Originally posted by
[email protected] 6 2006, 09:06 AM
Easy enough to wag the finger of moral disapproval at some guy who wants to buy a black market chicken for his family's meal; what about the party official who has a new car and maybe a 12-room house? With central air and heating? And a generator to keep them running even when the power goes off?
Redstar is more anti-Castro than the Miami Herald here. Even it admits: (http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/fidel/castro-family.htm)
Added exile author Norberto Fuentes: "The most avaricious cabinet minister lives no better than the average Cuban in Miami. He has one car, not two. An air conditioner in the car? No air conditioner.''
But of course it is these bureacrats who are best able to steal significant amounts of state property to sell on the black market, and that's who these measures are primarily aimed at if history is any guide. Neither the bureaucracy nor the black market can be eliminated under current conditions of scarcity...but the most corrupt or ambitious elements, including government ministers and prominent party figures, have been slapped down time and time again. E.g. Escalante, Torralba, Ochoa, Abrantes, Aldana.
Redstar seems to be going on the AP article's comment that "Many of Castro's targets are simply poor Cubans who steal from the state to make ends meet." But of course that is an unsupported statement, which could even have been inserted by the editor to produce the required slant.
If you read the speech (http://www.ratb.org.uk/html/cspeaks/fidel_1105.html), one of the thing's Castro's talking about was the diversion of huge amounts of gasoline from gas stations, something that couldn't have happened without management involvement.
And who put a stop to it? Newly trained young social workers...from an initiative to find work for "marginalized" young people, young people from the poorest neighborhoods who were neither working nor in school, so the revolution set up a new program to train many of them as social workers to work among their peers. And many of them have become the kind of people you can count on to put a stop to corruption.
The AP article does have to admit: Forty-seven years after Castro's revolution, many Cubans still share an ethic of solidarity that stresses spiritual over material wealth. They may not have fancy stereos, but they crowd theaters for plays and concerts. Many express pride that their doctors are helping earthquake victims in Pakistan, even if it means their own medical service is affected.
Redstar's right about one thing: that prevailing ethic of society is set from the top...that is, by the example of the revolution's leadership.