ZNet | Latin America
Assessing The Cuban Revolution
50 Years After Moncada
by Saul Landau; August 18, 2003
source: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=4055
"The Cuban Revolution has failed, Cuba is a basket case. Perpetual leader Fidel Castro is sick and suffers from a power complex. He and his regime will soon collapse. Democracy and the free market will return to make Cubans happy again."
That was the mainstream media's message for the 50th anniversary of the attack led by 26 year old Fidel Castro on Fort Moncada, the army barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953.
The Economist (August 2, 2003) characterized Fidel as "bearing an increasing resemblance to a Caribbean King Lear. Having outlived many of his enemies, he is busy finding more. Maybe that was because he has little left to celebrate, except survival."
"Many poorer Cubans got some benefit from the radical egalitarianism of Mr. Castro's revolution," The Economist continues, substituting a snide writing style for knowledge, "especially from its achievements in health and education. The infant mortality rate is the lowest in Latin America, and similar to that in the United States. Yet such gains came at a heavy cost, in lost human freedom and in Soviet subsidies."
Did The Economist forget that Castro's predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, ran a thoroughly repressive regime? Indeed, most of Cuban history took place under Spanish authoritarian rule. Then, after 1898, the United States intervened three times in Cuba. Periods of freedom were few and characterized by dramatic political corruption.
Castro should take the blame for selling out to the dollar "to preserve his regime at the price of its principles," states The Economist. Indeed, the article concludes, "the only things that now stand between Mr. Castro's revolution and mass poverty are remittances from the 1.2m Cubans who live in the United States, and investors and tourists from the EU, whose governments he now abhors."
Billions of dollars in remittances also go monthly into the treasuries of India, Pakistan, Mexico, the Philippines and countless other nations whose economies face the devastating after effects of centuries of colonial pillage and looting. In much of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the IMF-backed, free-market model that The Economist favors has led to disaster. In the recently bankrupt Argentina some 70% of the people live in poverty.
The writers could have praised Castro for using judo politics to turn the wealth of Cubans who migrated into cash for Cuba's national bank. Indeed, some of the most rabid anti-Castroites regularly contribute to his foreign exchange flow by sending money to their families on the island.
Castro's political version of martial arts has also meant the exporting of his political enemies - why didn't Machiavelli think of that? - so that they now cause trouble in the United States rather than on the island.
Instead of looking at the hard facts of Cuban-US relations, critics repeat trite mantras about "health and education gains at the cost of freedom." Worse, The Economist falls into the predictable rut of comparing Cuba's economy to that of the United States - the country that had sucked out Cuban wealth for more than half a century and whose economy bears little resemblance to that of any third world country.
The Economist's unstated message: "Get modern, Fidel. Let Cuban workers enjoy a 30 cent an hour wage working for a foreign multinational company in maquilas, let the transnational giants eat up your resources and give to the IMF and World Bank control of your budget! Or you will collapse!"
Such "Havanalogical journalism" persists. The July drama of Cubans floating in an old Chevy to get to Florida prompted the Miami Herald to repeat its chant about desperate Cubans "risking their lives for freedom." They did not refer to the daily journeys of Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Chinese and Central Americans who also risk their lives to enter the United States. Like Cubans, they come here because they want the better material life they are reminded of incessantly by global advertising.
Reporters rarely compare Cuba to neighboring or other third world countries where large percentages of the population would migrate to the United States - if possible. With Cuba, reporters often mistake frustration or desire for migration with imminent regime collapse. In 1992, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Andres Oppenheimer won himself a place in the forecasters' hall of fame with his book, Castro's Final Hour. He continues to pontificate in his Miami Herald columns about the best way to bring down the Cuban Revolution.
I say the Cuban Revolution was a success. Note the past tense. From 1959 through the late 1980s, it accomplished its major goals: sovereignty and independence, equalizing income and fostering social justice. Thanks to the revolution, Cuba was transformed from an informal United States colony through 1958, into a proud nation. In the 1970s and 80s, Cuban troops fought battles in Angola that changed the history of southern Africa.
How many other island peoples without major strategic resources have played in the limelight as have Cuba's? For forty plus years Cuban artists of all genres, athletes, doctors and scientists became world-renowned. The revolution took a relatively unhealthy population and made it healthy, a relatively illiterate people and gave it literacy.
Yes, Cubans paid a price: divided families; injustices committed in the name of the revolution; abridgement of civil liberties - albeit this was certainly not new. It did not allow a free press nor foster competitive politics Those with material aspirations suffered the frustration of egalitarianism.
Assessing The Cuban Revolution
50 Years After Moncada
by Saul Landau; August 18, 2003
source: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=4055
"The Cuban Revolution has failed, Cuba is a basket case. Perpetual leader Fidel Castro is sick and suffers from a power complex. He and his regime will soon collapse. Democracy and the free market will return to make Cubans happy again."
That was the mainstream media's message for the 50th anniversary of the attack led by 26 year old Fidel Castro on Fort Moncada, the army barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953.
The Economist (August 2, 2003) characterized Fidel as "bearing an increasing resemblance to a Caribbean King Lear. Having outlived many of his enemies, he is busy finding more. Maybe that was because he has little left to celebrate, except survival."
"Many poorer Cubans got some benefit from the radical egalitarianism of Mr. Castro's revolution," The Economist continues, substituting a snide writing style for knowledge, "especially from its achievements in health and education. The infant mortality rate is the lowest in Latin America, and similar to that in the United States. Yet such gains came at a heavy cost, in lost human freedom and in Soviet subsidies."
Did The Economist forget that Castro's predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, ran a thoroughly repressive regime? Indeed, most of Cuban history took place under Spanish authoritarian rule. Then, after 1898, the United States intervened three times in Cuba. Periods of freedom were few and characterized by dramatic political corruption.
Castro should take the blame for selling out to the dollar "to preserve his regime at the price of its principles," states The Economist. Indeed, the article concludes, "the only things that now stand between Mr. Castro's revolution and mass poverty are remittances from the 1.2m Cubans who live in the United States, and investors and tourists from the EU, whose governments he now abhors."
Billions of dollars in remittances also go monthly into the treasuries of India, Pakistan, Mexico, the Philippines and countless other nations whose economies face the devastating after effects of centuries of colonial pillage and looting. In much of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the IMF-backed, free-market model that The Economist favors has led to disaster. In the recently bankrupt Argentina some 70% of the people live in poverty.
The writers could have praised Castro for using judo politics to turn the wealth of Cubans who migrated into cash for Cuba's national bank. Indeed, some of the most rabid anti-Castroites regularly contribute to his foreign exchange flow by sending money to their families on the island.
Castro's political version of martial arts has also meant the exporting of his political enemies - why didn't Machiavelli think of that? - so that they now cause trouble in the United States rather than on the island.
Instead of looking at the hard facts of Cuban-US relations, critics repeat trite mantras about "health and education gains at the cost of freedom." Worse, The Economist falls into the predictable rut of comparing Cuba's economy to that of the United States - the country that had sucked out Cuban wealth for more than half a century and whose economy bears little resemblance to that of any third world country.
The Economist's unstated message: "Get modern, Fidel. Let Cuban workers enjoy a 30 cent an hour wage working for a foreign multinational company in maquilas, let the transnational giants eat up your resources and give to the IMF and World Bank control of your budget! Or you will collapse!"
Such "Havanalogical journalism" persists. The July drama of Cubans floating in an old Chevy to get to Florida prompted the Miami Herald to repeat its chant about desperate Cubans "risking their lives for freedom." They did not refer to the daily journeys of Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Chinese and Central Americans who also risk their lives to enter the United States. Like Cubans, they come here because they want the better material life they are reminded of incessantly by global advertising.
Reporters rarely compare Cuba to neighboring or other third world countries where large percentages of the population would migrate to the United States - if possible. With Cuba, reporters often mistake frustration or desire for migration with imminent regime collapse. In 1992, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Andres Oppenheimer won himself a place in the forecasters' hall of fame with his book, Castro's Final Hour. He continues to pontificate in his Miami Herald columns about the best way to bring down the Cuban Revolution.
I say the Cuban Revolution was a success. Note the past tense. From 1959 through the late 1980s, it accomplished its major goals: sovereignty and independence, equalizing income and fostering social justice. Thanks to the revolution, Cuba was transformed from an informal United States colony through 1958, into a proud nation. In the 1970s and 80s, Cuban troops fought battles in Angola that changed the history of southern Africa.
How many other island peoples without major strategic resources have played in the limelight as have Cuba's? For forty plus years Cuban artists of all genres, athletes, doctors and scientists became world-renowned. The revolution took a relatively unhealthy population and made it healthy, a relatively illiterate people and gave it literacy.
Yes, Cubans paid a price: divided families; injustices committed in the name of the revolution; abridgement of civil liberties - albeit this was certainly not new. It did not allow a free press nor foster competitive politics Those with material aspirations suffered the frustration of egalitarianism.
