Cuba Libre!
James Bloodworth is an unusual writer because as someone who is very clearly on the left of politics, he is not remotely misty-eyed about the true nature of regimes like Cuba unlike, say, his contemporary Seumas Milne at The Guardian who never has a good word to say about America, for example, yet never a bad word to say about the kind of repressive government presided over by Raul Castro.
Cuba: Obama gets it - the best way to defeat the Castro brothers is to end the embargo
The embargo is the excuse that for half a century has kept on giving
By JAMES BLOODWORTH - The Independent 
One small claim to fame of mine is that I was present during Fidel Castro’s final public speech as Cuban President back in 2006. Stood at a lectern about 50 yards from me, El Maximo Lider harangued the relatively small crowd for over two hours, littering his speech with the usual denunciations of ‘Yankee imperialism’, ‘capitalist monopolies’ and – I particularly enjoyed this part – ‘Bush and Blair’.
For a young revolutionary tourist like myself the spectacle of the bearded ideologue in full flow was subversively exciting: I hated all of those things too, or at least I thought I did. Like so many who pretend to despise the boring machinations of liberal democracy I was passionately rooting for the romanticism of Che Guevara over the banal compromises of the capitalist system. And so beards, green fatigues and tropical exuberance were in and Starbucks and McDonalds were most definitely out.
But in reality the ‘plucky Caribbean island’ was no tropical Shoreditch and what I witnessed was the stage-set Cuba rather than the grim and Spartan reality. I was a Useful Idiot, in other words; a person who would valorise the 95 per cent literacy rate on the island without telling you that it was the Cuban Government which decided what a person was allowed to read. Like many a pampered comrade, I rallied against the ‘superficiality’ of McDonald’s and Burger King while forgetting that plastic food is incomparably better than no food at all.
And yet one of the most dispiriting things in politics is the way that people feel the need to defend those superficially on their own ‘side’. Cuba is nominally socialist therefore all opposition is – and once was in my view - invariably ‘right-wing’ and ‘reactionary’.
Yet in reality any socialist or liberal ought to stand in vehement opposition to the Government in Havana. Cuban labour rights are virtually non-existent. There are no independent trade unions and freedom of expression is non-existent. The Cuban media in its printed form, with its endless stories of fraternal visits by North Korean officials and eulogies to Fidel Castro, was most accurately described by the late Argentinean editor and dissident Jacobo Timerman as “a degradation of the act of reading”.
All of this explains why the most penetrating critiques of Cuban socialism come not from the foaming-at-the-mouth right but from the progressive left. As Carlos Franqui, the closest thing Cuba has to its own George Orwell, once put it, “The socialist world is not socialist; it’s the world where the people are forced to work and to endure permanent rationing and scarcity, where they have neither rights nor freedoms.”
Not that you would know any of this from listening to our own trade union-sponsored Cuban Solidarity campaign.
Yet for all the repression and economic failure that have come to characterise Cuban ‘socialism’, successive American governments have helped to prolong the life of the moribund communist system through hubris and stupidity. The most striking example of this is the economic embargo, introduced in 1960 after Cuba decided to nationalise its large industries. As a tool of the US Government the embargo must register as one of the least effective foreign policy initiatives in US history. It hasn’t simply failed to topple the Castro brothers, but instead has helped them to cement their 55-year rule by portraying the US as all of the things the regime says it is: the bullying and controlling neighbour that wants to turn the island back into a corrupt brothel.
Thus when current Cuban President Raul Castro blames the embargo for “enormous human and economic damage” he isn’t simply lying like a good Stalinist. The embargo costs Cuba around £1.2 billion a year and directly increases the suffering of the Cuban people, exacerbating shortages in everything from medical supplies to baby food. Certain caveats introduced to the embargo more recently also threaten Cuban citizens with the loss of their homes based on spurious property claims originating in the 1950s.
And so for almost 60 years the Cuban people have been offered a Hobson’s choice by the Castro regime: stick with us or go back to the domination, racism and sordid excesses of American rule. The embargo is the excuse that for half a century has kept on giving: the mess around you is nothing to do with us, so the Castro brothers are allowed to say, instead it is the fault of unhinged American Congressmen who want to violently snatch back what was taken from their gilded friends half a century ago.
Fortunately Barack Obama has decided to stop listening to the shrill voices on Capitol Hill and, uniquely for an American President, appears to understand that the best way to defeat the Castro brothers is to take away their raison d'être by ending the immoral and counterproductive economic embargo. What a shame it has taken so long – and so many generations of impoverished and tyrannised Cuban citizens – to get to this point
But in reality the ‘plucky Caribbean island’ was no tropical Shoreditch and what I witnessed was the stage-set Cuba rather than the grim and Spartan reality. I was a Useful Idiot, in other words; a person who would valorise the 95 per cent literacy rate on the island without telling you that it was the Cuban Government which decided what a person was allowed to read. Like many a pampered comrade, I rallied against the ‘superficiality’ of McDonald’s and Burger King while forgetting that plastic food is incomparably better than no food at all.
And yet one of the most dispiriting things in politics is the way that people feel the need to defend those superficially on their own ‘side’. Cuba is nominally socialist therefore all opposition is – and once was in my view - invariably ‘right-wing’ and ‘reactionary’.
Yet in reality any socialist or liberal ought to stand in vehement opposition to the Government in Havana. Cuban labour rights are virtually non-existent. There are no independent trade unions and freedom of expression is non-existent. The Cuban media in its printed form, with its endless stories of fraternal visits by North Korean officials and eulogies to Fidel Castro, was most accurately described by the late Argentinean editor and dissident Jacobo Timerman as “a degradation of the act of reading”.
All of this explains why the most penetrating critiques of Cuban socialism come not from the foaming-at-the-mouth right but from the progressive left. As Carlos Franqui, the closest thing Cuba has to its own George Orwell, once put it, “The socialist world is not socialist; it’s the world where the people are forced to work and to endure permanent rationing and scarcity, where they have neither rights nor freedoms.”
Not that you would know any of this from listening to our own trade union-sponsored Cuban Solidarity campaign.
Yet for all the repression and economic failure that have come to characterise Cuban ‘socialism’, successive American governments have helped to prolong the life of the moribund communist system through hubris and stupidity. The most striking example of this is the economic embargo, introduced in 1960 after Cuba decided to nationalise its large industries. As a tool of the US Government the embargo must register as one of the least effective foreign policy initiatives in US history. It hasn’t simply failed to topple the Castro brothers, but instead has helped them to cement their 55-year rule by portraying the US as all of the things the regime says it is: the bullying and controlling neighbour that wants to turn the island back into a corrupt brothel.
Thus when current Cuban President Raul Castro blames the embargo for “enormous human and economic damage” he isn’t simply lying like a good Stalinist. The embargo costs Cuba around £1.2 billion a year and directly increases the suffering of the Cuban people, exacerbating shortages in everything from medical supplies to baby food. Certain caveats introduced to the embargo more recently also threaten Cuban citizens with the loss of their homes based on spurious property claims originating in the 1950s.
And so for almost 60 years the Cuban people have been offered a Hobson’s choice by the Castro regime: stick with us or go back to the domination, racism and sordid excesses of American rule. The embargo is the excuse that for half a century has kept on giving: the mess around you is nothing to do with us, so the Castro brothers are allowed to say, instead it is the fault of unhinged American Congressmen who want to violently snatch back what was taken from their gilded friends half a century ago.
Fortunately Barack Obama has decided to stop listening to the shrill voices on Capitol Hill and, uniquely for an American President, appears to understand that the best way to defeat the Castro brothers is to take away their raison d'être by ending the immoral and counterproductive economic embargo. What a shame it has taken so long – and so many generations of impoverished and tyrannised Cuban citizens – to get to this point
Cuba Libre (20 May 2014)
Here's an interesting article from The Guardian which tells the story of a young Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, who has set herself on a collision course with the state controlled media in Cuba.
I wish her well because Yoani has a tough fight on her hands and may end up going to jail for her belief in freedom of speech.
Cuban blogger to launch island's first independent digital newspaper
Yoani Sánchez's online publication called 14ymedio will challenge communist-ruled country's state-controlled media
Reuters in Miami - The Guardian
Yoani Sánchez will use online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba’s one-party system. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Cuba's prize-winning blogger, Yoani Sánchez, is launching the island's first independent digital newspaper next week to challenge the communist-ruled country's state-controlled media.
Sánchez said the online publication will be named 14ymedio, in honour of the year of its launch and the 14th-floor Havana apartment where she writes her popular Generation Y blog on daily life and politics in Cuba.
Going up against Cuba's heavy media restrictions will not be easy, she admitted in an announcement on her blog on Wednesday.
"It will be a difficult road. In recent weeks we have seen a preview of how official propaganda will demonize us for creating this medium," Sánchez wrote, adding that several of her online team have already received warning calls from Cuban state security officials prior to the official launch on 21 May. Public criticism of Cuba's communist system can be considered enemy propaganda, punishable by jail sentences.
Sánchez, 38, has won several prestigious media awards in the United States and Europe and has been included on Time magazine's annual list of 100 most influential people.
Vowing to be totally independent and transparent, Sánchez said she opted for online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba's one-party system, rather than becoming an opposition politician. "A reporter should not have any kind of militancy," she said.
Instead, she hopes 14ymedio "will support and accompany the necessary transition that is going to take place in our country".
Raul Castro: Man Alone in the Crowd
Raul Castro during a public event
The shouts, the posters, the slogans in a million voice chorus, awaken dormant, extinct sensations. Seeing the sea of people passing in front of the platform, his heart skips a beat in his chest. The red face, dilated pupils, goosebumps and tension in the jaw. They are the first symptoms of the excitement crowds provoke incaudillos. A ritual they need to dip their hand into from time to time, to avoid the solitude of power.
Autocrats invent marches, huge processions, lavish parades–”the biggest in the world”–to rejoice in their own authority. They know that they, and only they, can force a million people out of their beds in the early hours, load them onto buses, write down the names of every attendee, and set them to marching through a great plaza. To make it clear who’s the boss, to send a message by way of a crowd chanting their name, worshiping them and giving thanks. A “mass” that would never dare to stand down, people whom they don’t rub shoulders with, whom they fear and who–deep inside–they despise.
Today, in the Plaza of the Revolution, an elderly man in sunglasses will preside over the May Day event. Days ahead of time every rooftop near the place has been checked out and guards have been posted at the highest points in the city, calculating how a shot could be fired at the platform. His own grandson will remain close to protect him and a fleet of cars will be waiting “in case something happens” and he has to escape. He doesn’t trust the very crowd that he himself has summoned.
The autocrat is afraid of his own people. Fear and suspicion. The feeling is mutual. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of heads he looks down upon are there… because they fear him, not because they love him.
