From Cuba to Venezuela: an aging revolution

of course. Maduro's problems – with Raul Castro – can lead to the Cuban regime. Photo: AFP

The most beloved characters of Leonardo Padura have aged with the revolution that has also aged with them. Mario Conde arrived in his sixties, as did the regime, without knowing whether he had been through the slow decay of the collectivist central planning system, or whether he had to get on a raft and navigate to sea. to a place where his fate was not decided by his rulers. who present themselves as living heroes of the story that they imposed.

The Cuba that Padura describes through the former detective policeman is more real than the one evoked in the liturgies devised by propaganda. The dense frustration conveyed by the characters of novels such as "Heretics" and "The transparency of time" highlights one of the characteristics of the revolution that has just turned 60: it implies a triumph of Fidel Castro.. The formidable victory of having survived the power against the thousand plots of the CIA. But The success of Fidel does not necessarily imply a success for Cuba. And this is demonstrated by the landscape of deprivation, mediocrity, disenchantment and simulation described by Padura's books.

Reality can become even more difficult if the chavist regime ends up falling. Juan Guaidó and the National Assembly have become a counter-power that isolates and weakens Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's heir who has strengthened Cuba's control over Venezuela and, consequently, the oil aid that has allowed Cuba to escape the suffocation suffered during the so-called special period.

If finally Guaidó wins the fight in Maduro, the fall of Chavismo will imply for Cuba a new disappearance of the Soviet Union.

(Read also: Crisis in Venezuela: "Guaidó is strong")

The year 2019 began with the revolution, which was 60 years old and approved a new constitution, which proves the bad placement of Fidel, the monarch who dictated for half a century the parameters of good and evil.

change In Article 5, the constitution dictated in 1976 imposed "progress towards communist society"which implied the collectivism of central planning, thus eliminating the very existence of the smallest enterprises. Only in 1992, when the outbreak of the USSR revealed the terrible unproductivity of Castro's economy, a constitutional reform took a timid step towards acceptance of reality, recognizing the work itself.

(Read also: Crisis in Venezuela: global hypocrisy)

The reality did not correspond to Fidel's ideological imagination. Self-employment and the black market are the truth that the official discourse does not admit. Self-employment in the constitutional reform of 92 was the first recognition of what the leaders denied. Without the Soviet subsidy, the special period began, which meant opening up to foreign private investment and accentuating an adjustment that made Cubans' lives even more austere. In collectivist economies and extreme populism, adjustment is done by the "ration book" and the scarcity of products. Already then, the younger brother of the Castros knew that collectivist socialism had failed in the world; abolishing private property was a mistake with disastrous consequences and that, like China and Vietnam, Cuba should open up to private property and foreign capital.

These Asian countries have developed and taken oceans to people in poverty, thus saving the power of their respective communist parties. To survive, they buried the principles of their creators, Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh. Raúl understood that the regime could only last through the Asian way. In particular, it is the Doi Moi (Vietnamese reform) that he took as a model. Raúl deleted Article 5 and proclaimed it "progress towards communism". The word communism survives on behalf of the single party but not in the Constitution, which also includes the word market and the concept of "private property".

He also speaks of the "rule of law" although the step in this direction is not significant, but rather as the badumption of Diaz Canel as president: a formality.

The revolution had only two presidents without the nickname of Castro: Manuel Urrutia, who had resigned a few months earlier to avoid being a puppet of Fidel, and Osvaldo Dorticós, who held this imaginary post until the Constitution of 1976 eliminated it.

Opening In short, the new constitution advances in the direction promoted by Raúl since the "special period", this openness that his brother has locked up since the appearance of Chávez, yielding Venezuelan oil to the benefit of his own leadership at the regional level. This ceded oil largely replaced the Soviet subsidy, but eventually merged PDVSA and the Venezuelan state.

The new constitution is the way forward, but the established march is much slower than that promoted by Nguyen Van Linh at the beginning of the capitalist overture to Vietnam. Another difference is that the Vietnamese reform included shock therapy, which took place in 1989.

Not only in the economy, the opening will go with the parking brake applied. Mariela Castro, Raúl's daughter who, because of her own badual condition, is fighting for the official acceptance of the existence of the gay community, thinks that she has succeeded in making the Constitution legalize marriage mixed. replacing the formula "union between man and woman" by the formula "union between two people". But finally traditional communist homophobia is imposed, preventing this crucial breakthrough in a regime that viciously persecuted homobaduality.

(Read also: NEWS in Cuba | The revolution must change so that nothing changes)

However, little by little, the real reality imposes itself on the reality reported. In Cuba, there will be no capitalist shock, but a staggering gradualism it will continue to separate the imagined official economy and the economy in which society, pretending not to be seen by a state that claims not to see it, continues to make capitalism what it can and with what it can .

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