It’s a May Day Loyalty
Day miracle! Maybe?

Whispers and some non-specific quotes suggest that “radical and
profound” is coming to Cuban in the next few weeks. At least, so
says Cuban Parliament Leader Ricardo Alarcon on that last
part. After 50 years of Cubans fleeing by the
hundreds of thousands (and often by all manner of dubious
watercraft) could it be that citizens may actually be allowed to
travel freely soon?

Sources say, possibly! Except that Cuba is still busy trying
anything (as long as it isn’t voluntary) to keep doctors, lawyers,
military folks, and other brainy folk from fleeing from the tiny
island. But still, there’s a definite hopeful buzz that things this
is a good thing about to happen. From some people. Others, says
the AP:

have cautioned against over-excitement, leaving islanders and
Cuba experts to wonder how far Havana’s leaders are willing to
go.

In the past 18 months, Castro has removed prohibitions on some
private enterprise, legalized real estate and car sales, and
allowed compatriots to hire employees, ideas that were long
anathema to the government’s Marxist underpinnings.

Scrapping travel controls could be an even bigger step, at least
symbolically, and carries enormous economic, social and political
risk.

Even half measures — such as ending limits on how long Cubans
can live abroad or cutting the staggeringly high fees for the exit
visa that Cubans must obtain just to leave the country — would be
significant.

“It would be a big step forward,” said Philip Peters, a Cuba
expert at the Virginia-based Lexington Institute. “If Cuba ends the
restrictions on its own citizens’ travel, that means the only
travel restrictions that would remain in place would be those the
United States imposes on its citizens.”

Wouldn’t it be great if both countries stopped their absurd
restrictions? Of course then a
certain type of “radical“would have to find some other terrible
country to idealize as the socialist dream that is everything the
U.S. is not (even in areas where Cuba was once appalling, like
gay
rights, its sluggish progress can look pretty progressive if
you wear the right kind of lefty-glasses). And they would find one,
but it would still be an amazing thing if Cuba gave in to the
inevitable siren song of free exchanges and free movements and
maybe even free people.

Alas, reports The Irish Times, the island is still
celebrating the glorious, stagnant revolution in their usual
fashion. They still know how to do
May Day right:

Raul Castro (80) has launched a series of reforms encouraging
more private initiative and reducing state dominance of the fragile
Soviet-style economy put in place after Cuba’s 1959 revolution. He
has said his goal is not to replace communism but to take steps to
strengthen it.

Lest the message was not clear, the national television
broadcast of the parade focused on a sign that read “To Capitalism
We Will Never Return”.

In the heavily orchestrated event, workers carried pictures of
former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, his revolutionary comrade Ernesto
“Che” Guevara and Marxist heroes such as Vladimir Lenin and
Frederick Engels.

The words “Unity and Victory” and “Long Live the Socialist
Revolution” were flashed across the television screen.

Reason on
Cuba, and because it’s still the best thing ever, Reason.tv
interviewing the leader singer of the dissident Cuban punk band
Porno Para Ricardo: