I'm watching a documentary about Castro. Outline: Batista ruled Cuba as a brutal dictator, and many people gradually began opposing him in favor of democracy. Communism existed as a minor, seldom expressed, component of an anti-Batista movement that grew, and which centered on American-style democracy. Castro -- illegitimate son of a sugar cane plantation owner -- joined this anti-Batista, pro-democracy movement as a Havana law student. He led a military strike against a government facility, but failed. Batista's government sentenced him to 15 years in prison, but released him after just a year, without torturing him, believing that leniency would temper his fire. Other democratic activists -- college students, and, increasingly, middle class professionals and merchants -- received similar treatment. Few but Castro attempted military strikes. Most of the others received free speech suppression in the form of police beatings and short prison stints.
Upon his prison release, Castro fled to Mexico, along with his brother Raul. There they linked with Che Guevara -- a much wealthier scion, a young physician from Argentina. Eighty-one of them piled onto a small boat (designed for about 20) and embarked on a seven day voyage to a remote Cuban beach. Military planes intercepted them and killed all but about 20. The survivors began a guerrilla campaign against an unmotivated army. As they maneuvered they drew converts, and increasing success in the countryside. Supportive pro-democratic riots in Havana formed a pincer, and drove out Batista and the rest of his government. Five days later Castro's militia stomped in and took control of a crowd eager to receive the fabled, armed countryside, fellow democrat rebels.
At this point, Guevara was not a top Castro lieutenant. But Guevara qualified as the chief booster of a surprising path taken by Castro: dictator. The promised elections would never occur. And those middle class revolutionaries, with their businesses, practices, and corporate positions: confiscated, and collected into state institutions. These people had played crucial roles in undermining Batista, and in supporting the supposedly democratic Castro. They led the applause of Castro's entry into Havana. Now they felt betrayed. Those that expressed this conclusion suffered, and this suffering administered by Castro exceeded that administered by the inarguably detestable Batista. Castro's number 2 and number 3 resigned in protest to the imposition of dictatorship. Where Castro's violent strike against Batista led to a 15-year sentence that manifested as a one-year, torture-free stint, these guys' expressions of discontent with their comrade Castro resulted in 15-year sentences that manifested as 20 years of brutal torture... and the elevation of Guevara to number 2.
Guevara and Castro's partnership derived from agreement on three principles that shocked and offended a large fraction of the anti-Batista population: dictatorship, socialism in the form of rigid communism, and little or no mercy for their opponents, certainly less then Batista ever showed. Much less. Physicians, engineers, accountants, and proprietors who had played a sentinel role in Castro's victory had their properties and businesses confiscated. This triggered a wave of objections from the democratic revolutionaries, who felt that Castro had sold himself as one of them. The American revolution produced a similar conflict, with the democrats winning. Unfortunately here, as in Cuba's Caribbean neighbor Haiti a century before, a revolution for democracy produced an even worse tyranny.
Castro and Guevara achieved folk hero status in the USA. Like Marx and Engles before them, these rich kids promised a paradise, but achieved a stagnant, rampant poverty. I once revered them. Then I learned the facts.
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I wouldn't refute many of the facts that you listed here. I would like to provide a couple of points for clarification.
Guevara was a physician by training, but not rich at this point. He had come from a rich family but his father squandered most of his rich wife's inheritance on failed business schemes.
After Ernesto's famed trip across the South American continent, immortalized in the very good movie "The Motorcycle Diaries", Guevara set out on his own winding up in Guatemala as a US sponsored coup overthrew the leftist Arbenz government.
Guevara took refuge in the Argentine embassy and then made his way to Mexico. By this time he had become a socialist. He signed on to the Castro Brothers' cause as the group's doctor.
While the rebels were carrying on their guerrilla war they were courted by many groups (including the CIA according to Jon Anderson's excellent fair, balanced and non-ideological biography CHE: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE), and one that provided much help was the Cuban Communist Party. Raul Castro and Guevara were both more socialist in their leanings than Fidel was at the time. He always seemed to be sympathetic to the ideals of a people's rule, but non-commital.
Paul's one-sided account ignores the fact that though Cuba was nominally independent after the US military withdrawl in 1901, the United States exerted political and economic control over the island. Batista was the last in a long line of US sponsored dictators, a puppet who was abandoned by Washington when it became apparent that he was too unpopular to defend.
After the rebel victory over Batista, the US government assumed that it would lord over Cuba's new leaders as it had over Batista. The rebels were insulted by Washington's arrogance and refused to be dictated to by outsiders. They wanted Cuba to be truly independent, and at this point they were not communists but staunch nationalists.
American huberis prompted the state takeover of the United Fruit Company and other corporations more than Castro's ideological shift. The agrarian land reform efforts were designed to provide land for the people who worked it, not the rich absentee Americans who owned and operated the Cuban colony.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco forced the Castros to rush to the waiting arms of the USSR for protection from the giant to the north. They didn't trust the Soviets much more than they trusted the Americans, but the Soviets chose persuasion and stick and carrot diplomacy as an influencer rather than brute military force.
The settlement of the Cuban missle crisis, where Khrushchev and Kennedy agreed on the removal of Russian missiles from the island was carried out without consulting Fidel, further straining his relations with both superpowers.
Washington's insistance on hardline diplomacy in Cuba has failed most notably since the fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba was the largest recipient of Soviet foreign aid (much like the Israeli island in the Middle East is protected by its big brother), so the nation has struggled as of late.
An end to the US blockade would have encouraged social change in Cuba most effectively. The Castros have continued their stance because they feel they have little choice. Both Fidel and Raul have reportedly studied China's market reforms, but for whatever reason have been slow in enacting similar measures.
Though the Cuban people are poor now, they certainly don't want to look like the rest of the Caribbean - vassal states where US investment and tourism dictates the economies of the nations. An influx of American dollars would definitely help Cuba, but their pride will not allow them to become the playground for rich Americans as it was up till 1958.
All this is to say that US domination and hegemony is almost as much to blame for the state of Cuba's economy and social atmosphere as is the dictates of the Castro government. The Americans and Miami's Cuban community have sponsored both real and economic terrorism in Cuba over the years. They wish to create an environment that would allow for domination of the island instead of partnership. Capitalist control rather than egalitarianism and economic democracy.
Nowhere on the planet is US bullying more emblematic than in Cuba. Nowhere has it been more detrimental to a people than in Cuba.
Thanks for these additional facts. Naturally, I object to Nadir's interpretations:
1. As always, Nadir has excuses for why non-US entities resort to tyrany. Botista was a tyrant... because the US controlled him. Castro erected a tyrany... because the US tried, but failed, to control him. All tyrannical acts trace back to the omnipotent US govt, in Nadir's view. Only tyrany by the US gets blamed on nobody else.
2. The parallel between US support for Isreal and USSR support for Cuba has some superficial legitimacy, but is ultimately bunk. Isreal has a productive economy and relies on the US only for military aid, its people have democratic freedoms, and it is surrounded by nations and organizations that constantly strike at it militarily in an effort to eradicate the nation and to replace democracy with tyrany. Cuba under Castro, however, has suffered from a non-productive economy which required Soviet help just to prevent starvation, the people have no freedom, and except for a very brief span of about two years in the early 60s, the tyranical government in Cuba has faced no external military threat to its existance.
3. Prior to the Bay of Pigs Castro has already begun economic and political repression, which include the arrest of his top guerilla comrads who favored democracy, and the confiscation of businesses and properties of middle class people who had supported what they thought was a democratic revolution. The Bay of Pigs invasion resulted *from* Castro's repression (it created the US immigrants who fled the repression and wanted that democratic revolution afterall) and thus cannot qualify as source *of* the repression.
4. How does Nadir know what "the Cuban people" want? They have no democratic means to express themselves, and a large fraction of those who object to Castro have fled to the US, demonstrating rather conclusively what it is that *these* Cubans want.
5. Millions of free people in the US live and thrive in areas that qualify as "playgrounds for the rich." The best example is Las Vegas, to which many thousands of non-rich people annually move to vastly improve their economic lives from just such an economy. It defies common sense to imagine that "the Cuban people" would be so different as to prefer a stagnant economy to one that bustles from tourists, due to any reason, much less their "pride". Do the many thousands of mestizos from Mexico who have earned nice homes for their families in Las Vegas lack "pride"?
6. Nadir's declaration of other Latin American countries qualifying as US "vassels" is of course unsupported, and unsupportable. Is Brazil a US "vassel"?
7. I agree with Nadir's opposition to the US embargo against Cuba. It has failed to get Cuba any closer to freedom, and I think it's time to give Home Depot and Starbucks a chance.
"1. As always, Nadir has excuses for why non-US entities resort to tyrany. Botista was a tyrant... because the US controlled him."
Batista didn't have to be a puppet, but he was and he was controlled by the US. It's not a cause and effect. It's two facts.
"Castro erected a tyrany... because the US tried, but failed, to control him."
Castro's tyranny is partially based on his need to protect his government from US imperialism and covert and overt attempts to overthrow his government. Many (not all of actions) can be blamed on his legitimate concerns that the US is trying kill him and remove him from power.
US tyranny (The USA Patriot Act, domestic spying, etc.) can be traced to fears the US government has about dissidents. What's the difference?
"All tyrannical acts trace back to the omnipotent US govt, in Nadir's view. Only tyrany by the US gets blamed on nobody else."
Not true. Castro is responsible for his tyranny. I understand much of his reasoning, but much of it I do not. The US is not blameless, however. You refuse to acknowledge US actions that have caused many of the problems the Cubans have faced. A policy of engagement would be more beneficial to the relationship than an embargo.
"2. The parallel between US support for Isreal and USSR support for Cuba has some superficial legitimacy, but is ultimately bunk. Isreal has a productive economy and relies on the US only for military aid, its people have democratic freedoms, and it is surrounded by nations and organizations that constantly strike at it militarily in an effort to eradicate the nation and to replace democracy with tyrany. Cuba under Castro, however, has suffered from a non-productive economy which required Soviet help just to prevent starvation, the people have no freedom, and except for a very brief span of about two years in the early 60s, the tyranical government in Cuba has faced no external military threat to its existance."
Wrong. The Cuban government since 1960 has been under constant covert and overt military threat from the United States government and Cuban exiles. The US has attempted to assassinate Castro at least 12 times. Castro has said that he could have spent more money developing socialism if he didn't have to spend so much money arming the people. Cuba's people are healthy and well educated. Though there isn't a lot of food to go around, few people are hungry. They lead a meager existence (absence of material/consumer goods), but have the very basic needs supplied by the state.
That said, Castro has made many mistakes in not diversifying the economy in an effort to increase revenue, and in relying too heavily on the USSR. I am also very critical of Cuba's totalitarian measures, though I understand the reasons they undertook many of them.
"3. Prior to the Bay of Pigs Castro has already begun economic and political repression, which include the arrest of his top guerilla comrads who favored democracy, and the confiscation of businesses and properties of middle class people who had supported what they thought was a democratic revolution. The Bay of Pigs invasion resulted *from* Castro's repression (it created the US immigrants who fled the repression and wanted that democratic revolution afterall) and thus cannot qualify as source *of* the repression."
I would agree with this partially. What the Bay of Pigs did was confirm two things: 1. That the elites who made up a great majority of the exiles did not have the support of the Cuban people. 2. That the US government was committed to the overthrow of the Cuban revolution and could not be trusted.
Therefore, the Castro government's crackdown on dissidents became justifiable just as the USA Patriot Act was justified after 911 though both totalitarian actions are not excusable.
"4. How does Nadir know what "the Cuban people" want? They have no democratic means to express themselves, and a large fraction of those who object to Castro have fled to the US, demonstrating rather conclusively what it is that *these* Cubans want."
Self-determination does not necessarily entail democracy or an electoral system. Like the Iraqis, I am sure the Cubans do not want the US dictating what happens to their country.
Aren't you, Slinger and other right-wing ideologues the very people who say "if you don't like the US, then leave?"
Those Cubans don't like Castro's government, and they chose to leave. Do they still have a say in what happens to their country?
"5. Millions of free people in the US live and thrive in areas that qualify as "playgrounds for the rich." The best example is Las Vegas, to which many thousands of non-rich people annually move to vastly improve their economic lives from just such an economy. It defies common sense to imagine that "the Cuban people" would be so different as to prefer a stagnant economy to one that bustles from tourists, due to any reason, much less their "pride". Do the many thousands of mestizos from Mexico who have earned nice homes for their families in Las Vegas lack "pride"?"
There are many poor people in the US and all over the world who resent those "rich" people who play in their neighborhoods and their countries. Many of those "rich" people oppress the poor people. The Cuban people should choose their government, and if they choose to change their system of govenment, then it is up to them, not you or JFK or George Bush.
"6. Nadir's declaration of other Latin American countries qualifying as US "vassels" is of course unsupported, and unsupportable. Is Brazil a US "vassel"?"
Caribbean countries. Not Latin American countries. Read it again, son.
And yes, they do qualify as vassels. Their economies are completely dependent on US tourism and investment, and would collapse without the US in their current states.
"7. I agree with Nadir's opposition to the US embargo against Cuba. It has failed to get Cuba any closer to freedom, and I think it's time to give Home Depot and Starbucks a chance."
If the Cubans decide they want to allow Home Despot and Starbucks to enter their country, the US should let those companies enter.
Comparing the US Patriot and Homeland Security Acts to Castro's endless clampdown? I think that the flow of immigration indicates both which is worse, and the extent to which it is. I can't even respond to all the other extuses for Castro. We have the same facts, but different conclusions.
The US hasn't tried to overflow Castro, what, 40 years? And this is still his excuse? The ancient attempts by the US to overthrow Castro occured only after his brutallity and totalitarianism began, and he embraced communism and an alliance with an empire at war with the US. As I reported in my story, a big fraction of the anti-Botistas supported democracy. But the minority anti-Botistas that had guns won the day and used those guns to impose communism/totalitarianism. Even some of Castros own armed comrads were democrats, but that got them lengthy prison terms, much worse than what Botista would have given them.
The people who fled surely included some dirty Botistas, but mostly they comprised people who wanted a democracy. Here, as with Haiti, a revolution got wasted on taking a nation to a lower level than were it began. Castro's puny one year prison term for his armed attack on Botista versus the 20-years of torture that Castro imposed on his pro-democrat comrads demonstrates this in microcosm.
For these reasons I consider Castro and Guevara reprehensible frauds. They are not "of the people", they are dictators of the people.
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