Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 57

political offices by prostituting Cuban citizens in official capacities, etc., etc., etc.
As a result, the State’s representatives have been and
still are the first to violate their own laws and are completely responsible for national corruption. This does
not emerge from the impoverished people, but rather
is perpetrated on them. Worse yet, the regime has attempted to hide major, periodic scandals involving
embezzlement and theft perpetrated by functionaries
who are completely trusted by the government and
Communist Party. Yet, it has not been able to. Given
this degree of hypocrisy, and the double-edged sword
of legality and intrinsic criminality, the always brandished unity of the Party, Government and People is
getting harder and harder to believe in.
Given the mess generated by this particularly destructive chaos, the structure of entities like the Communist
Party, Peoples’ Power, army, and police, as well as
functionaries in foreign and domestic corporations,
also cannot remain strong in provinces and municipalities. The absence of a real, national perspective has a
damaging effect on personal destinies and concerns,
and on these very same institutions. Recent examples
reveal how these provincial structures are secretly
benefiting from the very same corrupt interests that
have eaten away at the nation’s economic fabric. This
is the result of being far from the central power’s limited vigilance and being attracted to this tendency,
which is evident in the rest of society. It is even possible that the interests of these dominant “parties” are
being better served than those of the leaders in the capital, and that the real power structures are quite different from those presented via officialdom’s framework.
Unfortunately, all this establishes a norm for how to
organize the government (functionaries and a minimal, bureaucratic machinery) we will need in the future. This will not disappear by magic just because we
move towards democracy.
The two greatest institutional obstacles to any future

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It would be prudent to divest ourselves of preconceived models and henceforth concentrate on the nature and particularities of institutions most likely to
become obstacles in a transition to democracy, and
with conditions dangerously likely to cause chaos, indirectly. For example, due to their force, the army and
political police constitute are very likely to survive.
Given the Castro-like nature of our society, which has
been shaped by a vertical, disciplinary and authoritarian mechanism, as well as due to its structural ability
to impose the dictatorship, it is very likely that both
institutions will be considered obligatorily hereditary
and called upon to continue occupying the exclusive
space not only of leadership, but also of national leadership, itself. They may rely upon some affinity group,
and even permit it to participate in their power, e.g.,
the enormous number of middle-aged functionaries in
a Party and State shaped by their own interests. In the
end, they have experience in making the controlling
State work properly.
In addition, the power they flaunt and have demonstrated abroad, the totalitarian tradition, and the
faceoff with the United States in which these have
taken shape, seem to indicate the likelihood that these
present structures will be loath to change from within.
Despite the obviously dire situation in which our tired
national direction is placing us, neither body has acted
independently to safeguard us against this. Perhaps
this solitary example is enough to reinforce the idea
that they can serve as impediments to the establishment and consolidation of a State of Law.
Despite any economic possibilities created, the result
of this method, one inspired on the Chinese model or
sampled from the Russian version, would not eliminate totalitarian, institutional ills that have degraded
into authoritarianism, nor would they cancel out the
absence of a State of Law.
These reflections should not schematize reason. To realistically consider this national dilemma and its possibilities, it is not wise to be guided by supposed historical parallelisms, or absurd similarities that are
nothing more than fatuous and inexact, intellectual exercises. Our future crisis is not an empirical formula:
it is a historic event with its own evolution.