Family business

There are doors that only open when you murmur before them an open-sesame, which may be a name, a rank, a pedigree. Safe-conducts that relieve us of a mass of problems, if they are signed by a person of the right standing. For decades, those who came down out of the Sierra Maestra with Fidel Castro have stood as the fountainhead of law in revolutionary Cuba. The relatives of these one-time guerrillas flaunt their blood relation with them, be it ever so tenuous.

To have a relative who is a general or a colonel helps cut through every sort of red tape, can reduce jail sentences, wipe out criminal records, and, of course, take the form of substantial material perks. Popular humor has created a whole lexicon of ironic terms for the prerogatives enjoyed by these rebels of yesteryear. The lexicon includes some gestures of body language. For example, the conversation turns to a certain young man who has been seen in an amazingly up-to-date car (in a land where carefully cherished old junkers are the norm). Someone says it was a gift from the young man's father; then he touches his shoulder with index and middle finger joined, indicative of epaulettes or other signs of the progenitor's exalted rank. Nepotism is taken for granted here; the favoritism of genes is part of the system. Upstarts who don't share any DNA with "historic" leaders have an uphill fight of it indeed.

In this clientele system, the death of a visible family head jeopardizes the status of all his clan. It isn't the same to pick up the phone and ask a favor of the uncle who fought with Castro in '58, as to invoke his memory, post mortem, to climb out of a tight spot. Surviving relatives will never rise any higher on the ladder than the rung on which the deceased had placed them. Longevity is essential if one's sons and grandsons are to be well set up, especially economically, before the passing of the Granpa who once boarded the Granma. An early death has a drastically adverse effect on the prospects of one's own people. So the new generations are trapped between the need to carve out a space for themselves, and the need to keep the head of the family as a figurehead for advancement. The son will never amount to as much as the father, since the former's prestige stems from events of the past, and not of the present. History confers infinite validation. Hard luck on the young, who were born too late to take part in the revolution.

Biology is now decapitating many of these power groups. Just the other day the death in office of Julio Casas Regueiro, armed forces minister, confirmed the fragility of a government in excess of retirement age. He may be replaced by some other histórico such as General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, Álvaro López Miera or Joaquín Quintas Sola. The most pessimistic even include on the list the name of Raúl Castro's own son, Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín. With Casas Regueira's death a whole clan loses points, but it also shows up the failure of generational succession. At the time of his appointment there was talk of giving the post to some younger figure such as Carlos Lage or Felipe Pérez Roque. However, the inner circle of the regime preferred a man who was old but "safe." Shortly afterward both Lage and Pérez Roque were dumped overboard, feeding to the sharks the brief input of new blood that seemed about to rejuvenate the regime. In the severe words of the Chief Commander, they had become "addicted to the honey of power."

Now, as the obituaries define our political scene, we wonder if today's surnames will give way to new ones, or attempt to pass on power as a legacy to their descendants, to keep the business in the family.

© Yoani Sánchez / bgagency-Milan

Yoani Sánchez is a Cuban journalist, author of the award-winning blog Generación Y.