Partial Solutions

Partial Solutions / Fernando Damaso

Posted on October 19, 2013



With regards to the adoption of the Mariel Special Development Zone

Decree Law, it comes to mind that this idea of trying to solve the

problems of the country not in a global way, but by creating regions and

special plans, has been a tendency of the authorities since their

earliest days in power.



We remember the declaration of the town of El Cano, as the first

socialist town of Cuba and, later, that of another unimportant one as

being the first town where money would not be needed. These constituted,

at the time, childish utopias within the large adult utopia that has

been the so-called Socialist Revolution, which has had very little of

socialism and a great deal of voluntarism.



To these initial blunders, we have to add the failed Havana Cordon, the

Ten Million Ton Harvest, the micro-jet bananas, the failed livestock

cross-breeding plans, the Pharaonic harvests of pangola grass and pigeon

peas, the windbreaks, the embankments on any nearby key, the Turquino

Plan*, the Escambray Plan, and a great deal more economic and ecological

nonsense.



Now, copying the Chinese brothers in turn (we lack originality), and

after greatly criticizing them, the so-called Special Development Zones

started to appear which, though they strengthen the creation of

accelerated wealth in the chosen and controlled regions, they deform the

economic map of the country, generating reas of extreme poverty, where

people have no other option for survival than to emigrate to these new

El Dorados, where all this rootlessness and loss of identity leads,

affecting the social fabric, making even more virulent the economic and

social differences between regions, creating a country alienated by its

different living conditions, very distant from "with all and for the

good of all" advocated by José Martí.



For those of us who dream of a single prosperous Cuba, where citizens do

not have to emigrate from the places of birth to develop their life

projects, time and the tenacity of Cubans are working in our favor.



*Translator's note: The Turquino Plan was a 1980s effort to develop

forestry and site appropriate agriculture to stabilize mountain

populations and make mountain areas independent of cities.



18 October 2013



Source: "Partial Solutions / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba" -

http://translatingcuba.com/partial-solutions-fernando-damaso/