Cuba and its Magical Realism in Politics

Cuba and its Magical Realism in Politics / Ivan Garcia
Posted on August 6, 2015

Ivan Garcia, 4 August 2015 — In Latin American literature, magical
realism has weighty authors like Alejo Carpentier, Arturo Úslar Pietri,
or the genius of Aracataca, Gabriel García Márquez, who with his
fictional town of Macondo portrayed a continent of rascals, loafers, and
pompous leaders.

In politics, magical realism has its ultimate leader in Fidel Castro.
The Cuban elder has no match when it comes to selling smoke.

Probably only the sinister Adolf Hitler overshadowed him in the art of
enchanting an entire people and setting them marching and applauding.
The real economy in Cuba stopped working 54 years ago.

He lived off the story, of campaigns and bursts of gunfire, which
contained more optical illusion than fact. The nationalization and
absurd central planning of the production of matches, croquettes, and
toothbrushes, killed creativity.

We Cubans were all a coupon book. A number in the OFICODA [the
government agency that distributed the coupon book every year]. Six
pounds of rice per month and two cotton shirts per year. The economy was
a mirage supported by a torrent of rubles coming from the Kremlin.

They designed a system of universal healthcare, vigorous and effective,
with borrowed money. They intensively and irrationally exploited the
land with fertilizers, oil, and tractors that arrived from Moscow or
Siberia.

Cuba was a fable. A bubble. A hypertrophic country. Without butter or
shrimp, but with a bunch of Olympic champions, and a sacred cow that
produced 110 liters of milk.

Dazzled, twice a month Castro inaugurated works such as "the most modern
textile mill in the world" in Santa Clara, a cheese factory in
Cumanayagua that "would destroy the French cheese industry," and
millions of dollars sunk into building a nuclear plant in Juraguá.

When Soviet communism said "adiós," Cuba had a hard landing. For 30
years we had been perched on a cloud, living a fairy tale. Reality was
different. Production was sloppy and inefficient. And there were more
political, bureaucratic, and professional commissars than workers and
peasants.

Not knowing how to capitalize on the billions of rubles, we suddenly
entered into a black hole euphemistically named the "special period in
times of peace." A war without bombardments or explosions.

Gone were the changes of clothing and the plastic shoes sold to us at
bargain prices by the generous olive-green state.

It was every man for himself. The phone became an effective weapon: in
two hours, your Miami relatives (the once hated "worms") could toss you
a hundred bucks by Western Union. And with money from the "imperialist
enemy" you bought "luxury" foods such as milk powder, cooking oil, or
sausage.

Cuba zigzagged between poverty and inflation. During the 80s Carlos
Solchaga, adviser to the Spanish President Felipe Gonzalez, came to
Havana to advise Fidel Castro.

Slowly, the suspicious Castro opened up to capitalism. A strange
symbiosis. To the populace, speeches of resistance, cheap nationalism,
and anti-imperialism. Meanwhile, in the underground conduits of power a
military-business network was being forged.

The island passed from the Castro regime's socialism to crony capitalism
run by military generals and colonels. A magical and silent change. With
the arrival in Miraflores of the paratrooper from Barinas, Hugo Chavez,
the best possible scenario gelled: another foreign pocket to sustain the
ideological nonsense.

In any state, ideology will always be a pretext, a booby trap. If you
want to function and be efficient, you must have clear accounts, work
hard, and invest in education and new technologies. There is no other
formula.

As long as there is money there will be capitalism. The great sin of the
Castro brothers is not that they are boorish autocrats. No. Their
mistake is that they are not modern dictators capable of establishing a
decent economy.

The censorship of the internet for many years has taken its toll on the
economy, business, and professional talent. Cuba opens itself to the
world full of phobias, inaccuracies, and lies.

The economy, they tell us, is growing every year. It's like inflating a
carnival balloon. The numbers never add up to reality.

While financial czar Marino Murillo tells us in a speech that the GDP
grew 4.7% in the first half of 2015, average Cubans scratch their heads
at the inflated prices of food in the supermarket.

The economic prosperity that they talk about in the official media does
not show up on the tables of Cuban homes. You don't see it in increased
consumption of goods.

The political magical realism of the Castros is a tale to be told. Never
before has anyone sold so much without having anything.

Iván García

Note – On July 28, Jorge Bello Dominguez, of the Cuban Network of
Community Communicators, reported on and photographed the living
conditions of Gladys Marta Galvez, 66 years old, of Calle 82-A No. 7909
between 79th and 81st, Guira de Melena, a municipality in the province
of Artemisa, about 50 kilometers east of Havana. Two days later,
Dominguez Bello reported that after a storm with rain and severe winds
passed through, the "apartment" collapsed and she lost the few things
she had. The photo shows what remains of her wooden shack:

She was at the neighbors' house, but due to the mental retardation she
suffers, she will soon be wandering the streets, like many Cubans
throughout the island, the many that ministers of the regime are unaware
of or do not want to be aware of. Gladys Marta receives a monthly
pension of 200 pesos (about 8 dollars); she has no family in Cuba; her
only brother left on the Boatlift from Mariel in 1980 and she has never
heard from him since (TQ).

Source: Cuba and its Magical Realism in Politics / Ivan Garcia |
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