They discuss the economic blockade against Cuba at Clacso 2022

Mexico City. Sitting in the middle of the small auditorium, Marlene Vázquez, director of the Center for Martian Studies, asked to speak and spoke for a few minutes, her voice cracking and tears about to flow. In a few sentences, she referred to the situation in her country, Cuba, which carries long years of economic blockade and a crisis that the pandemic deepened. She spoke of “a crisis of values”, of “damaged spirituality”, of “desperate portions” of the population that make “ethical concessions that they would not otherwise make”.

There are Cubans, he continued, who think that the United States “is a sugar giant, with one arm of Lincoln and the other of Wendell Philips, who are going to make us all abundant and rich. It is a painful truth, but it is so.”

The stage was a forum dedicated to Cuba, within the framework of the ninth Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Social Sciences. In the presentations of the speakers, who spoke of a wide variety of topics, the costs of the blockade, the shortcomings of this time, the resistance and the role of Cuba as a regional reference had paraded.

The attendance was poor, perhaps because the table was held in the Humanities Coordination, which is not one of the most easily accessible venues.

Most of the attendees were Cuban researchers from different disciplines, who work in centers affiliated with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (Clacso).

One of them, Enrique Gómez, from the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research, gave a good summary of the “efforts and contradictions” of the Cuban process.

He opened like this: “Cuba is a benchmark. Not because it is a perfect process, it is a reference, precisely because you can learn from it. You can learn from the trajectory full of contradictions and in a context of systematic aggression, you can learn from their ability to resist, from their results and also from their mistakes”.

Gómez also spoke of the need to recognize “the daily sacrifices and efforts made by Cuban families in this context of adversity.”

In the list of “efforts”, understood as ongoing or possible changes, he referred to the need to “strengthen state-owned companies, which are not socialist because they are so”; of the need to promote municipal autonomy and abandon the “logic of centralization”; of the “diversification of current economic actors”;

The researcher also referred to the need to incorporate youth into the “revolutionary process”, through a program for children and youth that is currently under debate and that, here the novelty, is intended to be built with the participation of young people to break “the logic that has prevailed in sectoral and vertical policies”.

Likewise, Gómez said that in Cuba there are “insufficient participation mechanisms,” in addition to a bureaucracy that “kidnaps the spaces for participation and privileges, which is disastrous for socialist development.”

The researcher asked to “understand the revolution as a learning process in a context of permanent aggression… The blockade is intended to make the Cuban social project unfeasible and to blame the project for being unfeasible.”

Mariela Castro, director of the National Center for Sex Education, said that the “revolutionary process” brought the agenda of justice and equity for women to the political agenda, but the same did not happen “with LGTBI+ people, due” to the permanence of strong prejudices, centuries of ignorance and manipulation”.

“Cuban culture has a strong patriarchal Hispanic-African heritage, with a long homophobic tradition” and the “building of consensus on some issues requires a longer time.”

The daughter of former President Raúl Castro referred to the discussion around the Family Code, where there is still resistance to approving issues such as same-sex marriage. She asked “to keep in mind that the conquest of rights is a complex process, even within a society that identifies with revolutionary, radical and profound transformations like ours.”

They discuss the economic blockade against Cuba at Clacso 2022