Miriam Celaya, Translator: Norma Whiting
(Article originally published in the Diario de Cuba on July 8, 2011)
The recently published interview granted by Cuban-American businessman
Carlos Saladrigas to Orlando Márquez, editor of the magazine Palabra
Nueva of the Cuban archbishopric, has provoked numerous reactions on
both sides–Cuba and Florida–although, of course, the official Island
media have not even mentioned the matter. As expected, when the topic is
about proposals of reconciliation and of Cuban expatriates' capital
investments, dynamite-charged intensification is expected, ready to blow
up bridges or to place obstacles, though conciliatory opinions trying to
find a middle ground do emerge, a peaceful balance between offers and
opinions of the debating parties, though, as is often the case, these
mediations are usually too restrained when they occur from within Cuba,
since they remain frozen at the midpoint between the problem and their
possible solutions.
The work I am using here as reference, in addition to the mentioned
interview of Mr. Saladrigas–whose proposals I consider very
attractive–are Vicente Escobal's article ("Mr. Saladrigas, Don't Count
Me In") recently published by Cubanet: the debate between Jesús Arboleya
Cervera and Ramón de la Cruz Ochoa published in Espacio Laical Digital
Supplement No. 137/July 2011, and González Mederos Leinier's article
("Saladrigas Arboleya and the Debate on the Future of Cuba"), published
in Digital Supplement No. 138/July Digital 2011 of the same venue. All
texts consulted are just a sample of how complex and necessary the topic
of the Cuban reality, the reconciliation, and the role of the different
social actors on the future of the nation are, as well as the schism
created by the tremors that have encouraged the Island's government for
over 50 years.
Vicente P. Escobal, in his personal interpretation of the proposal,
criticizes Saladrigas for the project of reconciliation between Cubans
(he refers to "Cuba and its Diaspora: the Challenge of Facilitating a
Reunion" published in the "Espacio Laical" Digital Supplement of the
Archdiocesan Laity Council of the Archdiocese of Havana), for
considering it as an apology to the Cuban government, and he concludes
that "If our aspirations are to "perfect" communism, to hand the
executioners of the Cuban people a statement of "forgive and forget" and
to betray the memory of our beloved martyrs, then, Mr. Saladrigas, don't
count me in".
For his part, Jesus Arboleya, a political analyst associated with the
Cuban Ministry of the Interior and the official academic sector, attacks
Saladriga's proposal due to his not being completely convinced of "his
appreciation about the virtues of the market"; not only because they
don't harmonize with the socialist aspiration and vocation that he–by
virtue of certain capricious and unknown statistics–considers
generalized in the Cuban people, but because "the world is upside down
and it's the market's fault, socialist ideas have never before been more
alive in Latin America, and State intervention has even been necessary
in the US in order to resolve the wrongs brought about by neoliberalism.
As for Leinier González, we will need to thank the conciliatory spirit
that animates him–something that's always timely when it comes to
resolving tensions–and some notes about the objective reality of Cuba
today, though at times his focus may be somewhat dreamy and not entirely
in tune with Cuban conditions, and though he might have felt obligated
to throw the occasional soft dart against the dissidence, when–referring
to the work of Arboleya–he states: "I dare say that an intellectual
effort has not existed from the Cuban opposition party (neither inside
or outside Cuba) that has managed to equal, in quality and reach, the
narrative defended by Jesús Arboleya". As if Cuban intellectuals who
oppose the government in Cuba were able to make use of the same
editorial possibilities as that man, or if the many academic émigrés did
not have their work solidly published outside Cuba. Naïveté, fear,
ignorance or opportunism are impulses that, on more than one occasion,
have clouded the best of intentions of the forums, and it is for that
reason that I prefer to attribute this minor cluelessness of Leinier
González instead of the rush that guided him at the time he partook in a
debate so very important as to stop at trifles of this nature.
However, my intention now is not to analyze the ever-challenging issue
of dialogue among Cubans, nor the obvious advantages or disadvantages of
alleged Cuban-American businessmen's investments in Cuba, but to insist
on jumping the sharp contradictions of the official budget, including
the brilliant arguments of the outstanding analyst Jesús Arboleya. And
this is because when the market relations are so demonized that they
would ultimately defeat a nonexistent socialism in Cuba, the defenders
of the system are forgetting to make some proposal to inform us how
prosperity and development may be achieved outside the market. At the
same time, the selective amnesia of thinkers like this individual omits
the existence of a strong middle class in Cuba, represented by sectors
effectively linked to foreign capital and strongly correlated to the
power strata. The same memory illness does not allow the analyst to
include in the category of "dangerous" foreign capital business
investment from Spanish, French and Brazilian investors, and even from
the Chinese government, among others, operating since long ago in our
territory, from which only the Cuban government draws profits, its
narrow circle entrenched in solid interests and its foreign partners. Is
this not about the demonic "concentration of capital"? Isn't the
combination of capital and absolute power the worst the worst monster
created by the so-called "socialism"?
The Cuban-American dollars are, without a doubt, the "perverse capital",
though in reality they constitute one of the largest sources of foreign
capital income on the Island and the financial support to tens of
thousands of Cuban families. Cuban-American dollars and not "socialism"
have achieved the survival and even the economic welfare of their
relations in Cuba. Mr. Arboleya and the top leadership which he serves
are well aware that Carlos Saladrigas's proposals not only contribute to
legitimate a source of prosperity essentially Cuban that would turn into
a dangerous beginning of autonomy for many individuals in the country,
but that it will eventually foster the growth of independent cells in
civil society. Florida's Cuban entrepreneurs' capital and not just
market capital would result in, at the end of so much detouring, the
vehicle for that huge "perversion" known as Freedom.
Translated by Norma Whiting
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