal “from historical materialism, from dialectical materialism, from the political economy ’to carry out’ the daily analysis that since the Revolution we have to do with all the political, economic and social processes that we are facing. ”

Miriam Nicado García, rector of the University of Havana, pointed out that a cohesion was necessary between Marxism-Leninism and other career profiles that are not exactly related to such a transcendental subject. Making a show of being armed with the theory, she concluded: “We have a lot of nice things to do in this discipline.”

For his part, the First Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Walter Baluja García, for whom knowing the precepts of Marxism “is as important as knowing mathematics, as knowing how to read or write,” stated that his understanding “is what will really lead us to bring our people to understand reality and transform it.”

The guidelines outlined in this plenary session will surely be the route that will guide the course of the last session of the year of the National Assembly of People’s Power. The deputies are already clearly in favor of which proposals they will have to raise their hands for.

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = The [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others. 

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