Looking at Cuba Today: Four Assumptions and Six Intertwined Problems

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Notes

* This is a summary of the article, “Mirar a Cuba hoy: cuatro supuestos para la observación y seis problemas – nudos,” which appeared in Temas, no. 56 (2008).

1. The idea of “real socialism” distinguishes between theoretical constructions of socialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, historical experiences that have attempted in practice a non-capitalist, Marxist-inspired path of transformation. These experiences had four characteristics in common: they did not occur under developed capitalism, so that most of them had to create the material preconditions for socialism; they occurred in a global system dominated by capitalism, so that each inevitably unfolded as a revolution in one country; they took place in societies that were highly heterogeneous due to their underdeveloped state, so that the aspiration to a single model of socialism was “virtually impossible”; and they were the result of political revolutions and not of endogenous evolution from capitalism. See Juan Valdés Paz, “¿Qué es el socialismo del Siglo XXI?”, presentation, Martes de Debate, Fondos del CIPS, Havana, 2008.

2. Data taken from the Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (CEE), Censo Nacional de Población y Viviendas, Havana, 1981, and ONE (Officina Nacional de Estadísticas), Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, Havana, 2006.

3. For recent analyses on diverse aspects of the Cuban economy relevant to this problem, see Omar Everleny Pérez's article elsewhere in this issue, as well as other chapters in his edited collection Reflexiones sobre la economía cubana (Havana: Ed. Ciencias Sociales, 2006), esp. those by Juan Triana, Pavel Vidal, Armando Nova, and Anicia García.

4. See Ángela Ferriol, “Política social y desarrollo: Un aproximación global,” in E. Álvarez and J. Mattar, eds., Política social y reformas estructurales: Cuba a principios del siglo XX (Mexico: CEPAL-INIE-PNUD, 2004).

5. Aspects of the new reform moment are discussed by Raúl Castro in his speeches of July 26, 2007, February 24, 2008, and at the close of the 6^th Plenum of the PCC Central Committee in April 2008.

6. These strategies are defined as a form of popular response to the crises and as the set of procedures used by the family unit in order to satisfy its basic needs and to withstand the pressures around it. Their goal is to minimize uncertainty and maximize the use of available resources, drawing on its surrounding social networks. Despite unpredictable variations, they are considered strategies because they combine anticipation, foresight, prior experience, and a variety of alternative practices, while yet being flexible and transitory. They are a permanent adaptive innovation in the face of infinitely varied situations. See José Luis Coraggio, “Política económica, comunicación y economía popular,” Procesos Políticos y Democracia no. 17, Quito, 1989.

7. The repertoire was compiled from Departamento de Estudios sobre Familia, Familia y cambios socioeconómicos a las puertas del Nuevo Milenio (Havana: Centro de Investigaciones Psicológicas y Sociológicas, 2001); Mayra Espina, Políticas de atención a la pobreza y la desigualdad: Examinando el rol del Estado en la experiencia cubana (Buenos Aires: CLACSO-CROP, 2008); see also Zabala, in this issue.

8. See the Google groups superpccuba and pccuba, visit revolico.com or Google-search “ventas habana.”

9. In this last aspect, it is enough to recall the so-called “Guerrita de los correos” (email war) – a quick cyber-response from the artistic-literary sector which developed a common stance protesting the appearance on two TV programs of individuals who had leading roles in the administration of cultural institutions during the so-called Quinquenio Gris (Gray Half-Decade) “characterized by dogma, censorship and ideological repression – especially in the arts, literature and social thought.” Centro Teórico Cultural Criterios, La política cultural del período revolucionario: memoria y reflexión (Havana: Colección Criterios, 2008), p. 5.

10. For more detail see Espina, Políticas de atención a la pobreza y la desigualdad.

11. Edgar, Morin, Los siete saberes necesarios para la educación del futuro (Paris: UNESCO, 1999).

12. See Luis Marcelo, “El sistema empresarial estatal cubano y la realización de la copropiedad Estado-productores,” in Pérez, Reflexiones sobre la economía cubana.