Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 55

Cuba: A Failed Future?

Democracy and its challenges

Armando Soler Hernández
Independent journalist
Havana, Cuba

Suga suga shi
Bofu no ato ni
Tsuki kiyo shi

Renewing
After the violent storm
A radiant moon rises.

Farewell haiku by vice admiral Takijiro Onishi,
Creator of tokkotai attacks (kamikaze),
on the eve of his suicide.

M

ight our country have its future as a failed
State already decided? One like Somalia
or the Congo, where populations perverted
by forced and never-ending poverty always identify
the authorities and their repressive forces, whichever
they are, not as a safeguard against anarchy, but as enemies and oppressors? Lamentably, this is what current circumstances seem to indicate. Official rhetoric
continues to evade accepting the realities and tendencies worldwide regarding interrelationships and integration motivated by ideas of freedom and democracy.
For a long time, this diversion, a product of prejudices
and backwardness, have been deteriorating the level

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of Western civilization Cuba had culturally and historically reached by the decade of the 1950s.
The result of this is very evident, for the time being.
Cuban society mistrusts the State, its mechanisms for
order and governance, and its vague economic and national model. One could expect no less. More than half
a century of totalitarianism has left a definite mark.
The group in power has governed secretly, abruptly
imposing laws that restrict universal rights or ignoring
constitutionality. Hence, both the economy and the society to which it gives life have been seriously deformed. Despite all the promises and half-hearted
measures, the nation has been transformed into a poor,
repressive, and hopeless place for any personal or collective future that includes strong progress. This results in a small, poverty-stricken country, whose
youngest and most capable citizens continue fleeing
whenever they can.
This aging, governing group does not seem to accept
this reality; much less can it find an alternative other
than to continue to cling to power and proclaim themselves as the only ones capable of finding solutions.
The cause of the current, ruling system’s erosion goes
beyond just the advanced age that worries its leaders,
or their administrative incoherency. It concerns politics, the unviability of the mythical social model that
has been promoted every day, ad nauseam. In its rigidity and insufficiency, the system continues to accrue deformities.
Beyond this “vanguard,” which clings to power, it is
the nation that continued to be battered; it is the only
nation we have, and will have, when we inherit the fu-