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Cuba: the case of a 'dissident within the Revolution |
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by Medea Benjamin via Charles Brown/MB/ml
(No verified email address) |
06 Jun 2001
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[Submitted by Charles Brown. Excerpt from Media Benjamin's interviews with Juan Antonio Blanco from the book Talking About Revolution. Blanco begins here by recounting his own experiences as one whose views have not always been in line with prevailing policy, even though he stands within the Revolution. This illustrates concretely how Cuba has dealt with such differences. He then goes on to talk about how it deals with dissenters -- those who are outside of and against the Revolution.] |
Q. You make a distinction between dissent within the system and anti systemic dissenters. How has Cuba historically treated, dissent within the system, and has the recent crisis and hostile international environment narrowed the space for such dissent?
One of the historic problems with socialism around the world is that it never came to terms with accommodating dissent within the system. I know this firsthand because I have been, if you wish, a \"dissident\" within the revolution on many issues and for quite a long time.
Q. Can you give us some specific examples?
In the late 1960s I was teaching in the department of philosophy at the university. The department was a center for all kinds of creative thinking about socialism, and we published a magazine called Pensamiento Critico, or Critical Thought. We were trying to create a Cuban Marxist school of thinking using a non dogmatic approach to Marxism. As Che Guevara suggested, we approached Marxism \"with the natural attitude that somebody in physics might embrace Newton, without declaring Newton the last word in physics.\"
Throughout the 1960s, we tried to update the Cuban population on the major trends of thinking of our time. Pensamiento Critico was the kind of magazine that wouId have been frowned upon in the Soviet Union because it included all different schools of thought, including bourgeois thought (which is, of course, one of the major schools of thought in modem times), liberal thinking, radical socialist thinking. You could read the writings of African Amilcar Cabral next to the works of the German Herbert Marcuse, and of course we would include Cuban thinkers as well. We also included critiques of the Soviet model. All this was something totally \"abnormal\" for a proper, prudent Soviet socialist publication.
This experiment lasted until the end of the decade, when the Russification of the Cuban model began and derailed a number of original efforts like the one at our university. All of a sudden the direction of the department changed, a new curriculum was imposed, and Pensamiento Critico was shut down. I was not in favor of copying the Soviet model and made my views known. I refused to teach Soviet Marxism; I could not lie to my students saying something to them that I didn\'t believe in. So I had to quit my teaching job.
Q. Did anything else happen to you?
No, I did not end up in prison or anything like that, and I was able to get a job elsewhere. But during that time there was little room for public debate on issues like this.
Amazingly enough, there is more room for debate today. There are openings today that did not exist 10 years ago. The existence of the non governmental organization I am now heading is a testament to that. The very existence of my institution, a nongovernment institution for the study of politics and ethics, would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. This is because according to the Soviet model, every non governmental organization, with the exception of the mass organizations promoted by the system itself, was perceived as suspicious.
I find it very encouraging that during the most difficult moment in the revolution\'s history, we are moving toward a more pluralistic view of the construction of socialism. At one time the line of the party was the line period and if you spoke against that line, no matter how respectfully, you were perceived as a counterrevolutionary. This is not the case anymore. Within the party there is a growing trend for presenting alternative views and airing differences. So the logic that is prevailing today is not the logic of repression but the logic of democracy.
The admission of religious believers into the party and into high posts of government, which happened at the Fourth Party Congress in 1991, was an important step. Perhaps more important than what it meant to the believers themselves is the psychological impact it had of opening the society to more points of views. These are, of course, views within the system, because they are religious people who in one way or another back up the system. Like anyone else, they may disagree with particular policies, but they believe in building a socialist society. So we are moving little by little into a policy of more flexibility.
We are starting to understand that democracy is not a luxury, it is a necessity. If we want to save the system, we need to guarantee a plurality of views.
Q. If there was, indeed, a more open environment prevailing, you would expect to see this reflected in the Cuban press. Yet the press continues to be abysmal. Year after year, there are conferences in which everyone speaks out about the need to have a more investigative press, a more interesting press, a more dynamic press. But despite all these criticisms and calls for change at all levels of the Cuban society, nothing changes. Why?
One of the problems of copying the Eastern bloc model is the role that was given to the press. It is more apologetic than investigative journalism. I feel you can have investigative journalism from a revolutionary point of view without giving up your ideals and values. The problem is that this is not the way the media has been perceived in Cuba and it\'s not the role the media has been playing.
On the other hand, with all the TV and radio that comes from the United States, you can\'t say that Cuba is closed to the Western media. You can hear some 15 Miami radio stations. And in terms of TV, if you walk around Havana you will see all over town these little square antennas on people\'s roofs. Everyone knows that these are for receiving UHF stations from Miami, because there are no UHF stations in Cuba. The very fact that those antennas are tolerated, that nobody knocks on your door to question you about your antenna, shows that we are not a closed society.
So it\'s not that the Cuban people are uninformed, it\'s that they are ill informed. They either get an apologetic point of view from the national media, or a totally distorted view from Miami. Either way, the press is not objective in its coverage of Cuban affairs.
We certainly need to create a more objective press in Cuba, a press that could play a role in the economic and political restructuring of the country by providing insights, by providing ideas, by being a communication vessel between ordinary Cuban citizens and the central government. That is a necessity. But it\'s blocked by many prejudices from the past, and the international environment certainly doesn\'t help. It is difficult to create another kind of journalism without a change in the international environment. I find it very strange that the Western media either ignored or misinterpreted the elections for the National Assembly that we had in December 1992. If they had really looked closely at the process, they would have realized that this was also, aside from an election, a referendum on Fidel Castro and on the revolution.
I know that some Cubans don\'t like this thesis because they feel that it downplays the election as such, but in my own personal judgment, it was both an election and a referendum.
First of all, in 1992 the electoral laws were changed to call for the direct election of representatives to the National Assembly, which is the equivalent of your Congress. Previously, the people chose the local representatives out of a slate of several candidates. The winners then elected the provincial representatives, who then elected the national representatives. So these direct national elections were the first of their kind.
While there were several candidates to choose from at the local level, in these national elections there was only one set of candidates. You could delete the name of anyone on the list, you could choose all of them, or you could make your vote a protest vote by spoiling the ballot or leaving it blank.
Now to understand the significance of this campaign, you must understand that in the middle of our crisis, Cubans were bombarded by radio stations in Miami with messages calling on them to nullify their ballots. This was a major campaign in Miami, with about 15 stations broadcasting 24 hours a day. They spent literally thousands of hours of broadcasting time urging Cubans not to vote or to leave their ballot blank. Radio Marti alone broadcast 452 messages about the elections.
In response to this campaign, the government then asked the people to support the revolution by giving a united vote as a patriotic response and as a way of keeping the revolutionary vote united. Every vote was important and people were aware of that. You could still pick one individual and not another, but the population was asked to give a yes to the whole list of candidates. Fidel himself went all over the country explaining the measure and the importance of voting for the unified slate, and he himself was a candidate in the city of Santiago. So Fidel really put himself on the line during this vote, and remember that we are talking about an election that was taking place during our most severe economic crisis.
What I find curious is that for years the U.S. government and the counterrevolutionary forces have been pressing for a referendum on Fidel Castro. And that is essentially what happened, but no one wanted to recognize this. This was not a referendum on particular policies because many people would like to see a number of policies changed but it did transform itself into a referendum on sovereignty, on the revolution, on Fidel Castro, on socialism as a path for national liberation. People were voting both for a slate of candidates and for the continuity of the revolutionary process as the right path to face and surmount the current situation.
Q. And what was the outcome?
The interesting thing is that in the solitude of the booths that were checked out by the international media, the diplomatic corps and neighborhood committees people overwhelmingly voted in favor of the revolution and against the Miami option.
Almost 99.6 percent of eligible voters actually voted, and voting is not mandatory. The votes were counted in public, before the neighbors and international observers. In the city of Havana -- where most of the problems are more acute about 15 percent nullified their vote. Nationally, only 7.2 percent of the population nullified their ballot.
But let\'s use our imagination in order to understand the significance of the outcome. Let\'s say that 1 percent of the people didn\'t vote. Let\'s also be conservative and take the percentage of spoiled votes in Havana 15 percent and say that was the national average. Let\'s also assume that all Cubans overseas voted another million people and that all these Cubans overseas voted against the revolution (which would not be the case). You would still have the revolution backed up by over 75 percent of the population.
I would like to see a government in the United States elected with the participation of 99 percent of the people, and getting a 75 percent backing, especially in a critical economic period.
Q. Would you be in favor of a multi party system in Cuba?
I do not dogmatically believe in the one party system or in any other arrangement. But remember, we did not copy our one party system from the Soviets. It was really a legacy of Jose Marti\'s attempt to create one party out of several parties that existed at the end of the last century. All of them were independent clubs in conflict with one another parties were called clubs at that time and Marti wanted to bring all of those little parties into one huge party in which they could coexist with their own points of view and visions but be united in their efforts to achieve independence.
In terms of the future of the Cuban political system, our system is not and could never be a finished product; it is some thing that is in process. It has emerged at a particular time in history and is evolving according to the history of our country, the psychology of our people, and the environment that surrounds us.
SNIP
When the counterrevolutionary message speaks of \"freedom,\" it is referring to free enterprise. When the counterrevolutionary message speaks of \"democracy\", it is referring to reestablishing political competition between powerful sectors. When the counterrevolutionary message speaks of \"equality,\" it is referring to the re establishment of juridical equality within a structure that is divorced from economic opportunities. When the United States speaks to us of a \"new world order,\" it is speaking of the acceptance by Cuba of a transnational power, with its headquarters in Washington.
These code words are accompanied by other ideological messages. One of them is that humanitarian utopias are not viable, that there is no alternative to capitalism. It says that capitalism has proven itself to be the only viable society and therefore we should concern ourselves with improving the capitalist system and not with building an alternative system.
Another message is that life only has meaning for each of us as individuals, and only in the present. We should not search for meaning in life in relation to the future or in relation to others, for life only has meaning for me and for now.
A related message is that in society, as in nature, the fittest survive. So the misfortune of others is not my problem and is not within my ability to solve. If people are poor, that is because they have lost out in the social competition and the only thing I can do is to guarantee my future and not try to establish a sense of solidarity with my neighbors.
A corollary concept, taken to a national level, is that history, the nation and even my life have no historical and ideological mission to fulfill. We are on this planet to live as individuals and neither my nation, nor history, nor I as an individual have a meaning or an objective other than the search for success, and success as defined as power over others. And the ultimate message, which is logically tied to the others, is that I can be successful if I try hard enough. As the saying goes, \"You can make it if you really try.\"
In the last analysis, the message is one of selfishness, immediacy and egotism surely the antithesis of revolutionary values and ideals. In the best tradition of our Cuban revolutionary thought, there is clearly the notion that people make history. Instead of seeing inexorable laws of history, instead of believing that history inexorably led to a certain outcome, we see history as an ethical commitment and a human possibility. Marti, who died without achieving his goals, taught us that people make history not according to their real possibility of victory but according to their ethical commitment to justice. These are essential elements for understanding the evolution of our revolutionary process.
According to capitalist thinkers, yes, we are crazy people swimming against the tide of history. Socialism will inevitably fall everywhere and the Cuban revolutionary mission is therefore an anachronism an anachronism that corresponds to a romantic, modern era that is being overtaken by a postmodern era. We can answer that the true Christians, not those of the Inquisition but those who have been fighting for a particular ethical code, have also been swimming against the tide of history for some 2,000 years! Humanism, the human sense of existence, transcends the Cuban revolution; it transcends Jose Marti or Fidel Castro. The human character has two basic tendencies: egoism and altruism. Egoism embodies the ethic of \"having,\" that I am worth a million dollars because I have a million dollars. Altruism embodies the ethic of \"being,\" that I am worth what I am, as a measure of my virtues and defects.
The question is not whether or not the ethic of being can win out over the ethic of having. Jose Marti didn\'t believe that he would necessarily achieve victory in his lifetime, or that victory was even necessarily achievable. If we lose, as Marti did during the independence struggle, each defeat is accepted as a temporary setback, and we search for a strategic victory beyond the lifetime of the generation that is currently carrying out the struggle.
So it\'s not about winning, it\'s about taking a moral stand. We have to prove to ourselves and posterity that we were truly willing, in the words of Marti, to cast our fate with the poor of the earth. If we are not successful, perhaps the next generation will be.
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