As often happens, the optimal path is the most difficult one. / 14ymedio
To date, those who rule Cuba have reaffirmed their decision to sacrifice themselves, which in practice translates into their decision to sacrifice us all.
By Reinaldo Escobar (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES — The urgency of profound change in Cuba is so obvious that all transition proposals resemble one another in their essentials. With differences mainly in tone — whether moderate, academic, or radical — everyone tends to arrive at the same conclusions: freedom for political prisoners, the decriminalization of political dissent, economic opening, a balance between justice and reconciliation, a new Constitution, and, of course, multiparty elections.
It would be pretentious to claim that I have read every proposal — there are so many! And that is a good thing. But what I find missing is the sequence expressed with a chronology that makes clear what must happen first.
And here I return to the old issue of the four possible variables (mentioned in no particular order):
- A decision from above to save the country before saving the ideology.
- An uncontrollable social explosion that sweeps everything away.
- A foreign intervention.
- Everything remains exactly as it is forever.
The second leads to the third. If the third is limited to economic restrictions, excluding military action, it could lead either to the first or the second.
The fourth opens the door to all the others.
As often happens, the optimal path is the most difficult one: that those who rule Cuba experience a “fit of patriotism” and decide to save the country before saving the ideological proposal of the only party allowed. This could also be understood as saving the country before preserving their obscene attributes of power, because no one doubts anymore the obsolescence of the ideological proposal that this party defends in its speeches.
The outlook is transparent: foreign intervention, expressed through restrictions on acquiring fuel, together with threats of escalation into the military sphere, could lead those who rule Cuba to save the country before the ideology. At the same time, it could create the conditions for an uncontrollable social explosion.
To date, those who rule Cuba have reaffirmed their decision to sacrifice themselves, which in practice translates into their decision to sacrifice us all, as if what they are defending had any future at all.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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