OPINION | Díaz-Canel’s legacy: oppressive poverty or free progress?

Editor’s note: Jorge Dávila Miguel has a degree in Journalism since 1973 and has maintained a continuous career in his profession to date. He has postgraduate degrees in Social Information Sciences and Social Media, as well as post-university higher studies in International Relations, Political Economy and Latin American History. Currently, Dávila Miguel is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald on the McClatchy network and a political analyst and columnist for CNN en Español. The comments expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author. See more at cnne.com/opinion

(CNN Spanish) – Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel foresaw the possibility that his government would lose popular support just a year before the July 11 protests this year. It was on July 16, 2020 when, when presenting his plan of economic measures to the Council of Ministers, he warned: “The worst risk [de las nuevas medidas] it would be in not changing, in not transforming, and in losing confidence and popular support ”.

I do not remember that any senior Cuban leader publicly admitted something similar. And Díaz-Canel was right. In less than a year, thousands of Cubans protested in some cities against the situation of hardships in which the country finds itself. The Government responded to the events with the well-known slogan of external aggression; Bruno Rodríguez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, even called the protesters marginal.

But the situation is not for slogans copied from previous situations –– when Fidel Castro was the leader–– now animated with the mantra of “continuity”. Fidel, Raúl, Díaz-Canel … you can see their faces superimposed on propaganda billboards in Havana, as if transferring the guerrilla legitimacy that the first two have to the third party. As if it were a transferable dynasty that cannot be achieved. But what is continuity? Is it some kind of holy grail that protects the government from the demon of economic efficiency and political originality? Even Fidel Castro recognized in The Atlantic, 11 years ago: “The model [económico] Cuban does not serve us or ourselves ”.

And of course Fidel Castro said, and did, many other things. It ended with some 55,000 small private businesses in 1968, when its revolutionary offensive. He promoted the direct step towards communism when Cuba wanted to eliminate money. In the valley of San Andrés, El Cangre and las Terrazas and other places in the west of the island, the motto was “from each his capacity to each, according to his need”, a principle only possible in the upper communist phase, where neither even the USSR tried to get there. And when he said he was going to build hundreds of secondary schools in the countryside, including on-site hospital, the best food and facilities, but at an immense cost. Wanting to manufacture, with the mettle of peasant work and study, the new man. Fidel Castro’s dream was a golden dream, in which enormous resources were invested. Today, practically all of them have been abandoned. Fidel’s economic formula was one of the “resources of the commander-in-chief” that he would use with good will, but with a proverbial investor clumsiness. The statesman Fidel Castro knew how to navigate the seas of international politics, his great personal charisma and his iron hand allowed him to capture the popular imagination of his time, but he was also a dreamer of disasters in the economic affairs of the country.

In Cuba you don’t have to be an opponent to know that, subsidized by the former USSR and then by Venezuela – rich until it ceased to be so – the country has been increasingly poor and dependent, with an increasingly fragile productive capacity. We must not forget the United States embargo, terrible for Cuba, but against which we can reason that, if it is accepted that the only way for Cuba to progress economically is with the lifting of that embargo, which depends on an enemy government, we must conclude that Cuba, under that premise and in front of said government, is a country condemned to dependency. There seems to be no hope that the United States will change in the short term. What Havana can do is change the economic order of the country. And stop complaining as if what could be a plea were a demand. Because Fidel Castro himself said it: “Revolution is to change everything that must be changed.” Although this requires political self-confidence and action, which the Díaz-Canel government does not seem to have, submerged in the comfortable bubble of “continuity”. Also seasoned by the theoretical legacy that Raúl Castro left him: “Without haste, but without pause.” It is true that the economic changes expected by all Cubans do not leave room for pause, but they urgently demand what was announced some 11 years ago: economic freedom for their citizens, by allowing private companies, such as those that Fidel Castro suppressed in 1968 .

Four weeks after the popular demonstrations of 11J –– demonstrations that the president of the Supreme People’s Court (TSP), Rubén Remigio Ferro, recognized as legal, being peaceful –– the Cuban government announced the legality of MSMEs. The details of that legality are missing and, as we know, the devil can dwell in them. Díaz-Canel can still earn his own legitimacy, define what his legacy will be: oppressive poverty or free progress. But you have to hurry.