By Leonardo Padura and - -
HAVANA, Jan 28 2008 (IPS)

The mystery novel into which Cuban life has been transformed has entered a climactic phase of its development. In the upcoming chapters we may find evidence regarding the question we are asking: Will Cuba change or not? writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura asks, What will change on the island when the top ranks of decision-makers have a clear understanding of the frustrations and complaints expressed by the Cuban people in massive volume in a July public forum? How will Cuban domestic policy change in response to the government\’s recent commitment to respect two UN pacts safeguarding rights whose limitation on the island for a wide range of reasons, circumstances, and historical factors has been outstripped by reality (the right to travel freely is one of the most frequently mentioned). People\’s expectations are now focused on the decision that must be taken in a few weeks by the Cuban parliament regarding the confirmation of Fidel Castro as the head of the Cuban state and government. Would he be in condition to carry out his previous responsibilities? What would or wouldn\’t change with Fidel Castro in charge again, or definitively removed from power (at least officially)?

Even those of us who live on this small Caribbean island and encounter each day the expectations of its inhabitants suspect at times that the interest in what is (or is not) happening in Cuba is disproportionate considering range of events in the world, from wars that are either underway or announced, to the galloping economic crises that seem to indicate a worldwide recession.

Why this fascination with Cuba? I think there are a number of reasons, but the most compelling may be Fidel Castro himself and the question what his current position is within Cuban politics and what it will be in the future, after leading this country for almost fifty years and a year and a half of withdrawal from public life for health reasons.

On the other hand there is the fact that Cuba remains one of very few ‘bastions’ of socialism. It managed to resist nearly half a century of hostility from and a trade embargo imposed by the United States. It survived the disappearance of the USSR and the resulting loss of subsidies. Then, more recently, it weathered the horrifying economic crisis that erupted here in the last decade –euphemistically called a ‘special period in times of peace’ which devastated the country like a war. All of these feats spurred a range of bets on whether the system can survive and, more recently, whether or not it can reform and provide what its citizens are demanding more and more forcefully: changes that would allow a better life.

It is not coincidental that the top level of leadership in the country, now in the hands of the Minister of the Armed Forces, Raul Castro, felt it necessary to convene last July 26 a public forum to generate a national dialogue that was ‘courageous’ and ‘open’ and without fear – important requirements. At these popular gatherings, despite their historic weariness of certain structures used to express their demands, the citizens lodged a million three hundred complaints on a wide range of areas of Cuban life which they felt needed partial or complete revision. These included even the sector that was for years one of the pillars of official propaganda: the public health system and education, both afflicted by a lack of personnel, a loss of professionalism, and symptoms of corruption — not to mention the chaotic state of housing and transport, and the disparity between real and nominal salaries.

Will these complaints receive prompt attention? Nobody knows – at least nobody in the streets of the country. But it is expected there will be some response, including the liberalisation of certain economic structures, such as the system of land ownership and the marketing of products grown on it, now that the inefficiency of the collectivisation systems introduced by Stalin in the Soviet Union of the 1930s has been irrefutably demonstrated – and not only in Cuba.

It is significant that together with this revelation of its shortcomings in economics, services, and social policy, the Cuban government has announced that it will adhere to two important international protocols that it has refrained from signing thus far because of the partiality of the old human rights mechanism of the United Nations: the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights and the International Pact on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, both from the UN..

What will change on the island when the top ranks of decision-makers have a clear understanding (I think they do now and may always have) of the shortcomings, frustrations, complaints, and laments that were ‘courageously’ expressed by the Cuban people in massive volume? How will Cuban domestic policy change in response to the commitment to respect two pacts safeguarding rights whose limitation on the island for a wide range of reasons, circumstances, and historical factors has been outstripped by reality (the right to travel freely is one of the most frequently mentioned).

I don’t think that Cuba’s eleven million people will be able to wait long for answers to the above questions. Bureaucratic paralysis and atrophy are not the solution the country needs and deserves. And though it may not seem like it at times, there is some movement — note the recent lifting of a ban on a documentary on Cuban baseball that showed players who had escaped to the US. But it is very slow.

People’s expectations are now focused on the decision that must be taken in a few weeks by the Cuban parliament regarding the confirmation of Fidel Castro as the head of the Cuban state and government. Would he be in condition to carry out his previous responsibilities? What would or wouldn’t change with Fidel Castro in charge again, or definitively removed from power (at least officially)?

The mystery novel into which Cuban life has been transformed has entered a climactic phase of its development. In the upcoming chapters we may find evidence regarding the question we are asking: Will Cuba change or not? From what I see, hear, and breathe, the people want change, and some are even dreaming about it — like the young woman who has produced the virtual itinerary of the trip she will take to Mayan Mexico ”when exit visas are eliminated”. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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