HAVANA, Cuba.- The “Chinese Costco” It lasted a few hours after word of its existence spread. The independent press “exposed” it—after a few months operating in the very center of Havana, in the “shadow” of a site leased to a “state company”—and the next day it was closed “until further notice,” not because those who “call the shots” were not involved in the business—here, where everything is known, and even more so when it comes to money—but because, apparently, people were already asking questions that it was advisable not to answer, especially those that inquired about who were the “bosses” who had granted licenses and, more importantly, who was the Cuban counterpart benefiting from unusual “wholesale sales.”
There is talk of a Cuban woman, possibly the daughter of an officer of the Armed Forces, married to the owner of China Import; there are rumors about some executive from Suchel involved in a circle of corruption, something usual in all the state companies of the Island, but nobody comes out “officially” to confirm or deny, nor does anyone dare to speak “unofficially” about the matter, which leads to suspect that the cat in the bag is not any Michiand perhaps he is even the son of the same one who jumped like a hare last June when Berroa’s “Cuban Costco”, the “Diplomarket” awarded to the Cuban-American Frank Cuspinera Medina, abruptly ended its operations, just as all “prosperous” businesses in Cuba end when “there are conflicts of interest.”
These are clashes between an old “orthodox” guard of the PCC that really does not like at all “playing capitalism”, but which has no other choice than to align itself with the other, “not so orthodox” old guard that only flirts with capitalism to take advantage of it (economic and political) but never takes it completely to bed; and both united against that current within the regime – majority in number but not in power – more given to renovations (but not to profound changes) and that resorts to these sometimes out of conviction, that is, because they understand that, within the narrow margin of action in a totalitarian regime, it is the only way to face the crisis and at the same time curb the growing popular discontent, but also because easy money is their “weakness”.
Within this last “faction”, the most turbulent, there is also a tough internal competition between “equals” not so much to inherit the throne of “continuity” but to increase by force of “favors” a personal patrimony that later, already discarded by power, guarantees their survival as “entrepreneurs”, and if not, let us think of the “cadres” of the PCC, UJC, CTC, retired military personnel, former diplomats and even former ministers that yesterday, today and always we have seen and will continue to see debut as “SMEs”.
A “long light” that not only thinks about going out with full pockets to open a restaurant or rent a house to tourists, but also about the possibility that the “system” breaks down irremediably and knows that only by saving bread for May and maloja for his horse is there a possibility of not succumb to the fall. And the “system” has been giving clear signs of collapse for some time now.
The “deep” cleansing undertaken by Raúl Castro in 2008 within the power apparatus inherited from his brother did not end the struggles of the “renovation” faction. Only a few characters were replaced by others, equally competitive, ambitious, disloyal and jealous as the previous ones, and the most illustrative example has been the most recent dismissals, where Alejandro Gil has been the one “on the big stage”, exposing not only the hypocrisy of the official discourse but also revealing, once again, that hidden current through which all the “transformations” and economic “tasks” move, which, from correction to correction, continue without yielding results.
An “undercurrent” that is not seen only by those who, to save their skin or out of complicity, choose to perpetuate their blindness, since Cause No. 1, and later Cause No. 2, and all those that came after whenever the noose tightened around their necks, should have been enough to understand what this game is about that now takes more than one enthusiast by surprise. SMEs (including that “Bony from Cuba” who after so much campaigning to lower the dollar and so many false profiles to hide his true identity, in the very style of a head of all heads, Now he decides to sell his business because “things got ugly”).
Something more serious than a witch hunt is going on here and we still don’t know about it. When this current little war reaches its most critical point, which is clearly taking place at a much deeper (and darker) level than what we see on social media and in the press, since it is being fought within the power, then other “renewers” will come to replace those who will leave at the end of this chapter, because history, when there is no memory, is endless.
Nobody wants to answer the questions that are piling up, and that’s because someone needs the rumors to calm down and for us all to forget – just as we have been forgetting the “illustrious” Alejandro Gil – that there is a precision pattern almost mathematical in absolutely all the “explosions” and witch hunts that always coincide with a moment when the communists are suffocated, lost, and cannot hide it.
