I’ve always found it strange, that we think that, if we isolate Cuba, eventually, the people will get so sick of their situation, that they’ll overthrow Castro, but yet, we think that in China, to bring about reform, we need to give them the most favored nation trading status.
Well, try and think of it this way:
One of the tenets of current US foreign policy is that the US is by definition a Good Thing. Therefore if for whatever reason you are opposed to US economic and military supremacy, then you are opposed to the said Good Thing, are therefore a Bad Thing and cannot be tolerated.
In a state like Cuba, the central tenet is the the Revolution and Socialism are Good Things, and that if you are opposed to them, you are opposed to the common good, therefore a Bad Thing and cannot be tolerated.
It’s the same logic. As I said before, it’s all based on which axioms you base your ideology on.
It is pretty strange no?
Historical reasons, maybe… “Our sphere of interest”, perhaps… A small country is more easily bullied?
Oh, and to answer your first question, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any country going Communist and being successful at it. I mean, name one communist nation, where people actually want to go and live? From everything I’ve learned growing up, and from what I still hear today, most people in communist countries would rather flee them.
Oh, and one more thing about Cuba. If I were the ruler of a country, where an embargo from the USA was impoverishing my people, I’d either make reforms that would lift the embargo, or resign, for the betterment of my country. Castro may think he’s right, but if he cared at all for the Cuban people, it would be more important to him to do what he could to improve the lives of his people.
It’s one thing to say for yourself, this is what I believe, and I accept the consequences, but quiet another to say, this is what I believe, and if it causes an embargo, that causes my fellow countrymen, who aren’t part of my regime, to be poor, so be it.
OK, but going by what you said, the same is true in China, so why are they tolerated?
Maybe, but saying, because of your human rights record, we refuse to give you most favored nations trading status, isn’t bullying.
Are you saying then that no foreigners do live on Cuba?
As people in Stalinist USSR learnt the same things about the united states… Doesn’t amount to that much.
Oh, and you would do that under all circumstances, now would you? So then you would f. e. make reforms promoted by the Nazi regime more powerful than your country, for the sake of your people?
In this respect, Castro cannot be made responsible for the actions of the United States.
Zorro, I’m not going to quote your entire post, because, well, I just don’t feel like it. First of all credentials, I grew up in Cuba, post-Castro. I attended Lenin School, and left shortly thereafter. When I left Cuba I had plenty of relatives still living there, many of them members of the PCC, UJC, CTC, and so on. Now, to refute some of your assertions.
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Cuba’s revolution was indeed a popular revolution, but it was not a Marxist or communist revolution. Even Castro was not openly Marxist prior to 1960. In fact Castro’s group was not even the primary group in the revolution. Until the day Batista left power Castro remained in the Sierra Maestra mountains, and his group’s fighting happened there. Those mountains are at the eastern end of the island, some 300 miles from the capital, and far removed from the seat of power and commerce of Cuba. The revolution was fought in the streets of Havana and other Cuban cities by Cuba’s middle class. It was fought with generall strikes, daily demonstrations, election boycotts, and terrorist actions. Castro’s brilliant move was to convince all the other groups that helped defeat Batista to join in the Directorio Revolucionario, and then using strong arm tactics and his considerable oratory powers, make himself into the obvious leader of the group. Through a series of purges in 1960 the entire leadership of the Directorio Revolucionario was jailed, exiled, or executed. Then Castro hijacked the revolution and called it Marxist. By this point there was no organized opposition anymore, Castro controlled the army, police, and the entire repressive apparatus the still there today was established.
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There is not blockade of Cuba, not anymore. Thera was a blockade on Cuba for a few weeks in 1961, which effectively forced the Soviets to remove nuclear missiles from the island. What you’re probably referring to is the US embargo, which essentially says that, with some exceptions such as food and medicine, US companies may not sell or extend credit to the Castro government. Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world, and does. Cuba’s problem is the is very, very cash poor, and routinely defaults on its debt obligations, or threatens to do so, until that debt is renotiated. But as anyone who has been to Cuba will tell you, there is no shortage of anything in Cuba, as long as you have dollars to buy it. Unfortunately there are three classes of people in Cuba who have access to dollars: 1. foreing tourists, 2. Government officials, and 2. relatives of exiles. One quick aside here, it strikes me as just funny that many defenders of Castro’s government point to Cuba’s independence from the US as a triumph, and in almost the same breath they decry the US “blockade”. I usually point out that you can’t have it both ways, you either want to be free of US influence or you want US influence.
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Guevara’s memory? Please. As soon as Castro completed his takeover of the revolution Castro proceeded to systematically replace every commander in his army, by whatever means. Some he executed as traitors, some he sent to prison for 30 year terms, and some he exiled. Guevara’s ouster was one of Castro’s most devious. He asked Guevara to go to Africa to explore “exporting the communist revolution”, to Congo I think. But asked Guevara to leave a letter disassociating himself from the Cuban government, by this time Guevara was the Finance Minister I think, “in case Guevara was caught”. No sooner did Guevara get to Africa that Castro read his letter on live Cuban television. Guevara was now exiled. In fact Guevara’s name was not mentioned in Cuba again. Until he was killed. Once Guevara was dead Castro was free to build a personality cult around Guevara. This was around the time that Cuban pioneers, communist training groups for kids, were given the motto “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che!”.
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I can tell you categorically that street level Cubans don’t give a hoot about Marxism. Their worries center more around “resolver”, which in Cuban parlance pretty much means surviving. Whether it is driving tourists around in your car, and evading the cops that will bust you for driving an unlicensed taxi. Or renting your room to a tourist. Or running a restaurant from your living room. Cubans are as interested in capital and capitalism as your average american. Like I mentioned before, in order to survive in Cuba you need dollars.
OMG, this is my longest thread to date, I’ve typed too much to delete but I’ve a feeling this is just wrong. Hijack is probably too mild a term. Apologies to all.
I’m sure there are foreigners that live in Cuba, but I’m also sure very few migrate to Cuba. I can’t find a link to any data on it, imagine that a communist government being tight on information, but Cuba probably has a negative migration index. That is more people emigrate that immigrate.
Because there are 1.6 billion Chinese, they have nukes, and they’re generally big and scary. They are in fact a Third World superpower. In addition, they’re a very important trading partner for the US, and the US is quite keen that a billion people should start doing things such as buying Fords and developping 20-a-day Marlboro habits.
Cuba is an impoverished Caribbean island with a population of 11 million, and that has never had any military power. Although it does yield an amount of influence in the developping world that is out of proportion to its real power. It’s a bit like France in that it’s important because a lot of people think that it should be.
bayonet1976:
May I take this opportunity to ask you how street level Cubans feel about the embargo?
For sure. But this is a considerably weaker statement, since it is one that is true of most third world / poor countries.
Bayonet1976: touché, I lost, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I have indeed never been to Cuba, and my knowledge of Cuba is second hand, except for what Cubans have told me. The problem is that it is almost impossible to obtain objective information on Cuba. Both Cuban and US sources are laden with propaganda. Every so often, I read Fidel latest speech, and he’s quite good on matters concerning developping countries’ relations with the West, and you can’t fault his rhethoric on the primordial importance of education. It is after all the only thing you can give someone that can never be taken away from them. I have no objective information on how well this is implemented. Probably very much as it was in the USSR: the curriculum is probably perfectly good, but it’s all laced with propaganda. (One of my Russian friends had to thank Comrade Stalin for her happy childhood every morning…). But I have no doubt that Castro is a cunning old fox with all the “qualities” necessary to stay in power for 40 years.
By all accounts including his own books, Che Guevara was the original real deal unreconstructed idealist dreamer. The kind of dangerous utopian who could really get in the way of doing some proper Realpolitik.
I don’t believe I said that the Cubans or Vietnamese were committed Marxists to a man, but I’m pretty sure that they all have a good grounding in Marxist ideology. But of course what they want is what everyone in the world wants: a decent life for themselves and their friends.
Now I have a question and I plead ignorance: do the Cubans wish to hold on to any of the legacy of the revolution when Fidel pops his clogs? Because on the one hand, Cuba could probably become a lot richer if it just gave up and embraced the whole capitalist thing. On the other hand, it would just revert to being a pseudo-colony of the US as it was before 1959. So would the Cubans rather retain their independance from the US and stay relatively poor, or throw in the towel in exchange for a better life?
They mostly hate it. Most Cubans feel that any opening in Cuba is a good thing, and let’s face it, although Cubans appreciate the Italian and Spanish tourists, US tourism is seen as sort of “holy grail” for the Cuban economy.
So then obviously it is affects the civilian population? Shouldn’t it then be lifted?
Now, now, I never said you didn’t know what you were talking about. Did I? Hold on. Nope, I put forth some examples were I refuted your assertions. Let’s not put words in each other’s mouths please.
As to your questions, I don’t necessarily think that Cuba could become a lot richer in a capitalist economy. Cuba today has an agricultural, mono-crop economy, namely sugar. Sugar is not exactly the cash crop it was in the 50’s and even then, it was massively subsidized by US companies. On the other hand Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with at least two major cities on deep water ports, and could become the tourist mecca south of Miami.
As for Castro’s legacy, like most dictators you will never hear anyone say anything bad about him, in public. However Cubans are as politically sophisticated as the next guy, and most Cubans hold Castro personally responsible for the general misery of life in Cuba. Especially in recent years, the so called “periodo especial”. You generally hear Cubans talk abou the “free” education and “free” medical care, but in almost the same breath they’ll talk about the lack of jobs for all those educated people, and the lack of medicines in all those free hospitals. And of course, the general lack of food.
IMO Castro’s legacy will go the way of Franco’s in Spain or Stalin’s in Russia. There will a core of supporters who will defend the legacy and the vast majority of the population moves on with their lives.
I could be wrong, but I can’t believe that is a serious question:
Ask yourself, would you? And for that matter what has independence from the US brought? Dependence on the USSR first, China, Spain, Mexico and Italy now. I go back to my first point in this post, Cuba does not have a whole lot of resources, and very little cash. It needs partners, and those partners are going to require compensation, in the form of generous lease or partnership terms, or cheap labor, or whatever. You can call that dependency, or call it reality of life.
Well the embargo isn’t supposed to make the Cubans happy, it’s supposed to bring the regime to its knees. That’s what embargos are. But the UN General Assembly has called a dozen times for the embargo to be lifted, and pretty much everyone is opposed to it apart from the US. Unfortunately, the’re the only ones who’s opinion matters.
Well, you asked what Cubans thought, and I, of course, as spokesman for my people answered*. The real effect on the embargo however is unaffected by what people think. As I mentioned above there is no shortage of goods in Cuba, you can buy anything, as long as you have dollars.
The problem I see with lifting the embargo is that Cuba’s economy is completely controlled by the government. Tourism has brought about 1.5 billion dollars a year to Cuba’s economy. Almost all that money has gone directly to the government. Foreign ventures in Cuba are not allowed to hire Cubans directly, they must work through Cubancan, the government’s employment agency, which collects the workers salaries from the ventures in dollars, and pays the Cubans in pesos. Thus the degree to which lifting the embargo would improve the lives of ordinary Cubans will be directly controlled by the government, and so far the record is not so good.
That said I do think the embargo should be lifted. So it only improves the lives of Cubans a little bit, hey it’s better than nothing. And it removes an excuse for Castro’s failures. But let’s not kid ourselves, the reasons for Cuba’s problems is not the US embargo.
Zorro, think about what you’re saying. This embargo affects two entities, the US and Cuba. What you’re saying is that the UN GA is telling the US that is MUST trade with Cuba. I think sovereignty kind of implies that each country can trade or not trade with whoever it chooses. The US has chosen not to trade with Cuba, so what? Everyone else in UN GA is free to do so. The problem is the Cuba does not have a whole lot to offer in return, so what it really wants is cash, in the form of credits, grants, favorable deals, and so on.
Thanks for your answers. It was a serious question, as a lot of people would rather be in deep trouble on their own terms than better off on someone else’s. Call it bloody-mindedness, stubbornness or just being plain pig-headed. And once again, as it’s impossible to obtain objective information on Cuba, I just don’t know. The Cuban press is full of guff about people being prepared to die for the revolution, whereas the US media is all about how the Cubans just want DVD players and McDonalds’. I think that both are a load of nonsense.
And since this thread was originally a question about whether or not people really believed their political ideology, it seemed reasonable to ask a question about whether people would be prepared to sacrifice their comfort for their ideals.
We in the West seem to be worryingly short of ideals for the time being, except for the very worrying prevailing American foreign policy that everyone wants to be like the US, and that if they don’t they just don’t know what’s good for them. If all that we actually belive in and to offer the rest of the world is satellite TV, Pizza Hut and Nike shoes, well, it’s not much of a basis for a civilisation.