WINDS OF CHANGE BLOW IN CUBA

By Leonardo Padura and - - Reprint | | Print |

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HAVANA, Mar 4 2008 (IPS) - Two significant events have occurred since the formation of Cuba\’s new government on February 24 and suggest a shift in the country\’s politics, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. His most recent work, La nieblina de ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish for 2005. In this article, Padura writes that the first high-level representative of a foreign state received by the new Cuban president was the secretary of state of the Vatican. After this, for the first time since the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998, state television broadcast a mass in Havana\’s Cathedral Square which was attended by thousands who applauded the demands made in public by a Catholic church that is exerting pressure patiently but insistently on the all-controlling Cuban state. Almost immediately afterwards, at the UN headquarters the Cuban foreign minister fulfilled the promise of the government to sign two extremely important treaties: the International Covenant on Economic, Social,and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. What is most important in Cuba today is that there is movement, and what moves changes, and what changes generates hope.

These thoughts came to my mind in recent days when, as I read about the current situation in Cuba and the possible shapes it might take in the future, I found there was a wild clash of perspectives, from the comments of President Bush when he heard that Raul Castro was selected to be the new Cuban president, to the comments of Cuba’s perennial enthusiasts, generally enamoured of the revolutionary project but also in denial of the hard realities that for various reasons the citizens have had to suffer through.

Those who were waiting for major changes -there was even talk of a transition- feel completely cheated in their all-or-nothing wager. Meanwhile those of us on the island who are hoping for substantial changes are left with the anxiety of knowing how, when, and which are the changes that have been announced in the past few months by then-acting president Raul Castro and that seem to focus on certain economic shifts in sectors like the disastrous state agriculture or monetary policy or the organisation of the state, even bordering on a certain democratisation of the decision-making structures, though with no change to the political course of the last four decades.

Perhaps the worst way to imagine or sketch out a horizon for Cuba’s immediate or near future are the comparisons made by certain analysts with other models: while some speak of a Spanish-style transition, others see in terms of the Chinese model, and some even speak of the possibility that we are at the beginning of a devastating Soviet-style transformation. But the reality in Cuba, especially economic, has nothing to do with these models and is not at all present in the thinking of today’s leaders in Cuba.

What is clear is that in the last year and a half Cuba has begun to move and recently this movement seems to have even accelerated. Doubtless the first and I think most important sign of this movement is evident in the streets of the country. Never before can I remember people speaking so much about their reality and hoping for something different, even freedom of travel, a reduction in bureaucratic obstacles, greater freedom of expression, and a movement of wages closer to the cost of living. Though they are not essential, these hopes could be very important for the lives of many Cubans and thus for a country where phenomena like one-way emigration is not only a legalised aberration but above all a chronic drain that could complicate the horizon of a country in which the most capable and best trained emigrate more and more frequently.

Meanwhile, in the realm of concrete reality, two significant events that have occurred since the formation of the new government on February 24 suggest a shift in the country’s politics. The first high-level representative of a foreign state received by the new Cuban president was the secretary of state of the Vatican, Tarcisio Bertone, after which, for the first time since the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998, state television – there is no other on the island – broadcast a mass in Havana’s Cathedral Square which was attended by thousands of excited faithful who applauded the demands made in public by a Catholic church that is exerting pressure patiently but insistently, through civil and religious channels, on the all-controlling Cuban state.

Almost immediately afterwards, at the UN headquarters the Cuban foreign minister fulfilled the promise of the government to sign two extremely important treaties: the International Covenant on Economic, Social,and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And though the foreign minister indicated that Cuba was signing these agreements ”with reservations” regarding the application of all of their postulates, the fact that the country joined such fundamental international agreements on human rights is a transcendental political change, whether or not the extremists, right or left, desired it.

What is most important in Cuba today is that there is movement, and what moves changes, and what changes generates hope. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)