Structure of Class and Power

Structure of Class and Power / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere
Mackandal - Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere, Translator: Chabeli

In the early years of the Revolution, the state shook the tree, as they
used to say back then, but it left some rotten fruits that have
germinated and that today defecate on its face.

In the last two decades, there has been a mind set shift in a negative
way. Profit, individualism, selfishness, along with racism are social
illnesses that even when they were apparently dormant caused damage.
Today, these social illnesses are free, with plenty of space within the
social fabric and a significant power. They have succeeded and will
bring, in a short period of time, the absolute exclusion of blacks and
mestizos.

This is happening as a result of the many intellectuals that stare at
these issues, without daring to speak up about them with clarity. This
shows the high levels of self-censorship and fear that exist within the
top ranked Cuban intellectuals.

In Cuba, the Revolution betrayed itself, and it turned into a frustrated
phenomenon of social transformation. The hopes and the democratic
desires were betrayed by the triumphalism that took the ideals of José
Martí and Maceo regarding their vision of a Nation and turned them into
dust. Ideology must not be imposed and all races must be fully engaged
in the political and social life of the nation.

The Revolution is a traitor to itself. By displacing the previous
oligarchy and racist class, it formed the socialism's bourgeois elite.
The acceptance required to fully engage in the political and social life
of the nation is given by the individual's level of ideological and
political commitment to the current government and by the color of the
skin. There are three key sectors which are the high ruling class and
its ramifications like the repressive bodies and the military
bureaucracy, formed by managers and other economically powerful positions.

They live in the living spaces that they expropriated from the bourgeois
who were displaced by force. Today, according to their ranks, they
reside in exclusive neighborhoods where, in many cases, pedestrian
access is prohibited to citizens. What has changed? The answer is
obvious: everything has changed so that nothing can be changed.

Even more important than those changes in the structural framework are
the impacts that they have had within society and on the collective
mentality. That's what the regime fears, because the changes that took
place in Cuba were brought by force and imposition. They took advantage
of the circumstances and populist character of the moment, and the high
degree of illiteracy in the population, to hold their ideas above all
others, forgetting their commitment to equality and freedom, with the
people and with their companions in the struggle. This, in turn, left
out many of those rebels from the struggle who clearly saw the betrayal
to the Cuban people and to all the promises, and ended up in prison or
in the hands of the firing squads.

The regime fears the psychological rearrangement of a nation that has
lived the ebb and flow of a regime that ruled unilaterally for more than
15 years by decrees, until it could design a constitution according to
its convenience, a regime in which today, as always, the new class with
its sadistic lust for power, promotes structures of entrenchment over
the true will of the people.

Published by Primavera Digital, 2012/05/10, No.219

Translated by Chabeli

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