IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 47

State. Recent evidence of this can be found in the
brand new Foreign Investment Law. Anyone unfamiliar with Cuba might think that calling something ‘foreign’ implies there is another law for incountry, national investment. Yet, this belief
would make one an intellectual victim of a cattivo
pensiero (malicious thought). There is only one
law for such activities; its surname would not
have a place in any sovereign country.
The Cuban State is addicted to the Maoist maxim
“Nations that cease being poor, cease being revolutionary.” This is a spot on, cynical, totalitarian
dictum. With this law, the State reaffirms its pretension to keep the Cuban population domesticated through poverty. The official sophism of
producing more with less takes on a sinister tinge
for any thinking being, particularly because not
even the mistaken saint of economic theory, John
M. Keynes, whose philosophy sustains State control, would have believed in the possibility of producing more without incentivizing work through
higher salaries. Yet, the Cuban State totally hides
the fact that those who work do so for the purpose
of decorously supporting themselves, and improving their lives and those of their families—
something it probably can’t see because of how
absolute power shapes the reality it sees. Thus,
this Foreign Investment Law clinches the exploiter’s perspective and denies the working poor the
ability to improve their status as a simple labor
force.
The second factor that prevents the ‘desired’ normalization of our currency is the black market,
which increasingly establishes itself as an alternative to the absolute control imposed. It is a growing island of “economic cimarronaje” [economically liberating struggle] aimed against the State’s
somber base. In coldly comparing the two—centralized planning and the black market—the artful

functioning of the latter with regards to supply
and demand is far more effective than the operational limitations of its unwitting suppliers and rivals.
I recommend caution, though! Although the black
market has become essential to the country’s real
and stark survival it doesn’t mean that the black
market isn’t an aberrant deformation of the economic and financial health a free market and legal
protection could offer Cuba, which is what the
Cuban State impedes. Despite its being a unencumbered economic realm in which the vast majority of the population has to dabble or live, the
black market is a cancer that is increasingly not
only eating away at a large part of the State’s defense, but also nourishes itself in great measure
by devouring public funds.
Lamentably, however, that is not all. In addition,
the black market deforms and debases society and
its future economic inheritance. After all, an unknown number of crafty types are getting rich, expanding their subversive businesses, and corrupting and exploiting an ever-increasing number of
people. This predatory exercise can prosper only
by espousing an equal lack of scruples and sensitivity, which the State flaunts. Thus, despite its
national origin and concomitant counterpart, the
black market is also an enemy of the nation.
We must highlight its origin. What created this
thing? The Cuban State is fully responsible for
this realm of illegal realities (and others, which
other international legal definitions may or may
not define as such). It is a deformed answer to a
totalitarian view of society, one in which there is
absolute control of subjects (not citizens), and of
even their most minimal expressions of individuality. Any possibility of personal progress or
prosperity was hermetically prohibited, unless it
came from the only official party, its hierarchy
and structure’s allotment of wellbeing and power,

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