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What's integral about the changes

By Manuel Alberto Ramy

Some news items slip by, unnoticed, as if they traveled through an
information subway, and now that I've had time to look through
hundreds of them I've found some that are worth sharing with you. I
will not refer to President Bush's offer to send cell phones to all
Cubans. In the marketplace of international policy, Bush is a lousy
vendor and his message is worse than the worst TV commercial. Let me
just say that, as of a few days ago, the Cubacel company had sold
15,000 new cell-phone lines. Multiply that figure by 120 convertible
pesos (1 convertible peso equals 1.18 dollars) and you'll see the
volume of business.

Now, to the news. A news item from Europa Press, dated May 19, said
that Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Investments, Ricardo Guerrero,
said in Madrid that the measures being implemented by the government
"had been contemplated for a long time" and that this is "an integral
process."

To me, the integral nature of the process is not news, for several
reasons. The first is that the socioeconomic reality is a fabric. When
you operate on a segment or aspect of that fabric, the remaining
segments are affected favorably or negatively, as the case may be.

That's inevitable. It's one reason why President Ra=FAl Castro said that
decisions had been made in the past that had created more problems
than those that needed to be solved. I think the president referred to
tactical or response measures, lacking in systemic outlook. Often,
tactical measures -- because of their heft and dimension -- become a
strategy that replaces the initial strategy.

The second reason -- and I restate ideas that I've discussed in
articles I wrote more than a year ago -- is that the accumulated
problems are so many and so intertwined that they demand a coherent,
systemic and novel approach, as well as a timetable of priorities,
especially in the definition of the engines of propulsion to be used
in the field of production. This is a critical point, because it
implies resorting to nontraditional motivations in Cuba's
revolutionary practice, such as material stimuli, which were small.

An integral answer is the only serious answer when focusing on the
policy being started now (something that I clearly perceive); it
responds to a fine-tuned vision of today's Cuban, who is no longer
yesterday's Cuban, much less the 1960s' Cuban. In politics, the genes
reside in principles and values, in the indelible tracks left behind,
not in clonation, which of itself is antidialectical. That's a reason
for the importance of the institutions and functional
institutionality.

As a final element, I point out that in the field of the visible, of
what can be touched, we are witnessing a process that on one hand is
restoring rights -- to stay in hotels, to buy cell phones, electronic
equipment and household appliances, to increase pensions by up to 20
percent -- and on the other hand makes structural changes in the agro
sector that imply decentralization and a noticeable expansion of the
role of local agencies of the People's Power (provincial and municipal
governments). The process will also have an effect on the state's
central administration, likely implying the merging of ministries.

If, as it seems, this stage of the Cuban process departs from an
integral project and a new style of work that emphasizes collective
study and discussion of steps and measures, the distribution of
functions and institutionality, it becomes clear that the country is
saying good-bye to the paternalism represented by "they give me" and
"it was my turn."

Now, it's a question of "I earned more" by producing. And, if the
earnings are excessive, I suspect that income taxes -- already imposed
on those who receive bonuses in convertible pesos or on self-employed
workers -- will be utilized as a regulatory element.

I left for last Vice Minister Guerrero's statement that the changes
"had been contemplated for a long time." No reason to doubt that. In
the fall of 2005, Fidel Castro warned in a speech at the University of
Havana that only the revolutionaries could destroy the Revolution.
Also at that time, he defined that revolution was changing everything
that needed to be changed. That need is undeniable: the issue on which
consensus is needed is how to make the changes, and to what extent, in
this first stage of the country's socialist development.

Manuel Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso
Alternativa and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language
version of Progreso Weekly.

--=20
Yoshie
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