A prestigious Spanish economist who was working in Cuba in the 90s, recounted his experience on the Island, where he verified how the regime's information apparatus managed to keep the population deceived.
Ignacio Ruiz-Jarabo was part of the team that former Spanish president Felipe González - at that time a great friend of Fidel Castro - sent to the Island to help the Cuban government get out of the crisis.
Ruiz-Jarabo recalled that a few hours after arriving in Cuba he saw the news broadcast on television and noticed the difference between the news about the local reality - where everything was going swimmingly - and those from abroad, in which only It reported how bad things were going in the world, including Spain, where the economic crisis left 25% of citizens unemployed.
"Without a doubt, this Castro television intended for Cubans to be grateful for the fortune of being able to enjoy the achievements of the Cuban Revolution and be exempt from living in the wild capitalist jungle," he stated.
As detailed by the expert in a chronicle published in the Spanish digital newspaper Vozpopuli, Although disaffection towards the government was beginning to be noticed, the dictatorship's objective of keeping people deceived had been achieved.
"There were many who, explicitly, pitied us for our unfortunate luck of having to suffer the Spanish economic crisis, those who were barely able to acquire the essential food to survive," he explained.
"Some even asked us, in a mimetic application of the previously mentioned 25%, which of the four of us was the one who was unemployed. It was evident that the information monopoly of the Cuban Government constituted a basic instrument so that a dictatorship as ironclad as the one could endure. Castro, which also generated borderline poverty...", he noted.
Ruiz-Jarabo was also able to see "the severe police control" over the population.
Regarding the mission that took him to Havana, he considers that it was a failure, because the regime never took steps towards an economic reform that would give self-sufficiency to the Cuban economy.
The fiscal and tax system that Spanish specialists helped design became a punitive model and another instrument for political control, "and the management teams that we professionally train today reside almost entirely in Miami or Madrid," he lamented.
However, from a human point of view, this economist's stay on the Island was "fascinating."
"Seeing the affection that Cuba exudes towards Spain, everything Spanish and the Spaniards was more than gratifying. The personal relationships with the members of the Cuban counterpart of our mission could not be more satisfactory and emotional. And the gratitude they showed for our effort, too," he stressed.
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