When I arrived at Columbia as a visiting professor, in February 1991, the first Persian Gulf War was underway and CNN was sweeping television audiences, broadcasting live military operations from aircraft carriers and bombers.
Amid that war turned into a television show, the students and professors of Columbia gathered in enormous amphitheaters to listen to Edward Said, Roger Hilsman, Rashid Khalidi, analyze the causes of the conflict, the factors and problems ignored by the big networks, with an approach very opposite to that given by the spokespersons of the George H. Bush administration.
The other lesson in that cold winter in New York was learned with my students, among them, young Cuban-Americans, almost all children of wealthy families and brought to the United States very young in the early 1960s or born there. When they went to enroll, the question had arisen as to whether I was a real academic or a Castro militant. Despite these doubts, they were attracted by the option of studying, for the first time in their lives, the history of Cuba and its relations with the United States. So, after the first weeks of reading documents and debating various interpretations in class, we became friends. We finished the semester listening to Tito Puente and his band on the weekends.
The youngest of my students was a taciturn girl, who had asked my permission to sit in that postgraduate class since she had not finished her bachelor’s degree. She was the only one who had not come to the United States in the 1960s nor did she come from a wealthy family. When we became friends, she told me that she had been head of a Pioneer detachment in her classroom and an advanced student, before arriving with her family through Mariel and having to learn to live in an inverted world, where Che was a murderer and Fidel had ordered that Camilo be killed. Although she loved Political Science, she had chosen to pursue a law degree, because her parents were professionals who had left Cuba to make money, and she did not want to disappoint them. Her coursework was impressive; she was the only one who got 100 points.
I remember all the Cuban-American students I have had over the years, especially when we debated political problems such as dialogue with emigration, the debate of ideas, plurality, the promotion of a democratic public sphere, towards inside and out.
I also remember them, naturally, when I review recent approaches by some illustrious economists and demographers on the causes of the migratory flow, where U.S. policy and the factors that influence other migrations are conspicuous by their absence. And they paint Mariel as a combination of economic crisis and ideological dissidence, a cry for freedom, without even mentioning the perspectives opened by the dialogue with emigration in 1978-79, the effect of the community’s suitcases on the desire for consumption, the migratory potential accumulated for seven years, despite there being no economic crisis, but rather growth in the standard of living and expansion of access to consumption in those 1970s and early 1980s.
Although these views that ignore context do not seem ideologically biased, as they are wrapped in tables and macro data, quotes, and references, they typically lead to a common denominator, which permeates each paragraph: the cause of our problems lies in the nature of the system, and the cause of the system is ideology.
In this kind of rule of three, a linear equation is encrypted that explains everything and that extends the same in conventional academic and intellectual fields as in cyberspace; as well as among some sources today recognized as experts, who until the other day were journalists from official media, soap opera artists, hip hop singers, former security officers, professors of Marxist philosophy or officials in some organization, who suffered what the Greek tragedians called it an anagnorisis, realizing “their mistake.”
Disqualifying socialism and criticizing the government by instrumentalizing Martí, with phrases passed off as his (“socialism is enslavement by officials”) or taken out of context (“a republic is not governed like a camp is governed”); calling the wrong policies or the “Soviet model” an embargo or “internal blockade”; calling it a Stalinist dictatorship, an ally of Putin in the invasion of Ukraine, of Hamas in the attack on Israel; putting Cuba among the countries with the greatest extreme poverty, repression of religious freedom and critical journalism, tight control of the Internet, enslavement of doctors, corruption, hidden femicides, institutional or tolerated racism, have been representations coined by the United States in its denial of everything identified with “Castroism.” If closely agreeing with Radio and TV Martí could be attributed to a deficit of political vision or to what in Cuban is “pretending not to have heard,” or to both, none of that attenuates its final meaning in terms of endorsing approaches and positions.
This weakness is strictly intellectual and derives from the long absence of training in political science, as Juan Valdés Paz pointed out decades ago. Although I do not intend to subject the reader to a disquisition on the nature of political analysis, nor its scientific proof, it would be impossible to avoid that gap.
Unlike philosophy, pedagogy, literary and linguistic studies, legal sciences, history, social psychology, international relations, economics, and other surrounding fields, political science existed as a university degree in the 1960s in Cuba. Rather, it served to provide university training to leaders and officials of the political and institutional apparatus, which is why it could be replaced by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) schools. Even today it is still not recognized as a career, so professionals who learn to investigate politics as a field, with specific instruments, are not trained.
I do not ignore or underestimate the efforts dedicated to filling that gap through postgraduate studies, by capable academics motivated by political science. However, the deficit accumulated by the lack of tradition and academic identity, and public recognition translates into its limited research production.
These studies of politics rarely use data, they analyze voting patterns, they do systematic surveys among experts, they consult research in political sociology or social psychology, they do or try to do field studies, say, on political participation, the factors that delay or impede the application of agreements and laws, decision-making processes, changes in the composition of governments and institutional power structures.
Since conducting public opinion surveys is prohibited, as is research within political institutions and organizations, political analysts end up restricting their sources and references to speeches, press reviews equivalent to foreign ministry reports, others’ interpretations, comments, opinions. And they often limit themselves to reacting to these opinions collected on the fly here and there, caught in the media and social media, without applying a systematic method or procedure.
It is not strange therefore that political science is confused with a kind of illustrated journalism, with a highly speculative component, which is justified by the lack of transparency that characterizes the factory of politics, a kind of inscrutable black box.
Without disparaging this journalism or ignoring its merits, we should ask ourselves if the most sensitive intertwining of strategic formulations and decisions is not confined to the compartment of national security everywhere. Otherwise, we would already know how, who and why JFK was assassinated in Dallas sixty years ago, or Luis Donaldo Colosio in Tijuana thirty years ago. And it could not be explained that the secrets revealed by Julian Assange in WikiLeaks or by Edward Snowden, Philip Agee, and Daniel Ellsberg, had caused the earthquake that we know about.
If transparency is a fair claim, and if making inferences and deductions is part of the scientific method, none of that turns speculation or one’s very respectable opinions into political science.
It seems absurd, of course, to analyze current politics without investigating its context. To appreciate, let’s say, that the depth of the crisis in Cuban society and mentalities is greater than in the economy, although it is easier for anyone to appropriate macroeconomic data than to have instruments to measure these other equally real dimensions ― such as sociologists and psychologists can do it, if they let them.
Investigating the context would allow us to understand a translocalized society (transnationalized would mean something else), which already is without leaving Cuba thanks to the countless communicating vessels with other societies, also trans-local. That travels and returns more than it “definitely leaves”; with a schooling that opens windows to the world; that emanates cultural cosmopolitanism; that comes across foreigners every day as part of daily life.
It is a society within which new power relations arise. That it is not bipolar, because it does not move around two foci or poles, as represented by bifocal lenses: “young” vs. “old”; “state” vs. “private”; “official” vs. “opposition,” since with those broken glasses you cannot see most of what is relevant, socially and politically, between those poles. Cuba is a society in which dissent has become naturalized, and politics permeates everything, first of all social relations and everyday discourses, those that linguists could analyze with their own means, in addition to breaking down editorials and political documents.
In this new relationship between the State and civil society, a new socioeconomic structure emerges that is not only more diverse, but also more unequal, which includes the poor, the impoverished, and also the rich and enriched; where property, control, and influence relations have been fragmenting and, to a large extent, decentralizing, as has the reproduction of ideologies. And where, logically, a vibrant public sphere expands, which is not that of equitable participants, but which here represents a fundamental political and cultural change.
The simple inspection of the ongoing political debate reveals the emergence — but also the disappearance — of topics that have been hot in certain areas of the debate. Let’s say, the question of the predominance of a generation over 70 years of age in political power structures seems to have faded. As well as those denunciations of the government’s supposed concessions to the most reactionary currents opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage; or optimism in the face of the advance of something unstoppable called the normalization of relations with the United States.
In its place, the expectation emerges that an improvement in these relations would lead to a recession in the migratory flow; that the Gordian knot of the reforms lies in the expansion of the private sector, which advances in fits and starts, without relating it to the transformation of the state sector into a public one; a vision of the private as a panacea, and as a homogeneous block, in which the differences between owners and simple workers are overlooked; a dynamic of international alliances with actors perceived as benefactors, brothers or friends, as if they were people, or as if the tutelary spectrum of the USSR re-emerged in them, and not as associates with common interests, that is, allies that mutually benefit.
Above – or rather below – this whole mass of transition that I have analyzed elsewhere, multiple ideas are expressed about what socialism is, or should be, or whatever the social order based on sovereignty and social justice, less clearly defined and shared than ever before, is called.
An essential difference between history and political science is that what is happening and its trends are not always contained in the rearview mirror or trapped in the repeated image of previous patterns. In the same way, politics is not continuity, and even less so when it repeats that it is. Judging it from ideological formulas does not help to understand it, neither now nor before, especially when its main problem is generating a lost consensus. Politics, as Aristotle already knew, is based on dealing with the real polis, and not with ideal representations.
The relationship between progress and reform is much more complex than the logic of speeches and programmatic documents. So preserving what has been achieved requires reform, because the conquests achieved also have a historical condition, and they have to be reformulated so that they continue to be conquests.
Stating that the reforms are restricted to “the economic,” to avoid being confused with perestroika and capitalist transitions, does not convey their underlying meaning and scope, eminently political, beyond what the documents recognize. For example, we found that calling a constitutional reform a change that involves the review, correction, and reworking of almost the entire Constitution does not express its scope. The same as assuming rights as immanent to a legal text, no matter how valuable and progressive it may be, instead of conceiving them as fundamental changes that are fought for and made true not only through a vote but in the field of social relations and real political culture.
Naturally, staying within the guidelines or daring to try the line of the possible is not a philosophical or ideological option, but a political one. Understanding it this way begins by not considering it something exclusive of the revolutionary nature. Leaders who defended conservative values, and who did not intend to jump into the void, from Lincoln to Churchill, from Teddy Roosevelt to Stalin and De Gaulle, went down in history not only for their audacity but for defending the reason of State with great intelligence and sense of the historical moment.
As you can see from this list of names, deliberately heterogeneous, it is not about an ideological condition, and much less about approving the means they used or sympathizing with the characters, but about the imperative need to assume the problems that are there, and that cannot be ignored or postponed. We Cubans could know that there is no phrase riskier, politically speaking, than “this is not the right time,” nor more counterproductive than “we cannot give weapons to the enemy,” to seal the space for critical debate from within.
This extensive article does not give me space to refute ideas such as that our problems are those of the USSR, that the words spoken are equivalent to the behaviors that are followed, that conservative minds are irremediable, that there is no dialogue except between those who share beliefs, etc. Let me just allude to them through a parable from my petite histoire as a teacher.
One of those Cuban-American students I had at Columbia invited me to dinner at her house one time, so I was able to meet her father, a member of the College of Cuban Lawyers in Exile, who received me very kindly and shared with me the draft of a Constitution for Cuba, which I still have. However, her mother had told her: “I am not going to sit and eat at the same table with one of those who took away our bank.” It was useless for my student to explain to her that I was 12 years old when that happened, in any case, the lady left the house. And I understood her.
I received the unexpected lesson a few years later when while passing through that U.S. city, the same student repeated the invitation to me. “My mom told me that she was going to have dinner with us,” she assured me. This time, the lady welcomed me with Chivas on the rocks, she kissed me and chatted animatedly as if we had known each other all our lives.
On the other hand, we should not get our hopes up or generalize personal experiences. When I hear talk of the so-called reconciliation “with all and for the good of all,” I remember Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who did not like the term, because, he said, everyone has used it as they see fit.
By the way, ten years have just passed since his departure last January, and his memory has haunted some of these reflections, which I imagine would make him smile. Inspired by his unwavering lucidity and commitment, his loyalty and passion, we should celebrate his legacy, a decade after his departure, with a meditation on dialogue, faith (that is, beliefs), and civic culture, themes that always accompanied him.
I hope we can soon share that little pilgrimage in memoriam.
