HAVANA.- A Harold Cardenas (until recently director of The Young Cuba), he was disgusted, irritated, that CubaNet reported on the recently inaugurated 3rd and 70 storeand its wide assortment of products that can only be purchased in dollars, euros (not in MLC) paying with magnetic cards associated with international accounts or in cash.
In a publication where he tagged this medium, perhaps so that it would not go unnoticed, Cárdenas, who began as a kind of self-employed official blogger, commented: “Anyone would believe that CubaNet is concerned about inequality in Cuba, when in reality its objective is the agitation. There are plenty of reasons to be outraged when a people that earns money in pesos has to pay in dollars, but the right has nothing to preach about it when it is their policies that cause the most inequality.”
In that same Facebook post, Harold, a resident of the United States, raised several questions: “What if instead of worrying about stores that are obviously made for those who have, we focus on stores for those who do not have? Another closed store in Cuba will not solve anything, what is necessary is that they open more at lower prices and assist those who cannot afford them. That, CubaNet, and many of those who tear clothes today, do not care one bit.”
What makes Harold Cárdenas think that CubaNet does not care about inequality in Cuba, that we do not care one bit? There he already resigned himself to the growing inequalities in Cuban society! The vast majority of us who write in CubaNet live in Cuba and suffer daily the inequalities, shortages and other catastrophic consequences of the post-Fidelista continuity.
Do you believe that we are so sick with hatred that we reach the masochism of being happy about the blackouts, the buses that take hours to pass, the lines for gas, the medicines that our sick people lack or when we don’t have enough money to pay the bills? high food prices?
If you believe Harold Cárdenas, anyone would think that CubaNet is an agit-prop organ whose sole objective was to stir up Cubans against the regime. As if that were necessary with so many abuses committed by the increasingly hated bosses!
Even Harold himself has repeatedly declared himself in favor of “changing” urgently. Only he always clarifies that this change must be “on our own terms,” that is, within what he still insists on calling, stubbornly and extemporaneously, “the Revolution.”
Cárdenas has explained that it is difficult for him to deal with painful issues, first so that “the enemy” does not take advantage, and secondly and more importantly, careful as he is, “so that the most dogmatic sectors, which what they do is postpone solutions, do not misunderstand the message.”
As he assures that he cannot remain silent in the face of what has been done badly, Cárdenas has written a lot in La Joven Cuba and every time he makes direct comments to Arturo López-Levy (the cousin of the deceased Lopez-Callejas), but most of the time it dizzy, it overwhelms with its pathetic faith in the perfectibility of Castro’s socialism and its naive? romantic and punctilious Marxist-Leninist-Fidelista-Guevarist disquisitions.
To be fair, what we do agree with Harold Cárdenas on is the need to open stores for those who don’t have anything, and at lower prices. Only that this fight is not with CubaNet, it should be suggested to the leaders who now advocate dollarization, but who a few years ago, when they undertook the Ordering Task and created the stores in MLCthey assured that with the profits they obtained from them, they would supply the stores with products in national currency.
Those that today could not be emptier. And it remains to be seen, now that they are beginning to not accept them in some stores, what will become of the cards in MLC, if their holders will lose the dollars they deposited for them – as a ransom, to alleviate their hunger and misery – their relatives abroad.
