This is not an article with academic pretensions. I am not putting figures or statistics now, nor is it an extensive comment, it is only the reaction to the regrettable statements that have been made recently in a television program that deals weekly with different aspects of the progress of the national economy. A question of the greatest importance in the current situation that the nation is experiencing. In this case, referring to a highly sensitive issue: the nutrition of the population.
The nonsense has been so evident and so critically commented on, that on this occasion I have not felt the need to expand on it, only to support almost everything that has been rightly said about it.
A statement like this, unloading on the population, this time on their eating habits: “Excessive consumption of rice and potatoes, products that are not native to the country,” but are part of the culture and dietary guides of the nation for a very long time in history. Above all, expressing it at this time is extremely insensitive and lacks political sense.
Of course I have seen the entire program and there is more than one regrettable statement, like that other one that “with the scarcity that exists today, anything you put in the square works”, as one of the lucid comments on the matter states, and I quote: “That statement is not only insensitive: it is deeply dehumanizing. It reduces the population to an almost animal state, as if we were not people with tastes, preferences and dignity, but beings who must accept anything that appears, because we have lost the right to choose.” (Ale JC)
This episode is in the same category as those regrettable statements by the former Minister of Labor and Social Security that we criticized at the time. What damage these things do to the very nation that is intended to be defended.
Many times I have expressed that the conception and the editorial line, the conduction and the tenths and even the musical theme of that program [Cuadrando la caja] They should be reviewed to design something better, more rigorous, more politically daring, more revolutionary and more useful. Cuba is not for these mistakes.
There have undoubtedly been some programs with notable guests who have made very good interventions, but the overall balance of the program, its editorial line, is very questionable.
Of course, this program is not a scientific event; It is, it should be, a program to inform and explain rigorously to the population about the complexities of the economy in a very difficult time, with informed debates, without simplifications or dogmas.
This end of the year the population is experiencing thousands of shortcomings and evidence that what was promised last year, for various reasons, has not been accomplished even remotely.
In a situation like that, someone comes on television (whether in their own name or not, but in an official program and with a very clear editorial line that takes care of every word said there) and repeats, once again, that the fault of what happens is somehow the people’s… In this case, because they supposedly want to consume what they shouldn’t because it is not theirs. In addition to not knowing that there are not enough foods of those that were stated to be “Cuban”, such as taro.
To be fair, I must clarify that this is not a judgment on the colleague who made these statements, who is probably a valuable and honest worker; It is a judgment on what he expressed, which is an unacceptable error.
Lately there is a very negative tendency to blame people for their problems and to download the solution to the problems on them. The political impact of that is enormous. The population is tired. Saying that on TV, beyond any rational explanation, is nonsense without political sensitivity and the moment in Cuba is essentially political, in the deep sense of that word. There is a lot at stake and what must be defended with lucidity, credibility and sensitivity.
Of course, some deep down are happy about these errors, it is obvious. Others of us observe and point out with great regret, but “the truth is the truth, whether Agamemnon or his swineherd say it.”
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