A Reply to Yoani

at 9:03 AM Wednesday, July 20, 2011

By Ernesto Hernandez Busto of Penultimos Dias:

The emergence of the Cuban blogosphere, of which without a doubt Yoani Sanchez is its most visible member, has brought about an era of ideological confusion that is now beginning to become clear. The initial enthusiasm erased the mark of ideology and allowed a consensus based on elemental demands thrown in the face of a cynical regime. It was within that framework where, for example, the right to travel demanded by an independent blogger is supported by an entire Cuban community that is tired of having to ask permission to leave or enter. Or, where a punk music artist, arrested for predilection to dangerousness, receives effective solidarity that gets him out of prison and places him on the forefront of international attention. In that process, ideology moved into the background: the demand to have rights was worth more than the specifics of the demand.

I have no doubts about the contribution of Yoani Sanchez to citizen journalism on the island; neither do I doubt her valiant ethical stand, nor her struggle to recover certain basic rights. But her last post has looked to me – as well as many other readers – to be a "declaration of principles" from the left: her outright opposition to those who believe in the necessity of the embargo has brought to the surface the tensions that profoundly divide the Cuban community in exile. Within this panorama, Yoani Sanchez has chosen a position. It is nothing new that the celebrated blogger has for a while now supported a policy of "no restrictions" to exchanges in tourism, culture, and money between Cuba and the U.S. What is new this time might be the slant of her argument.

Perhaps she has wanted to respond in a resounding way to the criticisms that her previous post provoked, where her personal chronicle style exposed her worst side by addressing a complex issue that deserved to be taken on with more than just an anecdote and a moral. But her latest declaration, in my opinion, continues to be incomplete in some very essential matters.

In the first place, Yoani uses captious reasoning: whoever supports the embargo does so based on the theory of "putting fire to their feet." That is such an obvious manipulation that it comes across as outrageous from such an influential voice. Many of us in exile defend the usefulness of the embargo and the restrictions on travel and remittances not because we consider them, as the official line suggests, a punishment for the Cuban people, but because it is a legitimate policy of a country that has seen its interests threatened, and it has a right to defend them. To other people – including congressmen and other duly democratically elected officials – it looks bad that every two weeks fully loaded "mules" go do business with the misery of a foreign nation. Or that travel agencies who are now screaming to high heaven because of the prospective restrictions charge more than $400 for a 45-minute trip on an airplane. Or that all of those who are defending the sacrosanct right of Cuban families only consider those rights from the perspective of a reunification trip every six months, and not from the daily struggle to survive that the government forces upon its hostages.

If I talk about the "left," it is because Yoani Sanchez's juggling of arguments seems to me to be a kind of substitution for state intervention by employing in that role exile-trips-exchanges to provide a political sense. Supposedly, from the outside there would come a propitious environment that would bring about more liberty — just as before bread and work came every day from the paternalistic State. It is difficult not to read into this reasoning the reemergence of a certain mental laziness of the young progressive: wait until someone else provides, complain about the supposed evidence pointing to lack of civic responsibility, the virtuous premise of the "bridge," and the supposed "oxygen" associated with it. On the other extreme of this "Left" I place the defense of a free market, but based on the elemental premise that the parties that interchange must themselves be interchangeable. And that, unfortunately, is not the case for Cubans.

The government of the U.S. has no reason to help Cubans if those Cubans have already decided that instead of helping themselves they will "scheme" or "just get by" or "see what happens." Yoani Sanchez' post avoids confronting arguments that go against her argument: the "bridge" is in reality a profitable business for the "lobbies" of travel agencies who depend on the authorization from the Cuban government, and the "oxygen" from tourism is no more abundant than the paltry bubbles in the cocktails sipped by tourists who every day are less interested in social change.

Yoani Sanchez assures us that social rebellion has been subjugated by the efficiency of the machinery of repression and by the alternative of emigration. For the flow of remittances to be cut and trips by Cuban Americans to the island limited seems to her to be a contribution to the martyrdom of a lobotomized people, and would not affect a certain "ruling class." I believe that in this aspect Yoani is wrong. Perhaps she does not know this, but the ruling class feeds itself with, among other things, the money from tourism agencies: a business that is quite far from being an example of free markets. The uninterrupted flow of remittances has come to reinforce the mentality adopted by paternalism: the best thing to do is wait for someone else to resolve the problem. The reality is that neither more information nor increasing tourism has changed the way in which power is wielded in Cuban society. And that is a problem which should worry us. Because in Cuba and in the exile community, with fire or no fire, we have to stop thinking about how to alleviate the situation in order to start thinking of how to solve the situation.