Fidel Castro Left Off the List
Isbel Díaz Torres
HAVANA TIMES — We’re so used to being the center of the universe here that I was surprised a few days ago when neither Cuba, nor the Cuban revolution, nor Fidel Castro were mentioned in a listing of Latin American leaders and revolutionary processes.
The list in question was cinematographer Tristan Bauer’s answer to a question from Tele Sur. As president of Radio y Televisión Argentina, the country’s public media system, Bauer was visiting Venezuela to partake in a meeting of intellectuals centered on the figure of Hugo Chávez.
The interviewer was Cuban journalist Rolando Segura, whom Bauer first answered by mentioning some of the continent’s great historic leaders like Simón Bolívar, José Martí, or the recently deceased Hugo Chávez.
I don’t even remember the exact question, but I know that it was one of those rhetorical ones, so dear to Cuban journalists, that aren’t backed by the need to address a real concern, but rather set the stage for the interviewee to say what they’re expected to say depending on their surroundings.
I, with my conditioned brain, was left feeling a little expectant, waiting for Cuba’s ex-president Fidel Castro to be included in the list, “as would be appropriate”. This didn’t happen. “Surely he preferred only to mention the dead ones,” I reasoned with myself.
I imagine that something similar happened to Segura, who came back with another question that would allow Bauer to speak of the region’s present and future. The answer came with another rattling off of names: Lula da Silva, Cristina Hernández, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales… He even mentioned Che’s quest, but nothing about either the Cuban revolution or Fidel.
Personally, aside from possible criticism about how he handled his position as head of the government, I consider that Fidel’s Castro’s contribution to the Left’s thoughts and actions, and his criticism of imperialism, are more than enough to justify his inclusion in this light and speedy enumeration, with more rights than Ortega, Lula or Cristina.
I don’t know if this happens to you, but for those if us who were born with Fidel on our television sets day and night, it’s a bit nostalgic to see him omitted from the list of glorious heroes (since he’s alive), and his absence from the superficially progressive movement that is currently being promoted by certain Latin American governments.
On the other hand, it’s equally significant that Fidel hardly appears in the political analyses that spontaneously generate on a daily basis among your average Cubans.
But back to me, and my preoccupation at seeing how my education, which centered on such a personality, still forcibly conditions my thinking. After all, what Brazilian cares whether Bauer mentions Lula or not?
The argentine film director, who made Illuminated by Fire (Iluminados por el fuego), was born in 1959, the year the insurrection triumphed on the island. Has he thought about this coincidence? Should it even matter to him?
What’s certain is that for decades, all life on this island had a single focus, which revolved around the figure of the revolution’s historic leader. Many of us embraced (or were tied to) this central axis and moved with it, sometimes even in opposition to certain opinions.
National debate agendas were set by themes suggested by Fidel. The opposition positioned itself based on these agendas, and the government supporters prepared their posters with the president’s most brilliant aphorisms.
It’s as if all of life began and ended in this paternal figure. I’m not even saying it was a plan designed to function this way. It’s just the way society worked. Those who had other opinions (and there always were) were annihilated as “anachronistic” and foreign.
Today, I see that this isn’t the case. I’m glad, and it seems fair, but it doesn’t keep me from feeling a faint sense of mourning for abandoning someone we once knew and who knew us well.
Or am I just indoctrinated?
Ok John, I will see your ‘lift the embargo and then compare’ challenge and raise you a ‘no foreign subsidies or aid, survive on their own’. We both know that Cuba would not last five years without converting to full-on capittalism.
I have never denied the animosity between the US and Cuba.
The US has indeed carried out espionage against Cuba, and in the 1960’s, acts of economic sabotage. The CIA even tried on several occasions to assassinate Fidel Castro. However, refusing to trade with Cuba cannot be characterized as an economic war. The US simply does not buy stuff from Cuba. Cuba is free to buy food and many other products from the US. Cuba is free to sell their products to the rest of the world.
So I haven’t ignored the effects of the US-Cuban relationship, but I simply pointed out to you that it wasn’t the point of Isbel’s essay topic.
You fail to realize that this state of perpetual animosity with the US has been the Castro brothers’ intentional policy. By maintaining the state of siege, they have been able crush internal opposition & hold on to power. Every attempt by the US to improve relations with Cuba has been thwarted by the Cuban government.
Do keep in mind the UNHDI survey was compiled from information provided to the UN by the Cuban government. No UN group or any other independent body has ever been allowed to gather their own social or economic data from Cuba. The statistics provided by the Cuban government are therefore deeply suspect. For example, an independent analysis of data obtained discretely determined that the Cuban infant mortality rate is in fact 50% higher than officially reported.
So my question to you remains: why can you not discuss the original question in the essay without lapsing into a diatribe about everything you hate about America? And why do you continue to live in America if it’s so damned horrible?
Griffin,
The fact that the most powerful country on Earth has been waging a propaganda, terrorist and now an economic war on the poor Cubans for 50 years seems not to have registered upon you.
By ignoring this you have declared yourself either an apologist and supporter of that policy and an openly dishonest debater or just someone who is ignorant of the historical context of Cuba’s societal problems that are based on economic conditions. .
In light of the U.N.’s high HumanDevelopment Index rating for Cuba DESPITE that 50 year war being waged upon the island’s entire population, an objective evaluation would say that the revolution has performed miracles given the adverse conditions under which it has had to exist.
That said, Cuba’s Leninist-elitist cadre form of government and economy- if benevolent in the area of human physical necessities to its great credit ..is anathema to my communist-anarchist sensibilities which are centered on a bottom-up democratic society.
Still, I would like to see just how Cuba’s socio-political- economic forms would work out in the absence of the 50 year “U.S. War On The People Of Cuba” before throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It makes a pi$$-poor argument to claim, as many do, that any form of communism or socialism is inherently doomed to failure and that Cuba’s systems have failed while simultaneously waging all-out economic war on that fragile economy in order to force it to fail .
And it hasn’t when you compare it with any other nation that is comparable in resources and population and not under attack form the United States.
Evaluating the Cuban Revolution requires a greater objectivity and understanding of the context in which it is forced to exist than is afforded the public by the anti-sociaist, counter-revolutionary Western media.
So where do you chose to live, John? In the US or in Cuba? You would never accept for yourself the restrictions on your freedoms and rights which you repeatedly argue the Cuban people don’t need. You recommend TED talks on YouTube to illustrate your point. These must be inventions of the fabulous Cuban Internet we’ve been hearing so much about, right?
By the way, the subject of Isbel’s essay was “what was Castro left off the list of revolutionaries” … It wasn’t what’s wrong with America. Why is it some people can’t for a minute stop and think critically about Castro’s failures without immediately changing the subject to America?
By any objective measure, the Cuban revolution has failed to deliver on the goals set out by Fidel. The regime lingers on by selling the country’s minerals, beaches an prostitutes to foreigners. But the revolutionary process is dead. A few idealistic Cuban intellectuals persist in believing in the ideals, but even they acknowledge the country is moving away from them. The ruling clique has certainly abandoned socialist egalitarianism. Instead the are moving as fast as they can toward a new model of the military-corporate monopoly.
Perhaps that’s why the Cuba was left off the list.
Not may countries will ever give credit to the man who has done more for Afrika in terms of liberation that any leader anywhere. For myself it is clear that had he not helped Neson or Angola that perhaps all would be forgiven
The US has failed miserably on the part of the Afrikan desc of esclavos los hijos y los mujeres and to this end would do well to look within
The Cubans know that they live in a form of benevolent dictatorship .
You seem unable to understand that you live in a dictatorship as well.
The U.S. is an oligarchy; in effect an ” unelected dictatorship of money which works behind the scenes to veto any elected official who might seek to change the foreign or domestic priorities of the imperial U.S. regime.” ( Herman and Patterson) .
The U.S is hardly a democracy since every candidate for national office is preselected by his or her ability to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars by selling his services to the very wealthy who pay their way into office.
It is not even a republic: a representative democracy since those elected via huge campaign donations serve the interests of those who legally bribe them.
If you’d like an easy-to-understand explanation of this check out the TED talk entitled “Lesterland” at You-Tube.
The dictatorship in Cuba shares the wealth of the nation with the Cuban people: all the Cuban people.
The dictatorship in the U.S. maintains a 25% poverty rate which has a large percentage of its children suffering from what is euphemistically described as ” food insecurity” ( look it up) some 40 million without adequate health care coverage and close to 20% chronically unemployed for years.
All those percentages are much larger in the poorer inner-city areas of the country and afflict people of color disproportionately .
Fidel is not nor will he ever be remembered favorably for the failed Soviet-style economy he has burdened the Cuba people to overcome. His notoriety, good and bad, has everything to do with his defiant stance towards the US. Furthermore, the lack of democracy in Cuba has served to identify categorize his legacy as a dictatorship. That is never a good thing. Every other leader mentioned in this post had governed in a democracy. Fidel, despite the sycophants who would hope for better, will never be held in same regard as other great leaders without the asterisk by his name. (* means Dictator)
Isbel,
Isn’t it strange.
The person interviewed omitted mentioning Fidel yet in so many fora in which comments from the U.S. public are invited, I have noticed that in the minds of many U.S. citizens, Fidel is still the president of Cuba .
Of course anyone in Latin America with an I.Q. above room temperature knows that Fidel retired some five years ago but the corporate media in the U.S has somehow failed to pass on this fact to much of the U.S. public.
He is forgotten by those who should remember him for making all left movements possible in the hemisphere and remembered by those who despise him for that same reason.
No, Isbel you are not ‘ndoctrinated’, *far* from that given the history of your shared thoughts. I think they were perhaps focusing on the ‘new’ figures from the Latin-American left whose procedures on what is called ‘Socialism of the 21st century’. Bolívar and Che’s ideals are from my point of view more relevant than Fidel’s on what Chávez or Lula did and Morales and Correa are still leading. Chill out.