Everything Changes!

Movement is a universal property: nature changes and society changes. The difference is that changes in nature respond to objective laws which operate with or without human involvement, while history is made by men, allowing them to hasten or delay change, but not to stop it. The need for social change manifests itself as a permanent dissatisfaction with what has been achieved, which makes society a perfectible entity.

In Cuba, the convergence of various factors – internal, external, historical, sociological and cultural – at a specific time and geopolitical space, led to the prevailing immobility of the recent decades. But these same factors, together with new ones, have placed the limits of immobility on the agenda. A reality that the authorities of the country, long entrenched in the idea that Cuba has already changed, have acknowledged in their discourse – the need to change whatever needs to be changed, or update the model, or both.

Attempts to homogenize the pluralistic society, changing the citizenry en masse, ignoring the vital role of rights and freedoms to determine what, when, and how to do things, first led to stagnation, then to decline, and finally resulted in a resounding failure with significant material and spiritual damage.

Although the infeasibility of the model has brought the economy to the point of collapse, the system continues to cling to an ideology with no future, to the point that, to paraphrase Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation, the coincidence in Cuba of: the exhaustion of the model; the stagnation of the nation; public discontent; external pressures; and consensus for change, forms an objective picture showing that those underneath do not want, and those above are not able, to continue as before. In this context, while clinging to immobility and the politics of confrontation, a series of events happened very early in 2010: the government denied entry to Cuba to a Member of the European Parliament, the Socialist Luís Yáñez; the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died following a prolonged hunger strike; a similar strike was started by the dissident Guillermo Fariñas; and there were various manifestations of repression against the Ladies in White, which formed a new scenario at the very time when the government announced the “update of the model.”

Behavioral change was manifested in accepting and allowing previously unacceptable acts, such as: allowing Rosa Diez, leader of the Spanish Progressive and Democratic Union, what had earlier been forbidden to Luis Yáñez – to enter Cuba with a tourist visa and meet with several dissidents; the Cuban foreign minister meeting with the Troika of the European Union, where they raised the proposal of Cuba’s willingness to continue dialogue despite the alleged “media campaign against Cuba”; and the meeting of the Cuban head of state with authorities of the Catholic Church, where they addressed the issue of the Ladies in White, Fariñas’s strike, and the release of prisoners.

But while this change in behavior does not mean that the political will exists to democratize Cuba, there is an important practical result: the failure of inaction, as the issue of the prisoners could be a prelude to other urgent claims of society. I refer to rights relating to freely leaving and returning to the country, free Internet access, or freedom of expression, to name just three of the many needs of Cubans.

If the government’s tactic consists only in releasing prisoners to change the external appearance and to gain access to plans of cooperation and funding sources, it is on the way to a new and resounding failure. To avoid this it is important that, in the absence of an independent civil society with the legal recognition to act within Cuba, the international community, while encouraging the release of prisoners, should place on its agenda with Cuba the need to ratify human rights pacts signed more than two years ago and put the domestic legislation in line with those documents. It would be a grave mistake to implement aid to the government without it demonstrating its readiness to go beyond the liberation of political prisoners, which did not help either the government or Cuban society.

The desire to change must be demonstrated with the implementation of human rights, based on the dignity of the person, and the acceptance that, along with the government’s attempt to update the model, citizens enjoy the right to propose alternative models, which implies renouncing the strategic interest of remaining in power forever. Citizen participation parallel to that of the State is a requirement of modernity. Cuba has changed throughout its history and yet we are in a deep structural crisis, one of the causes of which has been the weakness or absence of civil society, that place of interaction and coexistence of diverse interests, where their autonomy and independence from the state constitutes an irreplaceable instrument for citizen participation.

The demonstration of the ability to retain power cannot be extrapolated to progress in the economy, which also indicates that it is insufficient to stop history. Everything changes, and Cuba is changing.

Translated by: Tomás A.

52,000 Homes: More of the Same

For those who follow all the developments on the subject of housing in Cuba, the recent announcement that this year only 52,000 homes will be built, instead of 100,000, will not come as a surprise.

In “100 thousand homes, not now” an article I published in Consensus in 2005, I conducted an analysis of the report submitted to the National Assembly of the People’s Power by the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, Carlos Lage, in which he said that due to “improvement of the financial prospects of the country” they were going to “build and finish no fewer than 100,000 new dwellings per year beginning in 2006. Some of the arguments, from which I asserted they were sure not to complete this, were:

– Excessive attention to the construction of homes with the concept that “the principal builder is the family that will itself live on the property”, that is to say, “self-made” so as not to affect in the least “the works of the Battle of Ideas … “, to which professional builders would be devoted. That is, housing, the most vital and pervasive need of Cubans, does not qualify to be included as part of that battle.

– The illegality of the new concept. The Housing Act designates the Microbrigades as the “principal way to increase the plan for construction of housing,” while the new project, with no changes in the legislation, gives priority to the family as the principal constructor.

– Exclusionary nature. Lage said in his report that “outstanding social and revolutionary conduct will be given absolute priority in the selection process,” as a prerequisite “for selecting those to whom housing or materials are assigned.” That is, first the revolutionaries, an ideological criterion, discriminatory and exclusionary. Therefore people who do not attend military parades, although they are honest, hardworking and model families, would fail to qualify as revolutionaries, and would be excluded from the marvellous plan.

– Lack of a free-market for building materials at affordable prices. In Cuba, where high costs bear no relationship to incomes, they proposed “to set new prices and fees for all such payments, from the prices of imported resources and the foreign exchange costs of domestic production, using an  exchange rate most appropriate to the current situation … “.

– Indefiniteness of the property. Lage said in the report: “At present 86% of families own their homes, a figure that will rise as another 150,000 are added in the coming years …”. The difficulty is that the current owners of a property may not sell, lease, exchange, rent, or loan it as they see fit. In the section on the 6,000 housing units that the state would build to allocate for health professionals who complete international missions, it stated that “they will pay for the building materials with their savings in foreign currency: at cost, for those produced domestically, and at the foreign exchange rate, for those imported,” without clarifying whether the property owner is the State or the health professionals, for the same report stated that “… it is essential to preserve state ownership of the homes built by the state, which will be assigned for rent.”

So far the weaknesses listed were not taken into account to identify the actual causes of the failure to complete the program for 100 thousand. The goal, now cut in half, is threatened by a fundamental flaw: the construction of housing cannot fall back on families if they lack the institutions, the means, and the rights that would enable them to actively participate in solving such a vital problem.

It definitely requires placing in the forefront the human being and from there defining the social function of housing as the foundation of citizen participation outside political, ideological or any other type of criteria. Ignoring this reality with make it very difficult to reach the 50,000 homes announced for 2008, an insufficient goal in relation to the accumulated deficit.

Translated by: Tomás A.