OPINION: Let’s Happiness beat the Pain

The fact that the US blockade is the root cause of all of our serious material and spiritual problems should not relieve our own mistakes of responsibilities, or lower our guard, not face any of them due to our own ignorance, indulgence, blindness, and weakness. There are inner forces fighting, in one way or another, for a return to an unfair society, allied to the foreign enemy. Fidel, in his speech on May 1, 2000, pointed out the need to “challenge powerful dominant forces within and outside the social and national milieu…”

The Commander in Chief, in that same speech, said: “Revolution means to have a sense of history; it is changing everything that must be changed…”, which does not mean to hide our wings because we have our feet firmly on the ground of this world adrift. If these are true dialectic moves, then our values will not be crushed, and we shall not “violate ethical principles…”

Who are we really without modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity and heroism (…) for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world? The essence of such values cannot be changed. Transformations are made so the Revolution grows and thus becomes a greater Revolution and the building of socialism, surrounded by shamelessness, cannot be stopped.

José Martí hinted that, sometimes, we can do as long jumpers do: going backward to reach further impetus and cover more distance. The less collective properties, even joint ventures, exist for that purpose and are part of those changes. In our case, we better watch out those hanging back, either due to confusion or wickedness…They try to mislead others and they sometimes do! It is paramount to strengthen the property of the people.

Never ignoring the class struggle, ideology, at any space, which badly needs to be surrounded by wisdom and subtleness, creativity, without weakness nor extremism, amid a time where the empire has tightened the rope and we have made mistakes where the enemy slips in as they oversize them and add lies to them with the evil use of social networks, which are a blessing if used properly. Those using social networks like scorpions have ceased to be human beings.

It is urgent to implement that Marxist conception of each according to his labor. But also that of Martí: each individual must receive what he deserves: equity, never egalitarianism, unfair morally and economically in our current stage.

 The market must not prevail over us as it is a mean, not an end. Health and education cannot be private: what kind of socialism would that be...? We cannot forget the weakest. We revolutionaries must fight to train everyone and always remember that darkness reigns at the foot of the lighthouse. We must go beyond the example, which is essential: we must learn how to convince without barricade speeches at the wrong time, or people will distance themselves from us.

There have been communist-like actions already in this socialist phase: voluntary blood donations, support in various ways to other countries without asking for anything in return —how can we talk about Revolution without including internationalism? —, volunteer work, the workers’ constructive work in their own schools, art centers or hospitals. Another example is the solidarity shown during the pandemic —and not only in Cuba—, in the face of the accidents occurred at the Havana hotel and in Matanzas, in the face of the hurricane's destruction in Pinar del Río. What we must achieve is to bring those attitudes to everyday life.

These statements by José Martí have helped me not to be an idealizing fool: “The people is a composition of many wills, vile or pure, frank or grim. You have to cede a lot, and build a lot, sacrifice a lot, to get out of fantasy, lifting sinners by the neck.”

Nor do certain winds scare me: the course of events does not go in a straight line in any area. These words by communist José Carlos Mariátegui have fed me: “The anesthetic, heavenly revolution has not yet been built… and it is essential to affirm that men will never reach the peak of his new creation, but through a difficult and painful effort, in which pain and joy will be equal in intensity."

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff