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in SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, USA, after a political protest. I have also witnessed, first hand, incredibly brutal treatment of peaceful protesters, on a large scale, and I have first hand accounts of other such treatment, in the good 'ol USA, over the last decade--some of the most brutal occurring in Miami, where people yammer about freedom in Cuba and ignore ill treatment of protesters in their own city. And black and brown prisoners--whether incarcerated on serious crimes, petty crimes OR MERE SUSPICION (picked up on the street for nothing--strip-searched and mistreated before they ever see a courtroom)--are ROUTINELY brutalized in our prison system.
NO governmental system can account for all of the behavior of its police forces and prison guards, although every government should make the effort, and ours is one of the most derelict on earth. What I know is this: people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks. And that is not to even begin to get into Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, "renditions" and secret US prisons in middle Europe and points east.
Cuba has been in a state of siege since its inception--with plot after plot after plot by various US presidents, and rightwing Miamians, to invade, destabilize and overturn the revolutionary government, and assassinate its leader, Fidel Castro. I'd say a little paranoia was warranted. And in these incredibly hostile conditions--with a continual US embargo--the Cuban government has done very well by its people, with high education and medical indicators, some of the best in Latin America--maintained even through the collapse of the Soviet Union (at one time Cuba's major trading partner and giver of aid), by highly innovative and intelligent trade policy.
Cuba has now lived through 40 years of punishment for being one of the few successful communist governments on earth--and has "survived with style": shared benefits, a prosperous country and high standing among the poor of Latin America. It is the rich who can't stand Cuba--especially the global corporate predators of the north, who consider poor Latin Americans to be a pool of slave labor and consider the natural resources of Latin American countries to be THEIRS.
And, hey, maybe this model of sharing has a few things that it could teach us--up here in northland, where homeless people roam the streets, where the poor and even the middle class can barely survive these days, and the super-rich lard themselves with multiple tax breaks and can't have enough of multiple homes and private jets.
The US economy stinks to high heaven of corruption and gluttony by the rich. Cuba looks better all the time.
As for their having a king--Mr. Castro--yeah, they do. But so do we. The difference is that Cuba needed a stabilizing figure in order to endure and survive the unrelenting hostility of the biggest dick on earth--the US. What is our excuse? Bush is not only NOT revered, and is not only NOT a stabilizing influence, he and his junta are destroying our country in every way imaginable--from a $10 trillion deficit, to the outsourcing of all our jobs, to the shattering of our reputation around the world, in its heinous war on Iraq, torture and other crimes.
Who is the bad guy here? Hm?
Show me the 100,000 innocent Iraqis that Fidel Castro slaughtered, to get their oil--Bush. Show me the 200,000 Mayan Indians that Castro slaughtered in Guatemala in cahoots with three successive brutal dictators, and the tens of thousands of leftists and poor people slaughtered in El Salvador, in Chile, in Argentina, in Nicaragua--Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush. Show me the two million Vietnamese slaughtered by Castro, in their struggle for self-determination--Nixon, Johnson. Show me the tens of thousands of people tortured by Castro in all of these and other heinous endeavors.
Castro is a saint next to these people--if you look at the matter in relative terms. His main crime was the success of his revolution with minimal bloodshed--minimal because it was truly a popular revolution, not out to kill, but out to REFORM SOCIETY. It's not a path I would choose. But when you consider the centuries of US-backed brutality and exploitation that preceded the Cuban revolution, and to which the Cuban revolution was the answer of its people, the armed revolution path was understandable, and it was remarkably peaceful compared to the Russian revolution, the French revolution and our own revolution. And one of the reasons for Castro's success is that neither their revolutionary war nor their communist government has been bloody-minded.
I have often pointed to Russia's Tsarist heritage, immediately preceding the Soviet revolution, as one of the causes of the failure of the ideals of that revolution. Russia had NO democratic tradition. Zero. Zilch. No experience of democracy, ever. Then, boom--due to the horrendous slave-like conditions and horrible wars imposed by the Tsar--and the courage of many Soviet heroes, they were catapulted into the 20th century with a "peoples" government, and soon fell prey to totalitarianism, in the form of madman Stalin. The Soviet revolution, like Cuba's, was beset on all sides--with Soviet Russia particularly threatened by the rise of Hitler in Germany (who had ambitions similar to Napoleon's of invading Russia--ambitions that came to the same miserable end, in the face of Russia's stalwart patriotism and resistance, and Russia's winter). Comparing the dictatorships of Castro and Stalin, you have to admire Castro. He never became a Stalin! He is not a dictatorial personality. He is not a madman nor tyrant by any historical standard. And, aside from the initial violence of the revolutionary war, Cuba has enjoyed a long peace under Castro's rule. Cuba had some limited experience of constitutional government, prior to the hated Batista fascist dictatorship, but that was under the direct domination of the US in the interest of big business (--US direct intervention and creation of a protectorate, after Cuba broke from Spain). It is not as if Cuba had a long history of democracy that Batista overturned, and that Castro then defied in creating a communist government. By the end of Batista's bloody reign, Cuba was infested with Mafia gambling interests and US corporations. These interests would have undermined and overthrown any normal democratic government--as was happening throughout Latin America. Communism was a way to expel them, and to consolidate Cuba's SELF-DETERMINATION. That is what Castro did--in my view--and why he is so revered. He preserved Cuba's independence, by turning it into a communist state. He is much more comparable to George Washington than to Pinochet or other radical fascist dictators. George Washington spilled a great deal of blood in securing U.S. independence, and was so highly regarded that he was offered a king's crown--which he rejected (to his everlasting credit). Castro didn't exactly accept a crown--but acquired some of the characteristics of a monarch, as the "protector" of Cuba's identity, independence, and stability, and is regarded in a similar way to Washington, as the unifying figure of the country. And Castro has become, in addition, the advocate of self-determination in other Latin American countries, whatever economic path they choose (--and all of the recent leftist governments have chosen a mixed socialist/capitalist economy, combined with strong democratic principles).
Castro's friendships with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and presumably with Rafael Correa (just elected) in Ecuador, are fascinating in that all of these governments are strongly democratic, with raucous and lively political dissent on all sides. They were elected by the people--all of them in highly monitored elections--and do not hold power as the result of revolutionary violence. All oppose US hegemony in Latin America--particularly neo-liberal exploitation via "free trade" (global corporate piracy), and World Bank/IMF gross interference. This is generally the view of ALL of the new leftist leaders in Latin America--in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua--and of growing leftist movements in Peru, Paraguay and Mexico. But all of these new leaders nevertheless favor mixed economies, with strong elements of social justice. They are not communist states, not even close to it. What I am getting at is that, when Cuban communism was established, there was no other way to achieve majority rule--rule that would benefit all, especially the vast, poor, exploited majority. Every time democracy arose, the US in cahoots with local rich elites smashed it to pieces. And now there is another way--achieved by long hard work on TRANSPARENT elections and other democratic institutions--a credit to the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, and to millions of grass roots civic activists throughout Latin America.
So, why do democratically elected presidents like Chavez and Morales admire Castro, a reputed dictator? One, because he stood up for Latin American INDEPENDENCE when it was extremely difficult to do so, and two, because of the obvious benefits to the Cuban people of Cuban communism. Venezuela, for instance--where the rich elite entirely neglected the education of the populace--lacked doctors to staff the new medical clinics for the poor. And there was Cuba, with many doctors--due to the free university education in Cuba. So Venezuela traded cheap oil for doctors, and now provides a free education through university to all Venezuelans, and sends its students who are seeking a medical degree to Cuba to be educated. The benefits of Cuban communism are obvious. It is not the way that Venezuela or Bolivia have chosen to go. But it is one way, and it is respected.
Here in the US, we are subject to unrelenting--and often quite stupid--propaganda against communism and against Cuba. For instance, the comment upthread that Castro is like Pinochet is just stupid. It flies in the face of the facts. And our viewpoint on political dissent is similarly skewered by the corporate news monopolies that control all news and opinion in this country (with the exception of the internet--may it be free forever!). How free is political dissent in THIS country--when even the mild dissent of the Democratic Party is greeted with anthrax envelopes, politicians' planes falling out of the air, and "swift-boating," when elections are stolen by Bushite corporations using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems, and when political opinion is dominated by "talking points" from the president's political aide and from billionaires' rightwing "think tanks"? Are we any freer than the Cubans under Castro? It is arguable that we are nothing of the kind.
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and much of Latin America is choosing the middle way, with one eye toward the benefits of socialism, and the other eye toward the benefits of capitalism, trade and business, and rejecting the extreme forms of both (communism, fascism). They are able to do this because they have a SANE view toward the world, unlike us north Americans, whose government and its propaganda machine, the corporate news monopolies, promulgate INSANITY in every sphere, from economics to war policy. We need to learn, from the saner view prevalent in these Latin American democracies, what the possibilities are, and what sort of government and economic policy would be best for us, and then we need, somehow, to achieve it, as they are doing.
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