Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 8

Race, class and gender in Cuba and the world

Vindication of the Blackbird
José Hugo Fernández
Writer and journalist
Havana, Cuba

I

f a survey was taken to establish what digital, audiovisual material has most often been watched in
Havana during 2013, the winner would most
likely be stuff that has been circulated all over on
flash drives. It contains undocumented reports of
cases of corruption amongst mid-level, State workers
and functionaries. In particular, a segment devoted to
the Economic Sub-Director of Communal Services of
Old Havana really caused a stir and lots of comments.
This person easily was able to embezzle more than 30
million pesos over a period of several years, in cahoots
with other administrators and employees.
This case is, perhaps, the only one since Fidel Castro
passed leadership onto his brother in which evidence
presented during proceedings of a crime committed by
a corrupt State official has been featured so prominently in the mass media. It has never been officially
stated that it was the government itself that ordered
this media blitz, but it is clearly responsible for it.
Clear, too, is the fact that it has garnered the most benefit from the great impact of this news on people,
which leads one to think that even if this evidence was
secretly filmed, its publication could have been covertly directed from above.
Despite what everyday Cubans have seen, inferred
and talked about, the Cuban Comptroller General insists on publicly declaring that corruption is found
mainly among low and mid-level leaders, and that the
most frequent cases involve non-compliance with, or
incompletion of orders from above. Meanwhile, the
most conspicuous, corrupt, white-collar criminals and
high-level political and military leaders continue to act
according to their whims, with no laws or controls of
any sort to affect them. Neither are the details of their
crimes ever known publicly, nationally or internationally (few are punished, when there is no other choice,
due to political cosmetics).
One of a number of examples, recent ones, is the case
of General Rogelio Acevedo, President of the Cuban
Institute of Civil Aeronautics (IACC), whose deeds

have not become well known because, of course, no
detailed video, like the one about the Old Havana Economic Sub-Director of Communal Services, was ever
circulated. Yet, given its enormous notoriety, it seems
it was also impossible to prevent some details about it
from leaking out. More than one government mouthpiece, like academic Esteban Morales, expressed in
writing his shock and dismay at such flagrant corruption “in the highest of places, and with strong personal, internal and external connections generated by
decades of certain people occupying the same positions of power.”1 Morales also was referring to rumors
about the use of State airplanes for private business
and the diversion of so many millions.
Notwithstanding, all that information could go no further without evidence or testimony from the accused
because filming of cases such as these—if they are
filmed—never get passed around on flash drives.
On the other hand, visual testimony of a theft by some
poor devil, some lowly, seventh-level link in the long
and putrid chain of command, is made an example of
for the benefit of the entire population, and makes the
headlines even in the foreign press. In addition, he will
be held up as a prototype of the kind of administrative
corruption the country is battling. It’s the same old
story, even since Spanish colonial times. Corrupt bigwigs who own the institutions also make the laws and
adopt trickery, thus monopolizing with impunity,
from a position from which they comfortably characterize, judge and condemn crimes committed by the
underdogs.
Despite the unsavory nature of the Communal Services Economic Sub-Director’s embezzlement in Old
Havana, it was not such a big deal, as crimes go, when
compared to what the IACC President was able to embezzle; he enjoyed total impunity for so many years.
It is now the case that he is the poor devil who publicly
represents the prototype of the administrative corruption the government says it is mightily fighting.

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