Reflections on issues in Cuban productivity

A dialogue with Prof. Juan Azaharas

     My long time and good friend Juan Azaharas visited me on New Year’s Day.  We had a good conversation on the government’s call for increasing the productivity of the nation.  Juan is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Havana.  At the age of 13, he was incorporated into the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra as a message carrier and assistant cook.  He subsequently received degrees at the University of Havana and in the Soviet Union; and he served in educational missions in Angola and Venezuela.  He is a member of the Communist Party of Cuba.  We have been friends since my second trip to Cuba in 1995 to attend an academic conference at the University of Havana.  We began an informal conversation over issues of substance following a late afternoon panel, and he had no problem with my suggestion that we relocate the conversation to a local bar supplied with Cuban beer. 

     In our conversation on January 1, we agreed that there is a problem in Cuban culture, and it …