Cuba – An objective history of the rule of Castro:

In My Humble Opinion
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**You are right - in many ways it is not a nice place. I’d still recommend it to anyone for a holiday though;).

A question for you, bayonet. Is Castro a marxist in his heart of hearts or is he mostly motivated by nationalism? Was his conversion to communism just an opportunistic survival tactic to secure soviet support or does he believe in its core values? **

I have no idea what goes in in Castro’s head, and I doubt anyone in Cuba does either, however he came to power on a nationalist revolution, and I think that looking at the history of his rule you can see that communism, and alliance with the USSR was a matter of convenience and survival but little else. Castro originally rose to prominence as a leader of student movements, which were in no way associated with the communist party. In fact, the communist party was a legal party in Cuba during the 1940’s and endorsed Batista during his successful run for the presidency.

Take for instance the symbols of Cuba. As far as I can remember now ever other nation that embraced communism changed all its national symbols, at least in part to include some reference to its new political set up. That included changes to the flag, national anthems, slogans, and so on. Cuba’s flag is the same what was flown during the Independence Wars, same for the national anthem. Even Castro’s personal slogan was “Patria o Muerte”, Motherland or Death and remains so.

Yes, the communist party is the only legal party in the island, and Cuba’s 1976 constitution followed a soviet model, but, as you probably saw when you go to Cuba, the pictures you see everywhere are of Guevara and other of Castro’s revolutionaries, not of Marx or Lenin.

Oh, and I second your recommendation of Cuba as a holiday spot. Only if you’re going to see Cuba, for goodness sake don’t spend all your time in Havana, or Holguin, or Santiago. And don’t spend any time at the all paid resorts, anything you spend at the resorts goes directly to the government’s coffers, Cubans get squat.

Take trips to the country side, visit the small towns, don’t go to Varadero beach, go to Santa Maria instead, the surfing is better anyway. Yes, the nice buildings are in the tourist section of Havana, but the nice people are everywhere else.

22

I meant to reply to this part of your post too but got carried away with the commie crap. Anyway, yes Cuba’s literacy rates are much crowed about by the government but compare both current and historical statistics between Cuba and Costa Rica, and you’ll see that the same numbers can and have been achieved by others in the region. And they have been achieved without the kind of political repression and isolation of Castro’s government. And when you consider that, as you mention, Cuba was ages ahead of Costa Rica in 1958, it’s sad to think how the island might have progressed under a different government.

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My impression is that Castro is primarily a nationalist, and I think that the revolution arose, as they usually do, from the combined sense of injustice and desperation of the people, and this was capitalised on by the educated elites. This is pretty much always the case. In fact, I can’t think of any popular revolutions that were not led or guided to some extent by the elites. Those tend to stop at the plain old revolt stage.

Anyway, the fact remains that Batista’s regime was truly awful, and that there was a genuine desire for a serious injection of social justice. This concern is not however exclusive to Marxists, although they do tend to try and hijack it for their own purposes (i.e. social justice for those who agree with us or do what we tell them, and little more for us, it’s only fair enough after all the effort we put in).

I’m sure that Fidel had a very commendable set of ideals, aspirations and goals when he started out. And then he got involved in real world politics, and he made a choice that seemed like a good idea at the time. Essentially, he made a Faustian pact with the USSR, and when that screwed up, it was too late to change direction. Rather like Macbeth:* “I am in blood stepped in so far…”*.

This is all rather speculative of course. Besides, Fidel wasn’t the first Cuban revolutionary, just the first durably successful one.