Manuel Vázquez Portal, Grupo de Trabajo Decoro
HAVANA, February - In Cuba today, the dollar is more important than the Party ID card. With twenty of them you can buy what twenty years of belonging to the Party cannot. Some years ago the little red book opened all the doors; today the little green paper is the master key.
In the past, people would go to any lengths to earn their spurs as a militant Party member; today people will do anything to earn a few dollars. All for good reason. It used to be that being a militant was the way to accomplish anything, from an important job to a seat in the dais at significant
celebrations. Today, the dollar buys anything from a job with juice perks to a stay in the hospital.
In yesterday's Soviet Cuba, the best recommendation, the best compliment, the best characteristic, was to be a militant Communist Party member. When you talked about someone, when you evaluated someone, when you elected someone, Party membership was the cornerstone. People were satisfied and
proud to be Party members.
Today, Party membership is not so splendourous. However, the dollar has become some kind of mantle of light. When someone says: "He has dollars," all doors are opened and they even invite one in. Of course, in official circles, they see it as an epidemic. For them, it is a corrupting
agent, a motive for concern, a genuine head ache, especially if they can not control it. The worrisome dollar is the one in the hands of someone else.
Officialdom sees an enemy in the dollar. To accept its currency in the country, more than a concession or a necessity was a true catastrophe. It was the loss of the splendour of militancy. It will never occur to anyone to think that dollarization is not another name for annexation. Which
currency is boss? If it is the dollar, no one could possibly think that we are very Cuban. A very socialist method of covering up the lack of economic independence. And then they accuse others of being annexionists.
Wasn't it they who admitted the dollar as a common currency, they who opened the dollar markets, who created a system of money changing houses, who sapped the value from the Cuban peso? You can tell someone else that story; I'm already used to soy hamburger.
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