The Great Chronicler of the Cuban Economic Disaster

The Great Chronicler of the Cuban Economic Disaster / Ernesto Santana

Zaldivar

Posted on September 24, 2013



HAVANA, Cuba , September www.cubanet.org – I don't remember the first

time I heard or read his name, but it must have been in the mid-90s on

Radio Marti, which at that time, despite the strong obstruction of its

signal, I could still listen to. I do know that by the end of that

decade his name was one of the most recognizable to me among the

journalist who were dedicated to disclosing, from within Cuba, the

reality we were living in the country, while offering his ideas and

opinions that helped to better understand not only what happened, but

also why it happened and what could be done to stop it from happening.



For many years Radio Martí was, for me, as it was for many Cubans, the

only source of alternative information, and listening to Oscar Espinosa

Chepe I learned and understood, from my ignorance in this respect, the

value of many of those small and innumerable elements that shaped the

economy of the nation.



In fact, I had a more concrete idea of concepts such as methods of

production, which always seemed to me like entelechies of Marxist

economic doctrine. In general, over the years — also reading his

frequent articles published in different media — I discovered the

integral thesis of Espinosa Chepe, although I fear this term is

reductive; it was that almost all the elements that constituted the

entire machinery of the Cuban economy didn't work or worked badly

because, simply, the economic conception that ruled the gears didn't

function in practice, but in a fictional world composed of ideological

and authoritarian dogmas, an absurd world divorced from human reality.



Others said this as well, of course, but it was Espinosa Chepe who

demonstrated it without stridency or getting lost in the numbers, but

with balanced studies on specific topics where the data and analysis

formed a convincing and irrefutable body, with what Miriam Celaya,

talking about one of the economist's books, called "the particular

accent of documentation."



In his articles, the variety of themes is so vast that his

investigations could hardly fail to be important in the economic field

of the country. And in the end, the conclusion this social scientist

showed us described the process of how, simply, the Revolution was

turned into Involution.



But what Oscar Espinosa Chepe communicated to us with a simplicity and

remarkable wisdom, came not only from his research and diving into a

thousand books and countless theories, but also, and perhaps above all,

his own experience of life itself, although he never speaks of that in

his writings.



For this man, committed to the pursuit of a better future for his

country, was not imprisoned for the first time in the sinister spring of

2003; he had already been in prison in 1957, as a teenager, for opposing

the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After 1959, he was among the

millions who participated in what they believed to be the building of a

dream; he worked in the Central Planning Board, as an economic adviser

in the diplomatic service, and finally in the National Bank of Cuba.



The events that began to shake Eastern Europe from the mid-80s showed

him the necessity for profound changes in economic and social thinking

and, accused of being counterrevolutionary, he had no option but to

enter the political opposition, even if it meant passing through Villa

Marista prison and the worst prisons in the country, which ended up

aggravating his health, by then already deteriorating.



But neither prison nor illness convinced him that he should cease his

work, let alone leave his country permanently. He devoted himself to his

mission with diligence and conviction of a Jesuit, he felt obliged to

give evidence as an expert working in the events. The titles of the

books he has published ("Chronicle of a disaster," "Cuba: Revolution or

involution") illustrate what has been his reason for living: to shed

light on the details of a long and gloomy national event that is

inscribed in a socio-economic system that he called "the most colossal

scam known to history."



Deep in the eye of the hurricane, Oscar Espinosa Chepe has always been

an honest person courageously committed to the progress of Cuba which,

dedicating to us with the great generosity of his years and his

intelligence without a hint of complaint, never allowing himself to

sacrifice professional ethics. This is perhaps the best part of his

lucid and illuminating example.



By Ernesto Santana Zaldivar



From Cubanet



23 September 2013



Source: "The Great Chronicler of the Cuban Economic Disaster / Ernesto

Santana Zaldivar | Translating Cuba" -

http://translatingcuba.com/the-great-chronicler-of-the-cuban-economic-disaster-ernesto-santana-zaldivar/