Havana Cuba. – Police raids against street vendors in Cuba are like garden pruning. The oldest branches and roots are cut so that new and stronger ones can grow. They are a regular process that guarantees that the plant does not die, that it grows very healthy almost forever; that is why the gardener will never cut the main trunk and root, but will even fertilize them and cure them of diseases.
Around here, even the dumbest knows that, in the Cuban economy, the informal market is like the main plant in a gloomy garden. And that it is “sustainable” and “prosperous” by virtue of its total link with the so-called “socialist state enterprise”, a colossal monster of “institutionalized corruption” that, if it died, would drag the entire system down with it. That vulnerability is well known to the Communist Party, hence his insistence on preserving and rescuing at all costs a state business conglomerate that has made inefficiency and inefficiency proverbial.
These days, after more than a year without news of operations against street vendors and hoarders, when it seemed that the gardener was taking too long to use the scissors with which he likes to embellish his plot for public opinion, many wake up in shock , almost to the point of heart attack, because they know that in matters of the informal market there is no Cuban —neither on foot nor under the shadow of power— who is free of sin.
Everyone, absolutely everyone on the Island participates in the informal market, either to survive or to amass a fortune, although we know that the former are the most vulnerable because the scissors always go directly to cut the weakest branches, and those are the ones that sprout at ground level or those that have yellowed from being too exposed to the burning sun, to the heat of the asphalt.
What public opinion does not see —although the astute gardener does— is not cut by his scissors, which is why we still do not hear in the official press the first name of a minister, deputy minister, police officer, inspector or senior official whose head has rolled along with that of the cart driver, the hoarder from La Cuevita, the Taíno shopkeeper who fights for her yucca, the self-employed person who buys seafood for his palate, the “Palestinian” whose backpack was confiscated with tubes of mincemeat or clothespins, and the guagüero —state, not private— who only earned a few pesos for transporting a “facho” from Havana to Matanzas.
Because very much about the “underground”, very much about social control, the formal market doesn’t work, it doesn’t exist and we are all up to our necks in the informal market, because we can’t reach chicken, bread and oil in the queue where there are to get up early for a shift, because we need a few dollars or euros to manage a visa, but only those who fully participate in it, and even control it under the approval of those who decide which heads to cut off this time, are the ones who sleep Quiet these days, knowing that so much fuss is nothing more than another “regular pruning.”
Woe to the naive who, for the umpteenth time, trusts that an operation with drones in the cave or a police assault under the 100th street bridge will put an end to the mess that today is our reality in every way.
And woe to the one who is satisfied with seeing the TRD administrator and the neighborhood viandero handcuffed; Poor, because they really don’t quite understand what this game is about where some old players leave only for new ones to take their positions.
As poor as the one who thought that the restoration of the exchange market by the Central Bank would put an end to street speculation when in reality it came to make the situation worse, and even when the Minister of Economy had sworn and swore that they would not take the high rates of the informal market as reference. But there were too many dollars slipping through their hands and temptation overcame them, so that they ended up on an equal footing in the “espectuladera” with the “asere” on the corner.
Those who have had the “fortunateness” to work for some time in any “socialist state enterprise” will know, from their own experience, what the true “economic” (and “political” purpose) of each of them is, and why, despite being unprofitable, they continue to exist, with shifts that last more than eight hours, even on weekends, with zero working conditions, and with workers and leaders “supporting” low wages, without too many complaints.
Each one of them is, more than companies, a network of corruption and blackmail that the regime uses at will, depending on what it needs at any given time, either to project the most beautiful image of itself, or to reinforce the feeling of guilt that The burden is on the shoulders of those who, due to the system itself, are forced to commit crimes to feed their family, or to live the illusion that they are realizing their dream of having money in a country where that fantasy is totally unrealizable, as long as they do not be a “protected” of those who really “cut the cod”.
The socialist state enterprise is not profitable, it is not productive, because its main function, in addition to ensuring the regime a simulation of popular support —which reaches its greatest expressions in the May Day parades and in the “rapid response brigades” —, is to constantly provide an informal market where both the simple worker and the leader find a way to compensate for all the negative aspects of state employment.
The worst thing about this situation is not the corruption that cuts across it, but rather the full knowledge that the regime has about it, its operation and its participants, and how it uses it to its advantage as blackmail. Something like “I allow you to be corrupt as long as you are not annoying, as long as you are faithful to me.” That “fidelity” is rewarded with more or less “permissibility”, with more or less “immunity”.
It is in this dynamic that the other dynamics of the informal market in Cuba are built, and they are the ones that determine who enters and who leaves it, and therefore they are the ones that, going back to the initial metaphor, mark the gardener’s pruning cycles.
OPINION ARTICLE
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