April 5, 2012
Armando Chaguaceda
HAVANA TIMES, April 4 — The charismatic Chilean student-protest leader
Camila Vallejo traveled to Cuba to participate in the events marking the
anniversary of the island's Young Communist League. This young woman is
a case — rare in these times — that combines intelligence, perseverance
and social commitment.
To these must be added her being the face (an entrancingly beautiful
one, like that of an actress) of the most creative, combative and
respected post-Pinochet social mobilization in Chile, one in which
students are demanding the right to education.
In the prelude to her most recent visit in Cuba, Camilla made some
statements that were picked up by several web forums.
Alarm was raised concerning her remark comparing repression in Cuba and
Chile, where — without denying its existence here on the island — the
young Chilean recalled the violent means in which her fellow
demonstrators have been attacked during social protest actions in her
country. This doesn't mean that she is unaware of the violent acts
committed by agents of the Cuban government; it merely speaks of her
real and personal experience and knowledge.
Here, perhaps one might might add to Camilla's assessment by saying that
the substantial difference between the two contexts and populations is
the existence in her country of a public sphere — the media, laws and
institutions — in which people can express their dissent against
official policy without censorship or the suppression (though there is
indeed repression) of the right to protest.
Likewise, the Chilean citizenry — despite the anesthetic effect of the
military dictatorship and neoliberal consumerism — is in a qualitatively
superior position for dealing with fear and in their capacity for
mobilization as compared to the Cuban population.
What few critics recognize in Camila's words is that — unlike many
"friends of Cuba" who visit us — she didn't keep her critical opinions
to herself. As true friends do, Camilla said:
"With these words, I don't wish to conceal the legitimate discontent
felt by certain sectors of Cuban society with regard to its political
and social system. We were able to hear criticisms about these during
our visit to the island" (referring to a previous visit in 2009).
And to make clear the absence of mimicry or dogma in the fight that she
helps lead, she concluded:
"Cuba is not a perfect society and Chile does not have to follow its
path. Chileans must develop their own path to overcoming inequality."
Although the progressive sectors of that country value the Cuban
experience, she recalled, "We have aimed to place Chile on a path of
broad social and political convergence within a multiparty system."
Therefore I don't think that this experienced student leader is either
an accomplice of repression or naively uninformed. She speaks from the
position of a new generation and with a new political vision, the same
one that has led her — overcoming the admiration held by many of the
world's leftists for caudillos or the fierce xenophobia that exists in
her own country — to prefer coca-growing leader Evo Morales over the
brash former soldier Hugo Chavez.
Hers is a generation that has the challenge of overcoming the
neo-liberal legacy of dictatorship while advocating education as a
public good and right in the face of justifications issuing from all of
Chile's established political parties – including the Socialists.
We can perhaps assist Camila by giving testimonies about the experiences
here, that — without denying her claims — could provide her with new
arguments for better seeing "the other Cuba."
We can point to what doesn't reside in the lush foreign-guest facilities
at El Laguito or in organized visits to model schools with diligent
pioneers. We could show her experiences where the idolatry of the market
and order are advancing while the emblematic social programs of the
revolution are being cut back in an agenda similar to that of the
military coup leaders and their US-trained advisers from the Chicago School.
We can testify to experiences in which average people are seeing their
living standards fall without these citizens having mechanisms for
expressing their concerns or raising protests. Where college students
who tried, in the past decade, to discuss the thinking of Che Guevara,
or to organize a protest march against the war in Iraq or who resisted
the imposition of spurious leaders over their student organizations were
punished for thinking and acting with their own minds and hearts.
We could point to where those who today discuss the experiences of the
Chilean students or the Spanish "Outraged" are monitored by police
agencies and defamed with impunity as "members of the services of enemy
intelligence."
All these testimonies exist and their central figures certainly have
much to tell this courageous leader and her brave companions. This is
not to turn her visit into a "wailing wall," but to give a contribution
to the pluralistic and fresh vision — concerning Cuba and the world —
that is being forged by a new generation of social activists.
This is because you don't pour new wine into old wineskins and because
the birth of this new radical and democratic, anti-capitalist and
anti-authoritarian politics is the best tribute that can be made to the
heroic legacy of those who died in La Moneda that fateful day in
September 1973. The youth, despite everything, are living up to that legacy.
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