{"id":255786,"date":"2022-07-27T17:37:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T21:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=255786"},"modified":"2022-07-27T17:37:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T21:37:18","slug":"past-present-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/past-present-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Past present (I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When one rereads the debate about what Marxism should be taught in Cuban universities in those remote 1960s, one gets the impression that its contenders are not quite dead and buried. Not only because some are alive, but because their positions are replicated as if the debate on political ideas in Cuba today had something of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/span><\/p>\n

The editors of the magazine <\/span>Teor\u00eda y Pr\u00e1ctica<\/span><\/i>, and of the Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (EIR), which at that time were opposed to the teaching of Marxism with a historical approach, as well as the editorial line of <\/span>Pensamiento cr\u00edtico<\/span><\/i> (PC) and some expressions of cultural policy \u2014 such as that represented by the ICAIC film exhibition \u2014, had very marked distinctive signs. They argued that people were not prepared to understand the Marxist theory as a cumulative process, in its differences and even contradictions, but rather as a set of established truths and regularities; that they were not capable of reading diverse interpretations of Marxism, because that confused them; and that they could not critically assimilate the antiheroes of a certain narrative of combat and of the evil life of capitalism exposed in movies, because it would not respect the heroes and some younger ones could start imitating the criminals.<\/span><\/p>\n

To put it in the terms of a prominent pedagogue and teachers\u2019 union leader in Las Villas, with whom I had the privilege of befriending, it is not a good idea for people to try coffee in its pure state, but rather it should be watered down a bit, in what he called <\/span>cafu\u00e1<\/span><\/i>, although without decaffeinating it to the point of making it <\/span>cafunga<\/span><\/i>. This is what had to be done with the philosophy of Marx and his descendants.<\/span><\/p>\n

The young Marxists of the Department of Philosophy and PC rebelled against this vision. Anyone who wants to know more about the debates of that time can consult them in <\/span>a volume<\/b><\/a> compiled by Graziella Pogolotti, and in numerous publications of recent years on the Marxism of the 1960s, as well as <\/span>a more recent series<\/b><\/a> written by protagonists of those battles of ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost none of those who defended the original coffee of Marx went anywhere, so they had enough time to see how that theory of everything contained in the philosophical manuals fell into disrepute, once things took another turn in the second half of the 1980s, and especially as of the 1990s. I appear to be seeing the faces of Fernando Mart\u00ednez and Juan Vald\u00e9s Paz when, 20 years later, they told me about the praise they got from the defenders of Soviet Marxism-Leninism, veterans and also younger ones, as if that past had sunk in the mist of yesterday, until it was erased. I reminded them, paraphrasing Marx, that history repeats itself: first as \u201cSeven Against Thebes,\u201d then as Harry Potter. And we laughed a lot, as usual.<\/span><\/p>\n

Antinomies and conflict in Cuban political situation (I)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n