Cuba will live
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
At
a May 2 dinner in Miami hundreds of Cuban exiles, the vast majority
of them in the Viagra generation, feted Luis Posada Carriles. This
homage to the man suspected of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban
commercial airliner that blew up over Barbados in October 1976,
attracted a well known, aging radio personality. Tomas Garcia Fuste
described Posada as “a real hero who has spent his life fighting
for the freedom of Cuba.” Fuste, who attended the dinner, said
“Posada saw from the beginning that Fidel was a communist and began
his heroic fight against him.”
One
of the dinner’s organizers called Posada “a great Cuban … a
great patriot who has suffered a lot.” Several of those interviewed
denied Posada had authored the airplane sabotage that killed all 73
passengers and crew members, even though the actual perpetrators of
the bombing identified him to police. Other evidence pointed directly
to Posada. His adorers also discounted facts showing he had
orchestrated bombings of Cuban tourist centers in the late 1990s. One
tourist died; scores of others suffered injuries. Posada lovers in
Miami blamed the Cuban government for destroying its own airplane “to
create martyrs” and “staging” the tourist bombings “to get
sympathy.”
If
Posada didn’t plan these events, does he deserve the “combatiente
legendario” honor only for his failed assassination plots against
Fidel?
Posada
and the
crowd of retired lawyers, businessmen and professionals in Miami
spoke of fighting
to restore freedom to Cuba. Did no one recall that Posada worked as a
Batista police agent? Had the crowd at the Posada fete forgotten that
Batista staged a coup to grab the presidency in 1952? That his
repressive forces killed 20,000 until the revolutionaries overthrew
them?
Posada’s vision of a good society means returning to the good old
Batista days — without internal turmoil. What a gap between their
perspective and the Cuba that exists 90 miles from the Florida coast!
After
fifty years, aspirations of those who still want to recover their
property, perks and privileges grow ever dimmer. Posada, slurring his
words badly as a result of damage done by a gunman who shot him in
the face fifteen years ago, said: “We are coming to the end of a
terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near.” Applause! Since
the 1991 Soviet collapse, Cubans have lived through a “special
period,” the euphemism that meant drastic decline in living
standards. Cuba lost its annual Soviet aid of billions of rubles and
its advantageous trade with Soviet bloc nations. The state had to
break its part of the social contract: it could no longer provide
Cubans with sufficient food and clothing. Even the fabled health care
and education deteriorated. Rations were reduced and most Cubans
experienced a social morph from communism (sharing) to individualism
(dog eat dog) — for survival.
Seventeen
years of “special period” cost the revolution. Despite signs of
recovery, however, spurred by foreign investment, the soaring price
of nickel and the discovery of oil deposits, thousands of Cubans —
mostly young people — continue to leave their island in rafts or
smugglers’ boats to seek more opportunity in Florida. Engineers,
scientists and PhDs in literature choose not to spend their work
lives making pizzas or paper boxes, or teaching grade school.
By
2007, Cuban leaders began to address some problems developed in the
post-Soviet period. The leadership, however, had no intention of
going into the Chinese or Vietnamese models. On July 26, 2007, Raul
Castro spoke of solving pressing issues like daily adversity,
shortage of food and low agricultural productivity, within a
socialist model.
The
government has responded to popular discontent, alienation and
downright cynicism, and over the last two years imported 35% more
food. Raul also admitted that “wages are clearly insufficient to
meet people’s needs.” This statement does not mean what U.S.
journalists sneer at when they report that the average Cuban wage
comes to $20 a month. They don’t factor in free health care and
education from nursery school to PhD; no rent or taxes; practically
free transportation, entertainment, and subsidized food. But it is
still a long way from the cradle-to grave security Cubans experienced
before the Soviet demise.
Allowing
more goods for sale will not mean a mass rush of sales because most
Cubans do not possess excess foreign cash. Cubans will have to choose
between the new items available — including stays at posh hotels.
Cubans who receive remittances from family members abroad or get paid
in hard currency continue to enjoy buying privileges —
institutionalized inequality — that grate at much of the population.
But freedom to shop cannot sustain a socialist country — especially
a third world nation built on the twin themes of justice and
equality.
The
new mood has extended to artists and intellectuals who declared they
would not tolerate censorship. The leadership agreed. But ending
censorship
does
not relate to several thousand Cubans fleeing the island monthly for
Florida. They don’t leave because of censorship, but for freedom to
practice their professions and earn a better living.
Fidel
Castro warned
Cubans they
could lose their own revolution. In his April 3, 2008, letter to
Artists and Writers Union President Miguel Barnet, Castro wrote:
“Everything that ethically fortifies the Revolution is good;
everything that weakens it is bad.” In 1961, he told Cuba’s
intellectuals: “Inside the revolution, everything; outside the
revolution; nothing.” If one agreed and sympathized, one also
winced when Cuban leaders acted in ways that seemed to contradict
this statement.
“The
Cuban revolution was born to be different,” the Uruguayan writer
Eduardo Galeano once wrote. “Assailed by the incessant hounding
from the empire to the north, it survived as it could and not as it
wished. The people, valiant and generous, sacrificed a great deal to
stay on their feet in a world of rampant servility. But as year after
year of trials buffeted the island, the revolution began to lose the
spontaneity and freshness that marked its beginning.” (New
Internationalist,
July 2003)
No
kidding. In 1960, I watched creative chaos dominate everyday life.
Like Galeano, I have seen, over 48 years, “revolutionary virtue”
turned into “obedience to orders from above.” Loss of initiative
is an ironic result of almost fifty years of U.S. punishing Cuba for
disobedience. Washington blocked “the development of democracy in
Cuba, feeding the militarization of power and providing alibis for
bureaucratic rigidity,” Galeano continued. “The revolution, which
was capable of surviving the fury of 10 American presidents and 20
CIA directors, needs the energy that comes from participation and
diversity to face the dark times that surely lie ahead. I say with
sadness: Cuba hurts.”
Cuba
resisted 638 assassination attempts against Fidel. The CIA says this
is slightly exaggerated, but it admits launching thousands of attacks
against Cuba. For half a century, the United States maintained a
blockade, alongside psychological and possibly biological and
chemical warfare, survived and got wounded in the process. In March
2008, however, a change began. Beyond offering freedom to buy
electronic appliances and cell phones and own their own houses free
and clear, Cuban leaders signed the UN Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, which means that unions cannot be part of
government and free speech, press, and politics must be respected.
A
citizen told Vice President Carlos Lage at a conference that the
government lacked sensitivity to people’s social needs and
psychological problems, stuff money can’t fix. Lage apologized.
Cubans watched it on TV. Earlier this year, in Juventud
Rebelde,
an official newspaper, the government was ripped for fudging
statistics on unemployment. Changes have begun, but the smugglers
remain. The boats remain full as well.
The
Cuban revolution succeeded. It achieved independence and sovereignty,
educated and made healthy its population, provided them with basic
needs and educated its people to dance on the stage of world history.
Cubans altered the destiny of southern Africa when its troops helped
defeat the apartheid South African armies at Cuito Cuanavale in
1987-8. Mandela hugged Fidel at his inauguration. “You made this
possible,” he said for the world to hear. Cubans played a vital
role in helping Angola maintain her independence and for Namibia to
get hers. They played roles in the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur war,
and led the charge to slay the Monroe Doctrine.
Fifty
years ago, Washington controlled Latin America; not one leader dared
challenge its hegemony or its economic policies. Today, four of
Fidel’s ideological sons run countries (Venezuela, Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Nicaragua) and several of his cousins direct others
(Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Panama).
Cuban
doctors and scientists, artists and dancers, writers and filmmakers
have etched their names in the honor rolls of countless countries
through their sterling performances. The Cuban revolution created
them. Although Cuban doctors continue to save eyesight throughout the
third world and perform other humanitarian tasks, the question now
is: can Cuba overcome the legacy of the special period, when
individualism eroded the collective spirit, and can she transcend the
three decades of the Soviet model that she had to adopt for survival?
Her leaders have lived for the revolution and imparted its values to
the population. Can Cubans respond and grab the initiative to
maintain the enormous gains or succumb to the shiny lure of mass
consumerism?
No
matter what happens, Luis Posada “el combatiente legendario” will
not return to Cuba as one of its new rulers, gracias a Dios!
Saul
Landau received the Bernardo O’Higgins award from Chile. He is a
fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
