AN OPENING OF DISCUSSION WITHIN CUBA

The speech of acting president Raul Castro on June 26 was followed by a call for open discussion, which reignited the debate over the errors of the past and reflection on how to address them, from shortages and domestic difficulties to ideas about political, economic, and social projections, writes Aurelio Alonso, a Cuban sociologist and vice director of the magazine Casa de las Americas. In this article, Alonso writes that the discussion about the socialism in this century is above all a problem for Cuba, which must determine which changes it needs to make. What is certain is that up thus far there is greater clarity about what the socialist experiment was lacking than about what would be required to remake it. What is truly important is that debate has become an everyday matter in Cuba and that it has not been obstructed - even if we cannot recognise that the true value of this opening is rooted in not seeing it as a simple concession but rather a step forward in the revolutionary political culture. e future, must be capable of developing and preserving.