Ian
BoyneThe jubilant, celebratory scenes of large numbers of Cuban exiles greeting the news of Castro's ceding power, even temporarily, is at once pathetic and telling. It is tragic that humans could be hopeful of someone's death, but equally tragic that under totalitarian rule that is usually the only way to engender change.
Cuba has been America's longest nightmare. Long before Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Syria became a problem, and long after the Soviet Union and China have ceased to be worrying concerns, Cuba has been more than a small embarrassment to U.S. hegemonic designs. The embargo which America imposed in 1961, was supposed to crush the regime and remove its scourge from the Western Hemisphere. No such luck. It was because of Cuba why the world came close to a nuclear disaster in the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
stubbornly enduring
America's Cuba problem has proven to be stubbornly enduring. It is, therefore, not just the hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles in Florida who are hoping to live to see democracy in Cuba, but also Washington.
But America has constantly miscalculated and "misunderestimated", to use Bushie English, the Cuban people. Dwight Eisenhower explained the economic sanctions by saying that "if (the Cuban people) are hungry they would throw Castro out". John F. Kennedy said that the embargo would hasten Castro's departure as a result of the "rising discomfort among hungry Cubans". In April, 1960, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory advised of the wisdom of using sanctions to cripple the new Communist regime in Cuba.
Castro would be removed, he said, "through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship, so every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba(in order to) bring about hunger, desperation and(the) overthrow of the Government". The U.S. has failed miserably in that objective, and George Bush, 45 years after, is still pursuing that futile policy, only more fervidly.
For years, the Soviet Union bankrolled Cuba with the famous subsidy of US$1 million per day. After the Soviet Union collapsed, many hoped that Cuba would do likewise, but the Cubans, accustomed to shortages and sacrifices, and not drunk with the American materialistic ethos, did not succumb to making their bellies gods. They endured what was called a Special Period, only to be rescued now by the anti-American zealot in the region, Hugo Chavez. Communist China has also been helping to keep the defiant Castro regime afloat.
The U.S.' attempt to literally kill Castro has been the stuff of which great espionage movies are made, only in this case it's not fictional.
Long before Israel openly declared its policy of targeted assassinations and before it became well-known that the CIA engaged in such targeted killings, the US hostility to the Cuban Communist leader and his regime has led to murderous intentions.
BBC's Chanel 4 has aired a documentary titled "638 Ways to Kill Castro" which documents the many attempts to assassinate the world's longest reigning leader. The Bay of Pigs fiasco is one of the most famous incidents but there have been many others, including ones involving Castro's lovers. Castro has had more than nine lives, but his critics are hoping that he is running out of them now.
The fact that President Bush has used the occasion of Castro's surgery and handing over of power to his brother Raul to issue a statement calling on Cubans at home to press for democracy has played into the hands of the communist regime. For it is being used as an occasion to whip up loyalty to the regime, raising the spectre of a U.S. invasion and U.S. plans to destabilise the revolution and its "people-based achievements".
In an interview with the "Guardian" newspaper published on Thursday the president of the Cuban National Assembly Ricardo Alarcon says, "The American Government has said they do not accept the Cuban laws about succession. The direct logical consequence is that when the president of Cuba dies there will be a foreign military intervention."
The hostility of successive American Governments has always been used by the Cuban dictatorship to suppress the civil liberties of the people under the guise of protecting national sovereignty. It's the same National Security Doctrine which has been used by murderous right-wing dictatorships in Latin American to maintain repression; condemned by the Left in those cases, but endorsed by them in the case of Cuba.
Today when you mention the undeniable suppression of human rights and civil liberties in Cuba, left-wing apologists for the regime point to "US aggression" and "imperialism" as the reason why these rights, including freedom of the Press and freedom of association, must be suppressed. It apparently never crosses their minds that all communist regimes, even those not threatened by hostile neighbours, have maintained those same repressive laws! Therefore, the argument about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subversion being the reasons for the denial of human rights is a canard.
But make no mistake about the fact that from the beginning Cuba has threatened the U.S. not in terms of "exporting revolution", as the American right-wingers have regularly charged, but in terms of providing an alternative to the American Model of bourgeois economic development. America sells its capitalist ideology as the only workable one and the achievements of the Cuban Revolution in expanding people's social and cultural rights have challenged the American model.
No less a person than former Kennedy Adviser Arthur Schlesinger told the President then that: "The poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution are now demanding opportunities for a decent living." The Joint Intelligence Committee of Britain said essentially the same thing in 1961.
"Castroism still retains much popular appeal. If the Cuban revolution succeeds in achieving a stable regime which appears to meet the aspirations of the depressed classes there will be a serious risk that it will inspire revolutions elsewhere in Latin America." So the Cuban Revolution threatens capitalist ideology in Latin America, a region noted for gross and brutal exploitation by the ruling classes.
And, indeed, Castro's social achievements have been extraordinary. While millions of Latin Americans writhe in poverty, degradation and dehumanisation under various capitalist regimes, the Cuban people have enjoyed an excellent medical system, a well-functioning educational system and a social safety net that is the envy of he poor in other countries. Life expectancy is 77.3 years compared to 77.4 years in the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States. Infant mortality is low. The U.S. achieves its low infant mortality rate by spending US$5,711 while Cuba does it by spending $251. Cuba is teaching capitalist America about efficiency!
The CIA itself estimates that the Cuban economy grew by eight per cent last year, adding US$3 billion in economic output. And in his May Day Parade Castro boasted of an 11.8 per cent growth for the first three months of the year. Chavez's economic support has been critical, with U.S.-Venezuela trade reaching US$3.5 billion, a growth of 40 per cent over 2005.
Cuba faces some serious issues in the post-Castro period however, and a number of these issues are discussed in the major 2004 RAND think-tank report titled "Cuba after Castro: Legacies, Challenges and Impediments". One issue is the disillusionment and political apathy of Cuba's youth. "Save for the loyalists much of Cuba's youth today appears to be largely disengaged from political life. The retreat from politics by Cuban youth also poses problems for a democratic transition in the post-Castro era. Although opposition to the successor communist regime may intensify, the regime's opponents will be severely handicapped if they are unable to mobilise the active support of the rest of the society", says the RAND report.
The U.S. has committed a hefty $80 million for "democracy promotion" in Cuba, a code-phrase for support for dissident groups in Cuba. Bush would like noting more than to leave office with a post-Castro regime moving on to democracy and freedom. (He needs at least one foreign policy "success".) Those who feel that Castro's death will necessarily mean the death of hardline communism there might be simply expressing wishful thinking and are oblivious to certain political realities. It is a fact that Castro's own charismatic and towering personality count for much but the communist system might prove more durable than believed.
What is clear, though, is that quite apart from the desire or rhetoric of the Right-wing Bush Administration, the Cuban people do deserve freedom. They deserve a free Press. They deserve the right to freely visit relatives abroad or to have them visit them at home. They deserve the right to unimpeded access to the Internet, to subscribe to Western magazines and to be free to watch Western television. Broadcasts should not be jammed.
It is not enough to give a human being food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Human beings need more than that. They are not animals (or "lower animals" for my evolutionist friends).They have a will. They deserve freedom and dignity and so no matter the social achievements of the Cuban Revolution, it has failed the people for it has not provided for their full human emancipation.
I get the feeling that CARICOM has never done enough to press home to the Cuban dictator that, however loved and admired he is-and he has been a great friend to the Third world and to his neighbours-his denial of civil liberties is absolutely and totally unacceptable. Whatever the designs of U.S. imperialism, the issue of freedom and democracy stand on their own and we should assess the Castro regime harshly for trampling on human rights in Cuba.
The imprisonment of journalists and of people who oppose the regime, the suppression of religious freedom (especially of Fundamentalist and Evangelical sects) is inexcusable. Human rights groups in Cuba have no status.
Leftists must stop this diversionary nonsense of pointing to social achievements, contrasting those with the poverty, crime and corruption in bourgeois democracies, as an excuse for the denial of basic freedoms. I wish Castro good health, but I also wish to see the Cuban people enjoy a healthy democratic system which combines social development with civil liberties.
n Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
