10-12-08, 10:22 am

A US journalist says that in the Cuban city of Bayamo, 'a communist experiment is letting average government workers in this eastern city enjoy a few things that only foreigners and moneyed Cubans can usually afford: a good burger, a kicking jazz bar, and stiff cocktails.'

It is not surprising that a US citizen, told by the mass media that only the capitalist order and the consumer society offer worldly pleasures, might react the way this journalist did when witnessing the efforts of a socialist society to find ways to enrich the spiritual life of its citizens while avoiding the cruel exclusions that come with capitalism.

The socialist goal that Cuba has been working toward for half a century has had to deal with much more than embargoes and slanders. It has, in fact, been subjected to the most inhumane harassment and constant pressures, which have required a great deal of defensive creativity just to compensate for the disproportion in resources between the aggressor and the aggrieved.

When the US blockade against the Cuban people began, even before the victory of the insurrection in January 1959, the people's unity and the innate inventiveness of Cubans, along with the sagacity of their leadership, were buttressed by the solidarity of all the oppressed peoples of the world and, above all, by the support of the governments of countries where anti-imperialist revolutions had previously come to power.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist camp dealt a blow that could have devastated Cuba. That entire group of nations, in fact, at least temporarily, came under US hegemony, which strengthened the blockade, the attacks, and the dangers of isolation. 'A blockade squared!' That is what Cubans called the situation that they faced.

To resist, the communist organization that is the vanguard of the revolution and the Cuban government laid out the strategy of the 'special period.'

This has been a titanic task because in many ways the 'special period' is still in effect. The US government decided to take advantage of the situation to intensify the blockade and invoke new measures to cripple all of the island's economic activities with the aim of finally strangling Cuba and bringing it back into the fold.

Some of the most important measures adopted to confront the 'special period,' aimed at surviving the US government's stepped up offensive, involved concessions to the market, which led to the rise of some undesirable inequalities.

(They say that in times of crisis supporters of the centralized economy run to the market for support, while in times of crisis the most committed advocates of free market capitalism try to resolve their problems through the centralized intervention of the state. Look at how the US 'establishment' has comported itself regarding the present credit and financial crisis.)

The measures the Cuban government used to accomplish the miracle of surviving the crisis of the blockade squared never meant that Cuba would seek or desire or accept a return to capitalism. Cubans are aware of the 'good life' that citizens of the privileged sector of the capitalist countries enjoy, but we should not forget that for half a century Cuba has fought and resisted attacks, pressures, isolation, and slander in order to live in a society of equals.

What the journalist Will Weissert witnessed in Bayamo, according to his article, sent out by the Associated Press on October 4, 2008, is one of the many 'communist experiments' to make the life of citizens more pleasurable, without concessions to the shameful inequalities that still endure. These will have to be eliminated, sooner rather than later, to the extent that it can be done, without jeopardizing the continuity of the process of building socialism and continually improving it.

Because these are experiments, if they yield the hoped for results they will spread. Or they may not work and may be replaced by new experiments with the same goals.

That's why the revolution is the mother of all changes!

--A CubaNews translation by Will Reissner. Edited by Walter Lippmann.