Sunday, August 4, 2013

Very Rare Progressives

Very Rare Progressives / Manuel Cuesta Morua
Posted on August 3, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, August, www.cubanet.org-On July 26 was a strange date for
the so-called Latin American progressivism. Rarely have we seen more
than ten heads of state trivializing violence in a public act, as if the
failed tactics of killing among human beings were the founding myth of a
regional model of progressivism. Only President Mujica of Uruguay saved
the situation.

This is new in Latin American rhetoric, and undoubtedly at odds with the
fundamentals of progressive ideas. In our hemisphere we remember
independence as the founding events of the republics and as the rupture
of colonialism, but in no case do responsible politicians in power
launch into a rhetorical account of the battles and deaths. Every
message from the state is typically civil and about the future.

It is, therefore, worrying that some of the governments in the region
have joined the ritual of the frustrated Moncada assailants, without
thinking about the precedent it opens in their own countries. Their
advocacy of violence paves the way for armed groups in their nations to
invent their own Moncada, to assault a few garrisons and justify it with
social justice.

There was more enthusiasm for the Moncada assault in the ALBA countries
than among Cubans. Judging from Havana's beaches, and the absence of
flags, whistles and allegorical maracas in other provinces, and by the
mocking conversations on the streets, the 26th of July was nothing more
than another nice holiday. It's one proof that the mythical condition of
an event is related to what you can build, not what you could destroy.

If the current generation of Latin American leaders formed its vision
from afar starting from what happened in Santiago de Cuba in 1953, they
shouldn't have lost the double perspective of the fact that, 60 years
later, many Cuban revolutionaries entered middle age disillusioned, and
that the majority of young people bring little vehemence to the defense
of revolutionary violence as the supposed midwife of justice.

But the fundamental issue has to do with the progressive vision. It
should be noted at this point that the Cuban government is not
progressive, it is revolutionary. A revolutionary is a concrete type,
brutal and, as Mujica himself would say, short-term; someone who is very
upset with the way the world is, who lacks the tools and cultural
concepts to transform it, and so, thinks it is best to make it
disappear…in the name of justice.

A progressive, on the other hand, is characterized by two fundamental
features: doctrinal flexibility and the rejection of violence. He
understands the revolutionary, but sees him like the juvenile arsonist,
incapable of controlling the fire and its consequences.

When revolutions were at their peak in Africa, Asia and Latin America,
progressives enjoyed a bad press in political and intellectual circles
throughout the hemisphere and beyond. Especially in our region, you were
either revolutionary or bourgeois, representing the interests of
powerful nations.

In Cuba, to mention the word progressive is a deceptive intent to mask,
under supposed social justice ends, the interests of the United States,
but through another means: that of those who, according to revolutionary
cunning, want to be ready after having read a few social-democratic texts.

Onthe collapse of what never should have been built under the name
socialism, the progressive concepts gain media attention, seen as a new
image and the beginning of a breakthrough. Then come the social
movements, anti-globalization and people protesting in the streets
against the stagnant powers.

In the process, old guerrillas change, adopting the peaceful path,
re-reading Gandhi and Martin Luther King, not abjuring Mandela for
having abandoned violence and criticizing his own violent past. Joaquin
Villalobos, in El Salvador, Teodoro Petkoff, in Venezuela, and José
Mujica in Uruguay, are the examples that come to mind.

Everyone understands that elections and representative democracy are
important; that human rights that must be defended; that fundamental
freedoms are at the origin of any sense of justice that can be
conceived; that, in the end, conservatives and liberals may have, if not
reason, at least their reasons; and that the attempt to build socialism
is the hardest way to destroy modern conceptions of equity and social
justice, as demonstrated in Cuba.

Where does the Cuban government fit in this, let's say, progressive
philosophy? Nowhere. In modernity there are greater concerns than those
of their adolescent history with its heroic self-contemplation. Mouths
to feed, homes to build, welfare to define, old age to ensure, and
opportunities that offer, are and should be more pressing and decent
concerns than praising what was ultimately a sign of poor tactical
military sense that founded nothing.

This Latin American and Caribbean praise is not just a lack of respect
for our history, it is also contrary to what progressives claim to
defend in Latin America: the growing role of citizens, with their
diversity of names and surnames, and measurable justice and social
equity social. With no paeans to violence.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa

Translated from Cubanet

2 August 2013

Source: "Very Rare Progressives / Manuel Cuesta Morua | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/very-rare-progressives-manuel-cuesta-morua/

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