Declaration of Principles Cuban Libertarian Movement

(Movimiento Libertario Cubano – MLC) Mexico, Fall 2003

 

Since it has always been an inescapable duty, consistant with our principles and agreements, the Cuban anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists have been, and are in a struggle for liberty, social justice and libertarian socialism. Since the moment in the 19th century when we pioneered the worker’s movement in Cuba, we continue the social struggle started by those generations against colonial oppression, imperialist North American intervention, international capitalism, bourgeois republics, the dictatorships of Machado, Batista and the totalitarian government of the last forty four years; we remain committed to a series of social concepts and ideas which we will not renounce for any reason.

 

As Cuba lives through one of the most painful periods of her history, we Cuban anarchists present this document, continuing the tradition of denouncing and fighting state power, be it colonialist, capitalist, dictatorial or today’s totalitarian system. We have fought and denounced these wrongs before the founding of the Asociacion Libertaria de Cuba and later, in the First Congress of 1944, the Second Congress of 1948, the Third Congress of 1950, the International Libertarian Conference of 1955, the Declaration of Principles of 1960 and those from the exile since 1965, the Declaration of the Libertarian Movement of 1975, the editorials in the Libertarian Information Bulletin until 1979, the Guangara Libertaria until 1994, and in many declarations and speeches in diverse fora in 1979, 1988, 1993 and 1995, denouncing as well the Castro regime at international encounters in Italy, France, Mexico, Spain and the United States.

 

Whereas:

 

1 – Since 1959 until today the Cuban government, self-proclaimed “socialist” and represented only by the personality of its “Maximum Leader” in a fascist fashion, oppresses and assassinates our class brothers and sisters, assuming the functions of Sole Tyrant in the name of the Cuban people.

 

2 – After over forty four years of despotism without equal in this hemisphere, the Cuban people find themselves mired in poverty, corruption and forced obedience, without rights of any kind, brutally and inhumanely threatened and terrorized by the regime’s political police, with a judicial and correctional system comparable to that of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Gulags.

 

3 – The long-suffering Cuban proletariat (industrial and agricultural workers), falsely represented by vertical and fossilized unions of fascist ideology, finds itself trapped inside a social system that persecutes and imprisons for such acts as trying to organize freely; a system that exploits and discriminates, racially and politically, without the right to strike, protest and boycott. Against so much abuse, it needs to free itself of the infamous chains that oppress it.

 

4 – As men and women committed to freedom, we have decided to make public this document and to struggle from our barricades with all our strength to obtain freedom, to the last of our comrades and to the end of our lives.

 

We declare that:

 

1 – The Cuban crisis is our first priority.

 

2 – As internationalists we have the duty to support our anarchist comrades throughout the world and those class brothers and sisters who, from the ranks of other ideologies akin to our principles, ask for our solidarity.

 

3 – We are against all states and their representatives, against all governments and empires that attempt to globalize, centralize or dominate the rest of Humanity.

 

4 – We are not interested in the fight for political power, but we always oppose any fascist, capitalist or clasist enemy, now or in the future. Consistent with the idea that all political governments have their roots in religion, we manifest our opposition to all religions and churches as well as those philosophies and ideologies that oppose the critical development of all human beings.

 

5 – We aspire to the total emancipation of the working class, giving the Cuban proletariat our main attention and interest, given the socio-political situation it finds itself: a tragic quagmire without parallel in our continent.

 

6 – We will offer our fraternal solidarity to any group, sector and/or movement anywhere in the world that adopts as its beginning and end goals liberty and social justice for their own people. Internationalism always starts at the closest place of struggle. We support all oppressed and exploited people’s struggle for their liberation from domination, whether imperialist or domestic. We celebrate the beauty of human diversity and acknowledge the social and cultural contributions of all communities on the planet. We will keep all kinds of free and fraternal relationships with said sectors, anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, in or outside Cuba.

 

7 – We are enemies of capitalism and consumerism. We support all forms of resistance to the current capitalist exploitation: strikes, sabotage, workplace struggles, the squatting of buildings, rent strikes, and struggles for the communal control of resources. We desire the abolition of the wage and production system; therefore we are opposed to Capital recovery and the continuation of the system of production in any shape or form, including the imposition of state capitalism. We understand that if production is the basis for the exploitation perpetuated by Capital, changing the forms of production means changing the forms of exploitation, not their elimination.

 

8 – We are against the state in all its forms. We are opposed to all states without distinction of ideology and we fight to abolish them. The objective of the state is to maintain and regulate domination. The state has the monopoly on violence, the mechanisms to impart “justice” and organized terror: the police, the army and the prison system.

8.1 – We are against the prison and “social adaptation” systems, seeing them as ways of control by the state to perpetuate the privileges of the ruling class.

8.2 – We are against immigration systems and declare freedom of travel beyond our fictitious state boundaries a basic human right.

8.3 – We are against the ideology of the authoritarian left that pretends to “transform” the state, recovering its structures in order to keep power via the so-called “proletarian state”, as well as the current discourse of the democratic left that postulates “the need to democratize the state” inferring that “an strategy in accordance with the times must arrive at the occupation of the state” instead of its old proposal to “conquer it”. This position of expecting everything from the state and within the state logically brings the postponement of all social struggles and perpetuates the democratic game offering “everybody” the possibility to “participate” in the electoral farce.

8.4 – We are against the regressive pretensions of the conservative reaction (clasist, clerical, fascist) that aspires to return to a disgraceful and corrupt past.

 

9 – We fight for a society based on equity and equality among people without distinctions of gender. We are for the liberation and self-determination of women; therefore we oppose the patriarchal and androcentric system of domination.

 

10 – We fight against racism. We favor cultural diversity. We are conscious of the historical discrimination against the Afro-Cuban people, since the days of the slavery to the present, and we affirm our struggle for the self-determination of Black people. Likewise we acknowledge the historical oppression of the indigenous peoples of America. We stand in solidarity with their libertarian struggles for self-management, control over their resources, justice and dignity.

 

11 – We reject mandatory heterosexuality imposed by patriarchal culture and recognize sexual diversity in human relations. We support the self-determination of lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals.

 

12 – We are against the capitalist industrial system, built on the exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants. We fight as well against the savage destruction of the Cuban ecosystem by Castro’s dictatorship. We support the struggle of all movements of resistance against the continuous destruction of the environment. We acknowledge the need for revolutionary transformation of our relationship with the planet and the species that inhabit it.

 

13 – We will fight on all fronts to reestablish in the proletariat the anarcho-syndicalist ideals that were trampled by authoritarian “socialism” and torn away by the Castro’s regime. Socialism must always go hand in hand with liberty.

 

We affirm that:

 

1 – We object to the political repression established by the Castro fascist state.

2 – The political police must be disbanded.

3 – The death penalty must be abolished immediately.

4 – All political and social prisoners must be set free immediately.

5 – The military service must be abolished and the military institution disbanded. In its place there will be organized, free and spontaneously, self-defense collectives, empowering links with those antimilitarist sectors that inform their actions from a libertarian point of view.

6 – The abolition of the state is an immediate and realizable necessity. We acknowledge the people’s ability to organize their lives and their communities without the need for political, economic, and military parasites.

 

Conclusions:

 

The Cuban Libertarian Movement, consistent and coherent with its ideals of libertarian socialism, social justice, self-management, class organization, autonomous municipality, individual and collective freedom for the Cuban people, is once again confronting Castro’s fascist totalitarianism. We live in times of resurgence of the libertarian ideal, where the growth of the international protest movement is evident; today, more than ever, we glimpse the dawn of freedom and we deem it necessary to fight against Cuba’s totalitarian despotism, with our comrades in the island as well as with anarchists throughout the world.

 

We urge all revolutionary libertarian groups to coordinate their efforts with ours in the struggle for a libertarian socialist society. It is not about adding up ideological coincidences, but to sum our efforts in committed revolutionary praxis, in real confrontation on all levels and all planes, in the face of neocolonialist attacks and global militarism and capitalism. The social revolution that we must bring about comes out of the real needs of the oppressed, out of the real movement of the exploited, affirming their desire to live in a free and humane society that will once and for all break with all ideologies of death, product of exploitation and oppression in the name of progress. Comrades, let’s be what we really are and take on the struggle. Let’s assume the consistent and revolutionary practice of Anarchism.

¿Quienes somos?

Who are we?

 

by MLC. November 2003 (Spanish & English).

 

This is a bilingual booklet, available in .pdf format (pages: 17), and ready for print  See in: http://www.utopianmag.com/archives/2004-v4/Quienes-Who.pdf

ALCArajo: Against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas

 

The Cuban Libertarian Movement strongly opposes this imperialist expansion, under the guise of a “project for integration” because this this new imposition by the United States is an attack against:

- Indigenous people’s autonomy

- Social achievements

- The planet and its natural resources

- The environment

- People’s freedom

 

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are choking humanity with their relentless demands, legitimized by corrupt puppet governments, who, following their designs, oppress and exploit our class brothers and sisters throughout America.

 

Capital’s globalization, whether by means of NAFTA or MERCOSUR, with its pretension of capitalist integration with a “human” face, is against the aspirations and principles of those whom it exploits and their struggle for a tomorrow with liberty, justice and dignity. Another world is possible. A true integration is necessary, integration founded on human solidarity, mutual aid, self-management, acknowledgment and respect for cultural diversity,

not the integration imposed by the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

 

No to the FTAA, no to their imperialist ambitions and their puppet governments in our America!

 

Cuban Libertarian Movement  (MLC) – November 2003

 

movimientolibertariocubano@yahoo.com.mx

 

Translated by Ron Tabor

Movimiento Libertario Cubano in solidarity with the Cuban people (2004)

 

* In face of the following commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assault on Moncada fort on 26th July, it is our responsibility to make the following manifesto public.

The Movimiento Libertario Cubano [Cuban Libertarian Movement] is seeking to develop and spread anti-authoritarian revolutionary activism in Cuba in particular and throughout the American continent in general, with the aim of building a more effective anti-authoritarian movement which can take an active part in the real struggles of the oppressed for the control over their own lives and in the counter-cultural resistance worldwide.

We are not just another anti-authoritarian organisation, even less are we a closed circle of “self-appointed leaders” hoping to represent Cuban anarchism in its entirety. On the contrary, we are a network of collectives and individuals with sections in different cities of the world, which is working towards a more effective co-ordination between the different currents that are today part of Cuban anarchism, ranking from anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary anarchism, anarcho-communism, co-operativism, communalism, eco-anarchism and libertarian insurrectionalism.

Cuban anarchists have actively participated in the proletariat’s struggle for emancipation since the times of colonial oppression. The struggle that developed from the mid- to the late 19th century, led by the “3 Enriques group” (Enrique Roig de San Martín, Enrique Messonier and Enrique Creci) is the best example of this. This revolutionary anarchist group made their class position against the State and political parties clear already in the year 1888, in the pages of the anarchist paper “El Productor”, through a series of texts under the name of “Realidad y Utopía” [Reality and Utopia] (issues 1 to 6), which explain in brief the global conception of our comrades of that time, the struggle against the dominant mood, in a moment when democratic, liberal annexionist, autonomist and independentist-nationalist solutions (“Cuban national liberation”) were dominant. Naturally, the falsification of the History of the Workers’ Movement, something still in act today, has always sought to hide the importance of the anarchist ideal in the development of the active struggles of the oppressed.

Cuban anarchists also bravely fought against the Machado and Batista dictatorships, fighting on all fronts against the latter – some with the eastern guerrillas, others in Escambray in the centre of the island, while yet others joined in the urban conspiracy and fight. There were also connections between the revolutionaries organized in the fight against Batista and the anti-Franco anarchist militancy, through the comrades Antonio Degas (a CNT member who had settled in Cuba) and Luis M. Linsuain, the son of another well-known anarchist (Domingo Germinal, who died in Alicante in the early days of the Spanish Revolution). The goal of the anarchists was the desire of the majority of the people – an end to the military dictatorship and political corruption as well as the creation of a more open approach to liberty, that would make the ideological continuity that could lead to a Social Revolution possible, in spite of the threats of invasion.

Today, just as 45 ago, the Cuban people are living under an interventionist threat from the Yankees and suffer the terror and despotism of Castro-fascism, the only difference being the fact that the repressive Castrist system is more sophisticated and even more oppressive. The jails remain full of pacific opponents and young people who have rebelled against the constant imposition of totalitarianism and the lack of liberty. Once again, social fighters or those in despair who are trying to flee from absolutism are being put up against the wall.

And yet, inexplicably, the “Cuban Revolution” (as “leftists” still like to call Castro-fascism) manages to obtain hypocritical “critical support”. We see vast sectors of the “left” standing against the death penalty, against military service, against the media censorship, against the fabricated trials of social activists on euphemistic charges of “terrorism”; we see how they stand against the rule of silence that forbids free radio channels, how they oppose nuclear energy, how they denounce the spying by the repressive forces of their own States but we also see how, notwithstanding all this, they remain willing to justify all these wrongdoings, all this infamy, even going so far as to support it and praise it in name of overriding anti-imperialism. “Critical support” has been and is now a formula for foreign consumption, not for use here. It is based on a strictly totalitarian double-minded way of thinking – “with the revolution, against imperialism”. Those who do not support us are supporting Yankee imperialism and are therefore labelled reactionaries. This kind of thinking is the same that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco defended.

Sure, Castro-fascist propaganda on a world level has repeated this formula with all the energy of its dollars and its invitations for free holidays in Cuba, and there have always been plenty of second-rate writers willing to disguise the Cuban reality with sermons and parables. This results in helping to maintain the ignominious conditions on an Island which is physically and economically devastated, whose citizens defy all danger just to manage to escape and where, ironically, funerals are free. A terrible despotism oppresses our people and when someone denounces the crime, they are accused of being on the imperialist payroll. But the reality is self-evident, one that any curious traveller can witness as long as he does not reproduce the siren song.

Within the “international anarchist movement”, the positions concerning the Castro regime are no longer the same as in the past, when some anarchist sectors remained silent over Castro’s crimes against our comrades. Today, in fact, the loud voice of condemnation can be heard from our anarchist comrades wherever they are against the Castro-fascist dictatorship. We also see that the greatest defenders of the tyranny are less and less a part of the real movement of the exploited, less involved in the struggle to resist against capital, less present on the barricades of direct confrontation, less involved among the women and men who struggle in a horizontal, autonomous way for the self-management of the factories, the community, the universities, the neighbourhoods and our lives. On the contrary, the defenders of the Castro regime can be found in the ranks of the reformists, of social democracy, among the defenders of the “leftist” vote, Lula’s PT members, among Kirchner sympathizers, in the Bolivarian bureaucracy of Hugo Chávez, among the yellow PRI-ists of the PRD [in Mexico - ndt], among the opportunists of the Salinist PT, among the ideologues of Christian Democracy, among a whole range of bureaucratic left-wing organisations extending from parasitic unions and State-client organizations, to fossil student federations and popular fronts made up of labels. And not only in these – it can  be found in the capitalist groups, either in Europe or Latin America, who invest in the Island, preparing us to endure “capitalism with a human face”, while repressing self-managed struggles wherever they arise on the planet. Nowadays, the Cuban regime with all its boasted progress is not even an example for those who support it!

Today, Cuba is a huge farm in the hands of a cruel, bloodthirsty owner who does not hesitate to escalate repression in order to continue ruling. Cuba lacks any kind of freedom, individual or collective. Since the fall of the Soviet “ancien regime”, the economic crisis has been of catastrophic proportions and from a situation where food was not plenty, to one of ever-increasing scarsity. The working class has lost all its rights and all the unions are State organisms; protesting is an offence and strikes are a crime. All this may seem overstated but it is the reality that this Island puts up with. And we invite any cofrade who wants to verify these facts for him or herself to visit Cuba, but avoiding the “revolutionary” tours.

The last stand of Castroism is an efficient and imaginative propaganda machine. In 1992, we saw it functioning during Castro’s trip to the Iberian Peninsula, to celebrate the 5th centennial of the genocide together with other corrupt leaders, justifying with his presence 500 years of barbarous behaviour from the “madre patria” and other no less cruel stepmothers. In that opportunity we could witness the level of “leftist” hypocrisy when they should have denounced all tose governments that were part of this “celebration”, they just downplayed or omitted Castro’s contribution to this solemn occasion. Recently this hypocritical behaviour of the “leftists” was again patent when Castro visited Argentina for Nestor Kirchner’s presidential inauguration, in an open promotion of MERCOSUR, as the human face of market capitalism.

Today, exactly fifty years after the libertarian feat of the assault on Moncada fort, anti-authoritarian Cuban revolutionaries once again see the hypocritical behaviour of “revolutionary” social democracy, hidden behind half a century of labels and demagogical micro-groups – some cynically calling themselves “libertarian” – signing a call for solidarity with the Castro-fascist dictatorship that has oppressed and exploited our class brothers and sisters for these last 45 years.

Today we can witness a combination of a lack of historical memory among our people, the brazen confusion of those who still follow orders from the tyrant of Havana repeating lies when they claim that the Castro-fascist regime “has always supported national liberation movements in every part of the world and has fought against imperialist policies”. The Mexican revolutionaries have suffered in the flesh, like few others on this continent, from the opportunism and shameless manipulation by Castro who, justifying himself with inhuman “reasons of State”, has never supported insurrectionary revolutionary groups; on the contrary he has always benefitted from very close relationships with the dictatorship of the State party that oppressed and exploited the Mexican people. Countless uncontroversial occurrences confirm this. Just to mention some facts, let us recall the Cuban presence in the 1968 Olympic Games, ignoring the appeals for a boycott of these Games in clear alliance with the dictatorship that had butchered hundreds of students in Plaza de Tlatelolco. We could mention a long list of offences, such as Castro’s constant refusal to give weapons and military instruction to specific Mexican groups, or the constant refusal of the Castro government to seek justice at the International UN court in The Hague for the mothers and relatives of those murdered and “disappeared” during the years of the dirty war period.

We could also mention a large list of opposition and Revolutionary movements that have suffered from the opportunism, manipulation and shamelessness of the Castro-fascist dictatorship on our continent. Mentioning them all would take up this entire manifesto. Let it suffice to mention the independence movement in Puerto Rico; large sectors of the anti-fascist left in Chile and Uruguay; the Brazilian revolutionary movement; the revolutionary syndicalists in Bolivia and many many more. Not to mention such worse and shameful acts like the treason against the Eritrean liberation movement, where the Castro-fascist dictatorship sent occupation troops to crush the independence aspirations of the Eritrean people, to serve Soviet imperialism in the regretful years of the so-called “Cold War”.

To unmask all the demagogy and cynicism that pervades this appeal for solidarity with the Castro-fascist dictatorship would take us about a hundred pages, but we cannot allow them to go on with impunity using Nazi methods, repeating the lie so often it eventually becomes the truth. To say that the Castro-fascist dictatorship aims to build “a more just society which gives priority to the people’s needs and the most fundamental human rights such as education, health care, housing, food and employment, contrary to other countries which are being skinned by neo-liberal attacks”, is not only a lie but outright villainy.

To speak about human rights in Cuba, omitting the hundreds of political prisoners who suffer in the prisons of the dictatorship which can only be compared in this hemisphere with the imprisoned population of the USA, where an equally huge number of political prisoners suffer inhuman sentences, whose status as political prisoners or prisoners of war is not recognized. To speak of human rights in Cuba, when it is the only country, together with the USA where the death penalty is enforced. To speak about education in Cuba, where access to university-level negrees depends on whether you adhere to and are an accomplice of the system and on the hours of “voluntary” agricultural work you provide, where it is not even allowed for students to choose their own careers. To speak about health care in Cuba, with its unsanitary hospitals where not even an aspirin is given to the patient, but if you have dollars you can buy medicines or if you are a millionaire foreigner you can obtain the best and most advanced medical service in the “tourism and health” programmes. To speak about housing in Cuba, where thousands of familias live in apartments which are too small for them and where people out of despair occupy empty houses and abandoned State buildings but are then evicted and jailed. To speak about food when there is rationing, where the food products that can be bought with Cuban currency are diminishing and the only ones who can feed themselves with dignity are those that have dollars to spend in supermarkets and OXXO shops – at exorbitant prices. To speak about employment in Cuba, when 27% of the population is unemployed and/or lives on illegal street trading, prostitution or self-employment, such as bicycle-taxi drivers and independent lorry drivers who are permanently threatened by high taxes and bribes to the corrupt police. To speak about all these things ONLY SHOWS GREAT IGNORANCE CONCERNING THE SITUATION IN CUBA OR AN UNFETTERED COMPLICITY WITH THE BOURGEOIS GANG THAT HAS BEEN OPPRESSING CUBA FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS.

Today, the only way to pay homage to those that fell on the 26th July 1954, the only way to reaffirm our class position, the only way to be coherently anarchist and revolutionary, the only way to show our support to the Cuban people in this hour of renewed imperial threat, is and always will be, by direct solidarity with the people – not with the dictatorship. Workers, students, intellectuals, men and women fighting shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy: Capital – be it the neo-liberal kind or the State-capital kind such as the one that enslaves the Cuban proletariat.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE CUBAN PEOPLE NOT WITH CASTRO

FOR LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM!

¡SALUD Y ANARQUÍA!

Exploring the “chasm”: A libertarian reply to Celia Hart (2005)

 

* Responding to the invitation extended a few days ago from Havana by Celia Hart Santamaria – member of the Cuban Communist Party and daughter of prominent figures of the regime – calling for discussions on leftist alternatives for Cuba’s future, and where she explicitly asks for an  anarchist opinion, the Cuban Libertarian Movement (MLC – Movimiento Libertario Cubano) makes public its proposals for the debate. 

 

It is with great curiosity, interest and care that we have read your letter “About my Interview in the pages of La Jornada of April 5th”, published simultaneously by the Spanish web pages Rebelión and La Haine. There are very many things we could discuss in your letter, Celia, really very many things. But, to be frank, we care little whether you await the definite prophesized assumption of Christ, Buddha and Mohammed or that you sit besides Lincoln and Whitman; we don’t care you feel you are a “princess of the Race” or that your brief opinion about John Paul II insinuates a certain disagreement with his trajectory that Fidel did not show these past few days: as far as we’re concerned, you may continue happily with your poetic experiments which we won’t censure nor will we care a whole lot about your lyric output. Also with continued frankness, you may change what you say as many times as you please; whether because of a reprimand or whether your conscience and/or your intellectual pickiness drive you to correct a shot that you yourself know is in danger of being misinterpreted: you have all the freedom in the world to do so and it will be up to your readers from now on to grant your words whatever credibility and trustworthiness they deserve and you are capable of earning. Besides, again in all honesty, in your letter you touch upon issues of vital importance such as the “inertia” of the Communist Party or the existence of “certain mechanisms of capitalist restoration” in Cuba; facts more than well known and of little novelty whose really interesting feature is the fact that it is precisely you who admits to them: but that isn’t what we want to discuss exactly at this moment either. What matters at this time, only as a beginning, is that we take our position in the ideological and political map, that we adopt a position regarding such and such situations, such and such trajectories and such and such persons. In that order of things we would like to minimally and briefly debate with you. Let’s be a little more precise. You say you’re looking for, and perhaps building a leftist option, a leftist alternative for Cuba. We tell you then that your concern is also ours and of a very large number of people, in whose front lines -and not because of being vanguards but because of being coherent- are the anarchists you mention in your letter. But for sure what we cannot share is your affirmation that “to the left of Fidel is the chasm”. That sentence, and only that sentence, is what we would like to discuss now.

 

The first thing we want to point out to you is the logic problem such a statement creates; a statement that momentarily negates, barring some rectification on your part, the expectations you have been generating with some of your performances. By logic, only two things can follow from your statement: either the leftist option you’re looking for is found to the right of Fidel or else that alternative is the very same Fidel and the total continuity of the self-sufficient monologue he has followed all along. You realize that, if your leftist alternative is to the right of Fidel – which we doubt, you don’t look dumb – this debate is totally meaningless and it would be better to stop it right now. But you’ll also notice that if that option you speak of is nothing but the very self-same Fidel for all eternity, even in his physical absence, it is not very clear why all the hoopla on your part when it’s only a matter of, like a bland condiment, reading Trotsky, Lukacs, Rose Luxembourg and Gramsci. But also, not from the logical point of view but from the political point of View, you would have to explain what would that left to the right of Fidel be. Is that left to the right of Fidel responsible for the “inertia” of the Party and for the “mechanisms of capitalist restoration”? How come such things can happen? Is it Fidel’s carelessness? By chance the Commander in Chief, First Secretary of the Party and President of the Council of Ministers and State was overridden and his orientations have been ignored? Or perhaps Fidel also performs the biblical feat of trinity and, like Jesus – who is one with God the Father – sits to the right of himself? These questions only pretend to illustrate the confusion generated by the shortness of your expositions and the truth is that we have not yet touched upon the core issue: that is, we haven’t as yet fallen in the “chasm” you claim is the only thing that exists to the left of Fidel.

 

The lost words

 

We’ve tried to approach the subject respectfully and with care for the sake of this exchange, leaving aside for the time being the deceptions and reservations accumulated over several decades. We likewise strive to be ample and exhaustive, at least within our limited means. It occurred to us to take a range of subjects normally associated with leftist thinking, link them to Cuba and with Fidel by extension  and ask what elaborations or illuminations were available as a starting point for the debate. For that purpose we made use of the most powerful tool at our disposal at this time: the Google advanced search, limiting the search to the exact sentence, in the Spanish language, in any file format and for all possible domains. This way, anybody could verify the exactness of our findings and you yourself would be in good shape to do so, for we don’t doubt that you have access to the Internet without any inconveniences. Let’s look at the results of our little research and perhaps you will agree with us that they are indeed surprising.

 

Let’s start by saying that to the phrases “Cuban worker’s councils” and “worker’s councils in Cuba” Google’s search yielded a “no document found”; which is probably due to a very simple fact and that is that one does not reflect on something that does not exist or has not even been imagined. The same result happens with the expression “self-management in Cuba” although in this case we did find one -only one – about “Cuban self-management” which you can find in <es.geocities.com/anticivilizacion/antonfdr_GANDHI.htm> and which only informs us that the idea is practically unknown in the island. Following the same procedure, we arrive at the sad conclusion that as far as Cuba is concerned one doesn’t write and one doesn’t talk about “worker’s autonomy” or “autonomous unions”; which only confirms that the leadership of such organizations are not terribly interested in the matter and that the predominant orientation consists of keeping them within the sphere of dependency on the state. Things being what they are, it is not surprising that something as “extremist” as the collective and voluntary interruption of work barely yields discourses of very low intensity: the search for “strikes in Cuba” results in 5 documents of a historical character and when we input “Cuban strikes” we find one lonely and exotic result in <wvw.bibliotecagnostica.com/Poscla22.htm>. Even so, we didn’t give up in our quest, but to our amazement, in the case of “class consciousness in Cuba” and “Cuban class consciousness” Google again replies to our query “no documents found”. Things get a little better when we use “Cuban cooperatives” or “cooperatives in Cuba” and there finally we find a modest thirty-odd documents, not necessarily of official origin nor mostly adulatory and among which we note some pearls of interest such as that of Jesus Cruz Reyes where he takes deep offense when asked whether those organizations are independent or not. Faced with such a promissory – when compared to the former- result we continued our spirited quest, only to be told right away that nothing is said about “Cuban social movements” or about “Cuban autonomous university”; although to be fair, we do note now that there are 4 documents which contain the phrase “university autonomy in Cuba” to inform us of the lack thereof, naturally, and another 5, mainly in reference to the past, that consider it opportune to make use for some reason or another of the phrase “social movements in Cuba”.

 

And so, after many successive failures we decided to steer our research towards a concept we certainly don’t regard with much sympathy: worker’s state. Do you know how many documents show up containing the expression “Cuban worker’s state”? Only 30, the overwhelming majority Trotskyite and not all of them favorable. Among them only one came from Cuba’s officialdom, <wvw.lajiribilla.cu/2002/n57_junio/1413_57.html> and in reality it was a collaboration by John Hillson sent from the city of Los Angeles. We think this lack might be due to the strong identification of the expression with the Trotskyite tradition; we think that your rescuing the founder of the red army would face obvious difficulties and we tried to see if a similar expression would yield better results: proletarian state. Not even now did success crown our efforts: the phrase “proletarian state in Cuba” had a single orphan result. The article belongs to Luis Ramirez Caraballo and Antonio R. Barreiros Vazquez, entitled “Place and role of the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces, tn) as a especially significant component of the Cuban proletarian state” and you can find it in the Revista Cubana de Ciencias Sociales (Year 4, no. 12 September – December 1986). Perhaps, Celia, you share our disillusionment and you also loathe that, when one speaks in Cuba about the proletarian state, in reality it’s not fundamentally the proletarians but rather the armed forces. Does this have anything to do with the militarization of Cuban society?

 

The “chasm” is the absence of liberty, equality and solidarity

 

To wit: we have used a range of indicators that are far from perfect and can only be of an approximate character; even so, we have the firm impression that they also allow us to maintain a trustworthy hypothesis. That is, reflections on building a leftist option in Cuba face an almost untouched and virgin field. And we ask you please -assuming a reply on your part- be a little bit imaginative and don’t recommend that we perform a similar search with the expressions “health in Cuba”, “education in Cuba”, “sports in Cuba”, etc., because what we’re proposing doesn’t necessarily contradict such things but rather it imbues them with a different content, redefines them and infinitely enriches them. As you’ve probably seen, therefore, there is a body of ideas that in embryonic form represent their corresponding revolutionary social achievements – normally belonging to the left imagery – that in Cuba are used badly or very little. And we are absolutely convinced of three things that are intimately linked to our theme, as this has been established from the beginning: in the first place, Fidel hasn’t shown to have on top of his shoulders the most adequate head to elaborate thought and define the necessary actions: he’s had over half a century to do it and … nothing!; second, this field of ideas and realizations is located not to his right but to his left; and lastly, that none of them represent the “chasm” so feared and whose mention causes you so much worry. We have only to show you three examples especially significant and with possibilities of immediate implementation.

 

First, a leftist alternative in Cuba should consider an urgent demilitarization in the widest sense of the word. It would consist of not only the re-dimensioning of the armed forces, with the attendant savings and the corresponding transfer of resources to other sectors of the economy infinitely needier. It would also entail the loss of the armed forces’ historical privileges and that the diverse problems of Cuban society would no longer be seen as questions of “national security”. Above all it would be a matter of thinking about socialism like what it should really be, that is, a new living relationship of solidarity among free and equal beings; and to avoid superimposing on these facts a not so socialist articulation between “commanders” and subordinates. These things are immediately attainable Celia, and there’s no reason to counter them. For sure you’ll tell us that the revolution would not survive without “its” armed forces but that’s nothing but a fallacy the “Commander in Chief” and his minions have gotten you accustomed to. This is because the Cuban armed forces are constituted as a response to a hypothesis of conflict – in theory, a U.S. invasion – that is wrongly proposed or that will not happen. In the first place, the Cuban armed forces would have no power – and I agree with you that this is a disgrace for all humanity – against the aerial bombardment and ruination that the USA uses as its main method in the initial phases of the war. As has been demonstrated in Iraq, guerrilla resistance is much more effective than a regular army that simply cannot be up to the task. Second, there are plenty of elements to assume that such conflict does not nor will it conform tomorrow to that model: Cuba does not warrant the same reasons given for Afghanistan and Iraq – nor those given later for Iran and North Korea – nor does it constitute a relevant strategic threat nor has it deserved a real military consideration. Do the math Celia and you will see: the financing given by the USA to the “dirty work” in Cuba in the last five years is less than the cost of one single night of bombardment over Baghdad, even if the Commander in Chief’s megalomania is hurt a little with such calculations. In consequence, the demilitarization is feasible now and has nothing to do with the “chasm”.

 

Second, a leftist alternative in Cuba should immediately embark on the road to elf-determination. Do you believe that the construction of socialism should be strongly identified – sine qua non condition, we would say – with the direct self-management of the economy by the workers? Unfortunately, in Cuba for many years self-management has been assimilated in short order to the Yugoslavian experience and has been implicitly associated with the imminent threat of the market and the attendant “chaos”. Thus, all hopes were deposited in the myth of centralized planning that has been mistaken in the real world with the wisdom of the technocrats or the omnipresence of the military or the ineffable occurrences of the “Commander in Chief” that have always taken first place to the ideas of the collective organisms. Besides, it’s enough to analyze the results: Would you say, Celia, that the road traveled from the first impulse to establish communism in the Island of Youth to the actual presence of transnational corporations is a road towards socialism? No Celia, centralized planning has not only not brought us socialism but rather it can be qualified as a succession of blunders, before and after that failed sugar harvest of the ten million tons of sugar. Self-management, meanwhile, has all the credibility and that is the way undertaken by dozens of social movements in Latin America as a strategy of resistance and as a way to solve in a practical way – even if success is mixed, even in clearly neoliberal contexts – their most pressing needs in terms of food, health, shelter etc. Once again: self-management is also possible now and it has nothing to do with that “chasm” that you assume lies to the left of Fidel.

 

Lastly, a leftist alternative in Cuba must reclaim with force and determination the problem of the essential freedoms. We have to only demilitarize the brains and stop suspecting that behind every Cuban hides a potential “agent of imperialism” and immediately the subject becomes a blinding light. Pray tell us, how would a project to build socialism be affected should 12 million Cubans enjoy –among a thousand other prerogatives – the possibility of speaking, traveling or organizing in whatever shape or form they see fit? Let’s repeat one of your sentences: “All young people today who harbor political questions, those worthy of being heard, will always be of the left, anarchist, Trotskyite etc. But ALL are revolutionary”. Very well, stop playing hide and seek and be sincere with yourself and your readers: Do you or don’t you know that those revolutionaries can’t have the political organization they would like because that right is reserved for the Communist Party? Do you or don’t you know that those revolutionaries are not allowed to have their own library open to the public, can’t put on a radio show, can’t meet without asking permission, can’t have their own newspaper nor can they freely defend their orientation in labor, youth, neighborhood, gender-based, or ecological movements? These things require a framework of freedom actually non-existent and demand not state intervention but autonomy, they demand nothing less than the socially guaranteed possibility that every collective – whatever its nature, as long as it doesn’t threaten the other’s freedom – set its own rules. You enjoy a privileged position Celia, and you cannot have missed that the obsession with surveillance, control, repression etc. is one thing, and another very different thing is freedom. On what side do you think socialism and the left are? We know your preoccupation with the causes for the fall of the Soviet block: then, don’t you think that the fatal disregard for freedom displayed by them might have had at least something to do with the debacle? This experience is a gold mine of teachings and they unequivocally say, in this beginning of the XXI century, that socialism can no longer be conceived as the spontaneous outcome of a vaporous historical necessity or as a sophisticated operation in social engineering or the genius of a messianic will. XXI century socialism can only be built starting from the collective consciousness and such cannot flourish except from a root of liberty. And once again Celia, this has nothing to do with the “chasm”.

 

For a leftist alternative for all Cubans

 

Demilitarization, self-management, basic freedoms: three minimal elements and three roads to travel to make a leftist alternative in Cuba and to involve in it not the current ruling elite but the whole of the Cuban people. These proposals are not the “maximum program” of the anarchists and they may perhaps be qualified as “reformist” in the current Cuban context. However, they are a good base for the articulation of a really leftist policy for Cuba. You know better than we what degree of participation and commitment Cuban communists will have to have – in particular the younger ones – with this policy and what weight may have within the Party those who subscribe to this type of orientation. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that it overwhelms the Party’s organization and makes room for, among others, the currents that you yourself have recognized as revolutionary. For the same reason, there’s also no doubt that that policy clashes head on with a constellation of interests, privileges and expectations that are clearly situated to its right, within and without the Communist Party: a situation and a process that, if our memory doesn’t fail us, up until a few years ago were considered part of the class struggle.

 

Be that as it may, Celia, we must go on fine tuning the analysis and strengthening the will. If we have been ironic with you in many instances in this letter is due to the fact that we understand that you have not yet immersed yourself in the problem nor are you anywhere near ready to come out publicly with your real roots. Your intentions seem sincere and perhaps even compatible, but you still speak with a half tongue, you get distracted with metaphors that go nowhere and you haven’t had the courage to put on the table the fabric of concrete conflicts that underlie the process of building a leftist alternative for Cuba. Bread is bread and wine is wine Celia: that is the real start of any alternative that pretends to remain firm before the eventual adversities and not start from the palace intrigues but from the collective conscience of the Cuban people. You have carefully avoided talk of factional conflict but you must agree with us that it is precisely what everybody reads between your lines. And you also know that the fight must be fought at any price because what’s at stake is nothing less than the future of our beloved Cuban people. That struggle, Celia, can only be fought with clear ideas, with precise ideas, with ideas of strength and not with the customary odes to the untouchable figure of Fidel; it can only be waged with people organized around their deepest convictions and not with vague warnings or diffuse insinuations about the comings and goings of the elite. You have to pay the ideological price and you suffer directly the pressures from the system, that is understandable and it makes your position prone to difficulties and harassment. But at least you can speak, Celia, and that’s a possibility the majority of us Cubans do not have. We everyday Cubans have many disadvantages compared to you, and a single but enormous advantage: we already know that El Cid Campeador will not return astride Babieca and we also know that to the left of Fidel there isn’t any chasm, any cliff, any deep hole. What opens up, not to the right of Fidel but to his left, Celia, is nothing more nor less than the wide course of liberty.

 

Cuban Libertarian Movement   //   April 2005

Reflections on the VI Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle and the new Latin American left

 

* The Cuban Libertarian Movement (MLC) presents for collective debate its reflections on the declarations made by the EZLN (the Zapatista rebels) in July 2005 in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. 

 

On January 1st, 1994 the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico came into effect, and along with the new year, spoiling the party of the powerful, from deep within the forgotten Lacandona jungle also came on scene “the fire and the word” of the Zapatista rebels. Back then the whole world seemed to march without too much upheaval or energetic opposition towards “the end of History” and was doing so via “globalization” and neo-liberalism; that is – lest we forget and assume erroneously that those words explain everything – via the present hegemonic model adopted by the state’s system of control and transnational capitalism; that is, the currently prevalent models of large scale domination and exploitation. In such a hopeless context, the Zapatista outbreak meant a strong breeze of fresh air and a loud confirmation – anticipated, naturally, in many but less resounding gestures of resistance all over the world – that History continued its course and that nothing had put a stop to people’s struggles. Thus it was lauded from the beginning by leftist groups of diverse colors and thus it was also received by the Cuban Libertarian Movement who then gave its initial support to community projects in the Lacandona jungle such as the anti-authoritarian school May 1st or the direct solidarity camp Chicago Martyrs. For us, then as now, the emergence and development of the Zapatista National Liberation Army and its deeds make sense and demand a new look as part of the emergence and development of a new Latin American revolutionary left. The form, the profile and the orientations of that constellation of left groups and practices are one of our basic issues; therefore we must, within that frame of reference, take our position on the road the EZLN is on and its recent VI Declaration of the Lacandona jungle, as well as on its treatment and derivations. We will do so, with the solidarity and respect the Zapatista movement has earned on its merits whose proclamation is not necessary, but also without omitting – this would be an inconceivable  demonstration of demagoguery and opportunism – the criticism we deem applicable regarding contributions to the slow and laborious process of consolidating the new Latin American revolutionary left.

 

What Left and where do we find it?

 

Let’s start at the beginning and answer the mother of all questions: what is that new Latin American revolutionary left we speak of? For starters, there is no doubt that left is the one that has not renounced utopia neither by word or deed, and that, in spite of everything, finds its main encouragement in an utopia that could be generally defined as a thick web of relationships among free, equal and mutually supportive beings; an utopia capable of identifying its distant and venerable beginnings and of reclaiming them for their much needed actualization.  That left that feeds on not only its own full development but also on the other’s emptiness and grows within the hopeless and widely open space  created by the resounding failures of the “actually existing socialism” and the immediate defection of neo-liberal anti-utopia. This is the left that has learned to recognize and look askance at the narrow and dry road left on the wake of the guerrilla vanguards later become some exclusive and excluding party, civil or military populism and social-democratic reformism; this is the left that doesn’t feel represented by any authority and even questions the meaning of “representation”, that seeks itself among the cries of “let them all go!” and the whispering promise  to “change the world without taking power”; the left that depends on the non-negotiable autonomy of grassroots social movements as the template for a new world and that in self-management and direct action finds its truest expression. A left that surely the EZLN wants to belong to and that, in open reciprocity, finds in it one of its most visible manifestations. 

 

Now then, neither that new left nor the EZLN are finished structures that answer to a rigorous and extensive plan of construction but instead must be thought of as work in progress, characterized here and there by inevitable doubts and innovations founded on the needs of practices that are rabidly antagonistic. For example, the EZLN makes sense if interpreted as a guerrilla movement in transition. Its origins are more or less marked by the parameters typical of Latin American guerrillas of the 60’s and 70’s: “national liberation” as an informing concept, the pride of feeling and self-proclaiming as an “army”, the mystique of the “commandants”, certain symbolic reminiscences, etc., not really successful parameters and about which the EZLN doesn’t seem to have yet performed an in-depth critique. Its own actions have led it to adopt a profile that no longer responds to the old model. Not only because the “war of liberation” in its classical sense lasted barely 12 days but also because already by January 1st 1996 – the Fourth Declaration – the EZLN gave us the happy surprise of calling for the formation of “a political force that is not a political party” and indicating that it didn’t aspire to take power. To put it in our own terms: neither the old guerrilla vanguard nor social-democratic reformism. Neither – even less- the idols of populist salvation that would hardly find themselves at home among the anonymous every day events of the Lacandona jungle. That which, back then was beginning to acquire its highest relevance is precisely what we’re most interested in highlighting as a milestone of the new Latin American left: the autonomy of grassroots social movements; an autonomy that, within the EZLN’s sphere of action in Chiapas, is that of the communities of the first peoples.

 

Forwards and backwards of the Zapatista movement

 

Within the complex trajectory of the EZLN shadows and lights have, from the beginning, coexisted. Looking to legitimately widen its breadth and project its fight to the whole Mexican state, the EZLN rubbed elbows with, or glanced and winked with certain familiarity at the dominant institutions while expanding and consolidating its regional autonomy. The former only produced mediated acknowledgements, broken pacts, delays and failures, the latter, in contrast, cemented its hold on its immediate sphere of influence. And, just like the former led to the episodic formation of large political superstructures that voluntarily or not were delivered to the dynamics of the State or its implicit environment of action and later were trapped in its steel claws (National Democratic Convention, Movement of National Liberation, Committee of Concord and Pacification, etc), the latter facilitated, from August 2003 on, the emergence of a larger participation on the part of the Zapatista communities and a possibly healthy redefinition of the EZLN; now aiming –although never totally nor with convincing energy – to perform more as accompaniment than unnecessary first violin. This alternative way of thinking about politics and this latest course of action have allowed the formation of the five autonomous regions in Chiapas and the (not very well) denominated councils of good government; a reshuffling of roles far from being resolved and that has a lot to do with the debates and problems of the new Latin American revolutionary left. Lights and shadows through which the new EZLN has made manifest, either the fusion, without a preconceived plan, of old and new elements combining – very much like a movement in transition, as we have said – some of the practices of a conventional guerrilla army with the indispensable dares claimed by grassroots organizations as they build their autonomy. This play of lights and shadows can’t help but have an effect on the Sixth Declaration and “the other campaign” which we need to address immediately. 

 

It is fitting to start by being fair and consequent: if there’s anything the EZLN has made perfectly clear in its Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona jungle is that it feels cheated and that the main agents of the fiasco are the institutional political parties, with its leaders first of all. Their wording in this respect leaves little room for exegesis too complex and needlessly sinuous: “the politicians have clearly shown that they have no decency and are just a bunch of scoundrels that only think of earning lots of money as the bad governors they are. We must remember this because you will see that now they’re going to say that they will recognize indigenous rights, but this is a lie they tell us so we vote for them, but they already had their chance and didn’t come through.” Chances and defaults that – it all must be said with even clarity – run through every country’s history of “representative” democracy and come together each with its own characteristics in a hypothetical tale of universal infamy. It being so, it is proper that the EZLN wants to leave outside its expectations once and for all the institutional system of parties, wants to trace a clear dividing line in that sense and wants to orient its message in another direction: “a new step forward in the indigenous struggle is only possible if the indigenous join the workers, peasants, students, teachers, employees … that is, workers of town and country.” In other words, going further out and widening the spectrum of movements of resistance: “in this globalization of rebellion appear not only the rural and urban workers, but also others appear that are prosecuted and held in contempt precisely because they don’t allow themselves to be dominated, such as women, young people, indigenous people, homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals, immigrants, and many other groups that exist all over the world but that we don’t see nor hear until they cry out enough already, and they rise up, and then we see them, and hear them, and we learn from them.” A web of oppression, exclusion and pain seems to be at the bottom of the longings and desires of the EZLN; and perhaps the Lacandona jungle can be felt pulsating behind and under these words, words that not because they’re deliberately simple lack a deep and dear meaning. 

 

It is possible to agree with the immediate horizon in practically everything: the more or less stable articulation of these resistance movements behind a leftist program of struggle and the collective start of a “national campaign to build another way of doing politics”. Another way of doing politics: this should be understood as totally different from that developed in a shameless contemptuous way by the electoral parties, always embarked in the rhythmic and spasmodic succession of seductive promises, amnesias without description and opportunistic justifications. Here we have, for instance, a new Zapatista attack: “And those electoral parties not only don’t defend, but they are the first to be at the service of foreigners, mainly the United States, and are the ones who deceive us, making us look the other way while they sell off everything and keep the money”. Irrefutable judgments are these that the VI Declaration also extends with some nuances to the bureaucratic and defeatist labor movement: “And if the workers were in their union to legally demand their rights, then no, right now the union tells them they have to buck up and accept a lower salary or less hours or less benefits, or else the company closes and goes to another country”. A different way of doing politics about which not many things are specified but must surely be understood as an option for direct democracy as opposed to hierarchical and crystallized “representations”; an option for the people’s active participation with all its potential as opposed to the systematic exclusion that has always benefited technocrats and “know-it-alls”; an option for sincerity, dialog among equals and the shared elaboration of those dreams that are common to all as opposed to the insensible and absurd fair of the vanities where dissembling and lying run the house. The Declaration doesn’t say it, but such things can be implicit inasmuch they seem to be the authentic road to the formation and development of the indigenous Zapatista communities, essential signs of their existence and their consolidation.

 

Constitutional change: a road to nowhere

 

It’s a good thing there aren’t many definitions or a detailed and suffocating program to subscribe to, since the presence of such things would be more an invitation to adhesion than to dialogue; consideration of Mexican grassroots social movements more as a passive audience or an empty container than as a living and active fabric, capable of producing its own words and its own fire. Nevertheless there is a unique programmatic element the EZLN seems to take as axiomatic and tacitly agreed to, an element that can be a source of errors of vision and multiple strategic mistakes: “a new Constitution”. Will this be an elliptical way of referring to the constituent basis of a new Mexican society, and therefore including the conviction that this requires no more nor less a radical subversion of its power relations? Or perhaps it attempts to embark the autonomous social movements on a conventional constitutional reform whose transactions and game rules have been previously defined along the norms in force and as such, subjected beforehand to those very same power relations? On its face, it would seem that the EZLN holds a nostalgic idea of the Mexican Constitution that doesn’t hold up to an analysis in depth. Let’s see: “the Constitution has been fondled and changed. It is no longer that which had the rights and liberties of the working people, but now it has the rights and liberties of the neo-liberals to obtain their huge profits. The judges are there to serve those neo-liberals because they always rule in their favor, and those who aren’t rich get only injustice, prison or the cemetery.” But, did Mexico ever have a constitution that really consecrated, without ifs and buts, and in its widest expression “the liberties of the working people”? This type of reasoning might perhaps lead to the belief that the EZLN has understood very well the articulations of power that characterize the state’s political parties but has not yet grasped those that characterize the state itself. However, there’s no mystery in this and it can be stated, paraphrasing Marcos, in very simple words: the parties are like they are because the state is like it is. 

 

Something that should be beyond any discussion is that the state is a specific structure of domination, a hierarchical and codified form of social power relations and a system designed to self-perpetuate. This being so, the correct description the EZLN makes of the state’s party system cannot be founded in the malevolence, the perverse character or the venality of its leaders but must find a substantial part of its reasoning in the fact that such parties establish their basic orientation as an operation to capture the reins of the State. And it is precisely because of this that such parties adopt a shape that faithfully reproduces the State in their own actions: that is why they constitute themselves as instances of control and disciplining of its affiliates; that is why they assign deferential attributions to each of their own organs in their pyramidal existence; and that is why they believe that their survival, beyond any historical or social consideration, should be seen by “the voters” –their own and the other’s – as a blessing from heaven. We anarchists have been so convinced for over 130 years and the subsequent historical experience has only confirmed those old intuitions, and has done so without presenting, since then, a single exception to our anxious and expectant eyes. Furthermore: if in the past it was said “power corrupts” today we can say that even the mere aspiration to power also corrupts, beforehand and with plenty of room.

 

In this we must be clear and coherent. How does one reconcile the EZLN saying “we fight to be free, to not have to change master every six years” with the EZLN who speaks of “a new Constitution”? Can perhaps a Magna Carta transacted and compacted by necessity with the current state organization, according to the traditional sense of the expression, be reconciled with the struggle for freedom? It would seem not, and it would also seem that the correct orientation is exactly the contrary: the struggle for freedom starts with the autonomic formation of grassroots social movements and develops within it, while the negotiated pursuit of a new Constitution is condemned to be mired in the tortuous maze of the State and its endless machinations. Such conclusion doesn’t need any erudite study in comparative politics, it’s more than enough with the experience of the EZLN in similar matters. The fundamental and radical rejection to the state’s party system is an important conceptual step that only requires its necessary complement: the rejection of the narrow road of the state that will allow unfettered transit without chains or distractions along the fertile road of autonomy.  This autonomy of the social movements, set within the frame of territorial action they decide to give themselves, is the libertarian condition par excellence: an autonomy that requires emancipation from all-knowing power, external and superior, in order for each collective to design, with the largest margin of liberty possible, its own living relationships and its own recourses to action; without conditions or extortions, thinking themselves and their becoming and trusting in their own abilities rather than predestinations, messiahs, doctrines, conspiracies or randomness that –as is well known – have never nor will ever lead anywhere.

 

We all could “walk by asking” and “command by obeying”

 

There are many more things that could be argued in solidarity with the EZLN regarding their Sixth Declaration, or better yet, do so with all the Zapatista communities and, in general, about the people’s lives and struggles.

 

For example, we would like to go deeper on globalization and neo-liberalism, so that among us all we can trace a map of the world that is not reproducible exclusively in black and white, to see that in this arena there are more than two gladiators and it’s necessary to identify a whole gamut of local relationships articulated for our own convenience and not out of pure obsequiousness to the world’s great centers of power. In the end capitalism also finds citizenship papers and its specific multinational facade in Mexico, without the imperative of an external agent to give it life, impulse and projection. This type of consideration will allow us to make common, with almost complete certainty, the conviction that not only sold out politicians and their corrupt followings are responsible for the situation but also there are certain social levels that also try hard maintaining the status quo. This might bring us to share definitions much more markedly anti-capitalist, anti-state and anti-bureaucratic that perhaps the EZLN has already formulated within itself but has not yet made completely manifest.

 

We’d like to reflect in a brotherly way on a sentence of the Sixth Declaration to which we assign special importance and that illustrates one of the distinctive features of the EZLN all this time: “that is, on top the democratic political commanding and below the military obeying. Or perhaps even better that there be no below but everything level, with no military, and that is why the Zapatistas are soldiers so that there be no more soldiers”. Really, if everything were “level” nobody would command and nobody would obey but each act out of their own convictions, their own possibilities and their own commitments with the agreements freely adopted. And we would say that it’s dangerous and paradoxical this having soldiers so as not to have soldiers because then –what a mess of words! we would always need some soldiers so there would be no more soldiers. It seems much better, more direct and clearer to say that we are anti-military, and then really get to work, fully and not half-hearted, for the dissolution of all armies.

 

We would like to discuss in more detail with our comrades from the Lacandona jungle the motives that cause our enthusiasm with the idea of bringing together all the Mexican social movements in a wide net without exclusion. But even then, we would like to maintain a respectful discrepancy with respect to a proceeding that might not be the best. We think that this net should not have a center and, precisely because of this, the EZLN should not have self-attributed the role of initial coordinator assigning to itself the administration of a dialogue where the participants have already been previously categorized and meet according to the dispositions in regards to dates, place and agenda prescribed by the CCRI. It surely would have been better that the dates would have resulted from a broad previous consultation, that the place would be equidistant and that the initial agenda would be nothing but the free flow of the irrevocable popular voice. Perhaps there’s no cause for mistrusting the intentions and believe that this gathering is nothing more than a foundational necessity and that there will be plenty of future opportunities for things to be different.

 

Cuba: so near Chiapas, so far from the EZLN

 

We’d like to expound these things and many others, but right now it only seems right to place the questions. There is, however, an issue we can’t avoid at this time and that, as the Cuban Libertarian Movement, especially and directly interests us. We think it’s great that the EZLN manifest its solidarity with the people struggling in Latin America and the world and we could issue our own declarations to the effect. Inasmuch as people’s struggles happen everywhere, we think it’s a good literary image to say that we can’t very well tell where to deliver the EZLN’s testimonies of solidarity. What is not clear, then, is the ideological and political mechanism whereby the peoples of the world are “not locatable” whereas the Cuban people can find their seat, their natural residence and their legitimate representation at their government’s embassy in Mexico City. Seeing things this way, it’s as if the EZLN interrupted almost all its concepts, praxis and learning at the very moment of landing in Cuba. What natural and coherent link can there be between a platform that seeks to exalt the fabric of Mexican society through its grassroots social movements and another that assumes that its Cuban equivalent is totally absorbed by its government. Furthermore, does the EZLN believe that the Cuban government embodies the model of a new Latin American revolutionary left or is disposed to participate in it, eve as a discreet fellow traveler? Does the EZLN believe that they must do in Mexico what the Cuban “Communist” Party has done in Cuba? Does the EZLN deem contradictory and inconsequent to solidly marry the autonomy of the grassroots communities with a centralizing and excluding regime? Does the EZLN think that the self-expression of the Cuban people could be autonomous popular organizations whose appearance the government carefully and systematically tries to forestall by means of preventive repression? What answers, finally, can the EZLN give to such grave questions?

 

In addition, the EZLN can’t ignore or forget that during four long decades the Cuban and the Mexican government maintained fraternal relations; one of the best moments can surely be found around the complicit silence on the part of the Cuban government about the massacre of Tlatelolco in 1968 and the sending of athletes to the Olympic games immediately following; in spite of calls for the boycott of the games at the time by the Mexican left. There is a fraternal inter-states relationship that is not hard to personify in the friendship between Fidel Castro and Carlos Salinas de Gortari, part of whose fortune – amassed thanks to the exploitation of the Mexican worker – today is invested in Cuban territory.  Given these antecedents, and many others of a similar character, the EZLN should have no difficulty verifying that, for the Cuban ruling elite, the axis of international relations does not consist of the people’s struggles but instead these struggles are re-interpreted at will according to the type of relationship the ruling monopoly party decides to have with the rest of the governments, if and when they can breathe a little oxygen to its capacity for survival. How can you explain, if not, that Cuban diplomacy has supported the struggles against South Africa’s apartheid and has also shown extreme solidarity with the Suharto regime in Indonesia, who maintained a similar situation in East Timor? What coherence can there be between subscribing to the rights of African peoples to define their own destiny while at the same time sending troops of occupation to face Eritrean independence fighters according to the needs of the Soviet’s chess game, or now in a virtually ludicrous register, training Idi Amin’s military escort? What justification does the Cuban government have to send a vice-president to take part in the Davos forum and later send its president of the National Assembly to protest in Porto Alegre against the same forum? How can it be that racism is so strongly condemned at the UN World Conference on the subject that took place in Durban and later refusing all invitations to analyze the reasons why there’s an over-representation of Black people in Cuba’s jails. And so on, as far as anybody’s critical curiosity might take them.

 

By the way: is it necessary to remind the EZLN of the living conditions of the Cuban people and their absolute impossibility to self-organize autonomously or even to express themselves to face the situation? We think any concrete reference is unnecessary at this moment and we want to believe that the mention of the embassy of the Cuban government in Mexico City is only a mistake; a lapse that can be amended at the earliest opportunity. We want to believe it is so because what’s at stake is a lot more important and we have so insinuated from the beginning. Let’s repeat it and keep it present from now on: what matters is the formation, the profile and the orientation of a constellation of rebel groups and practices that today meet the conditions to nurture the new Latin American revolutionary left. In this work of creation there can be no carelessness nor levity nor polite phrases. In this work of creation the Cuban government has nothing to contribute because the only genuine messages that will permit us to advance along the road of freedom will not issue from the bureaucrat’s offices in Havana but from the clashes and din that surge from deep below and that below find their unmistakable echoes. It is there with the Ecuadorian “outlaws”, the Mapuche resistance, the Cochabamba peasants, the occupied factories in Argentina, the land occupations in Brasil and, of course, also in the experiences and trials that today are taking place in the Lacandona jungle.

 

Movimiento Libertario Cubano

Another Cuba is possible: A response to Diego Farpon (2005)

 

* The Movimiento Libertario Cubano responds to the attempt to justify the Castro regime on the basis of fraudulent interpretation of anarchist authors and proposals.

 

Diego Farpon, the notorious militant of the “Red current,” (in Spain) recently wrote, “Another world is possible: Cuba.” Originally published on the website, Kaos, (October 2005), it seems as though this was especially directed to persuade anarchists of their repeated errors, and has become widely noted.

 

For Diego Farpon there are two types of anarchists: the first are sectarian, dogmatic, Buddhists, and in addition to this, reinforce their ideological convictions through reading information from the Pentagon; while the second type – the “real” anarchists – have noticed with unequal lucidity that the Cuban government subscribes to libertarian communism; whether or not the government acknowledges this, nor shows any indication of it. In other words, the “true” anarchist thinks similarly to Diego Farpon, and must have a judicious, serene, and respectfully condescending attitude towards the Cuban government. Meanwhile everyone else must only be followers of exemplarily political scientists that allow the first type of anarchist to exist.

 

Let us leave Farpon’s description of the neoliberal scarp yard of the beneficiary State as a side note, and let us go on directly to the center of Farponian digression. Farpon begins with a ‘Bakunin-esque wink’: “According to Bakunin, the State is the negation of humanity, and he was not without reason.”

 

Farpon goes on to say that “Cuba is not a state of the old way, nor of the modern, because today like yesterday the state only served the interest of the dominant classes. Cuba is not like the rest of the states, where the most powerful are the beneficiaries of the system. Cuba has demonstrated that another type of state is possible: a state that defends the weak, the workers, the ones who need it. We are not confused: we need this type of state, not the traditional kind.” Farpon concludes by saying that “It is Cuba, as Guerin said, that contributed to the formation of a communist mentality, of an individual liberated from the mercantile economy. Bakunin, without a doubt, would take note of this contribution and would not throw stones against Cuba. Not to sink it at least.” Know this, anarchists, of here and now: if Bakunin were still alive, would he be affiliated with the Cuban Communist Party and would he abdicate his previous convictions or would he contemplate, quite perplexed, the first and most prodigious example of the statist logic?

 

It is significant to analyze Farpon’s statements with particular thoroughness. On one hand, it is important to recognize that, effectively, not all States are the same: there are large and small, traditional and modern, weak and powerful, bourgeoisies and “proletariat,” multi-racial, liberal, fascist, beneficiary, pastoral, bureaucratic, “democratic”, totalitarian, warmongering, neutral, monarchic, republican, lay, also integrist, etc., etc., It doesn’t reach, then, to localize the existence of a State or to know with certainty what political dynamic may be its intention. But it is possible to count with complete security, that whatever descriptive adjective of the State in question, we will be in the presence of a completely hierarchical structure, of a skewed distribution of power highly codified, and with a group of institutionalized positions of domination; this is all precisely within the very definition of the State.

 

It is because of this that serious revolutions can only be carried out, without any exception, from outside of the State, and they stop being revolutions when they are inextricably linked to it all the same.

 

Just as Diego Farpon points out, Bakunin was right with regard to the events of 1872, with the division of the first International; but what is more interesting to conclude is that those very reasons remain valid today. Only with great religious exaltation is it possible to maintain or even suggest that “Cuba has demonstrated that another state is possible;” as if to say that Cuba was some sort of lucky or magical State; a great exception in all of the exceptions produced; a territory of fables, myths and irrationalities where all of these concepts in their sublime moment were interrupted.

 

And, without a doubt, no matter how long faith waits for “revolutionary” ecstasy, the exceptions never fail to appear. The Cuban government, through the use of official propaganda, could continue insisting, in its fraudulent identification between the State, the people, the revolution and Fidel Castro, but that does not dim the necessity of critical thought in order to meticulously discern between each of these instances and the conditions in which they develop. The Cuban State can demonstrate a greater concern for it’s citizens than other governments with respect to healthcare, education, food and housing, but it would not be able to prevent the rashness of rigorous establishments for these basic necessities, nor the fact that when it comes to satisfying these needs, the dominant class receives much higher quantities and quality than do the rest of the population. The Cuban government will continue to go on about sovereignty, independence, and “national” dignity, but none of that will hide its phenomenal inefficiency on the matter, the existence of an old Soviet subsidy, or the current Venezuelan subsidy, or that a good part of its existence relies, among other things, on the currency remittances from foreigners, or by the government’s opening to the direct foreign investment that today is made up of over 392 transnational companies.

 

Diego Farpon will continue fantasizing about the things he wants to see in Cuba, and will regurgitate respect for Cuba with how it is an “example” and “model” that, has also made it “impossible to exploit the worker.” But none of this justifies the fact that Cuban workers are subject to laborious conditions, miserable salaries, and radical alienation with regard to production decisions. Perhaps Diego has ignored that the Cuban government has made one definitive and immodifiable choice in its hegemonic, buro-technocratic, militaristic and callous centralized planning in making alternative self-management detrimental? Diego Farpon will continue to suggest statements such as the following: “Cuba, of course, is not the aim, but it is a way to socialism. And at the moment, it is the only way that has proven to be viable.” Must we wait another 46 years, 9 months, four days and some hours only to capriciously confirm that the suggested path leads everywhere but to a socialist society? Or is it that the fervent and trusted Farpon will never take notice that there is no path of socialist development, especially not until “vanguardist,” party elitism, and statist strategies of repression and co-action are eradicated?

 

Diego Farpon does not notice in any given moment that, with regard to Cuba, it is necessary to recognize reality and not continue with a nostalgic exercise that invokes a revolution that forgets it’s original objectives and in place puts into power a misguided monopoly lost within statist labyrinths. How is it possible that he treats those who are “dogmatic” or “sectarian” critics with such profoundness but fails to do so with the very statist organization on who those critiques fall?

 

On our behalf, it is clear that we do not accept being trapped within the limitations of the State. We are not Buddhists, nor have we entrusted our future to the heads of the church: we are anarchists, and, precisely because of this, we are radically convinced that the Cuban revolution is not a cult object to mystify, nor do we identify it with the State structure. Instead, for us it is a social movement that must be recovered, and it is a gathering of passions that must be untangled starting today. We don’t believe in “commanders” nor in “leaders”; instead, we place our hopes in the autonomy of the most humble people, in organizations that freely know how to give themselves that emancipatory push. And, naturally, we don’t forget, that which worries Farpon, “the exterior pressure, the influence of the capitalist world and of the United States.” We know it very well, just as we know the interior erosion of the bureaucracy and its specific forms of capitalist exploitation. We do not want for Cuba the future of Romania, of Poland or Nicaragua, neither that of China, Vietnam or North Korea: what we do want is to transcend the wide channel of socialism united with the towns of Cuba and the rest of the world, and instead make this channel one and the same with liberation.

 

by Movimiento Libertario Cubano

James Petras’ Photographs of Cuba Before and After Developing: An anarchist commentary on his declarations about Cuba (2006)

 

* The Cuban Libertarian Movement (MLC – Movimiento Libertario Cubano) makes some pertinent observations about certain declarations by somebody who was until recently an unconditional defender of the Cuban revolution. 

 

It’s long been known that James Petras is one of the most devoted in the choir that sings the praises of the Cuban government. Even in that rare moment when the doors of critical reflection opened up for a left long used to look askance – March and April 2003, notwithstanding death penalties and massive imprisonment – Petras shot at those followers who dared hesitate and doubt more than the usual, an article that soon mutated into a command: “The intellectuals’ responsibility: Cuba, the United States and human rights” (www.rebelion.org; May 6 2003). There, among other genial blunders he brands morality as “lack of honesty”. He also recklessly attacks those who, when talking about Cuba, «make a gamut of unjustified accusations and falsifications out of any context that could help clarify the questions and provide a well reasoned base for … ‘the moral imperatives’». According to Petras, the critics of that time were victims of a sudden attack of irresponsibility: «The total lack of seriousness in Chomsky, Zinn, Sontag and Wallerstein’s moral diktats is due to their failure to recognize the imminent threat of war by the United States with weapons of mass destruction, advertised beforehand». Having lost all sense of moderation, he pronounces the more or less definitive sentence: «What’s truly shameful is that they ignore the big accomplishments of the Cuban revolution in labor, education, health and equality, ignore her heroic and principled opposition to the imperial wars – Cuba is the only nation that says it clearly – and ignore her steadfastness resisting almost fifty years of invasions» (sic). Back then, in spite of gross violations of human rights, the Cuban government enjoyed total immunity and whoever dared minimally transgress the inviolable precept would see falling upon their heads James Petras’ imprecations; the very same exalted thinker who systematically assumes radical and socializing positions everywhere in the world except in Cuba, shamelessly vying for the top spot among the temple’s guardians.

 

As time went on, and while the threats from the United States continue in a state of cataleptic and repetitious routine and the invasions never happen; Petras seems to have mellowed some, putting aside for the moment his avenging sword and his fiery condemnations. For starters, on Monday February 20 of this year, in an interview by CX36 Radio Centenario of Montevideo (Uruguay) and reprinted [in Spanish] a day later in La Haine (www.lahaine.org/index.php?blog=3&p=12739&more=1&c=1) he critically examines the Cuban situation, doing so, surprise surprise, not against the most egregious abuses of power by the centralized and excluding government, but against the supposedly unassailable social achievements of the “revolution”. Keep in mind his statements, and to avoid any misunderstanding we repeat them verbatim below:

 

«-There are things I believe are part of a process of development, these are the contradictions Cuba has shown in regard to the challenges, belatedly the government starts to take measures which I believe necessary, as with the housing problem with a deficit of approximately one million houses. The government’s plan is to build 100 thousand houses per year as the housing situation is dire and there’s great need.

- The people demand the start of this program given the positive international policies Cuba maintains with respect to health assistance, but I believe that conditions at clinics and hospitals in Cuba have gotten worse, in my personal opinion. I believe they have to concentrate more on development and restoration, on the improvement of the medical infrastructure that I think is badly deteriorated in Cuba, in spite of some efforts at mending them currently underway. In contrast, I think there are some clinics in Africa and Venezuela that are better than what the Cuban people has. This internationalism is very positive but I believe people demand more internal development; this is something that has to be balanced.

- The government has begun an exploratory program on health and education and it is to be seen whether this internal development program succeeds, which is necessary as they now have more resources, and the political decisions on how this surplus is utilized are very important. This surplus comes from an electricity savings plan that according to Castro could climb to one billion dollars.

- There’s also the problem of wastefulness, even the theft of state’s resources, particularly gasoline; this has been acknowledged and thrown at the new generations as a challenge to rectify the situation and replace the gas vendors who are committing these crimes. But I’ll tell you (… ) what worries me, more than the petty theft of individual functionaries or employees is the problem of ministers tolerating the theft of hundreds of millions. What were they doing? I asked, were they asleep or were they involved in the theft and didn’t fire anybody? I asked why, if this were to happen in any public or private enterprise, they didn’t own up. This is very serious. They should get a kick in the ass at the minimum, take them to trial.

- They have launched a program to rectify, mobilizing people and setting some urgent matters straight. I believe the current team is politically responsible and begins to acknowledge these problems, and also the problem of balancing black people’s participation in society. One notices in many places a disproportionately white presence and I believe there’s a lot of work to do here.

- I believe these points are real; it’s a shame people have to wait for Fidel to throw the ball for things to start to take shape. I believe the intellectuals and the politicians have to take initiatives and not always wait for Fidel to give the speech in order for the problem to suddenly come to the surface.»

 

Thus, Petras regales us with a series of six photographs of Cuban society that, even if he doesn’t say it with the requisite drama and the essential punch, touch upon main features of the “socialist” construct. They’re still negatives of photos, blurry with undefined contours, without obvious articulation; but, even in this confused state, are more than enough to embark on some exemplary reading. Most curious in this affair is that if these photos had been taken by a militant of the MLC, we wouldn’t have long to wait before hearing the usual list of accusations: “imperialism useful idiots”, “worms in the service of a foreign power”, “incorrigible dividers”, “hopeless liberals” when not actually “CIA agents”. Like it or not, these photos don’t belong to us, they’re James Petras’ who, as we insinuated, is a loyal and incorruptible “friend of the process of building socialism”; that is, in plain language, friend of the Cuban government, definitively, irrevocably and “revolutionarily” constituted as such.

 

Developing shows the inconsistancies

 

Let’s add the first drops of development solution and let’s try to decipher with a bit more light, one by one and in order, the skimpy proposals of Petras’. What do they tell us?

 

1) Cuban “socialism” suffers from a huge housing crisis since we face not only a very large deficit but you would also have to consider the decrepit state of the existing housing stock and the many situations of overcrowding. In the short term we see social struggles for access to urban space and even a budding squatter movement that has yet to be granted that noble condition by part of the revolutionary left.

2) Cuba’s health organization, a showpiece of the “process of building socialism” doesn’t have the remotest resemblance to the official version. This begs acknowledging and this is a feather on Petras’ cap, but he could also have remarked the not so socialist distance that exists between Maradona’s medical treatment or the ophthalmologic “miracles” and the medical treatment the common people get; which according to him can be worse than in Africa.

3) The “electricity savings plan” rather than a proactive governmental policy must be seen as an energy catastrophe -even with the generous oil subsidy from Venezuela – which the Cuban people suffer, mostly under the guise of continuous and unbearable blackouts. But sometimes light comes from the shadows and the people have started to make use of the darkness to paint graffiti and put up posters against the government.

4) Cuban “socialism” in its current stage of development has also created corruption and according to Petras’ well founded suspicions, it would be not just a bunch of anonymous bureaucrats at the bottom of the pyramid, but that corruption had found a home in the very Council of Ministers; that is, nothing less than the headquarters of the “revolution”, presided over, in public and with great notoriety, by the “commander in chief” in state.

5) After 47 years, 1 month and 20 days have passed since January 1 1959 and the date Petras wrote his opinions, it is finally acknowledged that the “revolution” has been incapable of solving the problem of racial discrimination, the latest confirmation that the state’s discourse on the matter lacks the ability to modify the real social dynamic. It’s obvious that Cuba’s black population noticed the problem long ago and there we also see stirring tremors of opposition.

6) The much touted critical culture alive in Cuba is a myth or a carefully planned clandestine exercise. It’s incredible that Petras shows surprise and complains that the “enlightened” discoveries and initiatives always come from Fidel Castro, more so when he himself should know well that the in depth critics that historically anticipated him had no choice but to pay the price by death, jail or exile.

 

In any case these observations are only a preview and now we must do the development proper, having already established a sketch as yet imprecise but very real of a popular mobilization in embryo rejecting the government’s performance. Now, whether James Petras likes it or not, the conclusion that follows from his naively sincere but also measured and partial photographic impressions is just this: the total failure on every count of a model of socialism militarized and under the spell of the caudillo. How can one think otherwise after confirming problems in housing, health, education and electrical supply; more so when they only affect the popular sectors but never even brush past the ruling elite? How is it that situations of social inequality go deeper than class position and affect the very large black population in the country? How come when it’s a proven fact that corruption affords the dominant class extra income above and beyond the institutionalized privileges they enjoy? When all the state traditions, customs, habits have established for all eternity that only Fidel Castro – the one and only, unequalled, indispensable shepherd of the Cuban people – can talk about the thorniest problems with no hanging noose of state’s repression tied around his neck nor “moral” and “revolutionary” condemnations falling upon his head? How can one think otherwise when it looks like neither the blockade nor the threats of invasion nor the clownish pronouncements of Condoleeza Rice nor the 90 miles that separate Cuba from Florida have anything to do with this situation? How come, James?

 

James Petras’ analytical limitation is because his camera is only capable of capturing the most glaring manifestations of the situation but misses the inner substance. In other words: the chronic problem with Petras is that he blindly believes in the misnomer of “rectification of errors” but can’t see that almost all of them could be reduced to a set of congenital, basic and fundamental errors-horrors that few in power or their clique of bored bureaucrats seem disposed to seriously discuss in depth. What we’re talking about is not confronting once again the dull succession of marches and countermarches or arguing whether the people will be allowed or not to have dollars in their hands; or if the peasants may or may not sell their produce in the towns, if the “paladares” [privately owned home restaurants -tn] will create a new class of “nouveau riche”, or whether the 60 watt light bulbs have to be replaced by 15 watt units in a new cycle of austerity, if gas station attendants will have to be replaced by social workers or if the construction of “socialism” depends on the recipe for Coppelia ice cream. No: the subject is much bigger and demands to put aside the eternal and erratic “talents” of Fidel Castro and deserves to be treated once and for all with due seriousness.

 

The hidden image

 

What would therefore be the in-depth discussion the dominant elite are not willing to tolerate in any way? In Cuba, today as always, the only dilemma worth considering is the autonomous action of the people vs. the never ending and unbearable tutelage of the “Communist” Party and its maximum pontiff; a self-awarded tutelage forever that has nothing left to rectify but its own existence. If James Petras is incapable of understanding the reasons why “intellectuals and politicians” don’t take the initiative that is precisely because his superficial perception of the problem doesn’t let him develop the photos he himself has willingly taken of Cuban reality. Because in that reality problems officially and legitimately acquire such status only when the infallible helmsman decides to make a turn more or less ingenuous that “rectifies” his own past decisions. Can anybody think that nobody but the “commander in chief” is the maker of all the “wonders” but always keeps himself behind the scene and completely away from whatever disaster has happened, happens and will happen in the process of “building socialism”? The answer to this is obvious and it’s long overdue that James Petras and so many like him dare take the necessary bad step and loose their virginity. We now add some additional details.

 

The failure of Cuban “socialism” is the failure of Leninist centralized planning in its impure Caribbean version. It is the failure of a strategy for “building socialism” based on the scientific hegemony of the techno-bureaucratic elite supposedly “enlightened” whose opinions and “vanguard” wisdom lie forever above self-management praxis. It is therefore the failure of an idea that infuses hierarchy in all state decisions – it doesn’t matter if it is planning the budget in the Guevara style or based upon the surplus value theory according to the old soviet vision; as they have alternated in Cuba – rather than of people’s autonomous decisions articulated in grass roots organizations. Besides it is the failure of a style upon which a militaristic leadership has been superimposed that dismantles the minimal “rationality” the soviet model could boast of; and not precisely because we think the latter worthy of admiration but because the Cuban version falls squarely in the terrain of the nonsensical. How else can we consider the centralized planning of a small peripheral country that gives such importance to a very expensive and wasteful police-military establishment whose only use is the control of the people and its daily operations for the greater glory of Castro? How else can we consider the inclusion in the centralized plan of all the occurrences and whims of the caudillo that go -in its most sublime expression and taking the productive achievements of “socialism” as if it were an Olympic event – from that failed sugar harvest of the 10 million tons to the building of freeways totally out of proportion with the number of vehicles, to such “brilliant” ideas such as raising crocodiles, or transforming every square meter of land into a coffee plantation or the exporting of toothpicks? James, could it be true that this may have something to do with the systemic lack of initiative on the part of the “intellectuals and politicians”?

 

The key to the Cuban problem has long ceased to be a problem to decipher and consists in basing the only possible form of socialist construction in the conscience and the will of the people. Today those single note echoes dare recognize that Cuban “socialism” can be reversible as a consequence of all its own errors and not because outside aggression: even Fidel Castro, in its speech of November 17 last year, took care of extending to his minions the corresponding “permission” to make such opinions. However, the latest check yields a very different result. The “socialism” built by the “Communist” party and its leader is not reversible for the simple reason that it never was and the only chance in sight is nothing less than the development of a vast autonomous project that returns to the people everything the state and its “vanguard” perversely took from them. And this is inseparable from an ample and lasting and unrestricted regime of liberties: liberty to think and opine, liberty to organize, liberty to mobilize and liberty for people to take charge of their own lives without mediation or interference. Because in the end, socialism will be libertarian or it will not be: a historical confirmation that James Petras’ timid, hesitant and belated step forward doesn’t quite acknowledge. 

Cuba 2007: Speaking with the Cuban Libertarian Movement

(MLC- Movimiento Libertario Cubano)

* Interview the Russian newspaper SITUATION -from libertarian collective Autonomous Action- regarding the current political picture in the island. A Spanish translation was published in El Libertario #50, Venezuela, 2007.

 

- Fidel Castro is in his last throes. Who do you think will rule in Cuba after his death?

º Fidel Castro is not dead yet, but even if he reappears, his role as leader of the revolution and chief of government is over. Raul has for now inherited the dictatorship but with his brother’s disappearance it’s unlikely he can exert power for long. Many factors indicate the opposite.

- Do you think Fidel is a dictator, yes or no?

º Somebody who’s been in power for almost half a century, violently crushing any opposition may be considered as much of a dictator as Stalin.

- What was Fidel’s policy with respect to other left movements (anarchists, Trotskyites, etc.)?

º In regards to the Trotskyites this question belongs to those who continue to romantically believe in Lev Davidovich. Some Cubans from that sect went into exile due to the repression following the death of Che Guevara. Anarchists were persecuted from the very beginning when some of our comrades were expelled from the unions, afterwards death, prison or exile was the medicine prescribed by the government against the Cuban anarchists.

- Brother Raúl doesn’t look like a strong politician, is that so?

º He doesn’t just seem weak, he is weak. He inherited the rank of chief of the Cuban army and Castro’s successor in 1959 as he was the only person the dictator could trust. He’s always been accustomed to taking orders from his brother and when his brother is gone he will not have the power he now has. For now he has delegated some sort of committee that in reality runs the government due to his brother’s incapacity. With the dictator gone, Raul will be left alone in a country that crumbles slowly and urgently demands political, social and economic change. Raul is incapable of filling Fidel’s shoes and we can’t rule out a violent popular uprising against the regime. At least it seems in Washington they expect the worst and are preparing for these events.

- The history of the Cuban anarchist movement is unknown in Russia. How long has it been around? How did it start?

º We should not be surprised that little is known about the Cuban anarchists even though Frank Fernandez left information in Moscow and Granada, but maybe it was with a different group. We recommend Frank Fernandez book (in English) for more information.

- Except for your web site, we have found this other site http://libertario.lautre.net/, but it doesn’t work. Is there any other libertarian group in Cuba besides you?

º We don’t think so, unless they have created another in Cuba.

- What is your relationship with the Cuban Communist Party?

º We maintain no communication nor relations with the PCC (Cuban Communist Party)

- Is change possible in the Cuban political situation after Fidel’s death, as happened in Russia between 1989 and 1993 after the fall of the USSR? In that case, how would the politics of the MLC change?

º It might be a possibility but we can’t answer the question for now. Political change implies a change in strategy, but the initial tactics will be dictated by our possibilities.

- What is Cuba’s political structure today? Soviet republic, dictatorship, something else?

º Cuban power structures were copied from the Soviet state in 1960. A constitution was drafted in 1976 which was a copy of Stalin’s 1936 constitution and is still in force.

- Today’s Russian political elite were able to stay in power by grabbing control of oil and gas. What keeps Cuba’s economy alive these days?

º Today Cuba’s economy is kept alive thanks to the free Venezuelan oil that Chavez sends, also because of the money from sent to Cuba from abroad by Cubans in exile and also because of tourism.

- Are there many Cubans unhappy because Cuba is socialist?

º Over 10% of the population lives abroad. Inside Cuba there’s a very weak civil opposition but it’s impossible to make a formal declaration by those opposed to the system, we can only cite statistics of those Cubans who apply to emigrate (almost a million) and not because Cuba is socialist, but because it is a dictatorship outside of time and space, too long and boring.

- How does the everyday citizen live? Can they travel freely in and out of Cuba? Can you criticize Castro? Can any Cuban buy a car for his family?

º The everyday Cuban lives in poverty and with little hope of improving unless there’s a change of system, as happened in Russia and Eastern Europe. It is forbidden to leave the country and even traveling from a city to another puts you under surveillance. It is forbidden to criticize Castro as he represents the government, national sovereignty, the economy etc. Any criticism is very dangerous and after a stern warning you can be thrown in prison if you persist, accused of counterrevolution. It’s practically impossible to buy a car, although there’s a black market, salaries are too low. Only government or army functionaries have access to this type of transportation.

Something smells different in Cuba (2008)

 

* With respect to the situation in Cuba these past few weeks, the Cuban Libertarian Movement – MLC (affinity group of Cuban anarchists in exile) speaks up to answer the unknowns and the challenges facing Cuban society. Ours is the voice of uncompromising commitment to freedom, equality and solidarity that has always been the sound of the Cuban anarchists. 

 

Indeed, something begins to smell different in Cuba; perhaps in tune with the flavor of the post-Fidel era. For starters, that verbosity that filled all spaces until the 26 of July of 2006 is no longer there, where it was heard for almost half a century. Since then, the prostrate “commander” has begun to write, but we all know that the written word doesn’t have the same spell as the spoken word and even less when it is elusive, erratic and lacking in interest to anybody who thinks outside of the personality cult. Maybe that is why so many, more than was foreseen, in the streets, in clandestine films, in household blogs, show a desire to liberate the people’s voice from the ties that bounded it. Even the first violins in the governmental orchestra, surely egged on by the same old confidential and carefully whispered commentaries growing louder by the day, have no choice but to recognize what would have been unthinkable years ago. Vice-president Carlos Lage, for example, recently proclaimed at the VII congress of the UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists): “The dual morality, the prohibitions, a press that doesn’t write of our reality as we would like to, the unwelcome inequalities, our dilapidated infrastructure, are wounds of war, but of a war we have won.” (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/siento-hoy-mas-orgulloso-nunca-escritores-artistas-cuba). It’s transition language, no doubt, since they can’t even keep alive much longer those moribund triumphal bellicose airs after admitting that the wounds are too many and too severe for a political regime self-conceived and presented to the world as “revolutionary” and “socialist”; even admitting that the military victory only means keeping the elite in power.

 

Even more direct and piercing than Lage’s was the language used by Alfredo Guevara in the aforementioned congress of the UNEAC, charging against undeniable stalwarts of “revolutionary” pride such as the educational achievements. About them, Guevara asked himself: “Can the primary, secondary and pre-university schools, such as they have become, managed by absurd criteria and ignorant of elementary pedagogic and psychological principles, violating family rights, be the forming mold for children and adolescents, and hence of the future?” He answers that “it can never be solidly built out of dogma, stubbornness, ignorance of reality or by dismissing whistleblowers and the citizenship”. This is a clear show of disconformities and even sorrow that Guevara quickly extended to the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television -under the direct supervision of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party – whose offices he called “neo-colonial media with its stupid programming dominated by such enormous ignorance that they don’t even know they are allies of capitalism in their obscene manifestation” (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/peor-enemigo-revoluciones-ignorancia). Such discourses, however, in spite of their virulence and their bitter complaints, don’t quite criticize in depth the whole power scheme nor disturb its survival.

 

Old perfume in new bottles?

 

The web of power doesn’t seem to have changed too much besides the loss of its charismatic component. There will no longer be a Moses to guide the people through the Red Sea nor to angrily smash the tablets, and everybody knows there is no marketing campaign capable of rendering Raul Castro a seducer. Therefore, the state’s discourse, suddenly deprived of its most inspiring flights of fancy, doesn’t have any other recourse than minimal sincerity and appeals to efficiency.

 

Today everybody knows – and now by word of the highest hierarchy of the State or its press – that Cuba can’t produce enough food for its population, that agriculture is in a ruinous situation without immediate solution, that the transportation system is ancient, that a good portion of the population of Havana able to work doesn’t even bother to obtain employment because it’s just not worth the trouble! (http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2008/03/21/nacional/artic10.html) that there continues to be a deficit in water transport, etc. Everybody also knows about the “excess of prohibitions and legal measures that hurt more than they help” because, a few months before Lage, the then acting and later elected, President Raul Castro said it that way in person during his year-end speech at the National Assembly of Popular Power (http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2007/diciembre/sabado29/deseo-e.html) Nobody doubts that this all has to change and there are very few remaining that have not yet become aware that credit is for a finite time and patience runs thin. For the great majority of the people the changes have to be now -hic et nunc, they would say in Latin- or they will never happen.

 

But of course, those changes are in the hands of the same people who should take responsibility for the situation and that’s why you can’t expect much from intelligences and attitudes that up to now they haven’t been able to demonstrate. For this reason the “changes” that have been proposed are trivial: permits for the sale of certain medicines in the neighborhood pharmacies or cell phones which until yesterday were only available from a friend visiting from abroad, permits for farmers to buy agricultural tools, seeds and fertilizer! And also for the permanent use of unproductive state land, permits for computer access, DVD’s and car alarms for those with convertible currency, and also allowing Cubans to stay at the hotels that up top now were reserved exclusively for foreign tourists. What is surprising is not the fact that such prohibitions have been lifted but that such mundane things have been prohibited at all! Meanwhile, there’s a fundamental permit among so many others we still don’t have: Cubans will have to wait a while longer so that a trip abroad will not constitute a via crucis.

 

The old “commander” stirs in anger or anguish in his convalescent bed and in a letter to the UNEAC congress he expresses the annoyance that an eventual flood of appliances would provoke in him: “Can we even guarantee mental and physical health with the unknown effects of so many electromagnetic waves for which neither the human body nor the human mind have evolved?. The UNEAC congress can not fail to address these thorny issues”, (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/carta-fidel-vii-congreso-uneac). His apocalyptic roaring is significant; mostly because he himself has been during all these years the Cuban most exposed to such “electromagnetic waves”. On the other hand there is a certain enigmatic tone in his exhortation to a congress of intellectuals and artists to take on a subject for which, in principle, other disciplines would be better suited to handle. Is it a last minute search for allies; a dramatic call for help to those who share his authoritarian atavisms?

 

Beyond these comings and goings, it’s time to get used to the idea that the coming avalanche of “liberties” is not general and even less constitutes an abandonment of the harsh punitive measures or of the classic and absurd prohibitions: not paying your bus fare, with its attendant disturbance may be considered an “act of vandalism” that will land its perpetrators in jail (http://www.noticiasdeautobus/tag/sucesos/page/11/), while those who want to have their own blog will be blocked under the assumption that, by its circulation and use of certain programs, they may endanger “national security” (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/potro-salvaje-tumbo-blog-yoani-revista-consenso). Some prohibitions, considered “excessive”, begin to fall on their own weight, but none of that for the time being enables the institutionalized promotion of essential freedoms; amply demonstrated by the harassment of counter-cultural youth initiatives. We can show as evidence the citations and “inconveniences” suffered by the rock band Porno para Ricardo and in particular the harassment of its lead singer Gorki Aguila.

 

Self-management: aroma of freedom and equality in solidarity

 

Something smells different in Cuba, yes; but not enough to harbor too many illusions about the strategy for change that seems to guide the steps of the fossilized “vanguard”. In our view, the current flexibility is due to certain basic political and economic reasons. Among the political reasons, it’s worthwhile to note in the first place the need to make it understood that a change of orientation is taking place and that such change is the telltale sign of the transition from one Castro to another; and second, it’s urgent to encourage minimal expectations in a population that has begun to show with increasing clarity its growing discontent. Among the economic reasons these measures are geared to obtaining additional dollars to revitalize the state’s coffers that are in no condition to finance the importation of basic needs and for which the large Venezuelan subsidy is not enough; a contribution of foreign currency not everybody can afford. Betting mid-term the most frantic search surely consists of finding a way for the nation to recover lost productivity levels and food self-sufficiency before the situation really gets unbearable. Along this road, and not as the result of a coherent project, it is a matter of adopting the “Chinese model” in combination with other initiatives along the “Vietnamese model”, as has been recognized by Omar Everleny, university professor and high level director of the Center for the Study of Cuban Economy (link to news.bbc.co.uk sabado29/deseo-e.html).

 

The political regime wants to show a more flexible face, but that doesn’t seem to be anything other than a self-preservation tactic; something that the stubbornness and pride of the “commander in chief” had not allowed up to now. The extensive network of State repression and control is intact but, even so, we must celebrate that in Cuba there is a healthy tendency to broadcast a discourse different from the official one: one with a different content, different shades, and different rhythm, via other media that are not those still strictly controlled by the government. For the time being, criticism of the complete control of the economy by the state and the mayhem produced during long decades by centralized planning as well as the radical feeling of alienation that the Cuban workers feel towards the “socialist” production structure have led some analysts to return to self-management proposals; about which we anarchists have something to say.

 

The first thing we have to say is that self-management is not a cosmetic nor a band aid but rather an integral conception totally against private or state capitalism; an idea that rivals any other model of production, distribution and trade and which exists as a whole, without impediments or caveats, only as much as it can be generalized to all spheres of society. In short, self-management can not be understood as a test tube baby, as some practice worthy only of minimalist and isolated experimentation but as a model for relations between free, equal beings in solidarity, capable of deciding, individually and collectively, the affairs of their lives. Just as centralized state planning and market competitiveness require totality, a self-managed economy also wants to be plenary, seeking expression on levels that are not purely economical but include people’s whole lives. Self-management is not a decoration but a principle, is not a model for the occasion but a liberating and revolutionary project by which people can re-invent Cuban society.

 

Thus, many of us fear that the seditious “self-management” proposals circulating around Cuba can’t go further than the search for a renewed identification of the workers with the state’s enterprises aimed at increasing productivity, something the government may concede with a dropper to small agricultural cooperatives connected with the food industry. That is why it is not generalized and genuine self-management but another turn of the governmental screw that allows the elite the power to extend its time frame and to renew its capacity to control the workers.

 

Self-management, as we anarchists understand it, can’t even be thought of if it isn’t based on widespread people’s freedom and autonomy for grass roots organizations. To put it clearly: those seditious “self-managers” manifesting in Cuba today will only appreciate one part of the problem as long as they’re not capable of seeing that self-management is not possible in a repressive milieu with an exuberant military and police apparatus, with a monopoly by the only party over all the mechanisms of expression and decision making and with a perpetual disciplinary alignment of “mass” organizations with the power elite. As long as this doesn’t change, it is true that something begins to smell different in Cuba but it is also true that the government continues to act as the most efficient deodorant. Once again we’ll have to opt not for faith in the worn out machinery of domination but in trusting people’s capacity for conquering and expanding their own spaces of freedom. To remember these things on such emblematic occasion as May Day is for the Cuban Libertarian Movement another signature of its dedication to anarchism and socialism; it is our emotional evocation of our far away roots and above all a committed reaffirmation of a horizon of freedom in unmistakable brother/sisterhood with all the people worldwide who struggle for their freedom.

 

Cuban Libertarian Movement – May 2008

Cuba: Interview Porno Para Ricardo (2008)

 

* The Cuban Libertarian Movement (MLC) interviewed via internet a punk musical group active in Havana for over 10 years who are today a significant reference in a counter cultural scene that merits recognition and solidarity.

 

Without a doubt, Porno Para Ricardo www.pornopararicardo.com has become a legend of countercultural resistance in Cuba and a milestone inside the Latin American punk scene; likewise we’ve been able to confirm the growing interest in the international anarchist milieu regarding the activities and the anti-establishment attitude of the band’s members who self-describe openly against authority of whatever color.

 

However, we think it’s not enough to advertise the existence against all odds of a growing and every day more important countercultural scene in Cuba where punk stands as the tip of the spear against all authority. It is precisely in this scene where PPR stands out with their independent and do-it-yourself music, full of irreverent lyrics which have resulted in harsh persecution by the bourgeois dictatorship of the Castro brothers.

 

This open repression against Cuba’s countercultural movement leads us, as Cuban anarchists, to add our voice to the necessary international solidarity campaign for Porno Para Ricardo. Therefore we publish this interview with Gorky and other members of the PPR collective as a first step in this campaign.

 

MLC: First we want to inform you that this interview will appear in El Libertario, a Venezuelan anarchist publication, and also in Cuba Libertaria, voice of the Group of Support to Libertarians and Independent Syndicalists in Cuba; besides other anarchist organizations who will surely publish it in their respective media.

 

PRR: We don’t call ourselves anarchists per se because we are not very well informed about what this philosophy means today and we’d like to design “our” anarchy for ourselves because after all this philosophy is very seductive.

 

MLC: When did PPR start as a countercultural musical endeavor?

 

PPR: The group started towards the end of 1998 motivated by unhappiness with the Cuban rock scene, that is, if we wanted to continue doing what we liked we could not continue to be just public, we had to form our own group. Our proposal has evolved but very little, it has been the same or very similar from the beginning, essentially as our hatred of the system increases and our bodies spend more years submerged in it, so has increased our radical stand with respect to that which bothers us – the older we get the more radical we become. Should it be the other way around?

 

MLC: Why Porno Para Ricardo? How did the name come up?

 

PPR: We don’t remember from so much repeating it, let’s have coffee and then we’ll answer you … Ricardo (an individual) + Porn (a censured pleasure) = Porno Para Ricardo – against the famous slogan “Fatherland or Death”

 

MLC: In what context did you decide to come together and express yourselves as a band?

 

PPR: Under official repression and total misunderstanding – we’re talking about the public, our colleagues etc – but also funny because being well liked was never too important for us, if that were the case we would’ve made a Salsa group.

 

MLC: what was the young people’s reaction to the appearance of PPR in the Cuban countercultural scene?

 

PPR: Since the beginning our public was small and to tell the truth our shows were never wholly accepted by the “classic” rock public because the public as well as the artists live in a state of frozen neurons typical of provincial cultures little informed and also because the culture of fear and intolerance that permeates people’s minds. Today more people understand our message, even transcending the boundaries of rock and being listened to by not only the followers of the genre, and that is where we believe we make our impact inside Cuba because a lot of people want to hear what we say in our lyrics since that is what many people think but are incapable of expressing because of fear.

 

MLC: And the state’s reaction?

 

PPR: Same as always, it’s always been obvious to us that we must pay a price for our obstinacy, for our way of thinking.

 

MLC: We know first hand of the persecution and repression the bourgeois dictatorship of the Castro brothers and the thousand and one ways of implementing it against whoever disagrees with the internal order of the Farm. In the case of the PPR collective, how has the Cuban state repressed you?

 

PPR: It is well known because we have denounced it every time we have a chance, summons to the police station, intimidation, acts of repudiation, discrimination, humiliation and even jail.

 

MLC: Porno Para Ricardo has set a precedent in the Cuban punk scene. Are there other punk bands and collectives in Cuba?

 

PPR: There are, but not at the radical level we have, which doesn’t make us proud because we would like to have more groups so we wouldn’t feel so lonely and to have somebody to go to because in many cases we are plague ridden, many people from other bands say they identify with us but when push comes to shove they freeze. What would be very sad for us is that when change comes many of those who kiss the official’s asses suddenly become “radical” and “anti-establishment” and invent stories to present themselves as heroes like it has happened in other occasions.

 

MLC: There are definitely clear differences between the life time totalitarianism of the Castro brothers and the bad copy of it that comandante Chavez tries to implant in Venezuela; perhaps because of it, taking advantage of such differences, the Venezuelan anarcho-punk scene has been able to establish strong links and coordinate among autonomous bands and collectives such as Cooperative of Self-managed Bands, that includes bands such as Apatia No, Doña Maldad, Skoria Social among others and initiatives such as Toche Records, La Libertaria de Biscucuy, the journal El Libertario, etc.; with the goal of organizing concerts and countercultural events in different cities. Is there in Cuba any coordination among punk bands and collectives?

 

PPR: The only thing we have in Cuba is a wrongly named “rock movement” which is even directed by a governmental agency called “Rock Agency” that answers to the government. It is a total aberration of what rock is, when did rock ever had to be institutionalized?, the saddest thing is that some people believe that they need the state to support their creativity and are not conscious of the “do it yourself” spirit that has always been the standard of rock and roll.

 

We certainly would like to make contact with this Cooperative of Self-managed Bands and perhaps learn from their experience and make interchanges since in Cuba there are very few punk bands, to mention a few also in the punk scene: Eskoria, ALbatros, Barrio Adentro, the rest are bands in this new thing of EMO and pop-punk that are in no way anarchist nor anti-establishment but in many ways the opposite.

 

MLC: We spoke of the “clear differences” that can still be observed between the Cuban and the Venezuelan states, but given the more evident similarities, would you like to coordinate efforts with anarcho-punk bands and collectives in Venezuela?

 

PPR: Definitely yes.

 

MLC: What about a joint effort as a first step?

 

PPR: We love the idea, count us in.

 

MLC: PPR lives under very particular conditions due to the scarcities, deprivations and restrictions of which the Cuban people but not its dominant class is victim which, together with the specific repression you suffer due to your anti-establishment position as a group, it multiplies your difficulties regarding your creative labor and its publicity. How can we help you? What do you need and how can we bring it to you?

 

PPR: We suffer necessities of every type but we have always prioritized among material things what we need for our recordings. The most urgent item right now when we’re trying to record our 4th self-managed record is a fast computer because we only have an old Pentium 3 where the software gets stuck when we try to put down several tracks with effects – imagine, we do our own mixes. We could also use a microphone to record voice because not even clandestinely people dare record the lyrics in their home studios for fear of reprisals. A good mike for us would be a Marshall 9000 or something like that. Our records can be bought in our web site: www.pornopararicardo.com . Buying them is another direct way to help us.

 

MLC: Would you like to add something else?

 

PPR: Thank you for the solidarity … Analchists –as we say here- of all countries Unite! And let everyone do with their ass as they wish.

ALB interviews the Cuban Libertarian Movement

 

* During mid-June 2008 the Iberian counter-information collective A Las Barricadas www.alasbarricadas.org posed several questions to the MLC… The complete text of this interview follows.

 

We’re interviewing the Cuban Libertarian Movement (Movimiento Libertario Cubano – MLC), an organization made up of anarchists in exile in different parts of the world. In these days of apparent change, of transition, as the European and North-American media would have it, it’s of interest to know first hand about what’s happening inside the island. The demise of Fidel Castro has opened up all sorts of speculation about the future of the communist regime due to the first measures the new chief, Raul Castro, has taken. Here’s the interview:

 

ALB – Hello compas. Let’s begin the interview with some notes on history for our readers. Could you briefly explain the history of the anarchist movement in Cuba?

 

MLC – Hello! Whoever wants to learn the history of our movement must begin with the work of our comrade Frank Fernandez, _Cuban Anarchism_, published in various languages. In general, the epic described is very similar to that of the anarchist movement in the rest of Latin America with the peculiarity that the late independence of Cuba finds our people involved in that struggle. The first Cuban unions likewise find many anarchists in their midst to be their main animators and such influence continues in certain production sectors until the 50’s, in open confrontation with the Batista dictatorship. Our participation in the struggles of the day came precisely from these syndicates, from the Cuban Libertarian Association (Asociación Libertaria Cubana) and in a smaller measure by comrades affiliated with the 26 of July Movement (Movimiento 26 de Julio). It is noteworthy that during the 50’s the Cuban anarchist movement was one of the most active among its peers in Latin America and took active part in different encounters such as the Anarchist Conference that took place in Montevideo in April 1957, which explicitly supported the struggle by the Cuban people against the Batista dictatorship.

 

ALB – Something that people in Europe and elsewhere don’t know: What was the role of the Cuban anarchists in the Cuban revolution?

 

MLC – As we have mentioned, we anarchists rose to the task within our possibilities and from our own revolutionary point of view in the struggle against the dictatorship. Indeed, we joined the general jubilation after the defeat of the Batista forces and the dissolution of its army. However, we also from the beginning maintained an early attitude of mistrust with towards the cult of personality, leadership, nationalist and militarist proclivities incarnated in Fidel Castro and his inner circle. This mistrust was soon justified and reinforced: for example, the direct intervention by Fidel Castro manipulating the X Congress of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (X Congreso de la Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba) for the benefit of his group and violating the principles of the worker movement’s autonomy. From then on, Cuban anarchists became more radical in their suspicions and adopted a clear stand against the incipient centralization of political power. All this is recorded in a manifest where we openly expressed our fears of the attempts to amass control by the Catholic Church as well as by the Communist Party whose most notorious cadres enjoyed political positions and sinecures during the Batista dictatorship. We’re aware that not everybody in the international anarchist movement shared our critical attitude and not a few kept to the expectative for many years regarding a process that continued monopolizing the meaning of a revolution by then devoid of any revolutionary spirit. Today, and for a long time now, we think it’s no longer debatable that the positions of those Cuban anarchists of 50 years ago proved completely on target. In short, it was nothing but the classic position from the 1st International that revolutions are not promoted, encouraged or radicalized by “revolutionary” governments but that within them you find the bureaucratic and authoritarian germ that ends up by suffocating and annihilating the revolution and imposing itself as the new dominant class in the new State.      

 

ALB – Could you talk about the exile? Was there understanding, support, or on the contrary alienation?

 

MLC – We can’t talk in the past tense yet. We are still many Cuban anarchists in exile in many parts of the planet. Our exile is as hard as any other exile in terms of separation and alienation with the aggravation that the first comrades who got out of Cuba didn’t have any other choice but to establish themselves in such a hostile milieu as the United States; something not habitually understood but such has been the inexorable destiny to be followed, at least in principle, by Cuban refugees of all times. Most painful was to come face to face with the lack of understanding and alienation we got from certain anarchist groups of Europe and Latin America that would have liked to see us integrated in a transformation that was initially uncritically favored. Not all anarchist groups, of course, reacted the same way and we also received countless displays of solidarity that grew with the years as the Cuban political regime unveiled its true face. Today, those debates from the 60’s have been totally overcome and there isn’t one sane anarchist that still can think about a libertarian evolution coming from a political regime based on absolute control of its subjects and the super-exploitation of the workers; without autonomous organizations independent of the state acting as bulk wards in the struggle against such “super-exploitation” by the state and capital; remember that there are a multitude of capitalist enterprises based in the Spanish State, Canada, Mexico, Japan, France, Italy, etc.

 

ALB – Let’s talk about the present; Fidel has retired leaving in his place his brother. What has changed in Cuba?

 

MLC – In our last public declaration – “Something smells different in Cuba”, May 2008 – we tried to clarify that “the changes” happening in Cuba are merely cosmetic and only attempt to generate a “liberalizing” image that doesn’t change the basic functioning of the regime and the institutional power structure: State capitalism, privileges for the haute state bureaucracy and particularly for the armed forces, monopolization by the only party of all the mechanisms of self-expression and decision-making, absolute control over the population, etc. Nevertheless, what is changing is the general attitude of the people: today you can see that the people are losing their fear of repression and have begun to conquer space; the hardships of everyday life can no longer remain hidden and everybody knows it; there are the beginnings of protest more or less organized, etc. All this points the way to possible courses of action: our expectations lay on them and we harbor no illusions with respect to a summit of power that is only trying to win more time.

 

ALB – In Europe there are reports about the lines that Cubans have to make to buy cell phones or to get internet (among other things), are we going into a spiral of consumerism?

 

MLC – No, consumerism is not possible in Cuba given that the main worry is to solve the most elemental and immediate things: food, housing, transportation etc. Even more: worker’s salaries do not even cover these needs and they must recur to the rationing book with all its scarcities. What we have in Cuba is a surplus of foreign currency in possession of those who get remittances from their families abroad: this surplus allows for such “luxuries” as computers and cell phones whose purchase has only recently been permitted. The economic debacle the regime is in is of such proportions that at this moment it is quite possible that the remittances of foreign currency surpass the sum of all of the country’s salaries, without exaggeration. This also explains the fact that that approximately 20% of the population of Havana has no interest in getting jobs. Why would somebody who receives some economic help from abroad – always more than the US$20 monthly mean salary – want to work? The regime has no answers to this type of thing and continues in vain the appeals to sacrifice and labor discipline in exchange for nothing, while the ruling class have access to the best goods and services available. Paradoxically there is much unemployment among the social classes historically dispossessed that survive against the current, doing whatever it takes, street peddling, prostitution and expropriation. This – together with a strong racism – institutional and cultural – explains why Cuban jails are full of young Afro-Cubans.

 

ALB – Is there hope of bigger changes among the people? Are any opposition political groups mobilizing?

 

MLC – We think that people have lost all hopes and faced with the total prohibition of any alternative form of social and political action they continue to explore the ways to emigrate as the only recourse at hand to escape a situation of open anguish. The “visible” opposition, meanwhile, is nothing but a potpourri without a coherent project, without anything in common but a primitive and visceral opposition to Castro. On the other hand, it is necessary to distinguish the ideological-political profiles of that opposition. It is well known that within this opposition there are sectors ranging from those strongly linked to Yankee diplomacy to those who support a generally self-managed outcome. Obviously, between these two factions there can be no alliance possible. On this point, we anarchists have no choice but to put our hopes in the strengthening of the second option and its gaining larger spaces among the people itself.

 

ALB – How do you see Hugo Chavez’s influence in the island? He broke the blockade years ago by investing millions in Cuba. Have those investments translated into political influence?

 

MLC – First we must make clear that the so-called “blockade” is nothing like a commercial closing down of Cuba but a mix of positions adopted by the United States under the name of “embargo” reinforced during republican administrations –with legislation like Helms-Burton and Torricelli’s – that stupidly handicap commercial exchanges but do not stop them: lately the United States has had commerce with Cuba to the tune of US$500 million per year. Cuba’s great problem in this area is its almost non-existent ability to pay, which has made it a universal debtor, even with Latin American countries, exporting doctors, teachers, sports coaches and security advisors. This is the type of relationship Cuba has formed with Chavez’s Venezuela. It is precisely this export of doctors and teachers what explains the undeniable decay in health and education. And also the military advisors that, no doubt, are the source of proposals to start up a unique intelligence and counter-intelligence “agency” that would control and coordinate all repressive enterprises, with a network of paid informants and volunteers throughout the country to watch and control all civic activities, in the image of the feared Cuban G2, that is, Castro’s state security. The Venezuelan people have nicknamed this bad copy “Sapeo Law” – a reference to informants – and even Chavez was recently forced to abolish it. Returning to the question we also have to point out that Cuba has generated a strong dependency on Venezuela, particularly with all things related to obtaining oil. But that dependency has also extended to China’s financing, Cuba’s other large international backer. In terms of political influence we think the Cuban rulers manage it in terms of convenience and at this moment their possibilities of adaptation lean more towards a “Chinese model” than a “Venezuelan model”. However, it is obvious that Cuba will have to follow kicking and screaming Chavez’s initiatives in a Latin American context.

 

ALB – What about the influence of leftist populist ideas from Latin America?

 

MLC – The surge of populist ideas certainly gives the Cuban political regime some breathing room, but also alienates it from the most lucid and radical revolutionary and autonomous sectors since these harbor no illusions with respect to governments such as those of Chavez, Morales, Correa or Ortega and certainly Cuban diplomacy will be set against popular mobilizations in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador or Nicaragua. On the other hand, one needs to place the current populist cycle in Latin America as only an attempt to develop a regional capitalism. It is a fragile cycle still subject to multiple oscillations that don’t afford the Cuban government any guarantees long term. This is one of the reasons why we understand that this government is running against the clock and playing for time. Meanwhile, the populist governments act as an ideological-political rearguard but the most pressing problem for the Cuban government isn’t that but the fact that it can’t even provide decent food for the people and it has to solve this problem before such a regional Latin American capitalist block is formed with a minimum of solvency.

 

ALB – For several years now news from the MLC appear in the international libertarian press. What is your relationship with other anarchists throughout the world?

 

MLC – The MLC aspires to better relations with the international anarchist movement. For a good period of time we have overcome diverse resistances and we have strengthened many of our alliances. Many groups have established firm priorities in terms of solidarity with Cuban anarchists such as Group of Support to Independent Libertarians and Syndicalists in Cuba (GALSIC) and Venezuela’s El Libertario, www.nodo50.org/ellibertario. Frank Fernandez’s historical work about our movement has been accepted in the Spanish State by the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation (Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo), in Italy by Zero in Conduct (Zero in Condotta), in the United States by See Sharp Press and so on. Also, we have worked to make clear our solidarity with anarchist groups everywhere and from the most contemporary currents. This has been possible thanks to the MLC’s configuration which doesn’t exactly follow the pattern of a proper organization but rather has been developing as a coordinating network for Cuban anarchists wherever they may be, and this covers a wide gamut of positions, from anarcho-syndicalism, specifism, neo-platformism, primitivism, insurrectionalism, eco-anarchism and even anarcho-punk; no matter how contradictory or incompatible they might be since the axis or principal motif of this coordination is the solidarity with anarchist comrades, autonomous and independent syndicalists and counter-cultural collectives with the clear objective of fostering a widespread anti-authoritarian movement that will allow the continuity of anarchist ideals so brusquely pruned –but not severed – by the bourgeois dictatorship of the Castro brothers.

 

Probably there are comrades who still have certain reservations as there are some who still perceive the Cuban State and its governing elite as a revolutionary socialist force. But these cases today are the exception and tend to become merely anecdotic as time goes by. Sooner or later, the MLC is an integral part of the anarchist international movement at the level of any other and soon nobody will doubt it.

 

ALB – What do you expect will happen in the island in a few years?

 

MLC – We have spoken about it in previous interviews. Basically we trust in people’s capacity for autonomous organization and there we put our expectations. It’s not a matter of waiting for the ripe fruit to fall but rather to join, within our possibilities, those formative processes of revolutionary anti-authoritarian and self-managed currents inside Cuba. We believe the situation has already produced more than enough reasons for this to happen but we also know that the political regime and the elite in power have been able to act to contain such manifestations to their minimal expression. We are not ignorant of the difficulties faced by militant work in that direction and we also know too well the efficiency demonstrated by the State’s security organisms –the only efficient aspect of the regime – but we will not stop our efforts because that is our only reason for being.

 

ALB – Lastly, what is the MLC? What kind of people makes it up?

 

MLC – We have already commented on this. The MLC is a network of Cuban anarchists. As anarchists we are not different from other anarchists who face the domination relationships and the webs of power in which they exist except for the fact – certainly weird – that in our case we face a hierarchical society and a ruling class that still finds justification in the name of “revolution” and “socialism”. The MLC is made up of people who live of their work and who in our everyday lives conduct ourselves by the incorruptible desire to build relationships among free and equal men and women in solidarity. From a generational point of view, the nucleus that tries to maintain alive the anarchist ethos today is no longer composed in its majority –due to obvious biological reasons – by the first group of exiles from the 60’s that founded the MLC in the city of New York, but rather by those of us who had to leave the island in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

 

ALB – Are there anarchists inside Cuba? How about libertarian groups in exile outside the MLC?

 

MLC – We know of no other anarchist groups in exile outside the MLC, but it wouldn’t bother us at all if there were, in this case we would try to find them quickly and explore the possibilities of joint actions. In the 80’s two editorial collectives co-existed, one of them around the journal Guangara Libertaria and the other with A Mayor and both co-existed as a coordinating network under the same acronym. As to the existence of anarchists inside Cuba, we can emphatically confirm that they do exist and have been doing so clandestinely and underground for the last half century. The big problem in this case is that those who remained in Cuba have been systematically suppressed each time they dared demonstrate publicly as happened with the agricultural syndicalists of the Zapata Group towards the end of the 70’s and beginning of the 80’s. This is one of the reasons why the anarchists inside have taken great care not to be identified as such and have managed to survive in the shadows. Besides, during the last few years there has been a movement by anti-establishment counter-culture youths that constitutes the ferment for the emergence of a spontaneous kind of anarchism that doesn’t yet have possibilities in the literal sense of the word or in the deeper sense of continued collective praxis. The truth is that surely there are in Cuba many more anarchists than we can even imagine: the spontaneous forms of rebellion that happen are the best breeding grounds for it. One of the immediate challenges we have is to achieve fluidity in these relationships with the “inside”, something that the “prohibitions” continue to present obstacles to.

 

ALB – What is your relationship with other opposition groups?

 

MLC – The MLC doesn’t keep formal or stable relations with any group of the so-called opposition; among other things because many of them would be our mortal enemies, if we were all active inside Cuba. It is imperative to be clear on this. The image presented by the most vociferous Cuban exiles is nothing but an attempt to re-instate capitalism – that is, to continue the task begun by the government but incorporating in it the private Cuban capital accumulation from abroad – and holding democratic elections under a parliamentary and party system. But we are anarchists and if such a project would take hold in Cuba we would also be against it. On the other hand, it is clear that there is a fraction of the Cuban exile that, without self-describing as strictly anarchist, agrees with us in vague terms defending a liberalizing and self-managed line, many times even among former socialists or members of the PCC (Cuban Communist Party), today self-described as Trotskyites, Luxemburgists etc. It is possible there wouldn’t be too many problems talking with them, but it is a diffuse and disorganized segment of the exile. Remember also that the exile, in its totality doesn’t correspond, in any way, to the image the Castro propaganda shows which only recognizes the so-called “Miami Mafia” which includes ex-batistians, anexionists, neo-liberals, narco-traffickers and ultranationalists. No! The Cuban exile is composed of a majority of working class people who survive out of the sweat of their brow. We’re talking about a noble people genuinely inspired by the establishment of a set of basic freedoms and respect for human rights inside the island: people who do not have a well defined political project but who want to simply be able to write, travel, organize freely, sing, paint, or do whatever they want without needing the state’s permission. Or simply people who want to go back, to work without exploiting anybody and live decently. With this type of people –the great majority of those in exile – we maintain fraternal relations in whatever part of the world it is our fate to live. It is not about a shared revolutionary program but about the elementary respect that honest, simple working people in Cuba or anywhere else deserve.

 

[Translation: Luis Jose Prat.

Original in Spanish: http://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticias/?q=node/7980]

New York, the anarchists, and José Martí

 

Wild Turkey Desire

[http://loveyourdestiny.blogspot.com/search/label/anarchy]

 

May they not bury me in darkness

to die like a traitor

I am good, and as a good man

I will die facing the sun.

-Part of “Versos sencillos” by José Martí

 

In November, We Remember

 

José Martí, the famous Cuban revolutionary and prolific writer whose published works fill 28 whole volumes, including – children stories, letters, poems, journalism, theater, translations, notes, and essays on a variety of subjects ranging from anarchists to white roses. Martí is often credited as the “father of modernism”, especially in regards to Spanish-American literature. He was born in Old Habana, Cuba in 1853 and died in 1895 fighting against the Spanish in Cuba. When I lived in La Habana back in 2005, I would often find myself literally surrounded by him, walking along the streets, and the haunting spectacle of what he was to become. What follows, are my thoughts and research about Martí, specifically – his ten years in New York City, his views on capitalism and work, and his thoughts about the anarchists.

 

First, a brief history. At the age of 16, Martí was sent to prison for treason against the Spanish government, then in control of Cuba. He was soon exiled to Spain where he studied law and philosophy, but in the coming years he returned to Cuba, where he was again exiled to Spain. Eventually, in 1880 Martí found himself in New York City (NYC) writing journalism, translating articles, and working as joint consul for Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina in order to survive. His time in NYC proved to be critical- as he helped launch Cuba’s third war of independence while there, by fund raising and organizing against the Spanish. Soon afterwards, as history has come to tell – Martí was killed near Palma Soriano, Cuba in the very first battle of the struggle for independence against Spain; as he charged into battle on a white horse, while he wore black overcoat. It seems that, in comparison to the sword, the pen was the mightiest for Martí, which is a point many critics make.

 

Being clever is a good way to start being free

 

For me, this exploration of Martí began when I visited Habana, Cuba back in 2005 and ventured to one of the many used book shops. Book shops are interesting in Cuba, because there is often a somewhat limited selection amongst public sellers due to state censorship, but at the same time there is a plethora of old inexpensive books floating around, both above and underground – the most unusual little bookshops you can imagine with discounts on already inexpensive books.

 

Anyways, I spent a lot of time browsing these shelves, and most all of them had one thing in common – José Martí. Here I was a native New Yorker, living in La Habana, reading his accounts of the time he spent in NYC. One thing I learned quickly, was that he seems to be quite the controversial character, for example – Martí Noticias(USA) vs. Portal José Martí(Cuba). Plus, Fidel has pretty much put Martí in the Cuban constitution, while the USA beams Radio Martí, the million plus dollar radio station into Cuba. It’s a cat and mouse game for them, as the USA beams it in, Cuba blocks it out, the frequencies change, and soon enough technology upgrades (kind of like the cold war of radio broadcasting/jamming).

 

So, what if one asks – if Martí were alive today, would he agree with the situation he would find inside present day Cuba? In my opinion, probably not, but that is a whole other essay. Interesting side note, thanks to all these new books and newspapers I collected while there, as I went to depart Cuba, waiting in the airport I was called over the loud speakers to report to security for questions and a search. It was funny because when I got there, the first and only question they asked me was why I had so many books and newspapers in my bag; I just told them the truth, I was a student and it was the Granma, they laughed and said I could go after that, but it still felt kind of strange being singled out like that. I only hoped that the same thing would not happen at the Canada/USA border when it came time to cross, but everything went smoothly after that.

 

Well, back to the story. For fourteen years (1880-1894) Martí lived in the “gran manzana” (big apple) – New York City (NYC). During this time, Martí experienced first hand the desolation and brute force of American capitalism, especially in regards to race, poverty, and the worker. Who, according to Martí – each day struggled for eight hours of work, fair wages, and an overall better world. Slowly reading through his works, there is so much to come across and many areas that I found difficult to read because of the old Spanish and manner of his writing. No joke, at times I felt like I was reading Finnegans Wake – it can be challenging, but for those who dig deep there is some pretty good stuff to uncover.

 

I would like to examine two of his articles more closely: Grandes motines de obreros, alzamiento unanime a favor de ocho horas de trabajo…, published in NYC on the 16th of May, 1886 and Un drama terrible: Anarquia y represion… published on the 1st of January, 1888. In these two articles and others he explores the likes of Haymarket (see also: Haymarket Tragedy.) With these two different articles he helped inform and radicalize readers, not only in the USA, but throughout Latin America, and the world. In these two articles, he presents us with a very interesting look inside the events that helped spawn International Workers’ Day (Mayday) and the International Day of anarchy (November 11th), while also helping understand how, so many across the the Americas and world, including the likes of Emma Goldman became inspired by these events. His appeal to anarchists can also be found in his his homage to Lucy Parsons written in New York, on the 17th of October, 1886(see also:Albert Parsons.)

 

In the first article “Grandes Motines de obreros…” he writes about the NYC anarchists struggling for a better day. He thought, that since the Civil War there had not been another moment in USA history so critical. He believed that, the blood stained flowers of May pointed out that there is no more serious problem, than the problem of heartless capitalists and work at this time in the USA. Martí thought that the situation seemed to suddenly appear in an uprising, somewhat spontaneous, even though he believed the problems to be deeply ingrained within the system.

 

The workers in the US were uprising, demanding their rights, and undermining the capitalists oppression. For Martí, the streets always seemed to be filled with workers fighting against the capitalists and police, in spontaneous uprisings. In the first article, he wrote that, the anarchists were reading books about insurrection and then target practicing with guns in the streets of NYC almost every Sunday, while everyone else was at church. With this, in the first article Martí looks at a comparison between the anarchists and workers, differences he presumes – such as “peaceful” vs. “violent”.

 

Martí states that he believes non-violence and actions within the law were most just. Interestingly enough, soon afterwards Martí picked up a gun to help fight against the Spanish in Cuba. I’m not really convinced that Martí really understands everything about anarchists, like thinking they’re all “violent” or even his definition of “violence”. On this note, I think Martí was in line with the demonstrations – but stopped at the point of NYC’s gun slinging anarchists and others around the USA. However, interestingly enough, within the second article he changes his stance to be more favorable of the anarchists:

 

«Martí’s first articles on the Chicago anarchists are in step with the North American press and the xenophobia it promoted: anarchist terror is the work of monstrous Eastern European immigrants who have brought the violent ways of the Old World to the New. The notion of “America” as a democratic alternative to barbarous “Europe” stands. After the execution of the anarchists, however, Martí does an about-face and re-writes his earlier account of events. He turns his rage on the political and justice system and softens his earlier critique of the anarchists. The U.S. is now as unjust and violent as despotic Europe.» [1]

 

It goes on to say that:

 

«In his initial reactions to Haymarket, Martí had celebrated the heroism of the police and demonized the European anarchists in terms similar to those found in the mainstream U.S. press. In “Un drama terrible,” however, he retells the story of what happened on May fourth in a way that was much more sympathetic to workers and anarchists. He indicts the police, the national media and the justice system for their lies and corruption. If before he had referred to the anarchists as beasts, now it was the Republic as a whole that has become savage like a wolf (795). Martí’s newfound solidarity with the working class, and his sympathetic representation of the anarchists he had previously rejected, results in a powerful identification with the working class, where a new community emerges out of the ruins of the Haymarket Affair.» [1]

 

A saint once said, “for the revolutionary, there will be no rest until the tomb.” In these times of struggle, millions have lost their lives and many more will, yet the battle will always rage on, in the hearts of us all:

 

«When the trapdoors of the gallows were released on November 12, 1887, Albert Parsons had begun to say “Shall I be allowed to speak? O, men of America…” before his voice was cut short by the noose. Deeply moved by the injustice of Haymarket, José Martí continued to speak, in the name of the executed anarchists, for the poor and the hopeless, and for the Latin American republics threatened by U.S. foreign policy. Thus, the Haymarket affair underlines how Martí’s familiarity with, and critique of North American current events during the Gilded Age did in fact play a substantive role in maturing his views on labor and enabling his later critiques of colonialism.» [1]

 

Other articles by Martí about New York, you might like to read

La ciudad, el viaje y el circo – La vida neoyorkina – Los indios de Norteamerica – La diversion norteamericana – El problema industrial en los Estados Unidos – La escuela en Nueva York – El puente de Brooklyn – The Dedication of the Statue of Liberty

 

If you like this, you also might like:

 

The Limits of Analogy: José Martí and the Haymarket Martyrs by Christopher Conway – University of Texas—Arlington [1]

http://www.ncsu.edu/project/acontracorriente/fall_04/Conway.pdf

 

In November, We Remember: Emma Goldman & Upstate, NY!!! by Problema Goldman aka me

http://yorkstaters.blogspot.com/2006/11/in-november-we-remember-emma-goldman.html

Cuba: socialist paradise or Castro’s fiefdom?

 

Dermot Sreenan

 

[From Workers Solidarity Nº 40, 1993, Ireland]

 

“..the major event of the twentieth century has been the abandonment of the values of liberty on the part of the revolutionary movement, the weakening of Libertarian Socialism, vis-a-vis Caesarist and militaristic Socialism. Since then, a great hope has disappeared from the world to be replaced by a deep sense of emptiness in the hearts of all who yearn for Freedom….”

 

(‘Neither Victims nor Executioners’ by Albert Camus)

 

As Camus says, a deep sense of emptiness is felt by all those who wish for a revolution leading to the creation of a society which is classless and truly socialist. As the history of the 20th century has unfolded we have witnessed the repeated failure of vanguards and leaders to create the society for which the true-hearted revolutionaries have fought and died. Not so long ago most of the left held up the Soviet Union as an example of Socialism or something with some socialist features.

 

As the Eastern Bloc crumbled and the true horrors of sick states like Ceaucescu’s Romania were exposed Cuba became the new Mecca for the left. What we find there is unfortunate and there is little to inspire us in the country which has had Fidel Castro at the wheel of power for over 30 years.

 

Cuba, about 90 miles off the coast of North America, is the largest of the Caribbean islands. The social services are in a far better condition than they are in other Latin American countries. Virtually every Cuban under the age of 30 can read and write. But the cost of these benefits is high for the working class who have never been in the saddle of power in Cuba. This is not their role as the doting Father looks after their interests. While the figures about literacy and health are good there are a number of statistics which aren’t so impressive.

 

One Cuban in every 340 is in prison. There are 400 political prisoners. Around 50% of the Cuban male population are known to the police or have criminal records. The Cuban police force regularly carry revolvers, tear gas and electric truncheons. The crime rate itself is very low, so the equipment of the police and the jail population would seem to indicate a state that is repressive in it’s dealings with the people.

 

Batista

 

To understand how Cuba functions now, why it developed the way it did and why socialism was never on Castro’s menu, we must look at the origins and path of the revolution. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar had taken control of Cuba in a military coup called the ’sergeants revolt’ on September 4th 1933. He promoted himself to the position of Commander in Chief of the armed forces and comfortably ruled through a host of puppet presidents.

 

Batista contested and lost the presidency 1944, after which he exited to Florida with millions from the small country’s coffers. He returned to power in a coup d’état in 1952, three months prior to the presidential elections.

 

An interesting point to note is the cordial relationship between Batista and the Cuban Communist Party. They were allowed to function openly and supported Batista’s candidates in the 1940 elections. As their reward they got control of the state controlled trade union, the Cuban Confederation of Labour (CTC-Confederacion de Trabajadores de Cuba). The First Secretary General was Lazaro Pena, a post he would later hold under Fidel Castro.

 

The 26th of July Movement was born out of an attack on the Moncada military barracks in 1953. The attack, though brave, was bungled and failed. The movement really grew during the subsequent trial where Castro successfully gave the impression of the July Movement as being nationalists who would no longer be restrained.

 

The political aspirations of the movement extended no further than “total and definitive social justice” and “absolute and reverent respect” for the 1940 constitution. Incidentally the attack on the barracks was condemned by the Cuban Communist Party who defined their role as being to “unmask the putschists and adventurous activists as being against the interests of the people”.(1)

 

Sierra Maestra years

 

The July 26th Movement grew in prestige from the trial of the Moncada attackers. Two years later, after the movement had been in exile in Mexico where Castro met the young Che Guevara, they returned on the “Granma” pleasure cruiser in December 1956. The 80 strong insurrection failed in the Oriente region and they retreated to the Sierra Maestra mountains. It is here according to the folklore historians, whom Castro had later appointed, that the discussions of Marx and Lenin took place into the long hours amongst the revolutionaries around the camp fires.

 

Castro had been a follower of the Partido Ortodoxo which was a nationalist organisation who put their faith in the 1940 constitution. Now, according to re-written history he became a Marxist-Leninist. Che Guevara’s story of this time is more enlightening, they “…had neither ideological awareness nor ‘esprit de corp’…. “(2). Castro goes on to contradict this history of his own making by saying that “the proclamation of socialism during the period of instructional struggle would not have been understood”(3).

 

In 1958, a year prior to the revolution, Castro said “true, the extension of government ownership to certain power companies – US owned – was a point of our earliest programmes; but we have currently suspended all planning on this matter.”(4) What the 26th July Movement was seeking was “industrialisation at the fastest possible rate. For this purpose, foreign investment will always be welcome and secure here.”(5)

 

The Revolution

 

By 1958 the Batista troops had retreated to their barracks. The rebels stepped up their attacks. There was broad popular support for the 26th July Movement, and mass strikes and demonstrations followed. (Che Guevara said that the Batista regime collapsed under the weight of it’s own corruption.) Many who weren’t in the July movement lost their lives, yet they seem to be forgotten in the process of deification which has taken place around Castro.

 

There was the raid on the Mantanzans garrison in which all the young members of the radical nationalist Autentico Party lost their lives in 1956. Then there was the attempted assassination of Batista in 1957 by the Revolutionary Student Directorate. All of them were massacred.

 

It is important to remember that the Cuban revolution was the work of a few armed insurgents. It was the work of a few hundred armed guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains and various other rebels. The working class supported the rebels but it was a passive support that did not extend beyond strikes and demonstrations when the dictatorship was close to crumbling. “The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers” and unfortunately in Cuba true emancipation was not to follow the revolution.

 

Yesterday’s Nationalism – Today’s Socialism

 

Following the toppling of Batista the first cabinet contained a judge, a lawyer, the head of the Havana Bar Association, a member of the Orthodox Party, and the ex-president of the national bank. (Within 14 months all of these disappeared to the USA and became ‘contras’.) The 1940 constitution was reinstalled. The first office set up was the National Tourist Board. All this would not seem to indicate a very socialist revolution had taken place.

 

In April 1959 Castro went to America to visit and talk with vice president Richard Nixon about securing a development loan. Castro made assurances to the White House about protection of American interests but he stood firm on Cuban sovereignty. However, even the demands for very limited economic control were against US interests and therefore Cuba was portrayed as part of the “world communist conspiracy”. The imperialist USA set out to smash small independent Cuba.

 

The Americans had wanted Batista to capitulate to a caretaker government before Castro could come to power. They were never really prepared to do business with the man. The further down a road one travels the less options one is faced with. Castro had reached a ‘T’ junction. The first road would have been to concede sovereignty to the Americans and keep a section of the old ruling class on his side. The second road was to industrialise the country, using the confiscated wealth of the ruling class.

 

Cuba was going “Socialista”. In October 1959 Che Guevara becomes head of the National Bank. In February 1960 a new agreement is reached to supply sugar to the USSR. In July of the same year Castro nationalises American owned sugar companies and oil refineries. By the end of the year few foreign industries are not nationalised. Castro had made a decision, America had refused to budge an inch and now it was time to side with the other major power. So began the myth of the July Movement always being Marxist. As the plaque reads at Havana’s main cemetery “What the imperialists cannot forgive is us having made a socialist revolution under the very noses of the United States.”

 

Cuba: Castro’s Playground

 

It comes as no surprise to learn that Castro chose to call himself a Marxist-Leninist. “I am a Marxist-Leninist and will remain one until the last day of my life” said Castro in 1961. This is a good political philosophy to adhere to if one intends to remain in power for 30 years and never release the reins of control to the working class.

 

How does Cuba function? On this Caribbean island you have a ruling class composed of the bureaucracy which came from the July 26th Movement. You have the remnants of the Stalinist Partido Socialista (Cuban Communist Party) who saw the Revolution and the nationalisation that followed as a means to strengthen their positions.

 

To the Cuban Communists their own survival is paramount, principles were abandoned as unhealthy a long time ago. Then you have the professionals such as academics, scientists and management. They have fewer privileges than their counterparts in the ‘West’ but are rewarded with praise and prizes as long as they remain uncritical. The ruling class is bonded together by a fear of the working class.

 

Castro is the cement which holds Cuban society together. As Che Guevara wrote “It is true that the mass follows it’s leaders, especially Fidel Castro, without hesitation but the degree to which he has earned such confidence is due precisely to the consummate interpretation of the peoples’ desires and aspirations.”(6) This is the cult of Castro’s personality which cannot be underestimated, he is the consummate master of telling the people what they wish to hear. As rumblings of discontent come from the working class about the bureaucrats, they still look to the father figure of Fidel to deal with the nasty bureaucrats.

 

The ‘internationalist’ policy of armed support for nationalist regimes in Africa and the scientific work all gives credence to the popular story of one little island standing strong against the wicked winds of imperialism. The economy of Cuba has been distorted for years so that it is like looking at something at the bottom of a pond. The funds from Russia are drying up. The Cuban cigars are partly filled from Bulgarian tobacco. There is little to be said when you find out that there have been sugar shortages in a country where about 50% of the economy is based on this crop.

 

The embargo is blamed for everything covering vast areas of inefficiency. Trading has been going on with the USA for years through a series of front companies. When the squeeze had to be put on in the 1980’s Castro, “El Lider Maximo”, came up with the process of ‘rectification’. This ingenious plan involved going back to the past and digging up the immortal legend of Che Guevara and returning to a ‘high moral socialism’.

 

Castro came up with such perils of wisdom as “Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of rectification has been to persuade the workers to give up the excessively high wages stemming from implementation of outdated norms, or erroneous criteria”. When one distils the true meaning from such pedantic language, we get the old maxim, work harder and ask for less. The words of a leader who is prepared to squeeze the working class more rather than attack the inequalities of the society which he helped create.

 

What Now?

 

The Cuban regime is called many things as people try and categorise it, and excuse it for its policies and glaring faults. The working class did not create the revolution and they have been crippled since Castro and his cohorts installed a new bureaucracy. The aspirations of the workers are low and so is their confidence. However, as you can ascertain from the steps preceding and following the revolution Castro did not set out to even create ’socialism on one island’.

 

Recognising that Cuba is not ’socialist’ does not mean, however, that anarchists and socialists ignore the U.S. blockade of the island. This attempt to starve the island of even medical supplies is yet one more attack on the working class. The Washington government are happy to sqeeze the ordinary people of Cuba in the hope that the resultant discontent will lead to Castro’s overthrow.

 

The American ruling class hate his regime, not because it is some sort of ’socialist’ paradise but because its very existence challenges Washington’s political monopoly in Central and South America. Their hope is to replace Castro with a government obedient to their wishes, like those of Guatemala or El Salvador.

 

The revolution was nationalist inspired and Castro adopted the political ideology of Leninism to suit his needs after his courtship of American investment had failed. The working class in Cuba need to unite and fight the ruling class who reap the rewards from their island. Those who see something inspirational in the way Cuba functions today are those blinkered to the possibility of the only true socialist society, one where freedom and equality are central.

 

 

———————————————————–

Notes

 

*. All statistics quoted in the remainder of this paragraph are taken from Analysis, Winter 1991-1992.

 

1. Daily Worker (Paper of the U.S. Communist Party), August 10th 1953

2. Castro’s Revolution (New York 1964) p.35.

3. Granma (Cuban paper) 28th December 1975.

4. Cuba, an American Tragedy (R. Sheer & M. Zeitlin) Penguin 1964. p. 61.

5. Cuba, an American Tragedy (R. Sheer & M. Zeitlin) Penguin 1964. p. 63.

6. Venceremos, the speeches and writings of Che Guevara, London 1968 p.388.

Myths & Legend : “Che” Guevara

 

* Taken from Organise!, the  journal of the (British) Anarchist Federation, Nº 47. Winter 1997-98.

[http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue47/che.html]

 

After his remains were dug up in Bolivia and reburied in Cuba a few years ago, public interest in Che was rekindled. The heroic cult that has developed around him took on new life, as hitherto unknown photos of his Bolivian campaign and two new biographies were published.

 

Whilst his image – on T-shirts, posters, and beer labels- continues to make money for capitalists, there seems to be a revival among the young in the idea of Che as idealistic hero and fighter for freedom. This hero cult seems to have infected many young radicals, some of whom regard themselves as anarchists. We take a look at his life and ideas…

 

The truth may be unpalatable to many. After all, the Che cult is still used to obscure the real nature of Castro’s Cuba, one of the final bastions of Stalinism. As jaded Stalinists and fellow-travelling Trotskyists celebrate Che’s anniversary we take a look at the real man behind the legend.

 

Born in Argentina (1928) to a Cuban aristocratic family who had fallen on hard times but who still had much wealth, Guevara had a comfortable upbringing. When Juan and Eva “Evita” Peron started on their rise to power, using populism and appeals to workers and peasants to install a regime that had many fascist characteristics (1944-1952) Guevara was still a youth. At this period he seemed remarkably disinterested in politics and failed to offer any opinions for or against the Peron regime.

 

Events in Guatemala were to change this. Arbenz, a leftist army officer, was elected as President. In 1952 he nationalised the property of the United Fruit Company, a major US company which owned much land and had great economic and political influence. He also began to nationalise the land of the local big ranchers and farmers. Guevara was caught up in enthusiasm for this experiment in ’socialism’ which infected middle class Latin American youth. Just before a trip to Guatemala he wrote: “I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated”.

 

Army

 

Guevara was in Guatemala when a US backed invasion force smashed the Arbenz regime. He was able to flee to Mexico. Here he joined up with the Cubans around Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. In November 1956, Che and 80 other members of the July 26 Movement (J26M) founded by Fidel had landed in Cuba to carry on a guerrilla campaign against the US backed dictator Batista. Here Che proved to be the most authoritarian and brutal of the guerrilla leaders. In fact Che went about turning volunteer bands of guerrillas into a classic Army, with strict discipline and hierarchy.

 

As he himself wrote: “Due to the lack of discipline among the new men… it was necessary to establish a rigid discipline, organise a high command and set up a Staff”. He demanded the death penalty for “informers, insubordinates, malingerers and deserters”.

 

He himself personally carried out executions. Indeed the first execution carried out against an informer by the Castroists was undertaken by Che. He wrote: “I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain”.

 

On another occasion he planned on shooting a group of guerrillas who had gone on hunger strike because of bad food. Fidel intervened to stop him. Another guerrilla who dared to question Che was ordered into battle without a weapon!

 

Apart from the drive towards militarisation in the guerrilla groups, Che also had another important duty. He acted as the main spreader of Stalinism within J26M. He secretly worked towards an alliance with the Popular Socialist Party (the Cuban Communist Party). Up to then there were very few Stalinists within J26M and other anti-Batista groups like the Directorate and the anarchists were staunchly anti-Stalinist.

 

The communists were highly unpopular among the anti-Batista forces. They had been junior partners of the regime and had openly condemned Castro’s previous attacks on Batista in 1953. They belatedly joined the guerrilla war.

 

With the Castroite victory in 1959, Che, along with his Stalinist buddy Raul Castro, was put in charge of building up state control. He purged the army, carried out re-education classes within it, and was supreme prosecutor in the executions of Batista supporters, 550 being shot in the first few months.

 

He was seen as extremely ruthless by those who saw him at work. These killings against supporters of the old regime, some of whom had been implicated in torture and murder, was extended in 1960 to those in the working class movement who criticised the Castro regime.

 

The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists had their press closed down and many militants were thrown in prison. Che was directly implicated in this. This was followed in 1962 with the banning of the Trotskyists and the imprisonment of their militants. Che said: “You cannot be for the revolution and be against the Cuban Communist Party”. He repeated the old lies against the Trotskyists that they were agents of imperialism and provocateurs.

 

He helped set up a secret police, the C-2 and had a key role in creating the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which were locally and regionally based bodies for spying on and controlling the mass of the population.

 

Missile deal

 

Che was the main link, indeed the architect, of the increasingly closer relation between Cuba and the Soviet Union. The nuclear missile deal which almost resulted in a nuclear war in 1962 was engineered at the Cuban end by Che. When the Russians backed down in the face of US threats, Che was furious and said that if he had been in charge of the missiles, he would have fired them off!

 

By 1963, Che had realised that Russian Stalinism was a shambles after a visit to Russia where he saw the conditions of the majority of the people, this after “Soviet-style planning” in the Cuban economy had been pushed through by him.

 

Instead of coming to some libertarian critique of Stalinism, he embraced Chinese Stalinism. He denounced the Soviet Union’s policy of peaceful co-existence, which acknowledged that Latin America was the USA’s backyard, and gave little or no support to any movement against American control. Fidel was now obsessed with saving the Cuban economy, himself arguing for appeasement. Against this Che talked about spreading armed struggle through Latin America, if necessary using nuclear war to help this come about!

 

Shambles

 

It was on this basis that Che left Cuba never to return. He went to the Congo, where he worked with the Congolese Liberation Army, supported by the Chinese Stalinists. This was a shambles of a campaign, and Che ended up isolated with many of his band dead. Despite this, Che still believed in guerrilla struggle waged by a tiny armed minority. His final, fatal, campaign was in Bolivia.

 

This also was a fiasco. Basing himself once more on old Castroist strategies, he failed to relate to the industrial working class. The Bolivian working class, and especially the tin miners, had a recent record of militancy and class consciousness. The peasants, on the other hand, among whom Che hoped to create an armed insurrection, had been demobilised by the land reforms of 1952. So, Che was unable to relate to either workers or peasants. The local Communist Party failed to support him. Robbed of support, Che was surrounded in the Andean foothills, captured and executed (1967).

 

Yes, Che was very brave physically. Yes, he was single-mindedly devoted to what he saw as the revolution and socialism. Yes, he refused the privilege and luxury granted to other leaders of Castroist Cuba, taking an average wage and working hard in his various government jobs. But many militarists, fascists and religious fanatics share these characteristics of bravery and self-sacrifice.

 

Che’s good looks and ‘martyr’s’ death turned him into an icon, an icon duly exploited by all those wanting to turn a fast buck selling ‘revolutionary’ chic.

 

But good looks and bravery camouflage what Che really was. A ruthless authoritarian and Stalinist, who expressed admiration for the Peronista authoritarian nationalists, Che acted as a willing tool of the Soviet bloc in spreading their influence.

 

Even when he fell out with the USSR about the possibility of guerrilla war in Latin America, he still remained a convinced Stalinist with admiration for China and North Korea. He had no disagreements with the Soviets about what sort of society he wanted – a bureaucratic authoritarian state-capitalist set up with contempt for the masses.

 

Che may look like the archetypal romantic revolutionary. In reality he was a tool of the Stalinist power blocs and a partisan of nuclear war. His attitudes and actions reveal him to be no friend of the working masses, whether they be workers or peasants.

GALSIC: Support Libertarians and Independent Trade Unionists in Cuba

 

Dear comrades,

 

As you will know, acting upon what we thought a pressing obligation, at the start of September we sent out a letter proposing the establishment of a support group for libertarians and independent trade unionists in Cuba. The motives behind that initiative were: the escalation of the crackdown on dissent and the emergence of libertarians and trade unionists ready to struggle for a trade union alternative independent of the Castro regime or whatever may come after it.

 

Well, having received an affirmative response from all consulted, we have concluded that the basis exists for the establishment of that support group and that we should press on as quickly as possible with its establishment, in that we have all agreed that:

- the role of protagonist belongs to the Cuban people rather than to its ruling elites (as occurred in the former Soviet Union) at home (Castroites) or abroad (Miami).

- civic participation should be underpinned by basic conditions of freedom of expression, reunion and assembly for all Cubans, without exception.

- the social struggle will carry on in that State capitalism (Castroism) and private capitalism (the capitalism of all the parties that advocate the “free market”) are the two faces of exploitation and domination.

- Democracy and Cuban independence will be fictions under the tutelage of the USA-EEC, just as much as the Revolution and independence were under the tutelage of the USSR.

- democratic authoritarianism, bourgeois democracy is and ever will be incompatible with the exercise of freedom and the achievement of equality.

 

We therefore append our definitive proposal for the lay-out of the Support Group for Cuba1s libertarians and independent trade unionists and would ask you to circulate it and let us have your response as quickly as possible so that we may know how you intend to collaborate with this publicity and solidarity project.

 

Paris 2 October 2003.

 

Daniel Pinos/ Nestor Vega/ Octavio Alberola

 

———————————————————–

 

Appeal Addressed to Libertarians and to Libertarian Organisations Generally

 

Dear comrades,

 

The intensification and increasing harshness of the crackdown by the Castroite dictatorship against dissent and the emergence of libertarians and trade unionists ready to campaign for a trade union alternative independent of the Castroite regime or of whatever may come after it, prompted us at the start of September 2003 to set up a support group for Cuba1s libertarians and independent trade unionists.

 

One month on, given that the replies received to our initial letter have been many and affirmative, we believe that the time has come to invite all libertarians and all libertarian organisations to rally to this initiative in order to facilitate the establishment at international level of a coordinating body representative of us all and which may strengthen our solidarity.

 

To that end and on the basis of what the libertarian movement actually represents in Cuba and around the World, we reckon that the most effective form of operation (for the time being) is that of an open, un-centralised network for the direct circulation of news and suggestions (via the Internet or other medium) insofar as we all have our news to offer or proposal to make. This does not rule out the libertarian organisations – especially the anarcho-syndicalist ones among them – setting up a working party or international coordinating body to see to it that solidarity is as widespread and effective as possible.

 

Nor does it rule out the possible establishment (along geographical lines, etc.) of autonomous support groups since solidarity need not necessarily be centralised. To that end and right now we invite you to join this Network of solidarity with libertarians and independent trade unionists in Cuba and we invite you (as many as may wish to do so) to tell us if we may pass your e-mail address on to anyone keen to take part. Allow us, then, to offer you the e-mail address of the Cuban Libertarian Movement (MLC): and inform you that, until such time as the international Group or Coordinating Body is set up, the address for the Support Group for Libertarians and Independent Trade unionists in Cuba (GALSIC – Grupo de Apoyo a Libertarios y Sindicalistas Independientes en Cuba) is:

 

GALSIC
Tribuna Latinoamericana

145 rue Amelot 75011 – Paris (France)

 

E-mails:movimientolibertariocubano@gmail.com
cesamepop@noos.fr

 

Fraternally,
The Support Group for Cuban Libertarians and Independent Trade Unionists.

 

———————————————————–

The hurt of no longer being (2009)

* Fragment from a work by Daniel Barret about the evolution of Cuba’s political regime since November 17 2005 till today. This piece attempts to place the role of Fidel Castro these past months.

Talking about a political regime so dependent on its tribal totem pole, it is not surprising that a fundamental chapter of its trajectory is about Fidel Castro; “commander in chief” by his own guerrilla merits and per saecula saeculorum. Fidel seemed to be dead but not buried back on January 11 2009 and very few dared to speak of missing him too much. By then he had already stopped his Reflexiones for some time and didn’t show much interest in appearing in person during visits by foreign leaders such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Martín Torrijos of Panama. Crowning the situation that very same day, in one of his periodic medical reports, a visibly moved Hugo Chávez said the following: “We know that the Fidel that walked streets and villages with his warrior image, in his uniform, hugging people, will not come back”. To finish by saying: “He will remain in our remembrances, because Fidel will live on, as he is alive today, and will live forever, past the physical life. And he must live – he knows it- many years”. That seemed like a poetic epitaph, the product of Hugo Chávez’s proverbial incontinence, who perhaps could not help offering the world such delicacies. But what Chávez probably didn’t take into account at that moment was the decision by the Cuban political rulers regarding the immortality of its icon and thus had to backtrack suddenly and announce amid drum rolls that Fidel was “very much alive”.

The situation was on stand-by several days until the snobbism and smarminess of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner set things in their place or out of their place. Using and abusing her prerogatives as a lady, according to the official explanations, she insisted on having an interview with history, even if it was with Tut-ankh-amon’s mummy: whereas the visitors to the Louvre Museum have their picture taken next to the Victory of Samotracia, she could not bypass adding to her collection of souvenirs a graphic illustration of her encounter with a revived Fidel Castro. Fidel, [1] in a majestic gesture of gallantry, accepted without hesitation the rendez-vous proposed by the extravagant amazon and put aside his self-imposed internal ostracism. There were some doubts and contradictions with respect to the duration of this encounter, but the truth is that it happened “officially” and was followed by mutual admiration, besides taking a photograph lacking in technical quality but which showed a Fidel somewhat shrunk but with more weight and aplomb than in his previous appearance in front of the cameras. And, since it was about ladies, if Fidel had met with Cristina Fernández he should also meet with Michelle Bachelet. Things got somewhat complicated in this instance since the “writer in chief” committed the faux pas of saying in writing that he had already informed the Chilean president of his taking sides in favor of Bolivia in the contentious Chile-Bolivia conflict; something that –as was said as an excuse- would not be too important coming from the lips of somebody who doesn’t occupy any position in Cuba’s state structure but who is barely the first secretary and undisputable leader of the only political party with legality in those lands. Michelle Bachelet took notice by saying that she had already communicated her displeasure to the real Cuban president and it all blew away as a passing upheaval and without visible consequences since the problems between Bolivia and Chile would be resolved by those countries themselves while Fidel –to the further chagrin of his large herd of unconditional and rueful sycophants- would not be invited to take part in any tribunal that would eventually rule on this conflict.

The pageantry of presidential visitors would not stop here. Right away, Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom entered the scene, carrying, as homage to the illustrious convalescent, the highest distinction awarded by his country: the Order of Quetzal in the degree of Grand Collar. The world gasped, perhaps waiting for the “commander” in person, acting coherently with his past, to recommend that Colom stuff the Order in the anatomical parts where the sun doesn’t shine. But fortunately, this didn’t happen: Fidel simply gave thanks for the distinction received by Raúl as his representative while at the same time Raúl clarified that his brother could not socialize with whomever came to Havana and that such privilege was the exclusive prerogative of female presidents.

The problem was that, at that precise moment, Chávez decided to make a surprise visit to the lands of his putative father, and in such an especial case, to be neither less nor equal to the ladies, the interviews with history had to be two instead of one. Almost nobody knows for certain neither where they spoke, how they spoke nor what they spoke about but it was clear that the current ruse was crumbling in plain view of the large following of this soap opera. If now Fidel was also accessible to the male occupants of the highest office in the sister countries; what new reason could they argue for not accepting amiable conversations between the old warrior and the presidents of the Dominican Republic and Honduras? It all seemed to go very well with Leonel Fernández but with Manuel Zelaya there were some problems of coordination. So much so that, while Fidel affirmed that he could not find any time to meet with the Honduran, [2] the latter sustained that the Grand Chief had deign to pose with his hat! [3] However, everything was fixed with a speed worthy of a better cause and Zelaya also had the honor of seeing himself praised by the following “reflexión” of Fidel’s, who took it upon himself to elevate to the sky and beyond his intelligence, his affability and even his being in Managua, as a child, at the precise moment when the Prophet pronounced one of his unparalleled discourses. Meanwhile, the comedy had to display its biblical face, and since nobody would believe a new multiplication of bread and fish, Hugo Chávez, in his role as the unfailing teller of such stories, had previously shown us Fidel Castro taking a walk in Jaimanitas; something that only he had the privilege and exclusivity to hoard in the graphic testimonies that no one else in the world could own. Nevertheless, he did not fail to qualify the walk as “miraculous” or swear that people “cried when they saw him”, even omitting the minor fact that the sacred mantle was in this case replaced by the Addidas sport wear. [4]

The most important political event would not be one of these anodyne movements on the chess board but Fidel’s pronouncement on the ministerial changes that took place at the beginning of March. The official communication was laconic and almost resembled a corporate memo, even though among the displaced were such figures as Carlos Lage and Felipe Pérez Roque, both former stars in the Fidelista heaven and part of the inner circle of students of the “commander in chief” who perhaps never imagined that their turn at defenestration would arrive some day. But the heavenly divinity could not neglect to put his personal seal and transformed the changes into an execution: “The honey of power by which they never had to sacrifice anything, awakened in them ambitions that drove them to an abject role. The external enemy had many illusions about them.” A few lines earlier he had made clear that he had been consulted about the changes and that nobody should interpret them as swapping “Fidel’s men” for “Raúl’s men”. Slyly and without warning he dedicated the rest of his “reflexión” to the much more important Baseball Classic, taking all responsibility for any eventual failure in the same; [5],[6] a failure for which he later, in one of his habitual gestures of magnanimity, blamed it on the technical staff, the directors of baseball and also, if possible, on a vast and diffused structure that has proven incapable of incorporating the materialistic science of pitching that the Japanese and the Koreans brag about. We could add, as newsworthy that this latest turn of the leadership produced much stupor among the “friends of Cuba” everywhere and so it happened that in the following days we were able to see urgent smoke signals being sent to Havana by such writers of irreproachable loyalty as Narciso Isa Conde, Pascual Serrano, Carlo Frabetti or Miguel Urbano Rodrigues. [7] Perhaps even the most faithful “friends” are trying to tell the Cuban political conductors that the game has its limits and not even they themselves know what to say to their closest listeners.

This soap opera is indecipherable; among other things because secrets are a State sport in Cuba and also, the intelligence and counter-intelligence services almost never fail to spread here and there the seeds of confusion and disconcerting incoherence. However, the elements external to these palace intrigues are perfectly comprehensible. For starters, it is obvious that neither the vocational “secrecy” nor the State Security can do absolutely anything with an economy in ruins, with people not believing and with bureaucratic inefficiency. Faced with this, the eternal bellicose way of presenting problems and the ever present paranoia are nothing but an obstacle and can not be the explanatory key or a reasonable course of action. This is precisely where the most pressing and immediate problems of Cuba’s political regime are; this is precisely where the State and its struggles for power have revealed themselves as totally bankrupt.

The government poses the problem from the perspective that the solution demands the incorporation of Cuba at least into the American inter-state system, the possibility of having commercial relations with the rest of the world and the creation of appetizing lures for a new resurgence of foreign inversion; [8] none of this is alien to a reformulation of the relationship with the United States. The strongest endorsement of these pretensions had already happened in December 2008, at the meeting in Brazil’s Costa de Sauípe; in which occasion Cuba was admitted as a member of the Río Group. This and nothing else is the origin of the following parade of presidential visits to Cuba in the first months of 2009: in diplomatic code, if the presidents of Ecuador, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Venezuela, Dominican Republic and Honduras visit Cuba in that order it means that the one who has to discuss the matter with the United States has to be Brazil; even if Lula has discretely abstained from taking part in this parade and nobody, not even Chávez has had the privilege of seeing Fidel photographed as the standard bearer of a scola do samba. In the end, the meaning of all this is nothing less than Brazil’s confirmation as global player and regional leader; a country by itself capable of assuming the representation of its “lesser brothers” and to straighten out Latin American business rendering the United States unable to claim any priority in the matter.

Everything was working out well in this sense and Cuba got to score some diplomatic gains in the field of international relations unthinkable some time ago. The additional problem, however, is that the Cuban State and its Sole Party lack any legitimacy other than that which came from the Sierra Maestra and its founding epic, out of the biography and destiny of its “commander in chief”. Those who know say that Raúl is characterized for being an advocate of institutionalism as a dam against the legacy of ideas, arbitrariness and whims without stops that characterized his older brother; but the drama of Cuba’s political regime is that there is no longer much time left or ideas to give a formal and statutory character to a monumental failure and they don’t have at hand, as happened in the past 50 years, the opiate of the charismatic conductor. In this dead end, in spite of all the efforts by Brazil, timely seconded by the rest of the Latin American countries, the historical leadership opted to be ridicule and didn’t think of anything better but to increase the militarization of the ruling circles and to push to the end the average age, transforming itself into a mediumistic government in communication with the after life and whose legitimacy already has a ghostly character; even though the specter, according to recent declarations, swims in a private pool, studies Darwin, takes walks around the neighborhood and shows himself at a news stand to get our daily Granma. Of course, while the comedy lasts, there will never be a lack of Latin American presidents ready to exchange sweet nothings with Fidel, take pictures to decorate family albums and, by the way, try to present to their fellow country folk a progressive image containing at least some of the flanks of attack of its most unaware leftist adversaries. [9] Although all of this does not produce anything but the wearing away of the undying image of the ghost; [10] whether because of his latest apparition is his own nonsense or because it is a matter of the broken down genius of the ventriloquists of the day.

[For more updated info, in English & Spanish, with the anarchist view of Cuba, see the blog “Movimiento Libertario Cubano”, in http://movimientolibertariocubano.entodaspartes.net. The other website of the Cuban anarchists is: http://www.mlc.acultura.org.ve.]

[1] There is a high probability that when we say “Fidel” we are naming a symbol and little can be done to know if in this case we are referring to a person, a circle of power, a cast of cinema doubles or the taxidermists of CIMEQ. However, for the sake of convenience, we stick to the narrative that passes in front of the eyes of the world and understand as such the totality of interviews, photographs and Reflexiones presented under that denomination.

[2] On March 4, at 3:35pm Fidel had sustained in his “reflexión” the following: “It’s a pity that he leaves today without me saluting him. It’s the second time he visits Cuba. But what can I do, where do I find the time?” which can be corroborated in the most official address conceivable: http://www.cuba/cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2009/esp/f040309e.html

[3] Zelaya’s affirmations can be found in the coverage made by Cuba Encuentro, http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es/cuba/noticias/zelaya-se-reune-con-los-castro-160643.

[4] A telling of this can be found in http://yohandry.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/fidel-castro-camina-por-la-habana/.

[5]Vid., Fidel Castro, “Cambios sanos en el Consejo de Ministros” (Healthy changes in the Council of Ministers) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2009/esp/f030309e.html

[6] Lately has circulated the interpretation by Mexican Jorge Castañeda that some of the baseball references in the Fidel Castro’s article are a coded message to Hugo Chávez with respect to his supposed participation in a plot together with Lage and Pérez Roque. In any case, this conjecture by Castañeda applies only to a specific phrase. Therefore the rest of the baseball references by Fidel Castro, in this article and in the following, seem to be nothing but baseball references.

[7] Vid., Narciso Isa Conde, “El caso Lage – Pérez Roque y los cambios en Cuba” (The Lage – Pérez Roque case and the changes in Cuba) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/caso-lage-perez-roque-cambios-cuba; Pascual Serrano “La institucionalidad y la luz” (Institutionality and light) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/la-institucionalidad-y-la-luz; Carlo Fabretti, “Política y dignidad” (Politics and dignity) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/politica-y-dignidad, and finally Miguel Urbano Rodrigues, “A propósito de las Reflexiones de Fidel” (About Fidel’s Reflexiones) http://www.lahaine.org/index.php?p=36756

[8] Foreign investment in Cuba has not followed a linear trajectory but rather it has had many ups and downs. After an avalanche on investments during the 90’s –mainly European and Canadian – the waters seemed to return to their normal course or even decrease in more recent times due to non-compliance on the part of the Cuban administration. However, the discovery in the last few years of important oilfields in Cuban territorial waters and the inability of the State to exploit them by itself has put the issue on the table, with urgency, once again.

[9] The success of this alignment is doubtful since in this round there hasn’t been a lack of significant pronouncements about these false love affairs. See for example “Carta al gobierno de Cuba. Quién es Rafael Correa?” (Letter to the Cuban government. Who is Rafael Correa?) by the Secretariado por la Unidad de la Izquierda (Secretariat for Leftist Unity) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/carta-gobierno-en-cuba-quien-rafael -correa; “Carta de los mapuches a los gobiernos de Cuba, Venezuela y Bolivia” (Letter of the Mapuches to the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticias/carta-mapuches-gobiernos-cuba-venezuela-bolivia; and also Narciso Isa Conde “No fue así, comandante Fidel” (It wasn’t like that, Commander Fidel) http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/no-fue-asi-comandante-fidel.

[10] A list of the inconsistencies and screw-ups written by the Venerable in his Reflexiones  would be a titanic task that the preservation of our mental health precludes. It is enough right now to show a couple of samples. For instance, in his “reflexión” of January 22 he explained that the decrease in the number of his writings was due to his decision “to not interfere nor impede the Party comrades and the State”, only to follow with a string of such articles. Second, let’s recall that in his article of March 12 he used Joseph Stiglitz as an analytical reference on the global crisis, being that at the time the economist was saying that in Latin America, no country would be more affected than Venezuela, and by extension, Cuba.