Cuba After Castro?

[Karmadillo]

I was doing some research on Latin America and came across this article. Not sure if it's been posted here before (it's from 2002), but thought people might find it interesting. If anyone has any good links on Cuba, I'd very much appreciate your posting them.

http://www.alternet.org/story/14066

It is possible that Cuba after Castro's death will find itself saddled with a government that mouths the rhetoric of the revolution, but destroys the institutions that make Cuba so remarkable.

In front of the most popular ice cream shop in Havana there is an oft-photographed billboard -- a photo of Castro, looking old and grizzly but still fierce. He is caught mid-speech, mouth open and soft, finger raised in the air to illustrate his point. Below the photo, in big letters, are the words: Contra el Terrorismo y Contra la Guerra. Against Terrorism and Against War.

It sounds sane and rational. For those of us in the States who have had difficulty stating a similar position without being branded traitors or terrorist-sympathizers, it's inspiring to see the message displayed so openly. But while it continues to provide a measure of inspiration to the solidarity brigades that come from all over the world, increased tourism and continuing shortages and restrictions mean that Cuba is having a harder time inspiring hopefulness and energy in its own people.

One's impressions of Cuba depend a lot on one's expectations. Anyone visiting Cuba, and especially anyone who visited the Soviet Union when there was such a thing or traveled to China in the last 10 years, would probably be pleasantly surprised by the amount of unregulated joy found on almost any Cuban street. People burst into song, play guitar and woo each other by the ocean's edge, and dance so well their clothes seem to want to fly off their bodies.

Returning on a packed truck from a beach in Santiago, I found myself surrounded by dueling songs. A woman would start a song, all the other women would join in, and then the men would respond with a (usually more sexually explicit) song of their own. At a few points, the songs converged and then the whole truck, including the driver, would shout out the chorus (Bad! No! Good! Yes! -- this was the chorus I remember best). I tried in vain to picture my rush-hour subway car, similarly crowded, breaking out in unified song.

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[Warpy]

1. I hope Castro has chosen wisely

and that his successor may move toward a somewhat more mixed economy, with control of the means of large scale production owned in common. I sincerely hope he keeps the wonderful health and education systems in place. I sincerly hope that control and repression don't become the order of the day, they way they have here in the US.

I have heard people break into song on a city bus, but not for a very long time...

[Delano]

2. I hope all the Miami rightwing Cubanns take their asses HOME!

For three years living in Miami, I had to listen to these fanatics rant and rave about Castro, Cuba, "Communist-sympathizing" democrats, as though fucking Cuba was the center of the world. Rather than becoming a part of our society, they completely took over Miami, elbowing everybody, including other Hispanics, out.

I'm sure there are at least a million Cubans who are fanatic anti-Castro loons - surely enough to muster a flotilla of boats and guns to take the guy out.

But no, they stay up here, and run for office on an anti-Castro (rather than locally oriented) agenda, send money to their families in Cuba, all the while bitching and moaning about how Castro is worst than Hitler and Stalin combined.

I'm so happy to be out of Miami, and away from their insanity. I hope they all take the occasion of Fidel's death as a perfect time to return to the island and re-make it into the plutocratic banana republic of their dreams.



BTW, I don't care for Castro at all, I think he's a pretty bad dictator, but these people have no sense of perspective....

[Karmadillo]

3. Related: Latin America Is Growing Impatient With Democracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/international/americas/24PERU.html?ex=1088654400&en=2dcfe2961f86b15b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

ILAVE, Peru — On a morning in April, people in this normally placid spot in Peru's southeastern highlands burst into a town council meeting, grabbed their mayor, dragged him through the streets and lynched him. The killers, convinced the mayor was on the take and angry that he had neglected promises to pave a highway and build a market for vendors, also badly beat four councilmen.

The beating death of the mayor may seem like an isolated incident in an isolated Peruvian town but it is in fact a specter haunting elected officials across Latin America. A kind of toxic impatience with the democratic process has seeped into the region's political discourse, even a thirst for mob rule that has put leaders on notice.

In the last few years, six elected heads of state have been ousted in the face of violent unrest, something nearly unheard of in the previous decade. A widely noted United Nations survey of 19,000 Latin Americans in 18 countries in April produced a startling result: a majority would choose a dictator over an elected leader if that provided economic benefits.

Analysts say that the main source of the discontent is corruption and the widespread feeling that elected governments have done little or nothing to help the 220 million people in the region who still live in poverty, about 43 percent of the population.

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[vetwife]

4. we'll steal that too......

[Karmadillo]

5. KIck

n/t