Translation: With neither subsidy nor explanations

My last post referred to the new housing subsidies Cuba, whereby low-income individuals and households can apply for grants to repair or extend their homes. Priority is given to those whose homes have been damaged by hurricanes and flooding. The scheme is funded by the sale of construction materials by state entities at retail prices. A percentage of the proceeds are allocated to subsidies at the municipal level.

As always, enlightened policies might look nice on paper but their effectiveness depends on implementation. Here, the enemy is what Cubans call "the bureaucracy" — corrupt, incompetent or simply uncaring administrators and, sometimes, entire institutions. 

The problem is not simply petty-mindedness on the part of individuals and an administrative culture that fosters such a mentality. The root cause seems to be hyper-centralised decision-making, in both the political and economic spheres, and a lack of accountability of administrators and institutions to popular constituencies, i.e. "from below". The theme of decentralisation is taken up in another commentary I've translated by the author of the fragment below, Jose Alejandro Rodriguez.

Rodriguez has a regular column in Juventud Rebelde newspaper titled Acuse de Recibo (Acknowledgement of Receipt) in which he summarises and comments on selected letters sent in by readers, most of which deal with specific cases of administrative corruption, incompetence, arbitrariness or insensitivity. As well as exposing and publicly shaming those responsible for such injustices, Acuse de Recibo provides a sober counterpoint to the triumphal style of much Cuban journalism. It arms and emboldens those who struggle against administrative arbitrariness and injustice.

The online version of Juventud Rebelde allows readers to submit comments. These are moderated, of course, but highly critical opinions are often accepted, including from Cubans living abroad who don't support Cuba's socialist order. The regular feature that attracts by far the most commentaries is Rodriguez's column, which has evolved into a forum in which Cuban revolutionaries debate each other and, on occasion, the Revolution's hostile critics. The case below is one of two that appeared in Acuse de Recibo three days ago. It burns with indignation.   

Little wonder, then, that the online commentaries occasionally draw attention to instances in which Juventud Rebelde journalists, or those from other Cuban pro-Revolution publications, have been turned away by officials who probably have something to hide.   

With neither subsidy nor explanations

By José Alejandro Rodríguez

Juventud Rebelde, June 23, 2012

Translation: Marce Cameron

What's worst of all, in some of the tales related in this column, is not the lack of resources or unavoidable objective impediments. No, what's inexcusable is that authoritarian style, blind and deaf to human problems; drastic decisions being taken without even those affected being offered an explanation. A name is crossed out and that's that.

Félix Revilla Castillo of 12th Street, No. 97, between 7th and 14th Steets in the Mármol neighbourhood of Santiago de Cuba, was very upset when he wrote to me. He told me that the mother of his two children, Miosotis Hechavarría, lives with them together with her own mother, now elderly and infirm, in an old and very run-down house at No. 50 Brigadier Marrero, between Calvario and Maceo Streets, in that city.

Miosotis has found it necesary to leave her job, due to health problems, and is a social welfare recipient. Given her precarious economic circumstances, and faced with the urgent need to get to work on the house, she applied for a subsidy to repair it. This she was granted by the [local government] commission established for this purpose, after a monumental effort given that there was always something missing: either a signature or a statement from the People's Savings Bank (BPA) that lacked a name or this or that surname of one of the requisite officials...

Then, at the construction materials distribution centre, the first time they gave her 65 metres of reinforced steel rod, a sink, two towell racks, electrical cables, two soap dishes and the set of components for the toilet cistern.

That was all she got. There were no other kinds of materials assigned to those with subsidies, even though such items were being sold freely[1] to the population. Yet Miosotis has a subsidy precisely because she can't efford to pay for them...

The following week they went back to the distribution centre to ask for the windows, doors and interior lighting. To their astonishment, at the Bank[2] they were told that the subsidy had been suspended as instructed in a letter sent by the Municipal Administration Council, in which they didn't even explain why.

Félix asks: "Why was that subsidy cancelled or suspended? Can anybody, whatever their level of authority, stop a process that up to now has been going well, despite its ups and downs?"

The saddest thing of all is that no offical from the Peoples Power municipal government has written to this family to inform them that the subsidy in question was cancelled, and why. Are these the methods of our society?
_________________

Translator's footnotes

[1] At retail prices, i.e. without subsidies, and in unrestricted quantities 

[2] Once granted, housing subsidies are deposited in a bank account. The bank is supposed to ensure that the funds are only used for their stated purpose, i.e. the purchase and transportation of building materials and the labour of registered small private businesses or self-employed workers (construction cooperatives have been foreshadowed).

Translation: Privileges to those who deserve them

A Cuban youth committed to the Revolution speaks his mind in this Granma letter to the editor. 

The emigration of disenchanted Cuban youth to countries such as the US, Spain (where youth unemployment hovers around 50%), Mexico and Ecuador seems to be one of the few remaining taboo topics in the Cuban press. 

Many seek higher salaries that would allow them to better support family in Cuba or abroad; some just want to experience more of the world than their Caribbean island and escape its economic hardships; others chase the "American Dream". Not all those who emigrate find what they're looking for, though some do. 

The exodus of highly educated youth is not only demoralising, it also has serious economic consequences despite the flow of remittances back to Cuba. Some of Cuba's best young minds in the technical sense are serving capitalist corporations in other countries rather than Cuba's socialist revolution.

The US government's infamous Cuban Adjustment Act aims to deprive Cuba of skilled workers by encouraging risky and illegal crossings of the Florida Straights in small craft, creating the propaganda spectacle of Cubans "fleeing the communist dictatorship". Any Cuban citizen who reaches the US coastline can stay and apply for US citizenship after a year.

Haitians and other Caribbean nationals who land on US shores without authorisation are sent back to where they came from.

A key objective of the "updating" of Cuba's socialist-oriented economic model, though not one that is explicitly stated in the Guidelines, is to make employment for skilled workers more rewarding in every sense, above all in terms of remuneration, so that, for example, a surgeon does not have to drive a taxi on the weekend to make ends meet. 

The dedication of such workers in the face of the hardships and privations of the Special Period is what has kept the Revolution afloat in the chilly waters of neoliberal globalisation. Behind the impressive statistics on health care and education are millions of committed human beings imbued with revolutionary spirit.

A substantial minority of Cubans think and act very differently, however, as illustrated in the candid vignette below. The struggle to renew Cuba's socialist project is the struggle of the former to prevail over the latter in the spheres of economics, ethics and ideology. The economy of the socialist-oriented Cuba that is emerging must "privilege those who really deserve it". 

Privileges to those who deserve them

Letter to the editor, Granma, March 2, 2012

Translation: Marce Cameron

I’m one of the many youths who is concerned about the future of their country. I feel proud of its gains and advances in various sectors, thanks to the socialism we’ve defended for 50 years. I consider it to be the most just country and socialism to be the most viable option for saving humanity.

But I’m also the first to acknowledge the mistakes we’ve make in its construction and improvement. With constructive criticism I open the door to the empty minds of those who care only about the good life and who salivate at the American Dream.

I once read a commentary by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro that contained a phrase which made an impression on me. From that time on I’ve carried it with me wherever I may go as a devastating weapon, firing it at point blank range at whoever dares to make a superficial criticism: “Anyone who wants more than what is indispensable in order to live is worth less as a human being.” Most people are speechless at such a magisterial phrase; life shows that this is how it is.

Recently I graduated from law school, and ever since I was a student I’ve read and analysed the letters pages of this newspaper, created so that the people could raise their problems and propose solutions. I’d like to take up an issue, one of many that concerns me and makes me feel uncomfortable: the wholesome recreation of young people, whether students or not, for an affordable and fair price.

For some years there was a scheme organised by the Union of Young Communists in which entry was granted to discos, cabaret tables, swimming pools and camping cabins at a price that, while it was out of reach of most parents, did make them more willing to fork out for it. They could give a treat to their son or daughter, but they’d have to earn it by getting good grades; this is something any honourable family educated by the Revolution should do without hesitation. However, it’s true that it didn’t work well, and neither should granting subsidies be a function of the organisation.

Today, these kinds of activities are organised in some educational institutions, but it’s still insufficient, given that it doesn’t meet the needs of all youth who need this type of entertainment. In addition, while the entry price may be affordable, the prices of drinks and food are unchanged. If you go to a disco, the entry price ranges from 2, 3, 5, 10 and up to 20 Cuban convertible pesos. What son or daughter of a worker or farmer with an average income, what intellectual or official in the armed forces or the police, could pay such a sum of money? The same is true of the products sold in these places.

I’m aware that the world finds itself in a deep economic-financial crisis and that our country is not unaffected by this, so we have to eliminate excessive wastage, superfluous spending and gratuities, among other problems that were addressed in the Sixth Communist Party Congress, but this doesn’t justify these unaffordable prices. Why the difference in prices between the products sold in the chain of convertible currency stores and those in the recreational venues previously referred to? Why double or triple the prices in convertible pesos if wages are static and most of the people who frequent them are young students? Are they higher quality products? We all know this isn’t the case, they say it’s because of the venue and what it offers. It seems to me this justification is for the rich in capitalist societies, and not for a young person of modest means born in a socialist Revolution who burns the midnight oil studying in order to be able to contribute to their country in the future, or he or she who makes sacrifices by working in any state sector that contributes to economic development and they just want to go out with their friends or their girlfriend or boyfriend.

I think that if one of these venues attracted 50, 100 or more people at an entry price of 2 convertible pesos and with reasonable prices for additional purchases, it would be able to cover its costs and contribute to tax revenues.

Despite the high prices you see many youth frequenting the best places and consuming large quantities of the aforementioned products as if they were sold in regular Cuban pesos. There’s no doubt that the great majority of them neither study nor work, they live off the black market which does so much harm to those who really strive to take the country forward. Those who sell their bodies or do all kinds of denigrating acts also abound, as do the kids of the new rich, and I ask myself: is it for them that these recreational venues exist? If so, it’s not in keeping with the truly revolutionary youth in which our top leaders have placed their trust. 

It’s hardly gratifying to arrive at work or school exhausted and see how in the corner of any square you meet a childhood playmate who spends the day lazing about, drinking beer, driving around and of course, entering and leaving nightclubs in the fanciest clothes and believing themselves to be the master of the universe. If you ask them what’s happening in Cuba or in the world, they tell you they couldn’t care less what’s going on, that they just want to leave the country, and other things I’m not going to repeat given their obscene and offensive content.

These and other related issues have been the subject of debate on various occasions by university students, revolutionaries, humble people, those willing to give their lives for the country and in honour of those youths that died throughout our history for the cause that the new generations enjoy today. Despite this, we lack things needed by young people that up to know only exist in dreams given the economic situation. If we oriented the social pyramid the way it should be we’d rescue ethical values and incentivise the importance of study and work, but for this we have to begin privileging those who really deserve it.

J. Martos Yapur

Translation: Morally unacceptable

Elsewhere it Latin America, where various forms of child labour are widespread, the sight of a child working in a family business would hardly raise eyebrows.

In my own country, Australia, there appears to be no minimum age for such child labour provided that it occurs outside school hours and doesn't affect the child's study. In the state of Victoria, "parents employing their children in a family business are not required to observe the general conditions of employment relating to age restrictions, hours of work or rest breaks" (source).

In Cuba, the school system strives not only for the rounded intellectual and physical development of children and adolescents, but for an appreciation of labour as both a right and a duty in a socialist-oriented society that aims to ultimately do away with the division — inherent in all forms of class society — between manual and intellectual labour.

Based on the ideas of national independence hero Jose Marti, as well as those of the Marxist tradition, a symbolic contribution to agricultural work in the countryside has been part of student life for decades. The sons and daughters of peasants, factory workers, administrators and government ministers work alongside each other harvesting potatoes and picking grapefruit. This, however, is education for working life rather than child labour.

In Cuba, all forms of child labour are prohibited. Hence the distress and moral outrage of the Granma reader in the letter below. In an interview published in the Spring 2010 edition of the International Journal of Cuban Health and Medicine's magazine MEDICC Review, UNICEF's Cuba representative, Spaniard Jose Juan Ortiz, commented:

I always say that applying the tenets of the [UN] Convention of the Rights of the Child isn't a question of resources, but rather one of political will. Cuba has demonstrated that a country doesn’t need to be rich to protect children’s rights. The Convention has been in place for 20 years and we’re still talking about hundreds of millions of children living in the street, not in school, or enslaved as labourers or sex workers, but not one of those children is Cuban and that’s due to the government’s political will to create a protective, rights-based environment. In Cuba, this protective environment is based in the family and the community, but extends to the provincial, national, and ultimately international level in cooperation with agencies like UNICEF. By guaranteeing social and community development, the Cuban government has shown the political will to provide for and protect children. This is also what has allowed Cuba to achieve health outcomes on par with the world’s most developed countries.

This Granma letter is notable not only for what it conveys about the sanctity of childhood in Cuba and the acute sensitivity of Cuba's revolutionaries in this regard. Also important is the fact that drawing attention to such a stain on the Revolution's pride in the national press is no longer considered taboo. Editorial policy is shifting from "don't talk about that, it will demoralise people and give the enemy a stick to beat us with", to "we must see things as they are, rather than as we'd like them to be."  

Morally unacceptable

By L. Martínez, Granma letter to the editor, December 2, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

I never thought I’d be writing about this, when the cornerstone of my discussions with my six year old daughter is the protection of childhood in our Cuba that, while imperfect, is the country that I want for her, her sister, their friends and their own children one day.

Last Sunday we went to the Coconut Island Park on the corner of 5th Avenue and 112 Street [in Havana]. It was very nice: not many people, not too hot, and with many of the rides in working order. We invited our little neighbour of the same age. Between his family and ours there are bonds of affectionate friendship, above all because the little boy is educated in the same values that we try to instill in our children. At the end of the visit, upon leaving the park, we froze at the sight: a child, no more than nine or 10 years old, selling toys, stickers, and all that plastic paraphernalia that is emerging in all the recreational centres where the parents go to drop off their kids. His stall was situated in front of the place where they do painted tattoos, just at the entrance/exit of the park, very visible.

On seeing his face as he talked prices and haggled with the buyers, a great fear came over me. The fear of losing the most precious thing we have for the sake of sending a message of openness and tolerance towards the new economic policy that we're getting used to. It’s impossible that those responsible for these establishments, the park supervisors and other authorities, are not aware of this. Later, I recalled that we’d seen him before, leading the ponies for children’s rides at Monte Barreto Park. At the time I didn’t think he was “working”, but that his family had let him do it for fun. Now I realise that it wasn't so; I should have said something there and then and I feel terrible for not having done so.

Who controls this? Who checks that the children of the parents who have these stalls aren't being made to work? I wish this didn’t happen! I hope it’s just an isolated case!

Not only because it’s a gross and serious violation of the law, but because it is morally unacceptable.

Translation: Spectres and the present

This commentary by Luis Sexto needs little introduction. It gives a feel for the mood of the country as it faces up to difficult and disagreeable adjustments to a patchwork of the valid, the harmful and the obsolete.

Spectres and the present

By Luis Sexto

Juventud Rebelde, January 24, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

It seems to me that the greatest risk to Cuban society in its internal circumstances, influenced by those of the world, could be to entrench itself in fear, pessimism or perhaps resignation, all feelings that a psychologist would include among the "spectres of the soul". Some may be offended by this judgement because, they would say, how could we fear or be pessimistic or resign ourselves if we have confronted without trembling nor wavering the hostility, threats and subversive actions by successive US governments.

Of course, nobody would deny such evidence. But the courage [I refer to here], primordial and with everything this implies, and that I have already mentioned, is not about raising weapons, shooting, charging at the enemies of the nation. Physical courage lies outside of the apparent generalisation of fear or pessimism or resignation. For many it would even be a historic privilege to confront a wave of invading "marines". It would be very straightforward for them. Because they would know who they were aiming and shooting at.

Now then, I want to try to reflect in moral terms. And to continue this analysis we'd have to turn to psychology and accept the tendency to persist in habits, to not abandon the known for the unknown, other than when in an act of liberation we take a leap forward. The origins of fear, pessimism and resignation are multiple.

We need to accept that, in effect, a certain part of society fears the possibility that the conquests of the Revolution — which never, in its brief history, has advanced without separating itself from obstacles of internal and external opposition — may be lost.

We agree, what's more, that it is natural that those who have defended the socioeconomic order they installed, and have defended it with good intentions, will be assaulted by pessimism when faced with the fact that our reality is being updated with modifications whose scope or success cannot be foreseen.

But let's allow for the senses in which Cuban society — that aspires to socialism, which is justice and independence — presents a rough characteristic: its complexity. In it is plaited, interwoven, in sometimes absurd alliances, the reasonable with the irrational; the collective with the personal; the success with the error; the ethic with the moral hypocrisy, abidance with indiscipline. It has to be admitted, though it may hurt or perturb us, that Cuba's social organisation has been overloaded with bureaucratism. Thus, certain gazes cannot see what exists but only what they wish would exist. Therefore, our economy will have to be organised horizontally enough that the prevalence of incorrect acts above the law is avoided, and that the excess of will on the part of the administrators, above the view of the workers, is also avoided.

To preserve political independence and social justice we need, then, the indispensable mechanism of renovation, the basic dialectical method that would allow Cuba to become a place where such things abound. This, then, must be understood, and we must understand that a country whose image Raul [Castro in his speech to the National Assembly in December] silhouetted honourably and clearly as one foot over the edge of the precipice, cannot pass this test unharmed without measures that are at times drastic. Drastic measures that must preserve the equilibrium between the urgent and that which can be delayed, the necessary and the optional, that which is possible and that which would be inappropriate. Doubts may be understandable. But, being demanding, fear and pessimism are out of tune with our history. Or resignation, that feeling with which we leave everything to chance, to the wind that pushes leaves or papers around.

I have no illusions: some of my readers will write me off as a dreamer. And if this is true, that is, if I am a dreamer, is this not preferable to being labelled a pessimist, or resigned, or timid? I confess, nevertheless, that sometimes fear does keep me awake at night. Fear that everything of value in my country, its work and its history, could fall into the decadence of those that Ruben Dario called the new barbarians of Attila. These days, on learning of the attack, that became a killing, on a US senator, liberal and progressive, I ask myself if this is the country they propose [for us] so emphatically from the United States?

For now what counts is the present, and also the internal spectres, such as bureaucracy. But the bureaucratic mentality, dedicated to restricting with its all-seeing and misplaced eye, will only be nullified if the workers and socialist democracy raise themselves to the first rank of decision-making through a conscious and rational strategy, without fear, nor pessimism, and much less resignation to things being "always like this and they always will."

Translation: On our feet

My translations of Luis Sexto's commentaries are not always appreciated by readers. Some find them too poetic, intangible, even "vacuous", according to one reader. So here is my appeal to those who are inclined to skip over these columns and wait for something more familiar to Western leftist audiences: grappling with Sexto's weekly pearls of wisdom is advisable if you want to grasp the human dimension of the Revolution's strivings for self-renewal. 

We may not agree with what he says, and sometimes we may not understand exactly what he's getting at, but what is conveyed in these reflections is no less important than the speeches of political leaders and the data on agricultural production, productivity and wages. One of the Cuban Revolution's contributions to the treasury of communist thinking and practice is its sensitivity towards the subjective, the human being as the subject and not merely the object of social transformation. 

If the Revolution has indulged in errors of idealism that have weakened its economic and ethical substrate, and that must be corrected if the Revolution is to endure, it is only fair to acknowledge that the profound humanism of the Cuban revolutionary tradition has always been its pillar of strength. Sexto exemplifies this tradition, so it's worth making an effort to understand him. Cuba's socialist renewal must put bread on the table but, as the old saying goes, man does not live by bread alone. 

On our feet

By Luis Sexto

Juventud Rebelde, January 6, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

We have repeated it: few can doubt that man cannot live without illusions. Or without hopes. Every individual is the subject of hope. And society as a whole too, must offer hope, illusion which is not fantasy, as sustenance. And the most certain hope rests on what we have, and need, to reach the visible or foreseeable horizon.

But to convert illusion, or hope, into a force or a generator of force, what is needed is the conviction that each one of us is an indispensable reason for any desire for renewal. When we know where we're going, the will prepares itself to take a risk, to become part of the "long march" of the founding or refounding of dreams, or better, the satisfaction of needs.

Last Friday we spoke about committed participation as the watchword for this new year that has begun. One reader, very respectfully, has reminded me that the Cuban people have always participated in every campaign that the Revolution has needed. And this is true. But I refer here not only to attending a mass rally in the Plaza de la Revolucion, nor joining a battalion of the militia, nor to going to cut sugar cane or do volunteer work in agriculture. We must understand, as "disciples of history", that today is it not about committing ourselves to accommodating life to theory, known and secure; rather, it is about adjusting theory to the urgent necessities of life and, consequently, facing up to experiences for which the average mentality is not prepared.

So, participation begins today by understanding, from an ethical-political standpoint, that everything that is applied in Cuba to perfect socialism has a rough side, and requires a quota of confidence, since no matter how drastic are the consequences of certain measures to update the economy and society, no citizen need feel like a ruffled feather floating in an inscrutable and uncontrollable wind. Our dreams of improvement do not imply accommodating to everyone asking everyone to make the least effort, but adopting a strategy, within the commitment to socialism, that offers each one of us a space in which individual effort is truly valued in and of itself, and is integrated, reciprocally, in the collective.

It is difficult to admit this? The equality ideal that cannot be renounced must be generalised in an appointment with the non-egalitarian opportunities for wellbeing, in such a way that everyone can possess depending on the degree of effort and conscientious participation in work, beyond basic rights such as education and health care. And above all, on top of this redistribution of social roles, we'll keep watch over the certainty that the Revolution is, more than anything, a perennial work of renewal at the service of the workers, and whose acts correspond, above all, to its commitment to the people. A commitment that should not include the voluntaristic gift, the requirement to turn a blind eye, the centralisation of that which is most personal, nor the bureaucratic distortion that usually looks in only one direction — towards itself — and that prioritises the allegedly institutional over the popular.                   

Any doubts are understandable. But if reality is viewed as it is, and we accept that no aspiration to social justice and national independence is conquered and sustained without an economy that generates riches instead of squandering and that spends less than it earns, hope will have a valid niche within us. At the risk of being normative or didactic I recommend, then, that we take care of our mirages, and of our apprehensions. Efficiency, efficacy, and effectiveness must now move on pontoons of austerity and greater demands for participation, but with the evidence that today, the rational seems to be the method that leads to rectification.

Because if we recognise that no hopeful theory of "Earthly paradises" that has not passed the judgement of practice will offer a way forward for our country in the present circumstances, we'll travel on foot to wherever we must go. And this is the logic behind which others, the enemies of the nation and of socialism, would have us arrive where they would wish: at the disappearance of our vocation for a prosperous and equitable homeland, loyal to its history of independence and social justice. Everything that [Jose] Marti did was also for this.          

Translation: By one and all

If you live, as I do, in a capitalist society, in which the essential function of the mass media is to disorient, distract and divide in the class interests of the corporate elite (and to sell advertising space), imagine if you opened the paper and read, over your morning coffee, a commentary like Luis Sexto's below. You'd no doubt stare in disbelief and wonder if, by some magical device, you'd woken up in a kinder, saner society.

Despite material constraints and much room for improvement, the basic function of Cuba's revolutionary press is to orient and inform. Increasingly, it is also to provoke and facilitate the striving for consensus on how to carry through the urgent and necessary renovation of Cuba's embattled socialist project. Such a consensus would be unthinkable in capitalist Australia where the social domination of the capitalist elite rests on the political atomisation of the working people; where meaningful participation in politics has been reduced to ticking a ballot paper once every few years for one or another gang of pro-corporate politicians.

Participation in the construction of a new and better society, the subject of Sexto's profound reflection, is of no interest whatsoever to the staff writers of the tabloids and broadsheets of the capitalist world. All they care about is sustaining the appearance, the fiction, of participation. That the masses believe in the illusion of democracy is what counts. In revolutionary Cuba it's the opposite: what matters is the substance of participation, since without an ever-greater real participation of the broad masses, not only in the carrying out of the tasks of the Revolution but in deciding what those tasks will be, there can be no progress towards socialism.

Sexto's subtle, lyrical prose is difficult to translate. I hope my attempt does justice to the original.         

By one and all

By Luis Sexto

Juventud Rebelde, December 30, 2010

Translation: Marce Cameron

Among the terms in our daily language, this commentator would choose "participation" and its verb, "to participate", as the key words for the coming year. They are very common words. And because of this one could say that they must be restored to their original meaning, which is "to take part". Because not many would be able to give assurance that when we participate, we are truly taking part. To participate, or better, to become a factor in, convinced and ethically committed.      

One of the errors of some humanisms that have allegedly redeemed humanity, converting man into the guest of an Earthly paradise, is rooted, it seems to me, in not having taken into account the subjective dimension of man and his essential inclination towards the passions. It's true that society forms, educates, imposes a relation, but can a society of solidarity, for example, automatically avoid envy, ambition, intrigue, ingratitude or unconformity, indifference or lack of commitment?

It may be that some readers of this column think otherwise. Sometimes, the greatest obstacle to change in the direction of human improvement is that there are ideas that are not accepted that would improve people or society; nor do they attract participation towards collective goals because by themselves, as in a robotic act, they self-correct, they adjust or integrate. Now then, if negative attitudes are part of the subjectivity, along with consent, the acceptance of improvement and its emergencies has a subjective component, right there in the most individual of individuals: the conscience.

And if this is true, then ethics — the ethic of participation — has to be, therefore, the point of departure for improvement. Because ethics, the understanding of why we must act to adjust these principles and norms, or why living in society obliges one to observe certain commitments, is the focus that brings together, organises and gives impetus to solidaristic collaboration, to help to change the circumstances and parameters of others, and in the process to change oneself. This is the dialectical game, complicated and simple: to change changing; to change that, and to change ourselves as well to achieve the result, together with all, of greater improvement.

Cuban history has been sustained by ethics. Without ethics as an integral part and an actor in our revolutionary ideology, the Cuban nation may have been subjected to and ultimately annihilated by colonial and neocolonial corruption. So it does not seem excessive to remember that the transformations that will take place in the Cuban economy, and in other spheres of society, are oriented towards general improvement. And that no process of collective improvement can dispense with the ethical vocation of our history. Which is to say, the aspiration to a perfecting utopia whose concretion in justice and [national] independence has defied storms, privations and armed hostilities.                  

We have to see, it follows, how improving society implies a power of conscience, a "taking part" that would correct the perceptions that may have become deformed in the subjectivity of many of us. Let's address them ethically from within. And then we'll begin to accept that it would be an ignoble attitude to believe that very little depends on me, or that I'll have to continue "struggling" with the tricks of an apparent participation, chameleon-like, feeding the roguishness that would turn me into a leech or a nuisance to my compatriots.

Much, if not all, will depend on each and every one of us. And the sum of individual action, the utilisation that every subject makes of the opportunities open to them, will also influence in the general sense the updating of our society. Updating, that is to say, in the direction of more justice, because the reinforcing of the sides of a strong centre will be more participatory and more effective, though not unipolar. For now, I don't know anything that would convert the complaints and the necessities into deeds and solutions other than conscious participation — and this, transcribed from the dictionary of actions — into an approach in which everyone takes responsibility for themselves and for the country. 

Translation: Frei Betto speaks in Havana

Frei Betto is a Brazilian liberation theologian who is well known throughout the world for his work on education, and for his support for the Cuban Revolution and other national liberation and socialist movements. In the late 1980s he interviewed Fidel Castro at length. Published in English as Fidel and Religion, it has become a classic of revolutionary literature. My previous two posts touched on the theme of the non-dogmatic application of the Marxist method and outlook. Betto's words below, although in a different vein, are also in this spirit.

Frei Betto speaks in Havana, November 10, 2010

Fourth National Meeting of Popular Educators 

Translation: Marce Cameron

In 2011 it will be 30 years since my first visit to Cuba. At the time I was working in Brazil using the method of Paulo Freire. I wanted to bring to Cuba this contribution, I was convinced of the political importance of the methodology of popular education. When I arrived, there were prejudices not only towards this methodology, but also towards the figure of Freire. His first book had caused a certain suspicion among the compañeros of the Cuban Communist Party. A Christian Marxist sounded contradictory then: Marxism was considered a faith, and one could not be both.

So I proposed in Havana a Latin American Popular Education Conference. The Cubans prepared everything; but there was not a single Cuban in the conference. Two years later, I got the Casa De Las Americas to organise a second conference. Various Cubans, who were there merely as assistants, said that in Cuba all education was popular and it was not necessary to have a team for this. In the third conference, the Cuban participation was active. Thus arose the Martin Luther King Centre team.      

But Paulo Freire was not the first Latin American to talk about this methodology. To do justice to history, the first to practice popular education was José Martí. Martí said that teachers had to be brought to the countryside. And with them, the tenderness people needed. Surely Che had read this phrase when he said that on had to harden oneself without losing one's tenderness. For Martí, "popular" did not mean poor, but of the people. The rigid distinction applied in Europe between the working class and the bourgeoisie did not apply in Latin America. The struggle here was between those that struggled for justice and those that tried to maintain injustice. Not everything is explained by class origins. If all the poor were revolutionaries, there would not be capitalism in Latin America.

Perhaps you don't know that it is a biological fact that eagles can live up to 70 years. But when they get to 30 or 40, they tend to die because their talons and beak are no longer strong enough to tear apart the meat they feed on. And when they feel death approaching, they fly towards a mountaintop and they tear out their claws and beak. They spend six months there until they grow back again. Then they can live for another 30 or 40 years more. Today, the eagle is Cuba. I say this because I've just finished reading the [Draft Economic and Social Policy] Guidelines for the 6th Congress of the Communist Party: the Cuban Revolution has the capacity to move itself forward critically. Its popular education networks are very important in this effort.

I saw at close hand the fall of the Berlin Wall and today many ask: how is it possible that after 70 years of socialism, Russia is a country known for extreme corruption? Something didn't work: there, socialism committed  the error of building a new house but not knowing how to build new inhabitants. New men and women are not made automatically. Those born in a socialist society are not necessarily born socialist. Every baby is an exemplary capitalist: it only thinks of itself.    

Socialism is the political name of love. And love is a cultural production. Its final objective is the creation of a loving community, within itself and towards the world. Sometimes we forget a Marxist principle. I, a friar, have been a professor of Marxism and this is not the only contradiction of my life. The human being is not mechanical. There are two things that cannot be predicted mathematically: the movement of atoms and human conduct. Political work must be directed towards every human being. For this the Cuban Revolution resists, because it is not a wig that goes from the top down, but hair that grows from the bottom up. Here a truly popular revolution took place. The strategic victory, of Fidel [apparently a reference to Fidel's new book, The Strategic Victory], does not speak of popular education; but it does this.

I want to finish with a parable: there was a man, very ideologically prepared, powerful in his system but very unhappy. He went all over the world searching for happiness. He arrived in an Arabic country — where they always tell of good legends — and he wanted to buy happiness in its markets. They told him that this market doesn't exist, but a youth had heard of a shop in the desert where he could find it. He went in a caravan of camels, traversed the desert and saw the shop, with a note that said: "Here is found happiness". He said to the shopkeeper: "Give it to me, how much does it cost?" And she responded: "No, señor, here we don't sell happiness, we give it away freely". And she gave him a small matchbox containing three small seeds: the seeds of solidarity, of generosity and of comradeship. "Plant them", she said, "and you will be happy".           

Thank you.