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Was
Fidel Good for Cuba?
A
Debate Between Carlos Alberto Montaner & Ignacio Ramonet
Nearly
50 years after a small island nation embarked on one of history’s
most
radical social experiments, it’s time to measure the results.
Does Fidel Castro’s
exit offer Cubans a long-awaited chance for freedom and prosperity,
or merely
mark the end of an era in which Cuba saw unprecedented success?
One of
Castro’s harshest critics squares off with one of his foremost
advocates.
Communism Has Failed Cuba
By
Carlos Alberto Montaner
After
nearly 50 years of suffering under Fidel Castro’s regime,
Cubans can now realistically prepare for life after El Comandante.
As of this writing, the 80-year-old Castro is very ill, if not
completely incapacitated. When he dies, will
the communist regime he created back in 1959 survive? Or will
the country be transformed into a pluralist democracy, equipped
with a market-based economic system and the existence of private
property, as was the case with almost all of the communist Eastern
Bloc dictatorships after the fall of the Soviet Union?
I predict the latter. In the Americas, at the turn of the 21st
century, a dictatorship where human rights are not respected,
which has more than 300
political prisoners—including 48 young people for collecting
signatures for a referendum, 23 journalists for writing articles
about the regime, and 18 librarians
for loaning forbidden books—cannot be sustained. Fidel Castro’s
death will be the starting point for a series of political and
economic changes similar to those that occurred in Europe. Here’s
why.
First, Castro’s leadership is nontransferable. He is a strongman
who has personally exercised power for almost half a century.
Although his ideology is
communism, he is from the same anthropological stock as Spain’s
Francisco
Franco or the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo: the
authoritarian military man. This type of authority, based as it
is on a combination of fear and respect, cannot be handed down.
It’s true that Castro’s brother, Raúl, has
been handpicked as the successor. But, at 75, his age is also
a liability—as is his alcoholism and lack of charisma.
In
short, he fails to inspire the kind of loyalty that his brother
has.
In all likelihood, Raúl will simply play a transitional
role between
the communist dictatorship and the arrival of democracy.
Second, the Cuban people know that the system Castro created has
failed.
Every day, they must reckon with the realization that communism
has
aggravated all of Cuba’s basic material problems to the
point of desperation.
Food, housing, drinking water, transportation, electricity, communications,
and clothing are wants that cannot be compensated for by an extensive
but very poor educational and health system. Paradoxically, even
the revolution’s achievements incriminate the regime. The
fact that Cuba has a reasonably educated population fosters the
society’s desire for change and its dissatisfaction with
a system bent on having the immense majority of Cubans live miserably.
No one is more anxious to abandon egalitarian collectivism than
the legion of engineers, doctors, technicians, and teachers forced
to live without the slightest hope of betterment. These educated
and frustrated Cubans will attempt to press for reform within
the communist institutions, or even outside of them.
Third, Cuba must eventually face up to history.
The country cannot continue as an anachronistic,collectivist,
communist dictatorship in a world where Marxism has been competely
discredited.
Cuba belongs to Western civilization. It is part of Latin America,
and it
makes no sense for its government to keep the country isolated
from its surroundings, its roots, and its natural evolution any
longer. After all, the dictatorships of Latin America, both on
the left (like Velasco Alvarado in Peru)
and on the right (Augusto Pinochet and the military regimes in
Argentina, Brazil,
and Uruguay), were all replaced by governments legitimized at
the ballot box.
Lastly, the reformists know that change is not only possible,
it is desirable.
Cuban leaders, especially those younger than Fidel and his brother
Raúl’s generation, realize that they are not heroesin
a tale of romantic exploits, but
the promoters of an absurd system from which everyone escapes
who can. And,
at the same time, they know, from having watched it in Eastern
Europe, there is
life after communism. They have all the moral and material incentives
to
contribute to change. I predict a peaceful change based on agreement
between
the regime’s reformists and opposition democrats both on
and off the island.
Cuba’s
Future Is Now
By Ignacio Ramonet
Those
who argue that after Fidel, Cuba will follow in the footsteps
of Eastern Europe stubbornly refuse to see what is already before
their eyes. President Fidel Castro has not been on the job since
late last July—that is, it’s already been more than
five months “after Fidel.” And yet, nothing has happened.
The regime has not collapsed, nor have the much-anticipated public
protests erupted. The system is showing that it can operate normally
under these conditions, and the legal institutions are withstanding
the shock of Fidel’s withdrawal.
Although
the current situation has come about because of a gradual decline
in Castro’s health, it has served as a dress rehearsal for
the day when Fidel is no longer alive. And, for the time being,
the rehearsal is proving successful, confirming that commentators
like you, who compare Cuba to Hungary, are simply wrong.
Unlike in Hungary, major Cuban reforms have not been the result
of foreign ideas driven by foreign troops arriving on Soviet-armored
vehicles. Rather, they have proceeded from a popular movement
in which the hopes of peasants, workers, and even professionals
from the small urban bourgeoisie have converged. This movement
also capitalized on the desire for genuine national independence
(frustrated by the 1898 U.S. intervention) and the longing to
put an end to humiliating racial discrimination. And it continues
to have the support of the majority of its citizens. Castro’s
death will not dismantle a movement hundreds of years in the making.
To disavow this national character is to ignore some of the regime’s
essential dimensions. And it is to fail to understand why, 15
years after the disappearance of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s
regime is still in place.
Cuba in the years after Castro will, of course, be influenced
by outside events. The colossus to the north will see to that.
Witness the Bush administration’s suggestion of naming someone
to lead the “transition in Cuba,” as though the country
were some colonial protectorate. It’s a shocking suggestion,
even
to some members of the opposition. Clearly, the United States
is bent on maintaining a misguided relationship with Cuba. It
continues to bolster an embargo that, besides making Cubans suffer,
has only further legitimated to the rest of the world the regime
it aims to defeat. Washington’s position is so irrational
that even the Bush administration admits that the embargo will
not cease until neither Fidel nor his brother Raúl is at
the helm. Which means that the U.S. embargo has less to do with
any particular political regime than it does the personalities
of two individuals. It gives one an idea of the level of neurosis
that dictates U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Although
the United States is unlikely to reverse its stubborn Cuba policy
anytime soon, other Latin American countries have proven more
than willing to recognize the advances and advantages of the Cuban
system. The generalized failure in Latin America of the neoliberal
models preached in the 1990s has rejuvenated Cuba’s image
as a social model. No one can deny the country’s successes
in education, health, sports, or medicine. They are again making
Cuba a benchmark for the disenfranchised of Latin America. Washington’s
strategy to isolate Cuba in the hemisphere has failed. Indeed,
Cuba has never been as embraced by its neighbors as it is today.
Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Luiz Inácio “Lula”
da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chávez
in Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua have all publicly
expressed respect for Fidel Castro and solidarity with Cuba. And
the majority of them are adopting “Cuban solutions”
for some of their social problems. This legacy will undoubtedly
outlive Fidel Castro.
You
also fail to emphasize the reforms that Castro’s regime
has embarked on, including the opening up to foreign investment,
partial deregulation of foreign trade, the decriminalization of
the possession of foreign currency, the revitalization of tourism,
and so on. More important, the regime has diversified the country’s
trade relations, signing agreements with Argentina, Brazil, China,
Venezuela, and Vietnam. The result? During the past 10 years,
Cuba’s average annual growth in gross domestic product was
roughly 5 percent, among the highest in Latin America. In 2005,
for example, the country saw growth rates of 11.8 percent (including
the value of its social services), and a similar rate is expected
for 2006.
For the first time in its history, this country does not depend
on a preferred partner, as it depended, successively, on Spain,
the United States, and the Soviet Union. It is more independent
than ever. With that rare and hard-earned distinction, Cubans
are unlikely to reverse course.
Cuban
are Poor and Slave
Carlos Alberto Montaner responds
Anyone familiar with Cuban history knows that Fidel led the revolution
against President Fulgencio Batista to restore freedoms to Cuba
and to reinstate the Constitution of 1940, not to create a communist
dictatorship copied from the Soviet model. The reason communism
has not tumbled in Cuba, just as it has not in North Korea, is
because of the country’s complete repression. It’s
a brand of repression linked entirely to one dying man. When he
goes, so too will much of the fear that his regime instills in
its people.
In spite of political differences, all human beings have the same
hopes: They prefer freedom to oppression, human rights to tyranny,
peace to war, and they want their living conditions to improve
for themselves and their families. This statement is as true in
Hungary as it is in Cuba. Cubans want the same changes that repressed
peoples have always fought for. And when Fidel Castro’s
passing provides them a chance to make those changes, they will
seize it.
Just look at the facts. At cubaarchive.org, Cuban economist Armando
Lago and his assistant, Maria Werlau, have compiled a balance
sheet that explains why Castro’s regime forced 2 million
Cubans (and their descendants) into exile. Under Castro, there
have been Cubans Are Poor and Enslaved roughly 5,700
executions, 1,200 extrajudicial murders, 77,800 dead or lost raftsmen,
and 11,700 Cuban dead in international missions, most of them
during 15 years of African wars in Ethiopia and Angola. Castro’s
legacy will be one of bloodshed and injustice, not one of Latin
“solidarity” and reform.
You
blame the United States and its embargo for the Cuban people’s
material problems. But your analysis ignores the devastating impact
that collectivism and the lack of economic and political freedoms—not
the United States—had upon Soviet Bloc countries, ultimately
leading to their demise. And statistics on Cuba’s economic
growth are highly suspect. The official Cuban numbers for Castro’s
economic and social achievements are so poorly regarded that the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean opted
not to take them into account when it compiled its own statistics
on the true measures of Cuban society. And the idea that Cuba
is now more independent than ever is laughable, considering that
much of the economic growth that you cite is buoyed by $2 billion
a year in Venezuelan subsidies.
When Castro’s revolution started, he asserted that all of
the country’s economic ills originated from Washington’s
exploitation of the island. Since then, he has claimed that they
are due to the fact that Washington does not exploit it. Which
is it? It is also a curious paradox of the Castro regime that
it fiercely opposes the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas,
while it demands that the embargo be lifted so it can trade freely
with the United States. These contradictions notwithstanding,
the truth is that the United States is a remarkable trade partner
of Cuba’s.
Every year, the United States sells to Cuba roughly $350 million
in agricultural products, it permits money transfers estimated
at $1 billion a year (or half the island’s exports), and,
what’s more, it grants resident visas to 20,000 Cubans
each year, relieving the government of serious social pressures.
And the United States is already preparing for the end of the
sanctions once Cuba proves to be headed down the road to democracy.
That is not the behavior of an implacable enemy.
Castro’s
Enviable Record
Ignacio Ramonet responds
Even
if Fidel Castro were as repressive as you believe, history provides
no
shortage of examples of discontented people rising up against
repression.
From the former East Germany to Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia,
on up to China, just to cite cases of rebellions against authoritarian
communism, people have managed to fight oppression. In Fidel Castro’s
Cuba, however, there have been no major uprisings. When Castro
eventually succumbs to his illnesses, there is nothing to suggest
that Cubans will suddenly rise up against socialism.
You must stop looking at Cuba through an ideological prism and
twisting the
facts to fit in with a preconceived scheme of things. It is time
to reason like
adults. Your statistics, which blur the number of fighters killed
in an old war (1956–59) with the number of people anxious
to emigrate, the majority for
economic reasons, show nothing. Exaggerationturns to insignificance.
No serious organization has ever accused Cuba—where, in
fact, a moratorium
on the death penalty has been in place since 2001—of carrying
out “disappearances,” engaging in extrajudicial executions,
or even performing
physical torture o detainees. The same cannot be said of the United
States
in its five-year-old “war on terror.” Of these three
types of crimes, not a single case exists in Cuba. On the contrary,
to a certain extent the Cuban regime
stands for life. It has succeeded in increasing life expectancy
and lowering infant mortality. As New York Times columnist Nicholas
Kristof asserted in a Jan. 12,
2005, article, “If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate
as good as Cuba’s, [it]
would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.”
These successes constitute a great legacy of Fidel Castro’s,
one that few
Cubans, even those in the opposition, would want to lose and one
that the
many Latin Americans who have been swayed recently by populist
leaders covet. Cubans enjoy full employment, and each citizen
is entitled to three meals a day,
an achievement that continues to elude Brazil’s Lula.
But Castro will not only be remembered as a defender of the weakest
and poorest citizens. Historians 100 years from now will credit
Castro with building a cohesive nation with a strong identity,
even after a century and a half of the white, elitist temptation
to side with the United States out of fear of the numerous and
oppressed black population. They will remember him correctly,
as a preeminent pioneer in the history of his country.
The
End of a Sad Chapter
Carlos Alberto Montaner responds
How can you speak of “no major uprisings”? You know
as well as I that, in fact, there was popular resistance to the
establishment of the communist dictatorship.
In the 1960s, thousands of peasants rose up in arms in the mountains
of
Escambray and were quashed by Castro’s regime. The number
of political
prisoners in the first two decades of his regime was estimated
at 90,000,
and even the government admits to 20,000.
In addition to this quantification of the “human cost of
the revolution,” anyone
who wants to know the cruelty of the communist repression in Cuba
can read the 137 Amnesty International reports and press releases
on the subject, or the
abuses documented in numerous Human Rights Watch accounts. The
most publicized crime of the Castro era has so far been the deliberate
sinking of the
boat “13 de Marzo” ordered on July 13, 1994, with
72 refugees on board.
Of the 41 who drowned, 10 were children.
Castro
will not be remembered as a luminary or an upholder of human rights.
The Cuban people will look back on the Castro era with sadness.
He leaves as
an inheritance a detailed catalogue of how not to govern. We should
have
different political parties and not just one dogmatic, inflexible,
impoverishing,
and misguided one. We should respect human rights. We should trust
in the democratic method, in the rule of law, in the market, and
in private property,
just as do the most prosperous and happy nations on Earth. We
must tolerate
and respect religious minorities and homosexuals, forever prohibiting
“acts of repudiation” or pogroms against people who
are different. We must permanently eradicate the “apartheid”
that prevents Cubans from enjoying the hotels, restaurants, and
beaches that only foreigners are allowed to frequent. We must
live in peace, giving up the international adventurism that cost
so much blood in Africa, as well as in half of the planet’s
guerrilla groups, which Castro inspired.
With his passing, we must strive to be, in short, a normal, peaceful,
and modern nation, not a delirious revolutionary project aimed
at changing the history of the world.
Seeing the Truth
Ignacio Ramonet responds
As
long as we are talking about gross human rights violations, why
don’t we
begin with the United States’ continued protection in Miami
of two avowed terrorists, Cuban exiles Luis Posada Carriles and
Orlando Bosch, who are
accused of blowing up a Cuban civil aircraft on Oct. 6, 1976,
killing 73 people?
This act has yet to be denounced by those in Miami who continue
to nurse old resentments against Cuba. They have not protested
against the 3,000 Cuban victims killed by terrorist actions financed
by and directed from the United
States. Could this be a double standard, a repudiation of “bad”
(al Qaeda)
terrorism and an acceptance of “good” (anti-Cuban)
terrorism?
And if human rights are a concern for you, how can you deny that
Cuba, a small country, is the one that
gives the most medical assistance to dozens of poor
states throughout the world? In more than 30 countries, there
are some 30,000 Cuban doctors working for free. Proportionately
speaking, it would be as if the United States sent 900,000 doctors
to the Third World. The “Miracle Mission”
alone, which provides free cataract operations for poor Venezuelans,
Bolivians,
and Central Americans, has given more than 150,000 people back
their eyesight.
Is seeing one’s children and the landscapes of one’s
homeland not a fundamental human right? Cuba does not accept its
denial to millions of poor people.
It
is a shame that while you look back with heated reproaches, you
do not see
the truth of what is happening in Cuba today and do not know how
to decode
the permanence of its socialist regime.
Cuba
Libre
Carlos
Alberto Montaner responds
There
are always intellectuals ready to justify crimes. It was the case
with
Stalin and Franco, and now it will be the case with Castro. It
is morally incomprehensible: They love the executioners and hate
the victims. How can the Cuban government simultaneously respect
solidarity with its Latin neighbors and
yet fail to uphold human rights in its own backyard? Where is
the mutual incompatibility between solidarity and democracy? Judging
a half century of incompetent and atrocious dictatorship by the
cataract operations it performs is
the fascist argument characteristically wielded by Franco’s
apologists: His dictatorship was good because Spaniards managed
to eat three times a day.
It was also the argument of South Africa’s racists: Apartheid
was good because
the country’s blacks were not as poor as their neighbors.
Castro’s dictatorship
was good, we now learn, because it leased doctors to the Third
World.
No, all dictatorships—like all forms of terrorism—
are reprehensible. Don’t forget
that Castro came to power using guerrilla and terrorist tactics
(Havanans remember perfectly the “Night of 100 Seeing the
Truth freedom
and democracy? But, despite this sad complicity, the day will
come for releasing
the political prisoners, for holding pluralist elections, and
for beginning the
material and moral reconstruction of an artificially impoverished
society cruelly terrorized by repression and devastated by Stalinist
totalitarianism. After Castro, Cuba will be free.
Viva Fidel!
Ignacio Ramonet responds
Prominent
intellectuals have always been on the side of those plagued by
the arrogance of the powerful opponents of Fidel Castro’s
Cuba are no exception. Setting oneself up against Cuba and in
favor of the United States, whose administration is accused of
very serious abuses (torturing prisoners, kidnapping civilians
locked up without trial in secret jails, murdering suspects, and
creating
a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, completely outside the
law) as denounced
by the world’s respectable consciences, is not the behavior
of a
halfway-informed citizen.
It is not even a question of an intellectual stance. Being an
intellectual must be earned. And the first step is to become informed
and not to mention South
African apartheid while ignoring that it collapsed only when its
elite troops were defeated in December 1986 at Cuito Cuanavale,
“apartheid’s Stalingrad,” not by U.S. forces,
but by Cuban troops. That is what prompted Nelson Mandela, an
icon for our time, to say that Fidel Castro’s revolution
“has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving
people.” He, like so many of the Cubans who will mourn their
leader’s passing, was wont to cry, “Viva comrade Fidel
Castro!”
Carlos
Alberto Montaner
and Ignacio Ramonet
have written extensively on
Fidel Castro and his life, legacy, and impact on Latin America.
Ignacio Ramonet’s Fidel Castro: Biografía a dos voces
(Madrid: Debate, 2006) is the product of more than 100 hours of
interviews with Castro. Carlos Alberto Montaner’s Journey
to the Heart of Cuba: Life as Fidel Castro (New York: Algora,
2001) offers a critical assessment of the psychological profile
and political legacy of the Cuban leader.
Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by Foreign
Policy Magazine as the covert story on its January/February issue.
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