Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
Two weeks ago, the President of Cuba, Raul Castro, announced that significant reforms would be made in his country through the legalization of real estate sales all across the Pearl of the Antilles. Contrary to the claims of right wing American political science journals such as the Atlantic Monthly, the Cuban model of socialism is far from on the verge of collapsing. Although this recent announcement heralds the advancement of the Cuban Revolution, the neoconservatives across the Gulf of Mexico have been waiting for decades for Cuba’s political system to cave in, attempting to twist half-truths and propagate outright lies for the best part of fifty years in order to convince the world that Cuba is some sort of Stalinist dictatorship. Nothing could be further from the truth.
After the revolution began in 1959, it is true that Fidel Castro ensured all homes immediately became the property of the state. Previously, under the despotic rule of the murderous Fulgencio Batista, Havana in particular was nothing more than a sordid bordello, brimming with brothels and drugs, and effectively run by infamous American mobsters such as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. Those who question why Fidel, Raul and Ernesto Guevara were so ruthless in their quest to nationalise every asset under the Latin-American sun need only read their history books to discover what a corrupt and wretched place 1950’s Cuba actually was.
The critics of the new regime, however, constantly grilled the leadership as to why it kept such a firm grip on power, asking why it was necessary to keep a hold on so many state assets when the country had essentially been ridden of organised crime. It might strike some as slightly surreal that the country asking these questions was the same one that implemented the puppet tyrant Batista in the first place, and previously imposed it’s own will on the people of Cuba in order to exploit their country for financial gain. Indeed, for nine administrations in a row, the US government made well over 600 attempts on Fidel Castro’s life, all the while asking him why his country wasn’t a stable democracy. But Cuba did not retaliate once.
In order to illustrate this challenge better, it’s necessary to go back to the 1930’s, and analyse the state of British democracy during World War II. When Adolf Hitler was at the channel port, democratic freedoms were curtailed, and there were no elections between 1935 and 1945 in Britain. Some might say that’s a glib comparison to make, but as Cuba has had to withstand fifty years of invasion, subversion, and blockade by the largest superpower in the world located just seventy-five miles away, it’s surely only natural that some democratic freedoms are suspended.
Yet still the neoconservative critics heap scorn on the leaders, instead of the praise it should be given for achieving a literacy rate of 96%, a higher average life expectancy rate than even the US, and the fact that there are virtually no homeless people at all in the country. These aren’t the statistics churned out by a propagandistic regime, they’re the facts presented by UNESCO, the WHO and UNICEF. Still, the critics such as the Cuban-American revisionist Humberto Fontova question why “so many” Cuban émigrés decide to sail on rafts to Miami to “flee” the country. This is probably the most bizarre cliché of them all. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of Cubans have never even attempted to do this, and the ones who do are playing right into the hands of Washington by unwittingly becoming actors in a publicity story. Washington paradoxically refuses to grant many visas, or even allow chartered flights from Cuba, but also states that any Cuban who illegally sets foot in the US after risking their life to sail to it will be welcome. However, it appears that the rest of the world is finally beginning to wake up to the reality of the situation. Two weeks ago Barack Obama was shamed when the annual vote at the UN on the Cuban blockade revealed that 186 countries were in favour of lifting the siege. The only two to vote against were the US and Israel.
The property changes currently being implemented are a natural step in the road to full democracy for the Cuban people. Only when the embargo has been fully lifted, and the United States lifts the state of war and siege on a country it has relentlessly bullied since 1959, will we finally see universal suffrage in Cuba. It may take a bit longer yet, but ultimately, democracy will triumph, and the world will finally see the true extent of what the July of 26th Movement sacrificed to accomplish. Fidel Castro was right, history will absolve him.
