Fidel: father of modern Cuba
By
Saul Landau
Fidel
decided to retire from almost half a century of leadership this week.
I saw him last in April 2001. “The worst is over,” he told the
person next to me in the hallway. “The issue is developing
socialism.” Poking his finger into my chest, he asked about the
Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and the state of poverty in the areas
— far worse than anything Cubans went through.
His
worldly concerns stand in stark contrast to Cubans who daily headed
north for more prosperity.
Last
May in Havana, some whose fathers served in Angola, asked me about
life in the United States. Those in their 20s and 30s felt
frustrated. Some had the PhDs and Masters degrees and worked at jobs
beneath their education and skill levels. The biggest complaint was
how they spent parts of their day “resolviendo” problems of
material existence.
Last
year, a veterinarian who drove a taxi in Havana asked me if the
United States was indeed the paradise that she and her friends
imagined, that wonderful place seen in movies.
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Fidel
decided to retire from almost half a century of leadership this week.
I saw him last in April 2001. “The worst is over,” he told the
person next to me in the hallway. “The issue is developing
socialism.” Poking his finger into my chest, he asked about the
Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and the state of poverty in the areas
— far worse than anything Cubans went through.
His
worldly concerns stand in stark contrast to Cubans who daily headed
north for more prosperity.
Last
May in Havana, some whose fathers served in Angola, asked me about
life in the United States. Those in their 20s and 30s felt
frustrated. Some had the PhDs and Masters degrees and worked at jobs
beneath their education and skill levels. The biggest complaint was
how they spent parts of their day “resolviendo” problems of
material existence.
Last
year, a veterinarian who drove a taxi in Havana asked me if the
United States was indeed the paradise that she and her friends
imagined, that wonderful place seen in movies. Letters from friends
and family who had migrated indicated that most of them liked it
better. I told her that in Miami I saw Cubans cleaning toilets and
mopping floors at the airport while others drove Cadillacs.
“Which
one will you be?”
She
shook her head. She didn’t know. She would think more about
leaving.
In
Miami, I asked a waitress in a Cuban restaurant. You want to return
to Cuba?
“Some
days,” she replied. “I felt less tense there, although I got
anxious trying to get food, soap, shampoo. Who knows?
Cubans
arrive each week in Florida, but not all the new arrivals enter
Paradise. Indeed, rapid social mobility for people without U.S.
college degrees — the vast majority of immigrants — has slowed to a
crawl. According to a Brookings Institution study, in 2004 “only 15
percent of Miami’s households are in that income bracket ($34,000 and
$51,000),” compared to 20% nationally.
For
African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians median
household income in Dade County was at least $20,000 less than “white
median household income.” Cubans fare somewhat better. The original
anti-Castristas, Batista supporters, moneyed and professional
classes, came with material assets and education. Their children and
grandchildren benefited from their original and accumulated wealth —
some of it stolen from the Cuban Treasury. Batista military officials
hijacked planes and ships to haul stolen loot to Florida shortly
before the revolutionaries seized power. Rather than charge them with
theft and airplane and ship hijacking, the U.S. government welcomed
them and never returned the stolen money.
Subsequent
migrations brought the less affluent many of whom have joined Miami’s
immense underpaid class in underpaid service and retail trades. The
Brookings study revealed that “wages, regardless of industry sector
or occupation type, are lower in Miami-Dade than elsewhere.”
A
native New Yorker, driving through Miami slums, doesn’t get it. The
monster-sized airport, the flashy hotels and modern office buildings,
the art deco Miami Beach area speak to affluence. In almost all black
Liberty City and Little Haiti one doesn’t see rotting tenements,
the trademark of northeast cities. Nor do homeless people huddle over
subway grates in mid winter ice. Yet, in 2004, Miami ranked as the
city with the lowest median household income: $24,031. Newark, NJ
ranked second poorest with $26,309. The national median income is
$42,000.
Some
10 million people drop in and out of the Miami area during the year.
Millions of others know it from the Miami Vice series, where cops and
drug dealers dress in super mod outfits, or from CSI Miami in which
expensive technology dominates the set. Miami tourism promoters sell
beaches and weather. The celebrity-rich own homes and yachts there.
The hotels thrive on conventions and cruise ships await the eager
vacationers who might spend one night at a five star hotel before
boring themselves into a stupor at sea.
The
rich adore the place. At DeVito’s restaurant in South Beach (yes,
Danny’s place) the entrees range from $40-60 — not counting drinks
or salads or deserts. On Valentine’s Day the tables began filling
early. Those who peel the onions and potatoes and dump the
restaurant’s garbage don’t earn the price of a meal for an eight
hour shift. Miami’s media median household income ranks lowest in
the country: $23,483.
Some
of the low income earners came from Cuba. Some of the homeless are
also Cubans. One Cuban woman, a “Peter Pan” kid — a CIA-Catholic
Church operation that removed thousands of Cuban kids from their
parents to the United States in the early 1960s — said she
“rediscovered my Cuba.” Her first return visit in 1994, during
very difficult economic times, “showed me that the values on the
island were better, more caring. In the United States if you’re
poor you have few resources. In Cuba you have some safety net and you
always have family.”
“Poverty
in every childhood poisons the brain,” Paul Krugman opened his
February 18 New York Times column, quoting a report from the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. In the United States poor
kids feel like outcasts and therefore suffer “unhealthy levels of
stress hormones, which impact their neural development.”
One
understands poverty in most third world countries. Even though income
disparity is wildly askew, the total wealth remains insufficient to
provide each citizen with basic needs. In the United States, Lyndon
Johnson’s war on poverty did reduce the rate of poverty from 23 to
14%. “But progress stalled thereafter,” wrote Krugman.
I
think of the smug criticisms of Cuba’s inability to provide
sufficiently for all of its citizens while Washington poured untold
hundreds of billions into wars in Vietnam and Iraq. I think of the
hundreds of billions poured into ridiculous weapons systems that
defended no one against anything and never will and the little
uniformed kids singing the anthem outside of a Cuban school in Havana
and little Cuban-American kids in Miami whose parents ort parent has
yet to rise above the poverty line.
The
anti-Castroites won’t have Fidel to kick around any more, but the
“post Castro” era features Raul Castro still in charge and few
basic institutional changes in the forecast.
In
Miami, I’d seen the same desperate Edward Munch Silent Scream look
on Cuban faces that I’d witnessed in Havana. A woman waiting for
the bus stared vacantly into space as if her lover had left her, her
kids had died, and she just didn’t know if she could continue. In
Miami I saw a similar expression on a tired middle-aged woman serving
the Cuban coffee through a window. She complained her feet hurt, she
couldn’t subsist on $9 an hour, and her husband only made $12 an
hour as a security guard. “How can we live like this?” she asked
me or herself.
“Do
you think about going back?
She
shrugged. A non-starter! She, like 1.5 other million Cubans had made
a decision to leave and they have to live with it. Some love it, some
accept it, and some regret it. All will admit that Fidel Castro
changed their lives.
How
will Cubans assess him now that he can’t carry out the duties of
office because of health? In nearly half a century Castro led Cuba
from U.S. informal economic colony into nationhood — sovereignty.
Cubans defeated a 1961 U.S.-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs,
followed by thousands of CIA-led terrorist attacks and survived the
1962 Missile Crisis. By the 1970s, Cubans began to enjoy good health
and high levels of education — unique for most third world
countries.
When
Castro went to the hospital in July 2006, nothing changed in Cuban
daily life. The revolution exacted a price: divided families, absence
of procedural freedoms and a struggle against harsh reality since the
Soviet collapse.
Castro
has become an interesting literary figure in his recuperation.
Castro’s will, vision, and perseverance helped put Cuba on the stage
of history — despite great efforts from Washington to keep it down.
For this, Castro stands
as David against Goliath.
That
Cubans risk their lives to leave the island for better opportunities
in Florida show that Cuban socialism is struggling, but far from
dead. While Castro remains alive, even bed-ridden, he will use his
agile mind to improve the world’s last experiment in socialism.
His
successors will be chosen from a pool of capable men and women. Raul
in his late 70s will not endure much longer. Look for Carlos Lage and
people from his generation to assume leadership; government will
become more committee-style.
Fidel
was the father of modern Cuba. Think of the thousands of Cuban names
etched in honor-rolls throughout the world in science, medicine,
sports, art, film, literature and music. Cuban doctors saved lives in
Pakistan, Vietnam, throughout Africa the Middle East and Latin
America.
Under
Castro, a nation without strategic resources changed history in
southern Africa. In 1987-8, Cuban troops in Angola defeated the
apartheid South Africa forces and thus forced the opening that
allowed Nelson Mandela to become President. A Cuban tank unit fought
in the 1973 Middle East war. Castro’s ideological sons now serve as
elected presidents of several Latin American countries America; more
distant relative govern other countries — ones the U.S. used to
control.
The
U.S. isolated Cuba in the 1960s. Now, Cuba relates to the rest of the
hemisphere — save for the United States. Castro also changed the
United States by exporting his enemies — to his larger enemy. In
turn, Cuban-Americans in Florida, especially in the 2000 elections,
changed U.S. destiny.
