Samuel Farber

The call to “unity” around the Castro government has become ever more urgent with the gradual but definitive increase of Internet access, especially among the youth, the professional and technocratic strata, and among those with a university education…

Mainstream critics have for some time been arguing for the establishment of a free-market economy, which they present as the only “rational” alternative to the bureaucratic economic management of Communist Party rule.

I am glad that Rafael Rojas responded to my review of his book Fighting Over Fidel. Unfortunately, however, his reply practically ignored my main arguments and almost exclusively concerned itself with the least important points of my review.

It was — and still is — possible to criticize and oppose the social and political system established in Cuba while strongly reiterating opposition to US intervention whether it takes the form of military invasion, terrorist sponsorship, or economic blockade.

Not all of the opposition forces in Cuba are happy about the visit starting Sunday of US president Obama to the island. The same divide exists in the Cuban-American community in the exile stronghold of Miami.

When in the 1950s, I became involved in the struggle against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, one of our teachers remarked that we had no real reason to criticize the state of our country because so many other nations in the region — such as Bolivia and Haiti — were much worse off than us.

In Cuba the one-party state is a very controversial question that few of the left-wing critics of the Cuban regime have been willing to address. What follows is an attempt to explore, from the left, some of the issues around this topic.

“On December 17, 2014, Washington and Havana agreed to a pathbreaking change in a relationship that, for more than fifty years, was characterized by US efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, including the sponsorship of invasions, naval blockades, economic sabotage, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks,” notes Samuel Farber.