• Opinion by Leonardo Padura Fuentes (havana)
• Tuesday, November 30, 2010
• Inter Press Service

After a long wait and numerous postponements, the Cuban Communist Party has decided to hold its sixth congress in April 2011. The last was held in 1997, more than 13 years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His most recent work is The Man Who Loved Dogs.

In this analysis, Padura writes that at the same time as the announcement of the meeting, the release of a 32-page pamphlet entitled 'A Plan for Social and Economic Policy', was made public. The document contains 291 proposals and attempts the definition of a new model for the country's economic, productive, commercial, and social policy which, it is hoped, will help Cuba weather the current crisis.

The 'structural and conceptual' changes in the Cuban model announced three years ago by Raul Castro are starting to take shape and make their presence felt. Now we will see how they effect the lives of millions of Cubans, doomed to live in a country in which economic competition and work must now take the place of state paternalism, and where efficiency will now try to displace subsidies, and where economic and social inequality is certain to rise after decades in which equality was officially created and promoted.

(*) Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His most recent work is The Man Who Loved Dogs, featuring Leon Trotsky and his assassin Ramon Mercader as central characters.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM// (END) (END)

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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