Virtual Changes

Virtual Changes / Fernando Damaso
Posted on July 21, 2015

Fernando Damaso, 20 July 2015 — The subject of cooperatives in Cuba
offers much to talk about. In the first place, it would be interesting
to know who had the absurd idea of dividing them into two types:
agricultural and non-agricultural.

Owing to this linguistic aberration, a cooperative that is engaged in
the repair, scrubbing and lubrication of vehicles is designated
non-agricultural, the same as one that makes plastic articles using
recycled raw material. The qualifier of "non-agricultural" should
precede these peoples' names as a divine punishment.

But furthermore, the self-employed grouped in these cooperatives, the
same as the farmers who make up the agricultural ones, are not
independent, but rather find themselves under the control of
bureaucratic governmental organizations and institutions, the same that
during countless years have been incapable of resolving the problems of
production and services, such as the ministries of Agriculture,
Transport, Construction, Interior Commerce and others, which now are
responsible for the creation, regulation, functioning and auditing of
the cooperatives. These inefficient ministries refuse to downsize or to
disappear, inventing new mechanisms in order to subsist, now at the cost
of the farmers and the self-employed.

Or is it that, in reality, the proclaimed changes are nothing more than
simple governmental adjustments, in order to continue exercising power
over every facet of society, maintaining an iron control, now without
having to answer directly for production and services, tasks that they
have transferred to the shoulders of the farmers and the self-employed.

So, the lands that are turned over to the peasants "in usufruct" and the
premises that are leased to the self-employed continue to belong to
these ministries, which, unsuccessful at performing their principal
jobs, now also have the jobs of real estate agents.

From all these economic spawns, as logic dictates, you can't expect much.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: Virtual Changes / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/virtual-changes-fernando-damaso/