2021 brings us the perfect storm. Under this new crisis in Cuba, people are more likely to hear different explanations about what is happening. Social movements and protests that demand changes and specific demands arise in different sectors —cultural, peasant, entrepreneurial— and capture the imagination of the population.
It is known that people do not question how things work until they stop working. It is not the same to question a system when daily life passes in a more or less normal way – with poorly assured work, food and health – than in traumatic circumstances.
Most people do not question their “beliefs” until it is necessary for them to preserve or enhance their daily lives. But it does occur in times of crisis, because the inability of the system to guarantee the dignity of daily life becomes visible to them. Those who cannot afford to eat, pay for public services and medicines, those who lose their jobs or go bankrupt, are now the majority and are directly and brutally affected by that “system” to which they enthusiastically submitted. or disciplined for so long.
This is when an important part of society begins to question their ideas and rethink how things really work. They may believe that it is best to “stay out of politics” until they begin to understand that those who control “politics” clearly block family survival.
Seeing their basic aspirations for prosperity blocked, people realize that in a totalitarian society any demand for economic freedom is also political. It is a gradual pedagogy of insubordination that transforms the hitherto “believer” of the system into a dissident and later into a potential opponent and activist. By now, the zigzagging experience of China or Vietnam has already shown that there is no sure path to freedom there. The unlimited power of the state remains a sword of Damocles over every citizen even if he becomes a millionaire.
A dissident defrauded with the system is not yet a proactive activist. It is true. But it is one less support that the oppressors have. For them it is no longer “reliable” as soon as it shows the first signs of ambivalence. That has been one of the strategic impacts of the San Isidro Movement and the 27N. The obsession of crushing less than two dozen unarmed boys brought them the loss of a lot of support.
“The system does not work, but there is no alternative; there is no way to knock it down or fix it”
With the new economic measures, the crisis progresses and the conflict between ideology and reality becomes more acute. People now see the truly privileged much better visible and stumble upon the hypocrisy of the system. The mafia tactic of sowing envy to divide and put Cubans to fight against each other — peasants and self-employed against consumers — no longer works. Many, increasingly, are now aware that it is they, the bottom, who are subjected to increasing misery and repression.
Dissent with the current system is already a massive phenomenon, although pro-democracy political activism is not yet. Being a dissident, feeling frustrated with the system, is close to being an opponent, but it still does not amount to being a proactive activist dedicated to changing the system that does not let you express yourself, prosper, and now does not even allow you to eat daily or have enough money to pay the electricity tariff. Why?
A lifetime of ideological indoctrination has left doubts about the population’s potential to achieve positive change. Accepting the apothegm that there is no one who can fix or overturn the system is more efficient in guaranteeing stability than the repression of the MININT.
The greatest strength of a totalitarian government is not repression or torture, it is fueling defeatism and resignation. One of the most subversive actions carried out against the Cuban regime was the message on the flyers dropped on Havana by the planes of the Brothers to the Rescue: “Your neighbor thinks like you.”
The inability of citizens to imagine a better alternative to the current system and to believe in their own capacity to materialize it is the only recourse left to the leadership. As psychologists know, resignation can be a very powerful weapon of social control. The elite no longer sell the idea that they will bring a better future to the country, but that a better future without them is not possible.
In Cuba, the discourse about the abundant future that awaited us under “socialism” has found its limit in queues and empty stores after 62 years. The distance between the optimistic ideology of Marxism and the growing misery of the majority who has lived it for six decades has never been so palpable.
Cubans – especially young people – are fed up with sacrifices and waiting while time and their life projects disappear. It is now up to the activists to help this tsunami of new dissidents to visualize and believe in better and possible alternatives.
Convincing the majority that another way of organizing society is not only desirable, but possible in the short term, is the key to change. Every revolution always begins by changing the thought that “nothing can be done.” It is not a fallacy: it is possible to achieve a prosperous and democratic Cuba here and now. Together we can achieve it.
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