The Real "Outraged" / Eugenio Leal

The Real "Outraged" / Eugenio Leal
Eugenio Leal, Translator: Unstated

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch
will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do
people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will
burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they
pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:16-17

For some years now I have exchanged views with some of the principal
apologists in Cuba, of the so-called "Socialism of the 21st Century,"
and I know the members of the Group called "Critical Observatory
Network," which brings together those who proclaim the reformulation of
the Socialist system.

From the first time, at a conference I attended in the now defunct
Institute of Biblical and Theological Studies (ISEBIT),in my rebuttal I
referred to the Gospel of St. Matthew. Because how can one conceive that
a system that has proven to be unworkable, because it goes against the
essence of being human, can be redesigned and supported in the XXI century?

The proposals and related approaches of the alleged "Socialism of the
XXI Century," reminds me of an experiment conducted more than forty
years ago by a married couple, both psychologists, at Harvard
University. It earned them the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the
mechanisms of perception.

For the experiment they took a litter of newborn kittens and divided
then into two groups. One group was reared in a room where all visual
stimuli were horizontal. The other in which the stimuli were vertical.
When both groups grew, respectively, some perceived only the horizontal
elements in the environment while the others perceived only the vertical.

In Cuba, from nursery school to university, we receive a
political-ideological training designed to demonstrate the benefits of
socialism. Thus, many people are indoctrinated to see only the socialist
forms of organizing society. In contrast to the reality. That is, they
perceive what they are conditioned to see.

On Saturday, May 12, the "Critical Observatory Network" called for a
rally in support of the "Outraged" of the world. It was to be held at 2
pm at Karl Marx Park, located on the corner of Carlos III and Belascoain
in Central Havana. Given that the day before the 11th Havana Biennial —
an Art exhibition filled with performances and other events — had begun,
I decided to go to see the performance they had prepared.

On arriving, I was aware of the presence of police and people in
civilian clothes around the site, which I told me that the political
police was guarding the place. Knowing that my friend Miriam Celaya was
also planning to attend, I looked for her and saw that the police had
arrested her. I went to her.

This caused the people dressed as civilians, who directed the operation
of State Security, to order me to stop me, as well, and they asked me
for my mobile phone. On my refusing to give it to them, as they were in
plain clothes and did not have such powers, they handed me to another
one dressed as a cop, although he did not have any identifying badge,
and he pushed me up against a patrol car. There I stood, and with my
hands up, feet wide, while they took my backpack, mobile phone, camera
and video recorder and I put me in the patrol car.

In the back seat to my right sat Miriam and on the left sat a policeman.
I told Miriam: don't worry that we go as a couple, as in Noah's ark. We
were taken to the Playa on Calle 42 and Avenida 33. where they stopped
the car and told us to get out. They gave us our property and tore out
of there, gone. Miriam and I wondered, what do we do? And I told her,
"On the other corner is the "El Alamo" cafeteria, let's go have a beer
and cool off.

I've described because it happened to show that the repressors are very
worried about public discontent in the streets of the city. While
walking with Miriam, the police who were taking her repeated: nothing
can happen here, nothing can happen here, like a mantra.

Members of the "Critical Observatory Network" were just 12 apologists
for the "Socialism of the 21st Century." Which they summarized in two
separate posters: "If you think like a bourgeois you will live like a
slave" and "Down with the capitalists." It turned out, that after we
were taken they sang the anthem "The Internationale". Everything took
less than 15 minutes.

What do they fear? That 68% of citizens, according to a 2011 survey by
the Veritas Group, believe that we must change the
economic-political-social. That the truly "outraged," in Cuba, take the
initiative and, instead of a XXI century socialism, they demand loudly
on the avenues, streets and parks of the city the structural changes
that our society requires.

May 15 2012

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