Celebration or Condemnation? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Celebration or Condemnation? / Luis Felipe Rojas
Luis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G.

One can already hear the beating drum of the proletariat. Just a few
work days away from the International Day of the Worker, the red machine
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has spent
various weeks moving around its chains.

This time, the confirmation came from the voice and presence of Salvador
Valdes Mesa, as the czar of the one and only official Union. The first
vice president — Estaban Lazo — has accompanied him in his adventures
through factories and institutions. But, who and what will they celebrate?

The indication of this year is that the State recruits and those who
have wandered into the private sector will march "in a tight and
uniformed block". The support that the latter will give to the economic
model of the island confirms that the wave of lay-offs, which the State
decided to interrupt at the last minute, was worth it. In the blocks, we
will see the unemployed, those who are nearly at that point, and those
who see them like a mirror of what their lives could be in just a few
months if the sacred economic guidelines go through.

The leading elite and the followers which will be in charge of carrying
the country on their shoulders have received high level reprimands,
under accusations of sparking re-unionism, idleness, and administrative
corruption as an ill that is worse than even that of
"counterrevolution". At the same time, they are blamed for the economic
inefficiency which Cuba suffers from, they are accused of not being at
the high level of the working people. And that's to everyone: victims
and offenders. The slipping of the frontiers between the culprits has
been and continues being the axis of revolutionary rhetoric — saying a
lot without saying anything.

Ever since Monday, April 23rd, when the convocation occurred, the same
actors as always have popped up throughout Cuban television screens:
secretaries from the nucleus of the single Party in the national
corporations, undaunted unionists, exemplary workers, and the general
public which indestructibly supports the massive parade in unconditional
solidarity with the Marxist-Leninst postulates.

What has been left out of this performance act — pronouncements and
promotions aside — has been the authors of the thousands of complaints
which are being sent every single week to newspapers, radio stations,
and other public spaces. It is difficult to believe (a show, after all)
that Cuban workers march "in solidarity with millions of workers and
citizens of countless countries who also march today demanding their
fundamental rights to life and work with dignity", without even blinking
before the violations committed against them.

What is true is that no-one is awaiting spontaneous reactions against
the rulers, but the operation of the restructuring of the labor force,
the expulsions of those who have been deemed 'non-suitable', and the
hundreds of workers from the tourism sector who have seen their months
of labor being reduced due to the international economic crisis, among
others, without a doubt conforms a good breeding ground.

Popular non-conformity towards the high taxes on the self-employment
sector, the disorder of clients amid the elevated prices of agricultural
products and other fundamental services, as well as the complaints of
the incessant bustle of inspectors and bureaucrats in search of
commissions or with absurd refusals amid any single process are all
significant evaluators that May 1st will be a sincere and cynical act
consisting of parts that are still unknown.

If, in reality, the thousands of unionists from the non-state sector,
convoked now by the State, march in support of those who have closed the
doors on them during half a century, they would be forging a new elite
similar to that which sustains the Nomenklatura and it would be yet
another act of apartheid against the attempts of independent unions —
that black hole when it comes to citizen participation in contemporary Cuba.

Translated by Raul G.

30 April 2012

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