4/1/17

Two Cubas

During our recent vacation, we were given a chance to view Cuba through two lenses.

Here’s the Party line:

Cuba is a poor but proud country struggling to feed its people and maintain its independence in the face of serious economic issues and continued enmity from the US as embodied in the Cuban Embargo.  In spite of that, it continues to offer free education (through graduate school) free land, free food, free medical care, free housing, and free retirement. It has high literacy rates for both men and women and low infant and maternal mortality rates. Its people are happy, well educated and well cared for.

While Cuba cannot yet produce enough food to feed its population, removal of the Embargo would allow for the importation of tractors and fertilizers that could significantly increase production. The crumbling infrastructure could be improved as well by allowing foreign investment in rehabilitating Old Havana and other areas.

In fact, almost everything that’s not working in Cuba today is the fault of actions by the United States.

Here’s the Cuban exile line:

Fidel Castro

Fidel was a thug and corrupt dictator who savaged the country and its people in search of a pure socialist vision and his own private wealth.  He was barely better than the man he replaced, and his brother Raul isn’t much better than Fidel. When Fidel took over, he staged massive public executions of supporters of Batista.  He (and Raul) tightly control all the media and punish public criticism with instant reprisals. The nation is monitored by both a public and secret police force so alert to any criticism that young people are reluctant to say Fidel’s name out loud. Instead, they stroke their chins to indicate “The Bearded One” in conversation. (I had this directly from a young Cuban woman living in Havana, confirmed by the guide.)

Raul Castro

Although he inherited considerable wealth, Fidel eventually amassed a personal fortune estimated at over $900 million (not bad for a scruffy socialist revolutionary) and was fond of luxurious living. He was the target of endless assassination attempts orchestrated by the CIA and approved by eight presidents, up to and including Bill Clinton, before they finally quit in 2000. Can we say exploding cigars?

His alliance with the former Soviet Union triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis and brought us all to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. That alliance almost destroyed Cuba when the Soviet Union collapsed, along with their subsidies of Cuban sugar. With no money coming in and a disastrous sugar cane crop, the country was faced with a dire emergency that it barely overcame.

So which version is true?  The obvious answer is, both of course.  Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship that has also instituted a number of reforms that have helped its citizens, at least those who stayed, and stayed out of jail. As the number of American tourists increases, I expect the call to remove the Embargo will also increase. Obviously, negotiations should include issues like human rights violations and property settlements for those who lost their homes and businesses after the revolution. And we’ll also probably have to wait a little longer, both for the aging out of the politically powerful exiles in Florida and for a seasoned State Department capable of handling difficult and time consuming negotiations.  Cuba has no reason at all to trust the U.S., but removing the Embargo would solve a number of its problems.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

ADDENDUM:

I had a fascinating conversation about this yesterday with my Vietnamese manicurist.  She fled their repressive Communist government many years ago and has nothing good to say about it. Under their version of Communism, there isn’t free education (it’s very expensive) free housing, and so on.  Strange how the same basic political philosophy can play out in so many different ways.

Next up:
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs, from the Cuban point of view.  Unsettling.