STUDENT: On the way to the dining room a few days ago I saw the photos, the biographies of all the delegates and deputies [candidates for the upcoming elections] and I said: Who are they?
I don’t know who they are. I simply read the autobiography, the possible merits of this citizen, but I never saw him, he never visited UCI [Information Sciences University], and I don’t know who he is. Where he came from.
Ah, the united vote, I am going to vote for each one of them, not knowing if “In freedom there are thieves” as Jose Marti said.
“In freedom there are people who are not totally consistent, not total Revolutionaries.”
I think it would be very opportune, very helpful if the tomorrow other unpleasant [people] arise, other [General] Ochoas, that these people come to UCI,
come to the masses, have a deeper and closer exchange with each one of the students who is going to vote tomorrow, the 20th, because if not, then it’s not worth it,
all we do and all we say, we are simply some hypocrites in freedom and we can’t speak of Communism, or Socialism, like a vulgar term and vote for the best looking, because I saw him at the bus stop the other day, and this isn’t what we want.
ELIECER AVILA: Well, Mr. Alarcón: Look I have a very clear concept and it is that the revolutionaries did not like to lose, someone said not even in baseball.
And ... well let me introduce myself, Eliécer Avila, faculty # 2, leader of the Technology and Politics Surveillance Project.
And this is what we call one of the specialties of Operation Truth,
in this case dedicated to constantly monitoring the Internet and the broadcasting of reports and we combat whatever [we find] in this area.
I was enthusiastic when I was listening to the comrade just now, and I think this space, I would like, and I don’t know if some disagree with me…
But I would like to take advantage of it and not let another day go by without my being able to topple each one of the elements I’ve heard every day.
It has been difficult for me to respond precisely because from my perspective, as a student, I didn’t have, and I don’t have, all the elements to reject certain affirmations,
To defend certain ideas and especially because I believe and have always said that every man dies, and kills, defending what he believes in.
And to really believe in something implies knowing everything or almost everything and having a perspective on the immediate future of what might happen with it,
…with what you are defending, what one is made of.
I selected some issues – to say they are the only ones would perhaps be to lie to you – they form a part of the international debate.
They are part of the debate of young revolutionaries today, when we meet to discuss things in a group, to become more convinced, to commit ourselves more, and to develop more arguments.
But they form a part of our own doubts, the doubts of our own conceptions. And then I would like to take this opportunity…
Perhaps at best you could answer these two or three questions or issues or controversies that I have here.
But at least you could make clear some of the fundamental controversies we have here that we discuss today among the youth.
And it might seem that I am rambling a bit. Well, perhaps departing from the main idea of this meeting, but no, it all has to do with it in one way or another.
For example: Why has the internal commerce within the country migrated to the convertible peso when our workers and farmers are paid in national money which has 25 times less purchasing power?
Why does a worker have to work 2 or 3 days to buy a toothbrush, or personal hygiene products, everything, clothing…
We can say I represent a people who are perhaps the most backward in Cuba, I’m from the countryside of Puerto Padre, Las Tunas…
and perhaps my perspective… I live surrounded by cane fields and the rest, perhaps it’s not the same as a place where it is better organized and things are more affordable, but so you understand.
Second question: Why do the people of Cuba – I am referring to workers and their families – not have a viable option to go to hotels, or to travel to other places in the world?
Let’s say I don’t want to die without going to the place where Che fell, there in Bolivia, and I work my whole life growing garlic…
… Let’s say there in the municipality of Las Tunas, and I have, let’s say, 30,000 pesos in the Bank, about $1000 and the passage to Bolivia is $200 there and $200 back.
And I want to go with my family, take my kids there to honor the place where Che fell…
Is this a viable possibility because to see something we ask ourselves…
In the 1800s – we studied in history – that Marti went to Tampa, Key West, took a tremendous trip.
Fidel, a little later, he traveled to Mexico, again, Mella went to Mexico. And then if in the conditions of a hundred years ago…
I imagine that transportation systems were much less sophisticated: at best they had boats.
Today, the twenty-first century, 2007, we have to see: if the logistics really improved or not, if we have more resources, if for example a group students here who study History, we want to go to the Pyramids of Egypt, for example.
But we are students who have done just about everything well: when we were little we did our homework…
Today we are college students, tomorrow we will be engineers.
We are going to work ten years… supposedly… we will have met a few of the goals that approach what it is to do well in life
And then a little if what I want explained is: what is a problem of our situation and what is a problem of our approach, and whether one day we can do this kind of thing.
We know [they can do it] in other much less fair countries (it’s true to say it), but they are much less fair to the unemployed…
… with those helpless sectors, really, that no one remembers. But at times it’s difficult to convince, for example, an installer of – I don’t know – of telephones in Haiti…
… who keeps his family in Cuba, they are engineers, doctors… that we, for example, cannot do certain things.
I am going to tell you an anecdote, we are going to talk about real things here, when I speak of these installers of telephones it was a reality.
A few months ago I was in a discussion and it was killing [me]: “Why if your government is as good as you say and your country is so great, why do you have so many students studying medicine in Cuba and not in your own country?”
“You say that mine is worse and”… we were on a tremendous roll and he told me:
“Well I install telephone cables here and my family are all doctors, masters in science, engineers in Cuba, and I maintain them from here.”
“But I am going to ask you something too, where are you from?” “I’m from another province, Las Tunas,” I told him.
“What can you tell me of Varadero, buddy. Listen, I love Cuba, how cool is that.”
But I can’t talk to him about any of that [I haven’t been there]. What can you tell me about Vinales?” Not that, either, I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about.
“What can you tell me about the Tropicana?” No, much less.
So he mentioned 200 things I had to do to uninstall the network and to say: Well, it failed because…
[Applause… Laughter]
Well, a little to not disrupt the line (I'm sure everyone got the idea), continuing with the two small questions I have left here.
Why isn't there a more open and regular exchange between, for example, the Council of Ministers and the people where everyone explains what the plans are to resolve the objective problems of their area,
and the people know at all times why they are struggling and how and when the problems are going to be resolved so they can help more and in a conscious way?
That is, almost everything in life is related to mathematics. Let's say that to solve transportation in Cuba involves $200 million, a hypothetical number.
It seems to us that a Revolution, a socialist project, cannot advance without a project and we're sure that exists and we want to know what it is.
And maybe we do not we have this opportunity to be here with you today, such a good opportunity. I speak for my dad, I say this for my grandfather,
I speak for a group of people who have lost their teeth in my neighborhood working from sunrise to sunset behind a yoke of oxen and still do not really know how how things are going,
if they are going to realize many of the dreams proposed when they were children.
And then it seems to me that ... "Oh, it's $ 200 million dollars, perfect, this implies the nickel production of 8 years, the workers have to double the workday,
the students have to do this, this other work sector has to do this other thing,"
and you say, "Good, now I get it and it will be solved in 2013 and we are going to do it this way." So, we will work more, we will struggle so this succeeds.
But I think things should have a limit and not, let's say, an obscurity in all sectors, in every sense, really we don't know where we're going, how it is going to be solved.
Now the other day I went to Havana and I learned they had gotten some new minivans.
They are tiny taxi-buses, that someone told me, "You pay 5 pesos. You get on and off on the corner and it's 5 pesos, you get on and off in Havana and it's also 5 pesos."
But, fine, there are ideas, there are questions that can be asked, a experiment that's being done in Havana to solve the transport issue, but I don't know them.
And when people in Las Tunas say to me, "Compadre, when are they going to have buses here, it's been 30 years and I haven’t seen a bus here?"
And I don't have the background to... that's what I mean when I refer to these exchanges.
The minister of transport stands in a place facing the people, and we will discuss the issues of transport and not and not dwell on the bad experience...
I was in the Plenary session of the National Assembly, the last to be fully broadcast... no... the previous one, I think it lasted 6 days, the different fragments they broadcast.
I watched 6 days in front of the TV and I'm going to use an example of something that I don't really share. Comrade Raul said, "Let's touch on the topic of transportation, get to the point of transportation."
The first deputy was going to speak -- I immediately called my dad, come and sit here they're going to talk about transport, you'll see we're going to explain things –
and the deputy who comes to speak said, "I don't know how many Latin American children die from preventable disease, I don't know how many U.S. children don't have medical insurance..."
I kept wanting to hear the truth on the issue of transportation in that speech... They talked, I think there were three deputies and they didn't really...
And we want our young people in each one of these discussion, in the brigade meetings where we're saying: this debate is happening at a high level,
it seems that the debate that happens in the parks, stores, hallways, homes, schools, everywhere, that it is a debate a few thousand times more grounded in the most pressing problems.
ALARCON (off camera): A thousand times more what?
Eliécer: A little more grounded, grounded in the serious problems, the problems we all know
and that really, at time, when people doubt what their representative is saying, "Well, in the end the things we're suffering in this neighborhood, as a people, who is saying that in the Assembly.
I tell Pedro what I know, but Pedro tells Juan and Juan, I don't know if he thinks like me because a question,
in a group of four houses, if you ask a certain thing, how would they like to settle a problem, and you're going to get twenty different opinions.
So why should a person who's three electoral steps from me think like me. Why?
Maybe it's someone who doesn't have the transportation problems I have.
Maybe it's a woman who has detergent and soap to wash her child's clothes, maybe she has it. And when we look at all the spheres of life, it's very different from me.
Man thinks as he lives. Does he really represent me? Does he have the same food available as me?
Then there are serious questions you really have to think about... then I think this solution is really coming to the people (as someone just said).
Someone passed me a note here and I think it's best if I read it because it more or less rounds out the idea.
It says, "We want to know the qualification and ideas that each candidate who stands for election, what are their ideas.
If one day they are going to be a delegate, what are their ideas, what do they stand for, what are their concerns and solutions.”
Many of these questions ... something like that. I think that's the intention, right?
We, what happens, is people are choosing not to engage in anything
or a minister may be a minister for 20 years and never in three years did he agree with the people about how to resolve a certain problem or to plan a project, "I think this is the idea."
Because maybe the people collaborate and at best after three years there is nothing, and they say,
"Well, man, look, that's a responsibility the people gave you, because in this country the people send you, we send you to resolve this
and in reality, look, no, you solved 80% or 85% or 90% or you didn't do a thing.
Because we don't really know, we say why waste the gas, what do you do with the resources you get, not one minister but the whole range of intermediate entities, that there is even a base.
So the people have no indicator to measure the quality of the management;
if he is really using the car to go to the beach every day or if he's using it to benefit the people damaged by some phenomenon,
if he's going to the neighborhoods, let's say, with lower cultural indicators, if he's visiting the schools.
We don't know, because we don't know what they do. Because let's say the municipal president of the Assembly of People's Power,
or some of the political or administrative organizations don't share with the people frequently,
there is no space where people can communicate openly what they think about a particular problem or propose solutions
and if the man really has a high level of commitment to the masses.
This part seems to us in the process and design that it should be studied more. Now all this that I am saying is more socialism, let no one doubt that.
The last question I do not understand: the question of the Internet.
This is, I can guarantee, is a concern of the 10,000 students of this university. Now, what about the Internet?
We know and have said, I myself have written in 200 forums in the world, that the United States will not let us connect with fiber optics to the Internet
and it is true on the map we showed one day here to Deputy Minister Perdomo (was the name Perdomo? Who came to the Internet conference?)
So the fiber optic cable runs along the coast of Cuba, it doesn't exactly touch us, and what we have is 132 megabits of bandwidth, which is ridiculous;
and so the people don't have mass access to the Internet; we don't have broadband, the satellite is the worse.
However, the two most widely used services in the world which are the services provided by Google and Yahoo such as Gmail ...
from one moment to the other they cut it off at the root and prohibited its use in all state institutions and the rest of the country.
And there are no services that can substitute for it, a national service (because myself, before using something national or something foreign I prefer to use the national, the national, as we say in Cuba, the pigeon is mine).
But the instant messaging services, communication services for voice, those that manage to make you cry when you can talk with your Mom in Venezuela, is the type of thing we can't do with the national services.
And from UCI there are many people communicating from Guantanamo with the student they have here,
and the student who has a Mom in Venezuela so the family in Guantanamo manages to hear something about this doctor who is in Venezuela, for example.
This is real, we serve as a bridge of communication to the whole country practically, in this digital way. But a ministerial resolution... Well, perfect, maybe it is well argued out there somewhere.
For me, I only got the information kept on those foreign servers well beyond the reach of State Security. That is, it wasn't clear, if it existed, well I would like someone to explain it to me better.
Then, in general, these are the controversies that in a personal way and a collective we would like clarified at some point. Thank you very much.
Applause.
RICARDO ALARCON: Well let's see, lets see how I can answer some of the things that you have raised.
I think first, first, I say this with all due respect for the comrade and for all the comrades,
among other things one has to try to find information, to have, to your opinions on the best possible information.
That last thing you said about the Internet, the truth is it's beyond me, I have no answer, I was not aware of that, but precisely the importance of these media is that you can be informed, know.
I am in a bit older than you, I know this country as it was before and I understand,
I marvel and appreciate the concern that young Cubans have to be able to visit the Pyramids of Egypt, to travel to Bolivia, and so on.
For just as we have gained so much, we have dreams of that magnitude, in addition, my friend, no one does it on the planet.
To speak of traveling as a right ... Yes, but a right you execute, a right you make happen.
Those who go to Egypt to see the Pyramids (you see them in movies such as Inspector Poirot: a large luxury yacht etc) ... I do not think many from Las Tunas have visited that country in the past.
To travel it takes a number of things: you need a passport, a visa, the means to transport yourself, that cost money.
So I too agree that everyone can travel as much as possible. Hopefully, hopefully all Cubans could get out and meet the outside world.
I think that would be the end of the ideological battle in this country, when people really see what life is like, what the real world is, how others live.
But to get to that point is more complicated: The old people are always saying the same thing, that capitalism was bad, etc etc.
I have some differences with the comrade next to me. I had comrades who were as black as Silvano and I have gone through the embarrassment of crossing the Almendares river.
How many times haven't you done it? To get there and the Miramar police stop you and say, "And this black, what are you doing here boy?"
Young people didn't know this, but I'm sure my black friends, who were unemployed, those who had to prove they were working,
who were the maid or the gardener for some rich guy who lived west of the Almendares River, they haven't forgotten it.
It is much more complex to return in the time machine to the past. How much easier it would be that we all travel and see how things really are, we look to see how many Bolivians consider traveling.
[How many] travel to Peru which is next door, travel to Buenos Aires. How many Americans? It is not true that the world is so simple, so easy.
Hopefully, I do believe, hopefully a day will come when we have the resources to go to the National Bank, Central Bank and acquire dollars for travel, which in Cuba isn't done since January, February, 1959.
And not because Fidel Castro had that idea. Do you know who it was who won control of the currency, which prohibited the importation of luxuries in Cuba?
Dr. Philip Pasos (I do not know if Professor Pasos is still alive but he was exiled in Venezuela the last time I heard of him) who was the president of Cuban National Bank.
He was not a radical compañero or anything, he was a decent man and a good professional, a guy who knew this.
And when he assumed the leadership of the Bank that he had created, he was first president of the Bank when it was created in 1950, when Batista staged a coup, of course he had to leave that job.
When the Revolution triumphed he was appointed again. And he did what any of you or I would have done.
"Bank chief again? Let's see... where is... I know where the safe is, where the millions we saved are, the jewels..." He opened it and it was empty.
And he knew better than anyone what he had left, and what he found.
And it is written, unfortunately there is a problem also of information here, in which he is absolutely right: there are plenty of things that people can't handle, they don't know or we forget.
Whoever wants to criticize the media of our country, I will be there with both hands, it is true that there are mountains of ... What I am saying now I've said a thousand times, a thousand times every time I can.
And then I saw reflected in our media they say: comrade Ricardo Alarcón, member of the Politburo, chairman of the Assembly, blah, blah, blah, spoke or was present.
Yes, but the simple data that it is much more convincing, we don't get. Filipe Pasos did this: He searched and he found the country emptied, emptied of its (I think I have it here) emptied of its funds, its resources.
In that famous whopping big book the Americans speak of the situation. And you can find if you look around on the Internet, if you go there and search some of these media, look in ...
The New York Times must have the editorial that came out in April 1959. The New York Times, the [Cuban newspaper] Granma didn't exist then.
It was calculated at $424 million dollars, that backed up the value of the peso.
That poor little chavito, that poor devalued peso that today is 25 to 1, etc.
Well in that moment it didn't have any value because everything that supported it had been stolen, it had been taken.
In this tome is a document in which they analyze this ("they" being our American friends) and come to this conclusion:
No government, the best government, the best leaders in the world can not handle a situation like that.
You have to be a magician to be able to govern an economy where the value of the currency is gone, all at once. That was the first act of the economic war against Cuba.
And the Yankees organized it, they took the resources from here.
Then Dr. Pasos made a decision, it wasn't Fidel, it was he, he said, "From now on no one is going to take a dollar out of this country.
I will not sell dollars to anyone and also I will prohibit all licenses to export perfume, jewelry and so on."
This was a man of the Cuban bourgeoisie who, in that document, said: "I am sure that the 'lively classes' (it was a term was used then, 'lively classes') the Patriots understand the reasons," etc. etc.
This was when the first chapter of a long novel began. He was one of the most eminent thinkers and professionals of the Cuban national bourgeoisie.
Note the long journey of this country and it began in an absolutely unmanageable situation according to themselves.
And on top of that came other things that you all know about: in the end, the Blockade, I'm not going to hassle you with that now.
What I want is that we all do like every student, like every intellectual effort, to be able to put things in their place.
Fidel wasn't even a member of the government, nor was Raul the minister of defense, and the first president of the National Bank did this.
And he was forced to do it, on his own, for one simple reason: this is just unbearable.
Typically, the ideal would be that people can have the resources ... all people, with an income level that permits vacation travel elsewhere, knowing [other] countries, hopefully.
Let me tell you, the overwhelming victory of the Revolutionary ideology in Cuba, the socialist ideology, is when all Cubans can see the real world as it is and then they will see the difference between this society and those around us.
Now, I want to address some details. There is a lot of discussion here in this country now, we know, that has to do with the famous double currency.
Raul [Castro] mentioned it in the National Assembly. These are decisions ... I am perfectly ignorant on issues of economics and others.
I know this can't be done like this. I know this is one of the topics being discussed with great interest right now.
The other question is access to hotels.
Let me tell you, and the data is there and you can find it compañeros, the number of Cubans who spend some time in hotels of all types in this country is higher than it was before 1959.
You may not believe it because you are very young, but at that time it wasn't true that everyone...
I didn't know Varadero or the Tropicana and I'd gone to the University. I came from a family a little bit above the working class.
I am descended from the Camaguey aristocracy but I never set foot in Tropicana and Varadero. Do you know why?
Because my dad had no money to pay for it nor did I. And that was the reality that many people knew.
I did have some privileges, I could cross the bridge, cross the river, but my classmate Jorge Madan, who also studied law, but who was black could not. I had to take him across. And in what hotel did he stay?
And this was a compañero of the black bourgeoisie, a more affluent family than mine.
Hopefully, hopefully we can all go, go everywhere but then you see, the hotels no longer...
Who has told people that in those stores that you see in the movies on 5th Avenue anyone can enter?
I was the ambassador to the U.N., I lived there 14 years and I'm still whiter than my wife and my daughter. How many times did they throw us out of a store.
Because we had a Latin accent or because of our hair color they knew we weren't Anglos, they didn't want us in that store.
Watching: get out. How many times? There are many ways, many techniques that people have to get certain things and the first one is money.
If everyone in the world, the six billion people could travel wherever they wanted there would be a congestion in the air of the planet that would be huge.
It's not like that, those who travel are really a minority. Now I say that here, here, I've seen the data that CTC [Workers Union] has, they have presented in some assemblies.
Of course it is not -- and this is discussed -- I do not want to take a position,
I have my opinions but I will not take them because I know that is a debate that there are going to be changes there.
For different programs of merit, of incentives, etc. [Inaudible shout from the audience.] I know, too
Now what is the difference it is not ... that's what we need to discuss and agree on.
There are those who can pay the hotel and it is not the vanguard, it has no merits, it hasn't done anything, it brought nothing except the money, as it is abroad.
This is how it was before, those who had money, resources, they could go to the hotel.
If you were to do that I think should also be respected in a bit more, then, the laws of the market,
and nobody thinks that here one can consume in the capitalist world market on the scale that we are used to in our brutally subsidized economy,
because for that, it is that not everyone can do those things elsewhere.
Hopefully, I insist, I vote with both hands so that everyone is traveling everywhere.
I'm sure it is going to reduce to zero the number of Cubans who dream of going to the North to live a happy life, prosperous, and so on.
Good heavens, after they see the North, no! These unfortunates who sometimes embark and die there on a raft, etc...
Among other saddest things is, and it is possibly one of the greatest self-criticisms that we should make,
is that we have not been able, that our propaganda, our education has been unable to make many people aware of the crushing reality of today's world.
Then those who do that, that anyone would die stupidly for something that a minimum of culture would tell him it doesn't exist.
So, that's a point that should be discussed and decided. I understand the position, the interest of this society and many people who earn good money,
who even have access to foreign exchange, not the deputies themselves but the intellectuals, artists, athletes, etc..,
Why can't they stay in a hotel? Why can't they? Imagine you spending Cuban pesos on something that it's very hard to acquire in this country in hard currency,
it would be very debatable, but today, right now, there are people who can do it, right.
Today they do more, more, I assure you, much more than they did before.
The only difference is that now those who go, they go because they were selected because they were given, because they won it,
and then you can see a black person appear, you can see a humble guy appear who before couldn't step foot in the hotel lobby.
FEU Representative: 15 days ago we had a meeting with compañero Carlitos Valenciaga and by chance we were talking of the same thing as now.
That Lage [at this time VP of the People's Assembly] had told him that at the end of last year 750,000 Cubans had passed through facilities the country had invested $53 million in.
He was explaining it because sometimes people don't know it, but many of them have been to a hotel as a bonus from FEU [University Students Federation],
not for youth but as a bonus for FEU, or they have been to the Tropicana or other places, then people feel that it's not known, but this little number is not just us,
they are students from FEEM [High School Students Federation], FEU students, CTC [Cuban Workers Union], the federations, the CDRs [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution],
the vanguards, the farmer, the athletes, also artists, this number last year was 750,000 Cubans.
And every reservation we pay for in national currency has a value in hard currency because this is a hard currency facility. And this expenditure for the country was $53 million.
ALARCON: I think someday anyone will be able to go there, without it being for a bonus or whatever,
but what I can say categorically is that today more people go than before, more than before the Revolution.
The other difference is that those who go now are not those who went before. Before it was the privileged, those with money, those with resources,
and now it's people who never dreamed or imagined in their life that they would be able to enter a Cuban hotel.
With... let's see... a more real exchange between the Council of Ministers -- I'm not a minister, luckily -- and the people, that there is more relation, I think that's correct.
Look, some things are being done, some. Raul spoke of these in the Assembly [of People's Power], in the Roundtable [TV show], they are talking now about health, education, housing, the hydraulic thing, I think so.... it's correct not only....
Well, the Council of Ministers is doing it this way now. Now there is the idea you raised which I want to reflect on:
"Let people know when and how they will solve these problems." More or less, I was taking notes quickly. "That there will be a project for how and when."
I am going to let comrade Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador respond to that -- he is an economist, I am not.
And he is a pretty young man, I think he's 42 or something like that.
Correa was cornered there in Miami, by the "worm" press trying to criticize Cuba, and he said, "Look, just a minute, I never criticize Cuba.
The Revolution like all human endeavors has its defects and things, but it is the only, a unique historical experiment, the only country in the world that has lived half a century,
half a century confronting the most powerful economy in the world. And it started with what I told you: grand theft, the great plundering of the reserves of this country.
They did not return not a single cent, not a single jewel, nothing. It was all stolen, it is all in Miami.
And then they want to make people believe this ingenuousness that is emigration, that the exiles are people so brave, capitalism is so effective is has managed to build the city of Miami.
It was raised with something: plundering another country, taking the resources over there and then after getting all the pottage in the pipeline of the American budget, something also rich.
But to return to Correa. Correa says, "No country in the world has gone through that experience."
Mexico couldn't have stood it for six months; my country couldn't have stood for three weeks;
I'm simply saying this -- Correa said -- Lift the blockade, end the aggression against Cuba and then, only then, will we objectively see what is going well, badly, regular, and so on.
Now, I want to add, in Ecuador there are people who now can read and write thanks to Cuba and its teaching methods and Cuban teachers.
And in Ecuador there are people who have regained their sight thanks to Cuban medicine.
So it's not all bad, it's not all defects, we have some little things, some little things that are... that are significant.
But the point is, the element you need to judge Cuba above all you have to put it in this context, it seems to me that for any student, any person who thinks, this is the first step.
This is not happening, we are not in Lapland or in the Mediterranean talk about about how to organize this country, the government program,
"You come with a project, very nice, take out ten copies, hand it out and we will discuss it."
No, we are doing this in the only country in the world that is facing that blockade.
Hopefully we can have answers to these questions: "When and how is this or that problem going to be resolved?"
That's the question that many governments in many parts of the world cannot answer. But here it is much more difficult compañeros.
I am speaking with some little independence because I am not a member of the Council of Ministers,
I don't have... my role is something else, but I understand the situation of the compañeros, I would say when we vote united, I said in some meetings,
I respect freedom of opinion, if you don't believe you should vote for everyone, don't vote for everyone.
I only ask them for one thing: if you want to choose from these three that we have here, don't let me vote to take it away from him, our president from the municipality,
because the job he has up there is much more complex. Above him the whole world is... the district delegate and then the head of government, you can imagine.
He is the one who they call about the transportation and when is he going to resolve this or that. And it is profoundly unjust that they will punish him.
Besides, he is younger and represents the future, and what is coming in this country. Or don't you vote for me instead of voting for my friend, the one with the bicycle.
Fuck it, he is also a delegate of circumscription and faces all the problems. He is facing all those realities.
Now, this element that Correa has stated so clearly, and that is the truth like a fist, that no one can ignore that it must be taken into account,
when it comes time to assess, to analyze what we have been able to do and what we have not been able to do. It can't serve as an excuse to cover up wrongdoing.
It's a very fine line on which, in my judgment, the political work of this country is balanced today.
It would not be fair to ignore that this country has a... well I don't know if the compañeros of MINREX (the Foreign Ministry) have done it,
Felipe [Pérez Roque - at this time Foreign Minister] explained it well many times, the Blockade is a law, it is not a regulation.
No, comrades, there is a whole system of persecution behind every screw, behind every bulb, behind everything that comes to this country or behind each export from this country.
This country is not Sweden, or Switzerland, or Italy.
And in Sweden, Switzerland and Italy, not everyone is staying at the hotels in those countries, not everyone travels, because not everyone... or they do it once, once a year they save, and so on.
It cost a lot... and of course in those countries I mentioned no one studies at a university without paying very dearly for it,
nor goes to a hospital and gets the most advanced treatment for his pretty face; all this costs a great deal.
Look, if we charged for those things here maybe we would have more resources to fix the potholes in the streets, or to buy more buses, if they don't prevent us from buying them.
Would that be a more just society? Listen, what would be the income of a university... they tell me there are 10 thousand students here, studying these careers...
gentlemen, like you said, let's keep our feet on the ground.
If you leave this place you won't see anything like it anywhere else.
Fine, it just occurred to me, for this famous project I have an idea: collect here the average tuition the universities in the world charge for the studies undertaken here.
With that financing, repair all the potholes in Havana, possibly, and buy however many thousands of buses. Would that be just, would that be right? I think not.
Or if we charge what a kidney or heart transplant costs, whatever, I don't think that's fair. Then, how do we maintain ourselves in a line of justice,
and at the same time necessarily look for efficiency in economic management? How do we understand the context in which we are developing,
that is what comrade Correa is referring to without justifying the bureaucracy, the indolence, the stupidity?
Because there is everything, not everything is the blockade, not everything is the economic war, it's not only that.
I really love this quote where they say that the only way to end Castro's majority is to provoke discontent, malaise, to make people uncomfortable, because that is what this whole situation has created.
Now, when a cadre adds to the discomfort of the people, an additional discomfort because of his stupidity, his laziness, his lack of energy to confront the problems, his bureaucratic mentality, he is committing a grave sin.
Because if a cadre does this in Scandinavia there are Scandinavians, but if you do it here it is giving aid to the politics of the enemy which seeks to liquidate us.
So we have to locate ourselves in the reality of the world that confronts Cuba today and at the same time be consistent in the fight against all the evils, against everything that...
Man thinks as he lives -- I'm not sure about that. I did not study Computer Science, rather Philosophy, that was my career.
I really like the theses of Feuerback where Marx refers just to that. And he says: those who think that man thinks as he lives... that man is the product of his circumstances,
and that... that only education... should be... in the end... the rest of the quote I don't know...
I think it is the product of circumstances, forgetting that it is also man who modifies the circumstances.
And this apparent contradiction is resolved by an expression called Revolutionary Practice.
The man emerges from his circumstances, emerges from a context, but it is also he and he alone who has to change those circumstances.
That is, it's not exactly that man thinks as he lives, although I think that is the explanation of the compañero:
that is he who is accommodated, he who doesn't have problems with transportation because he's not worried about the problems of others;
he who has access here and there and doesn't see that everyone else lacks access.
In that sense I agree, I understand that it is... but I wanted to emphasize this fundamental concept of Marx because it is the key to everything,
how we change this reality and it touches especially the youngest, those who will live in world in constant transformation.
Well I want to apologize for the time and especially because of some of the several things I perhaps didn't respond to.
We have to see, I said that it's not easy, that you can't say that... I wish we had an answer to that:
"How and when are you going to solve that problem and develop a project and present it here and everyone will know what the question is."
If only it were that perfect chess game, but to conquer this possibility requires that we defeat the politics of the enemy etc. etc.
That doesn't mean, either, of course, that we shouldn't encourage, shouldn't generate, that we have to reach a better understanding, more information to people about how things are going.
He gave several examples that are absolutely right and if so are very serious errors and violations.
Now, for example after the Assembly is over, there should be discussions everywhere between workers, the workshops, everywhere about the economic plan, the budget,
and we aspire for this to increasingly be so, that the proposal emerge from below and that the results from above go down to the people and they will find out.
And comrade Salvador Valdés, the secretary of the CTC (Cuban Workers Union), at the same Assembly, he referred to this process and criticized the first step that the administrator has to get there,
but not with rhetoric but with concrete data like these: he said how much fuel costs, how much is spent on this or that to have real control by the workers, by the people of this collective of ....
I will not say that it has been done well so far because it hasn't, and just as Salvador said in the Assembly.
We should aspire to that, to let people know in each collective, in every workplace, every ... in every instance ...
That is real democracy and that is how you can also control, reduce costs, to know how you are using resources and avoid having the manifestations of corruption, privilege, etc. It should be done, it is contemplated, it is done, it is done in an inadequate way almost everywhere but yes, it should be stressed that it is a sound exercise of popular control, this information.
STUDENT REP: Good, professor, I think that it's almost six and...
ALARCON: Almost time to go, no? And I will leave you all in peace.
STUDENT REP: No, you don't have to go. I think it is best to close the meeting and you can try to schedule another meeting,
because several of the comrades are making signs that they would like to talk to you about the [Cuban] Five,
about the leadership of the country on that whole topic and also you have very deep knowledge about this process.
I think that way we could repeate this, again have the opportunity, the privilege of having you here and addressing several issues,
we could even agree on some topics that people are interested in, so that you could come more prepared, that you could come with knowledge of things that ...
ALARCON: Now you're criticizing me, come more prepared. You're criticizing me with a glance.
STUDEN REP: No, professor.
ALARCON: But it's true, it's true I didn't come prepared.
STUDENT REP: No, let me correct myself, let me correct. You came with knowledge of some of the topics that comrades wanted to talk about.
ALARCON: That's good, to prepare myself for...
STUDENT REP: That's better. Then we thank you very much and confirm a little the material from the beginning.
I think that here in the University there are many very Revolutionary young people and liek the project, like the center arose from the magnificent ideas of our commander-in-chief,
we will go to vote early on Sunday and stand always ready to give more to socialism and to strengthen the Revolution.
So a big hug and thank you very much.