Chavez in Cuba? Or Cuba in Chavez?
Posted: 03/18/2012 11:55 pm
"These are the last caramels! Get 'em while you can!" shouted Olga -- we
called her "La Guajira" -- in the dorms of our high school in the
countryside. My bunkmate sold the food she got from Soviet technicians
who bought them in stores that Cubans weren't allowed to enter. It was
the last few months of 1990 and the community of Russian "comrades" who
had meddled in the Cuban reality were starting to pack their bags.
Throughout the city many houses were left empty in the stampede of these
foreign residents, while the black market they had fostered languished.
That candy wrapped in rough paper was, for me, the first sign that the
subsidies sent by the USSR would be abruptly curtailed. This harbinger
of bad news presented itself to my teenage palate in the form a caramel
that melted away for good.
Today, more than twenty years later, there are somewhat bitter
indications of another material collapse. But this time the risk doesn't
emanate from the Kremlin but from a much closer palace, the Miraflores
in Caracas. Hugo Chavez has just left Cuba amid infinite speculation,
and some alarming future scenarios are being woven around his health.
The more than 100,000 barrels of oil we import from Venezuela might fade
as fast as a caramel melts in the mouth, if the president of that
country dies from the cancer that afflicts him.
In the streets of Havana the questions go beyond morbidity in medical
terms, to become worrisome predictions of the future. A woman, her face
soured by everyday life, tells another curtly, "If something happens to
Chavez we're going to fall into another Special Period." The emphasis on
each syllable reminds me of that teenager proclaiming the last sweets
sent from the Soviet Union. The story is just as whimsical, sometimes it
repeats itself coated in syrup... other times in vinegar.
We have had the painful opportunity to learn -- as a country -- the
lesson of dependence; of promising ourselves that never again would the
future of this Island hang on a foreign president or a foreign party.
But in early 1999, when Hugo Chavez assumed power, it was clear that
economic independence would be just a national fantasy, postponed again
and again.
The unbalanced trade between Cuba and Venezuela has allowed the
government of Raul Castro to avoid collapse, despite our country's
inability to produce. The larger-than-life patient operated on in Havana
stands as the main guarantee that Raul's reforms can maintain their
timid steps forward and that he can remain in power. Seeing Chavez on
television announcing his speedy recovery to the newspapers, is like
giving a proof of life to the Castro regime.
When we read the smiling face of the Venezuelan president we are not
hoping just to read a man's state of health, but also the political
outlook of both countries. Thus, the official propaganda is eager to
connect his supposed "victory" over the physical tumor, with the triumph
of an entire ideological project.
The leaders maintained, the regimes subsidized, have the false illusion
they can learn to live without their patrons. They profess that they
will manage to walk on their own, once the support of the other ends.
But in reality, during the long period of dependency, we have only
learned to find a new source from which to nurse, a new partner to exploit.
Economic dysfunction cannot be repaired in the time it takes malignant
cells to advance through an organism. A system where inefficiency has
metastasized even to the production of potatoes, bricks and detergent,
knows that every step taken alone is a step closer to the end. It is
clear that Hugo Chavez came to Cuba to treat his physical illness
because the guarantees of discretion about his condition are also
guarantees of silence about the real state of our country.
So here we are again, in a situation we know well: the Berlin Wall
falls, or cancer takes up residence in a man's body; glasnost takes the
lid off seventy years of garbage, or a doctor is reckless with a
patient; Soviet technicians pack their bags in Havana, or Cubans weigh
their possessions in Venezuela; a young girl warns that caramels made in
the USSR will soon run out, or a disillusioned woman talks to another
about possible material collapse; a president sees how the map of a
political block is breaking apart into various fragments, or fading
leader stares in shock at the report of a CAT scan.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/hugo-chavez-cuba_b_1359144.html
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