Slippery Slope

Slippery Slope / Fernando Damaso
Posted on November 7, 2013

The closing, on 1 November, of the 3D movie rooms, and the ban, after 30
December, of private shops, deals a hard blow to self-employment. The
authorities, once again (we remember "Operation Bird on a Wire,"
"Operation Flowerpot," and the liquidation of Free Farmers Markets in
earlier years — all crackdowns on private enterprise), demonstrate their
inability to compete with private property, even if it is nascent and
must exist within absurd straitjackets, and the falsity of the so-called
updates and changes to the economic model. Where there's smoke there's
fire, and it wouldn't be unusual for them to apply other or similar
measures in the coming weeks. Time will tell.

Anchored in the past, dogmatic to the core, Marxism-Leninism and
socialism fanatics, despite their more-than-proven failures, they are
trying to survive (at least as long as they have a physical existence)
in the closed feudal system they've turned the country into, light years
away from the real world. The sad thing is that many citizens peacefully
accept this arbitrariness, most often committed against their own
neighbors, and they may even declare their support for them in some of
the so-called "Public Opinion Polls," which we are getting used to in
the official press.

Forgetting the more then 54 years of failed improvisations and failed
inventions, some who see a little hope in what was happening slowly,
have received a real bucket of cold water. If the government intends,
with the application of these measures, which respond only to the desire
to demonstrate force and show who's boss, it will gain followers and
organize the country's legal system, in which disorder is the greatest
element, they are wrong again.

Once again, illegal activities and the black market will proliferate
throughout the country, like before, simply because no one can force the
citizens to starve to death and live in misery. Our young people, their
life plans blocked by demonstrably incompetent authorities, choose
exodus, like so many professionals, athletes and artists in Cuba; and as
the lyrics of an old tango said, it will continue sliding down the
slippery slope.

4 November 2013

Source: "Slippery Slope / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/slippery-slope-fernando-damaso/