The Capos of State Administration

Cuba: The Capos of State Administration
November 7, 2012
Yenisel Perez Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES — The consolidation of capos in Cuban state administration
favors the maintenance of authoritarian order in the country.

They are representatives of those highly conflictive contexts of the
underground economy that reaches the whole of Cuban society. We are
talking about the informal economy.

This is supplied mainly by those goods and services that workers and
officials are able to divert or pilfer from their government workplaces.

The level of conflict which encircles the informal economy is
proportional to the distance that separates us from those resources.
Being very close to them implies participating in something very similar
to organized crime, although this is more organized than crime. The
blood still doesn't reach the river.

The better the organization of the informal economy, the more violence
and authoritarianism there will be among those who re-appropriate state
assets. The capos will be those heading the structure.

It's a situation that connects authoritarian government with popular
authoritarianism. It's a point where some interests of the state couple
with certain selfish interests of the people.

This comes from people as a sum of individuals, not as a community. The
obsession of the authoritarian bureaucracy with total power can be found
on the same stage with "every man for himself" among ordinary people.

There, as host of the encounter, are the administrative capos. Their
diplomacy harmonizes the authoritarian order with individualistic pillaging.

From the state, they get a carte blanche that allows them to be close
to the merchandise; and from their employees they receive popular
approval of their role as well as cannon fodder with which to feed their
administrative reports.

This allows their position within the power structure to become eternal.
They can out survive and government. And this one will turn itself to ashes.

Some will want to judge them for the wrongs committed.

Yet they will defend themselves using the argument of "something had to
be done."

They will hide themselves behind the sins of others. Under the discourse
that scares anyone who works indirectly with the authoritarian order
that is eating away at our society.

This is why they will be re-born in future authoritarian regimes. As a
Mafioso aristocracy if the neoliberals take power, or like capos of the
workers' mafia if populism is again embedded.

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