Raul Castro in Search of Money or of Moneyed Men

Raul Castro in Search of Money or of Moneyed Men / Juan Juan Almeida
Posted on February 16, 2014

It was only some years ago, when the visible financial crisis infected
sectors of the national economy, and Cuban industry verged on the almost
invisible boundary that marks the action and the omission that hastens
the death of a hopeless patient; General Raul Castro, with that
impressive way of showing his pathetic talent, sold us the fraudulent
idea that the Armed Forces had been converted into an example for "The
Change."

In papers, because delving into the demonstrated earnings, the island's
military enterprise system worked much more than the lawyer of singer
Justin Bieber works these days; of course, being propelled by slave
labor (to be more exact, recruits), there was no way of measuring the
calculable cost of a product or its labor efficiency.

Absurd, yes, but through repetition, it managed to attract the attention
of those who move opinion, and many began to believe in that rigged
sequence of decisions that today make up what appears the destiny of
Cuba and what some still call "Raul's reforms."

That group of measures, or non-structural opinions, which pay no
attention to productivity or change the nature of the system at all and
are basically aimed at legalizing or facilitating what until yesterday
was tolerated, prohibited or complicated; and bring symptoms of anemia
to the practically defunct capacity of monetary investments of that
labor force that biting a biased and naive scheme, believed the story of
"we are all an enterprising population," and jumped from the state
sector to the private, and today, earning more, counts on less.

Evidently, not all state workers took the streets convinced and
believing in Tía Tata*; but at this point in the story, "modernizing the
economic model" is simply a gross verbal diarrhea that served to
disguise a perpetrated crime that should be judged, obviously respecting
the due process that every accused must have, because only a defrauded
person can be induced to believe that after 20 years working in an
office, a person, by magic, without supporting aptitudes, will be
transformed into a shoemaker, locksmith, farmer, barber, drummer, trash
man or watch maker.

The strategy of General Raul Castro and his penitent entourage has only
served to simulate changes and forge flexibility; to increase poverty;
to abandon the retired people in an aging population; to invest less
state money in services like health and education and above all to try
to play down the stay in power of a single and inefficient governing
pack of hounds.

It is not accidental, it is all well planned and coldly calculated. It
was at the end of the '90's when Raul, after his recurrent hormonal
disorder, made fashionable the sentence, "Let's exchange cannons for
beans." By then, few could understand that he was not referring to the
food, but to the need of, without renouncing the least power, his new
strategy consisted of going in search of money or men with money who
with their presence in Havana would help demonstrate that security that
only solvency offers, or to count on solvent friends.

*Translator's note: Tía Tata's Stories was a radio program and later a
TV program with puppets.

Translated by mlk.

13 February 2014

Source: Raul Castro in Search of Money or of Moneyed Men / Juan Juan
Almeida | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/raul-castro-in-search-of-money-or-of-moneyed-men-juan-juan-almeida/