The passing of Fidel Castro has evoked mixed
feelings for me. Initially I felt a
sense of disbelief, as if he might last forever as a living, breathing museum
piece legacy of the Cold War. Fidel was
a presence on the world stage for my whole life, and so his death struck me in the
manner that, say, the demise of Queen Elizabeth undoubtedly will when that time
comes.
Before Americans were taught by their leaders
to fear and hate Muslims, they feared and hated Communists. Cuba, so close to the United States, was a
particular source of unease. Our
mainstream news media played up the Castro regime’s repressiveness,
enthusiastically echoed by politicians and the exile community. That Fidel did not go the way of the leaders
of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, that it was not until after he stepped
aside in favor of brother Raul that Cuba began the first tentative steps on the
road toward capitalism already trod by China and Vietnam, caused consternation among American leaders.
On the other hand, Fidel’s death has elicited
laudatory retrospectives of his life, thought, and work among
progressives. I tend to view him in
terms of his whole record. By his own
admission he was a dictator, albeit a “sui
generis dictator.” His regime had an abysmal record on civil
liberties. It repressed and persecuted
the LGBT community. Castro was perfectly
willing to foment nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. His
emptying the jails of Cuba’s worst criminals during the Mariel boatlift was hardly a laudable gesture, either.
Notwithstanding all this, the Cuban
Revolution was a net gain for Cuba. For
the first time, Cuba was a fully sovereign nation. The revolution broke the grip of American
corporations and American organized crime on the economy. It brought about a fair distribution of
wealth. It placed agriculture in the
hands of the people who worked the land.
It led to Cuba having the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean as well
as having its best educated populace.
Most importantly, it made quality healthcare universally available, an
endeavor at which the United States has failed miserably.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing
“Special Period” did result in some dents in the revolution’s edifice. Raul Castro’s willingness to make concessions
to the neoliberal order is worrisome though inevitable. As the country reopens to American investment
and tourism one sees the specter of pre-1959 Cuba slowly rising like a
miasma. (Ironically, during the era when
the CIA toyed with a number of novel ways to assassinate Fidel, he shrugged off
the threat by saying that if he were to die the United States would then have
to contend with Raul and “he’s even more radical than I am!”) I wonder what Fidel may have thought of the
first signs of his work being undone.
Did he acquiesce to this process?
This seems unthinkable to the point of cognitive dissonance.
And so, Fidel’s death represents a further loss of hope of preserving the gains of the Cuban Revolution. I suppose all there’s left is the prospect
of playing roulette and blackjack at the Havana Hilton for the first time in
generations. Bring on the Yanqui tourists!
© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar
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