Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By
Saul Landau                                                                       Read Spanish Version

Watching
Hugo Chavez orate on Venezuelan television rings old memory bells.
“Socialism. Revolution, Patria.” Words I heard in 1960-61 in
Cuba.

Now,
almost half a century later, in Venezuela’s 5 million plus capital,
I watched the local residents cheering and waving flags, a scene that
looked almost identical to what I remembered in Havana when Fidel
Castro launched his marathon exercises in exciting rhetoric.

Like
his Cuban mentor, Chavez offered examples of how “imperialism” —
his word for the United States — had violated sovereignty, by
backing the unsuccessful 2002 military coup against him and how
Washington interfered in the internal affairs of smaller countries.

What
a difference the decades make! In the early 1960s, the CIA (using
Cuban exiles) assassinated Cuban teachers and militia members, and
sabotaged Cuban installations. I remember hearing explosions, shots,
and screams from the street.

From
May through October 1960, I heard Fidel speak frequently to large
crowds. He had become what Lee Lockwood called “Cuba’s living
newspaper.” (Castro’s
Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel,
1967)

Almost
fifty years later, Fidel’s ideological son attempts to apply some
of his mentor’s rhetoric towards similar goals: to build a
socialist society in a nation where oil has helped produce a
capitalist mode of thinking and doing (shopping), a large wealthy
class and a much larger mass of poor people.

Fidel
exported his mortal enemies to the United States. Or, Washington had
a policy of importing them. Out of Cuba, wealthy exiles could only
mount terrorist campaigns — for almost 50 years — but not block the
dramatic changes that allowed Cuban revolutionaries to transform
their island.

Chavez
doesn’t have the option of exporting the wealthy oligarchs, the
business class below them and the professionals who adhere to
distinctly anti-socialist values. Nor will Washington return to its
old “import the anti-Castro Cubans” policy.

He
retains strong support among the poor and especially among the most
conscious sectors of Venezuela’s organized working class. He also
knows that if he wins the February referendum he has the chance to
remain as President until 2021. As much as he admires Fidel, Chavez
will not copy the economic model of Cuba. Socialism in Venezuela will
eschew Soviet models for other — as yet unknown — economic
arrangements.

As
Chavez has observed, eighteen years after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Cuba’s economy staggers.

After
spending a week in Caracas, I walked the streets of Havana and saw
groups of young men drinking beer and singing along to reggaeton
beats on portable radios or Ipods with speakers.

“And
where do these lazy bums get the money to buy beer and acquire fancy
music boxes?” asks a middle aged woman in Marianao, one of Havana’s
populous neighborhoods.

“I’ll
tell you where,” she answers her own question. “They steal.”
Then came her anecdotes about how the criminals learn from some TV
shows and put woolen ski caps over their heads and faces to conceal
their identities. “One of these bums pointed a pistol at a neighbor
and stole her motorbike. He had cut slits out and she saw he had
green eyes. But so what? Thousands of Habaneros have green eyes.”

I
heard her complaint echoed several times. “If we don’t do
something to reform the labor system here,” said a writer friend,
“we’re in deep trouble. Raul [President Raul Castro] himself said
so. We can’t afford to continue down this road. On top of the
hurricane damage, we now face rising crime and that is obviously
linked to the refusal of some young people to work at the jobs that
exist.”

He
referred to three powerful super storms this year that devastated
Cuban agriculture and destroyed hundred of thousands of homes.
Nevertheless, Cuba’s tourist industry claimed that by year’s end
some 2.3 million foreign visitors will have vacationed on the island,
among them almost 700,000 Canadians. Tourism earned more than $2
billion.

Younger
Cubans I speak to express resentment “at how the old guys have
risen from the grave [he meant Machado Ventura and Ramiro Valdez, who
have rejoined the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party].” The
young man spoke with passion. “I’m a committed socialist, but
paternalism may kill our revolution. Will those old fogies never
quit?” Yes, I think, when will the very aging leaders give the car
keys to the middle aged kids? People in the mid and late 70s who have
wielded power for decades and offer little originality do not exactly
vibrate with inspiration at a time demanding creative and
revolutionary thinking.

Other
young people recount the achievements — health, education, art,
music, sports, science, as well as real human rights. But none of
these past glories deals with an unjust and insufficient salary
structure, with mediocre but very obedient people heading agencies
containing critical and brilliant people.

Raul’s
daughter, Mariela, has spoken publicly about the urgent need to
reform in several areas. Her courageous remarks about putting an end
to homophobia on the island carry a sub-textual message as well. It’s
time to put an end to the decades of official censorship, not only in
the case of “dangerous” bloggers, but journalists who get chewed
out by some of the old guard for writing “sentences you should not
have written.” Indeed, I dare not mention the writer’s name for
fear it will cause more problems.

“We
have too much invested in our revolution,” a writer for Juventud
Rebelde
told me, “to allow the old guard to ruin everything by not allowing
discussion of issues everyone knows about [referring to the
irrationality of the economy and the refusal to cede power]. Cuba
stands for basic human rights even if the government refuses to grant
some of them. Our future must be one of enjoying. Our generation,
people between 30 and 60, knows that.”

I
agreed. So many people have invested their hopes and dreams in the
Cuban revolution for five decades. Every time Cuba does something we
think contradicts its basic revolutionary principles, we wince. “Cuba
hurts,” wrote Eduardo Galeano. Right now lots of Cubans are hurting
because of the condition of their daily lives. Hurricanes and a less
than perfectly functioning system don’t amount to the old one two
punch. But they are worrisome, especially in the context of pressure
in today’s world.

Cuba
offered a vision for the future despite the paternalism and other
less than democratic legacies it carried. It also stood for the
embodiment of human rights, again notwithstanding the absence of a
free press and a voice for the opposition in its electoral politics.
Cubans had rights to food, shelter, education, medical care, old age
securities — albeit not the absence of fear on the part of those who
made public their criticisms of government policies. However, Cuba
did not hunt down and murder “subversives” as did a gang of
states, in Latin America — backed by Washington. Nor did it launch
aggressive wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East as did the
United States, which officially celebrated, on December 10, the 60^th
anniversary of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That
day should have been a day of mourning for 60 years of failure to
achieve the noble goals of the Human Rights declaration. Two wars
rage on in Iraq and Afghanistan, while increased global warming
vitiates the right to a safe environment. Almost 3 billion people
suffer the very deprivations that in 1948 were officially the targets
of all the world’s governments. Some cause for celebration!

Human
rights in the United States have shrunk. In 1945, the U.S. prosecutor
at Nuremberg explained that waging aggressive war was permanently
outlawed. In 2003, George W. Bush waged aggressive war in Iraq. In
the post World War II era, torture became a crime against humanity.
In the 21^st
Century, Bush reauthorized it. Waterboarding became associated with
U.S. jailors at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo, Cuba. European allies cooperated with the United States
in secretly transporting people to torture centers in other places as
well.

Meanwhile,
Chavez, attacked by Washington for being antidemocratic, has expanded
the breadth of human rights for Venezuelans. They now enjoy more
health-care, women have gained greater equality, more poor people
have learned to read and have access to potable water.

These
accomplishments coincide with the spirit of the 1948 UN Declaration
on Human Rights. It seems as if the U.S. government has forgotten the
goal and uses only the words as an instrument of policy to attack its
enemies while it violates the letter and spirit of the very human
rights laws U.S. lawyers helped to establish.