What Are They Celebrating / Regina Coyula
Posted on May 1, 2013
I'm not exaggerating if I tell you that for more than I month it's been
known with precision the exact number of participants by province, union
and sector that will fill the country's plazas with color in
"spontaneous" marches for May Day.
What are these Cuban workers celebrating? In reality, they're not
celebrating anything. They consume a representation that started out
being genuine but that has shed meaning along the way. In contrast to
the working class in other countries, even though they have equal or
greater reasons to do so, they do not fight to increase insufficient
wages, they don't demand an end to the dual monetary system, and they
don't unite against the possibility of being laid off, they don't
protest about the slowness and shallowness of the economic reforms, they
don't organize to restructure the union that represents them.
One of the slogans that will preside over the march this year is: "For a
prosperous and sustainable socialism." If there ever really was
socialism, at its beginning it brought changes in education and
health-care, which, since the disappearance of the Soviet subsidy,
haven't stopped deteriorating, but prosperity has been an elusive goal
of the working class, which at one time perceived the real possibility
of reaching it through their own efforts, for long years so demonized.
With regards to sustainability, they should have the grace not to be so
dramatic; they've had every opportunity over more than half a century at
the helm of the government and haven't even managed food independence
despite constantly repeating the official propaganda about the dangers
of the Blockade and the Imperialist Threat.
It's a paradox that the workers march to celebrate conquests that we've
enjoyed for a half a century or more, but are incapable or organizing
themselves around demands that affect their daily lives. Meanwhile, the
Cuban working class continues marching being slogans that represent
nothing, the legacy of the Chicago Martyrs still leave much to be done
among us.
1 May 2013
http://translatingcuba.com/what-are-they-celebrating-regina-coyula/
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