Real Blockade

Real Blockade / Fernando Damaso
Posted on May 30, 2013

To update, in one of its many meanings, means to put in tune with the
times. It updates the valued, that which, having demonstrated its
effectiveness, should be retained, although infused with new spirit or,
what is similar, provided with renewed energy. It wouldn't occur to
anybody to update the obsolete, whose properties have been superseded by
development, because updating cost far more than replacement with
something new, which is much more efficient.

In the case of the so-called "Cuban upgrade" some inconsistencies occur:
first, it's trying to update the archaic, the failed, which throughout
its existence has demonstrated its practical infeasibility, and also
this updating is carried out "at the speed of the burial of the rich" —
slowly — and plagued with absurd restrictions that reduce its
effectiveness for oxygenating the dying national economy,
"straitjacketing" it even more, making it hard for it to breathe. This
is the stark reality.

None of the measures taken so far — most simple legalizations of what
has been being done illegally for years — have represented improvements
for the ordinary citizen, much less an economic boom. Moreover, they
haven't even offered stable solutions for many of the main problems,
such as food, which is becoming more precarious and more expensive every
day. Actually "there has been a lot more heat than light,"
notwithstanding the usual triumphalist declarations, which we are so
accustomed to.

The fact is that what we need is not an "upgrade" but a "change." What
doesn't work should be replaced by something that does work, or at least
that has proven to be better. If we don't abandon the "ideological hoax"
and the eternal empty slogans, we will never get out of the impasse to
which we've been brought. We are simply continuing to enmesh ourselves
in the unbearable tangle of these fifty-four years, with no present and
no future, living in the past, clinging now to some "generic
guidelines," that try to say a lot without actually saying anything.

Change is an urgent need, both economically as well as politically and
socially. Without it the way continues to be blocked, and this is a real
blockade.

30 May 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/a-real-blockade-fernando-damaso/