What does it mean for a Cuban that Cuba is no longer governed by a person whose last name is Castro?

Since the revolution triumphs, the figure of Fidel has occupied a physical, symbolic, and material space in Cuban life. And from the moment that Fidel leaves power, his brother Raúl occupies that space with a somewhat different sense of government, because I believe that Fidel moved more with a more romantic sense of reality and sometimes he lost his sense a little. practical. And Raúl brought a more practical sense, he realized that there were economic problems that needed to be solved: the very existence of two currencies in Cuba, an inefficiency of the Cuban economy that dragged on for a long time and he was preparing this moment of his departure. effective power although I do not think it is far from certain decisions.

Even the president and First Secretary of the party, Díaz-Canel, makes it clear that important decisions would be consulted with Raúl. In other words, we are not completely out of a period. And the position of Second Secretary of the party disappeared. And a group of younger figures who have had a political development in Cuba in certain spheres and have been rising, including the case of President Miguel Díaz-Canel himself, have begun to occupy places of decision, of representation.

I think that for the image of Cuba in the world there is a change because Fidel’s Cuba or later Raúl’s Cuba was not the same as Cuba without Fidel and without Raúl. And it is necessary to see, above all, from now on what possibilities to really introduce changes, especially in the economic sphere that is in a really very complicated condition at the moment, this new government team can have both on the part of the State as in the part of the Party, in a country where the Party is the rector of the government and the State.

With the coronavirus and the brake on world tourism, one of the main sources of foreign exchange income for Cuba was closed. Is that the trigger for this new crisis that has been compared to what was the very severe crisis caused by the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Yes, it is an important element, although I do not think it is decisive. I think there are three elements that should be taken into account when it comes to seeing why we have reached this economic situation. Of course, the pandemic has affected many economic activities.

Within this, this second aspect, tourism, was the most important economic activity in Cuba in recent years: Cuba has climatic conditions and has been creating a very important infrastructure for tourism. But there is a third element that has to do with the previous two, which has been the tightening of the embargo or the US blockade with the measures that Trump has adopted in the last four years: he reduced flights to Cuba, prohibited many of these packages that had These justifications, he reduced remittances and in the end practically prohibited them because there are no mechanisms from the United States to send money to Cuba.

And all these things have added to an economic situation that had already been impoverished by all this that is being tried to solve now. The eastern issue of monetary unification: in Cuba two official Cuban currencies circulated and between one currency and the other there were exchange capacities – that has an economic name, exchange rating – which could be from 24 to 1, it could be from 1 to 1 So in one place it was worth 24, in another 18, in another 12 and in the other it was worth 1. No economy can logically function with that exchange rate: in Cuba, they did not know what it was worth at all.

Padura: There are entities that do not want my novels to be disseminatedYou always wrote about exile and that with the departure of Fidel Castro everything would change. And it seems that the Cuban regime overcomes all situations. The demand today, does it go more on the side of the economy than on that of political freedoms or of expression in Cuba?

The demand for freedom of expression is a demand that is there. There are groups in Cuba that in the last two or three years have had greater visibility, an alternative press to the government that through social networks has been able to have the advertising space, visibility, with visions different from the official ones.

On the other hand, creators, in a general sense, defend as something that is inalienable for creation to have the right to freedom of expression, thought, and speech. Those are demands that are always there and that can be and in fact are limited in Cuba. My books, for example, until now all have been published in Cuba, fortunately.

The last two novels have not come out, also due to financial problems, not only due to problems of whether they have decided to publish them or not. But the number of copies that are published is very limited, it is not promoted because there are people who direct certain levels of direction of culture in Cuba who think that my novels should not be distributed and promoted in Cuba.

Leonardo Padura referred to Raúl CastroHis latest novel, “Como dust en el viento”, is about the Cuban exile. If you could talk to them, what would you say to them?

This is a novel that has to do with three great themes that I think are universal. First, the issue of exile: how to learn to live in a different culture. Second, the issue of permanence or belonging, because there are characters who remain in Cuba and there are characters who leave Cuba and cannot renounce that cultural belonging. You Argentines have a very great exile experience and you know that this is the case. I have seen, here in Spain, two Argentines who are people I know who are practically like two more Spaniards and when they meet they automatically begin to speak in Argentine, in a way as if they had never left Buenos Aires in their life and have been 30 years living here.

That is the other issue: how one belongs to a culture and at a certain moment in life is inalienable. And the third theme is friendship. I think this is a novel that deals with how, even with ideological differences, political differences, with geographical distances, with different ways of seeing the world, there are human values ​​that can remain and that is friendship. This is a novel by a group of friends and it is a tribute to that possibility of sustaining friendship.

One imagined that the system without the Castros was not going to continue, right?

The system has been maintained and Congress always said that it was the Congress of continuity. I believe that at the political level it is very clear that the Cuban party and government aspire to a continuity of the system, introducing some modifications of an economic nature. Because there is something that is very important in this: Cuba in essence has not changed in the last 30 years, from the year 90 until now, that there is a break with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the economic crisis that is lived in Cuba.

Apparently the political system and the economic system have changed very little, but Cuban society has changed a lot. People are different, the generation of young people who are 20 years old today has a completely different way of seeing reality, all these possibilities of communication, dissemination of information, contact between people, and knowledge, have changed a lot the Cuban society. And it is seen in many demonstrations, for example, music. Cuban urban music is similar to what is made in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic or Argentina. Why? Because the levels of communication, of closeness, are much higher.

It is a society that has changed a lot also because the world has changed a lot. I always say that the change from the 20th to the 21st century was not only a change of the century, I think it has been a change of era. We went from the analog age to the digital age and the codes, of course, that are handled are different in practically all the manifestations of life.

Can it be possible that a society changes while the political power and the economic situation do not?

Yes, it is possible, because I believe that Cuban society has changed. And I feel that people in Cuba see reality in a different way, express it in another way, with much more freedom than they could a few years ago.

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