My experience through direct contact with the reality of Cubans who live on the island has reaffirmed my political convictions. Since I can remember, the Cuban people have been ruthlessly used by the media from across the world for nearly fifty years, thrashing them about at whim. Those correspondents and documentary-makers compromised with honesty have not been able to prevent the conscience-building and dogmatic strategies of the Cold War from transforming the Cuban revolution into a simple media icon. In Spain, where I have been residing for nearly thirty years, few people hold back from giving their opinion. A polemic is practically always guaranteed between supporters and detractors of the regime, but the arguments put forth usually contain an original sin: a prejudiced point of view, or, which is the same thing, an essential ignorance about the reality of Latin America in which we should frame the Cuban process.  Numerous commentators in the world of communication rely on assumptions conceived in the New Europe. This reveals their servility to a mode of arguing that depends solely on a unilateral vision of the world, and sometimes, even worse, judgements that have as only base measly party discipline. Often we forget that it is impossible to reason with clarity when dealing with dogmas, and equally impossible to enrich our points of view when ignorance becomes arrogant and we raise our voice instead of listening to the contrary. In essence, the healthy practice of comprehension lies in a correct interpretation of those whom we consider our enemies, without really knowing why.

The tendentious education of citizens through the systems of media information helps little to generate a mutual understanding between societies that are culturally differentiated. Only individual thinking, guided by a healthy intellectual and unprejudiced curiosity, can bring us closer to certain human truths, because nothing is ever black or white. The depth of sensitive reasoning lies precisely in the capacity to perceive the finest subtleties, those small differences which are inevitably accumulative and determinative. A painter achieves mastery in the interpretation of nature only if she or he is capable of transmitting all the complexity and mystery which lies hidden beneath a visual appearance which we can all observe. In the same way, the correct interpretation of historical events requires arduous research which very few people take seriously. The only things that are truly real and objective are facts. But when we have not ourselves been the protagonists of these events, we forget all too frequently that in the books, documents and archives that we consult, other important pages are missing: those that failed to be written by the people who did not survive the events or those who are induced to be silent through an educational system that does not encourage the healthy practice of questioning. We often make terrible mistakes when interpreting the history of these people, due to this enlightened ignorance of which wealthy societies are so proud: the blind faith in official data of information, and the problem that represents our inability to evaluate facts from the borrowed standpoint of the souls of protagonists who face circumstances that are totally foreign to us.

The deplorable character of the neighbourhoods of the seriously Old Habana, where the last coat of paint dates from the 1950s, is the panorama which puts the hair on end of most foreigners who fiercely fear the visible face of poverty. Their verdict is clear: the total condemnation of the system. Without doubt Cubans suffer a lack of practically everything, but the great majority has not been trained to think according to our consumerist and egocentric ways. They were born after the revolution and their brains are inevitably different. Without wanting to justify the dictatorial and repressive formulas, we have to recognise the irreproachable social achievements in terms of public education and health which other forms of government have failed to reach ever in democracy. The endemic poverty of Latin America is not that much less than that which I saw in Cuba. The former shows a much more bitter face and carries other interlinked disgraces: illiteracy, alcoholism, drug-addiction, delinquency, physical and psychological abuse, unemployment, and appalling social services in terms of education and public health.  We are talking of basic human rights that remain unquestioned. In the West, we take for granted that the quality of our life is defined by our ability to compulsively buy unnecessary products. We live immersed in a consumerist culture fostered by complex marketing systems which generate feelings of anxiety and failure if we do not enjoy high acquisitive power. It is not about being but about having. A hierarchy of values that spreads like a contagious virus across the whole world and that does not even respect newborns. In this way, without even realising, we are leading our lives and our dreams towards the disingenuous goal of attaining happiness through consumption and, at the same time, fill up the pockets of those who put to pace the economies of the market. A source of eternal happiness… for some.

Anyone questioned will say that slavery has always existed, as if its existente throughout the centuries had made it legitimate. When I was in Havanna I couldn´t help but be surprised at the African component that dominates the genetic configuration of the population. Pre-columbine history and European colonization is something we all know about and bores many, however it is not unwise to remember at times that there never was a black population in America. They did not go there as investors, turists nor travel companions. Cheap labor was required and they were more profitable than the indigineous population, who, among other things, lacked antibodies and were decimated by diseases unknown to them until then. In the course of three centurias it is estimated that around 60 million blacks were kidnapped from their native Africa to uninterestedly cooperate as slaves in the building of the new European centres in the New World. Not satisfied with generalized pillaging and to violently subject a few defenseless civilizations, the Industrial Revolution which started in England, guaranteed the profitable business of people trafficking to cover the needs of industrialization. Cuba, still under Spanish rule until 1886, was one of the last countries to abolísh slavery and begin the liberizing imposed by Spain of the 400,000 slaves in census. Slave trade was one of the first transnational enterprises created by foreign investors in America. The debt to the peoples of Africa is enormous. In spite of being humiliated for centuries, they have left a cultural heritage without which we could not understand the 20 century.

Today is October 12, 2007, a very special day to think about Cuba. At this very moment there is a grand parade in Paseo de Castellana, Madrid, with allegorical floats representing all the Latin American cultures and nations. The powerful cultural richness, product of the mix of races in the New World, Africa and Europe - the genetic merging of three continents – leaves the Madridian parents and children who watch the show speechless. It is not surprising. It is the first time, since 1492, that the Discovery is observed with more than a grey military parade of the Spanish Armed forces.
 But this unheard of reencounter of peoples after decolonization, is not due to a sudden interest of the Spanish authorities for our customs, for lost civilizations or for the confirmation of a common identity which we haven´t valued enough. We wish! Unfortunately it is due to an inversion of the migratory flow, which now crosses the Atlantic in the opposite direction to the years of the conquest of America. And this is just the beginning. The Emigration laws set by
the European Community, though already trespassing the fringe of international legality, shall not stop the fact that the existing imbalance will continue to attract tens of thousands escaping from the oppressive reality of the labor conditions in their countries of origin. If the delapidated economies in latin american familias continue to hold up, it is thanks to the contribution of the millions of emigrants who voluntarily are forced into exile. The Cubans should not feel alone in the drama of seeing their broken families, the problem affects all of our community. A new form of slavery hides beneath the bouyant Technological Revolution, a revised and increased one from the Industrial Revolution which forever divided the world into two, the rich in the north and the poor.

In very few democratic constitutions, unfortunately, is there mention of the State safeguarding, above all, the happiness of its citizens. Happiness, understood collective well-being, comprehends all the values of a system of fair co-existence, and should be the major aspiration of an honest democracy. However, the capitalist interpretation of democracy concentrates its objectives on personal profit as the reward for business efficiency, profitability and individual effort. Collective happiness is thus excluded from the objectives of the system; it works implicitly on the premise of the survival of the fittest, that is to say, inequality as the incentive for development. Can we obtain collective happiness then via the proliferation of individuals who base their decisions on personal profit as their basic objective? I fear not. The capitalist equation encourages the accumulation of private wealth, and the elite group which administrates it internationally disposes of all the necessary means to exercise control over more vulnerable and disabled societies. Human beings are conscious that if they do not organise themselves as a group and create their own defence mechanisms, they risk putting at risk their self-subsistence. Marginalisation is the sad reality resulting from unbridled individualism which bases its doctrines on obsessive competition which turns any living creature which approaches us and is not recognized as an equal, a suspicious one. This discrimination – which at times comes tinted as classist or xenophobic – deadens any possibility of collective feeling, and, with it, the comprehension of the public versus the private as complementary concepts which, if correctly administrated, synthesize the essence of a democracy which guarantees social justice and peace.

Cuba after Castro has not much more relevance than a date in a calendar which some will celebrate while others will mourn. The history of Cuba neither started nor will finish with Fidel. In spite of its isolation, Cuba forms part of a community of Latin-American nations which share a common destiny: the slow and arduous battle to overcome poverty. We talk of democracy as if this were the only viable alternative to beat the penuries which the population suffers in the most depressed regions of our continent. Nonetheless, it has benefited only Canada and the USA, which have emerged victorious from European decolonisation. Latin America, on the other hand, offers a varied repertoire of democratic governments which have failed- and continue to fail- in this task, and today our countries share a common destiny with Africa and other deprived regions of the planet. Third world democracies and bloody dictatorships imposed by this old world order which hands over power to the same figures as always, has subjected us for nearly two centuries to a common history which continues to generate injustice, marginalisation and extreme poverty. The Cuban Revolution proposed a mode of development that was both licit and necessary in its day. In any case, no one ignores that processes of change need to be dynamic and must adapt to today’s new circumstances. But it is the Cuban people who have the last say. Cornered by the International Community since 1959, denial to play the rules of the game imposed by force has been a constant. Cuba would not otherwise have been able to survive neither the fall of the Soviet bloc nor the dramatic consequences of a never-ending bloc that is both useless and illegal.

180 tons of chocolates and sweets are eaten everyday in Spain. I just heard it on the news. While the civilized world produces obese children, on the other side of the world a child dies of hunger and malnutrition every three seconds. It is depressing to see how clearly and pathetically resources are used when they are available. How different our priorities can be in the different realities humans have to face! The long term in company projects of a multinacional such as Nokia is five years. They are mathematical calculations which do not take into account any human value other than the gaining of profit, and which paint us a picture of the perversion in our hierarchy of values. From these merely mercantile points of views, western democracies will hardly tackle the long term required for the huge task pending, the erradication of extreme poverty, an imbalance which causes many injustices whose dramatic consequences will not bypass prosperous societies. Important events set the pace of time and create history with an infinitely slower pace than the temporal micro-space in which the human being of today carries out her or his affairs. New communication technologies reduce distance and shrink time, shaping an artificial and false reality which makes us live  a too dangerous American dream. We talk of lasting freedom and of democracy as the model for coexistence to be established all over the world, even by force. How can we argue at this point in time that a free human being, because he or she is free, is more just?

Guillermo Muñoz Vera
[Texts: 8 días en La Habana - Muñoz Vera 2006-2007]