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Barack Obama and Sixty Years of Cuban Agony

By Walter Donway

March 23, 2016

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President Obama spoke to the people of Cuba—standing side by side with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, a declared communist for more than half a century, who was awarded the Soviet Union’s Order of Lenin.

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama, with his wife and two daughters, began a state visit to communist Cuba, and spoke that afternoon to the people of Cuba—standing side by side with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, a declared communist for more than half a century, who was awarded the Soviet Union’s Order of Lenin.

Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was a refugee to America after the murderous Bolshevik communist takeover of 1917, in Russia, which extinguished the few months of freedom that followed the overthrow of the Czar by the forces of liberation. It was from Russia’s first free democratic government that Lenin and the Bolshevik cadres seized power.

Ayn Rand incisively identified “dictatorship” by four characteristics.

 

Political Prisoners

Mr. Obama gained, at least arguably, the release of 53 political prisoners. In just half a year, Cuba’s secret police arrested 7,188.

The first is imprisonment or execution without trial for “political” crimes. The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) HRW stated:

“In December 2014, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease restrictions on travel and commerce with the island in exchange for several concessions by the Cuban government, including a commitment to release 53 political prisoners…

“The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN)—an independent human rights group the Cuban government views as illegal—received over 7,188 reports of arbitrary detentions from January through August 2014…”

Mr. Obama gained, at least arguably, the release of 53 political prisoners. In just half a year, Cuba’s secret police arrested 7,188.

In exchange for the less-than-convincing change of heart on political prisoners, Mr. Obama gives Cuba full diplomatic recognition. Opens full trade. Clears the way for a flood of tourism. And takes his family there so that in a talk to the Cuban people he can comment on the wonderful history, the great scenery, and, yes, the great food in Cuba. Today, in Cuba, private restaurants are permitted only 12 patrons at a time and must employ only family members.

 

One-Party Rule

The next characteristic of dictatorship is one-party rule. Not much argument, here; there has not been an election or any other political party but the Communist Party in Cuba since Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, and the executioner Che Guevara, came out of the Sierra Madre mountains in 1959 to seize power from the government of Fulgencio Batista, who had fled. HRW does not bother to mention elections because there simply are none..

 

Property Rights

The next characteristic is denial of property rights. Raul Castro supposedly has been struggling with this since Fidel Castro became ill and Raul Castro became head of the Cuban Communist Party and assumed all positions of power. In the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, Cuba ranks dead last in the entire region of Central and South America and the Caribbean.

But, in 2008, Mr. Castro hinted that cell phones might become legal. Also DVDs and microwaves. Maybe. Monthly wages in Cuba remain at an average of 20 U.S. dollars. It really is laughable, or tragic, to know that there was widespread starvation in Cuba’s “special period” (1989-1993) of famine when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its huge subsidies.

For a brief overall statement:

“The Cuban government has slowly and incrementally implemented limited economic reforms, including allowing Cubans to buy electronic appliances and cell phones, stay in hotels, and buy and sell used cars. The Cuban government also opened up some retail services to ‘self-employment’… Recent moves include permitting the private ownership and sale of real estate and new vehicles, allowing private farmers to sell agricultural goods directly to hotels, and expanding categories of self-employment.”

 

Freedom of Speech and Press

Finally, the defining feature of dictatorship is suppression of freedom of speech and press. As long as that freedom exists, a country’s citizens do not face government force with no recourse; they can speak out, write, and publish. No dictatorship, however, can tolerate or survive such freedom—and none ever has.

Here is HRW on freedom of expression in Cuba:

“The government controls all media outlets in Cuba and tightly restricts access to outside information, severely limiting the right to freedom of expression. Only a very small fraction of Cubans are able to read independent websites and blogs because of the high cost of, and limited access to, the Internet. While people in cities like Havana, Santiago de Cuba, or Santa Clara have access to the Internet, people in more rural areas are not able to go online.

“A May 2013 government decree directed at expanding Internet access stipulates that the Internet cannot be used for activities that undermine ‘public security, the integrity, the economy, independence, and national security’ of Cuba—broadly worded conditions that could be used against government critics….”

Cuba is a full-fledged dictatorship, a vicious anachronism in our time, ruled by a man who became a revolutionary at the height of the Cold War in the days of Joseph Stalin and for more than half a century, through collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Empire, the movement of the People’s Republic of China to a vibrant market economy, has dutifully enforced one of the few remaining socialist dictatorships in the world.

President Obama not only “opened” Cuba, which could have been done by formally upgrading our embassy and conceding some trade openings, he swept into Cuba with declarations of friendship and crucial mutual interests between the countries. He formally, but also personally, with a blaze of publicity, summoned American tourists to flood into Cuba.

Tourism has become critical to survival of the Cuban economy, which has stagnated, crushed by state control and regulation, permanently stunted by the escape to America of thousands of the most able Cubans, and crippled as Cuba’s one big crop, sugar, has been collapsing in price on international markets. But as Americans now swarm into Cuba, the dictatorship keeps its grasp on which Cubans may leave the country—no human right advocates, for example; which Cuban-Americans may come to visit—no political critics; and who can move within the country. Within the country, there is a desperate desire to move from rural areas to the big cities because socialist agriculture has led to near starvation. More pointedly, the government prevents dissidents from coming to the capital city for meetings.

Cuba is a full-fledged dictatorship, a vicious anachronism in our time, ruled by a man who became a revolutionary at the height of the Cold War in the days of Joseph Stalin and for more than half a century, through collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Empire, the movement of the People’s Republic of China to a vibrant market economy, has dutifully enforced one of the few remaining socialist dictatorships in the world. Only in contrast to his brother, Fidel, a mentality shaped by nothing but power lust, a mind frozen for half-a-century in Marxist ideology, impervious to any change, any fact—even, apparently, cell phones and DVDs—is Raul Castro more “liberal.”

And yet, if there has been a “formative” experience in Raul Castro’s life, it has been the astonishing shock of the collapse of the Soviet Union; he was Cuba’s liaison to the Soviet secret police (KGB) as early as 1953, and for years afterward. He knows that a dictatorship with absolute power over its people can collapse overnight. The only chance for survival of the Cuban communist dictatorship is tourism, which is now Cuba’s single greatest hope for new income. Even now, remittances to Cuban families from Cubans living in the United States is a mainstay against collapse.

In his speech today, in which Mr. Obama repeatedly did obeisance to the Castro brothers, he mentioned, in the most general terms, “human rights.” He said that the future of Cuba would be decided by Cubans, no one else. He should have specified he meant not one, two, or a dozen Cubans would make that decision, as they have for half a century, but the Cuban people at large. He said:

“At the same time, as we do wherever we go around the world, I made it clear that the United States will continue to speak up on behalf of democracy, including the right of the Cuban people to decide their own future. We’ll speak out on behalf of universal human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion. Indeed, I look forward to meeting with and hearing from Cuban civil society leaders tomorrow.”

Mr. Obama did not mention the almost-bizarre control of property rights to the point where the computer, internet, and cell phone revolution—today’s most crucial individual-to-individual global communication—are virtually nonexistent in Cuba. But the American press, cheerleading the visit, made much of the fact that one—one—internet café now would open in Havana.

Mr. Obama did not mention the arrest of political protestors, including arrests immediately before he arrived. He did not mention the thousands of Cuban political dissidents beaten, tortured, dying in Cuba’s prisons.

He did not mention the almost-bizarre control of property rights to the point where the computer, internet, and cell phone revolution—today’s most crucial individual-to-individual global communication—are virtually nonexistent in Cuba. But the American press, cheerleading the visit, made much of the fact that one—one—internet café now would open in Havana.

Mr. Obama said that in the future the Cuban people would decide their own future democratically. He did not say that this necessitates the end of the half-century monopoly of the Communist Party of Cuba.

He mentioned freedom of speech, the essence of freedom, but coupled it with freedom of religion. Then, saying no more about freedom of speech, he went into detail about freedom of religion and the Cuban Catholic Church. Raul Castro, born Catholic, educated in Jesuit schools, now in his mid-eighties, has said he will return to the Catholic Church. Perhaps, thus, he can avoid going to hell for his crimes, which began with the mass execution of Cuban soldiers when he and brother Fidel seized power.

 

Mr. Obama said that Raul Castro has agreed to welcome human rights groups into Cuba. For what? To deal with human sex trafficking, “which we agree is a profound violation of human rights.” At last, a human right upon which the United States and Cuba can agree—the right not to be a sex slave.

The opening of American-Cuban relations could have been handled far better. It could have been cast in realistic terms. The chief thing would be opening Cuba to American tourism and investment. That is what Raul Castro needs.

As Americans in thousands flood into Cuba, there is no possibility that the dictatorship will keep the lid on freer discussion, movement of publications, opening of the internet and cell phone traffic, and the flow of news between the two countries. The only recourse of the Cuban authorities—arrests of tourists, repression of their activities—will be impossible.

I am certain that Raul Castro knows that. And I entertain a fond hope—perhaps no more than that—that this is what he seeks as his fanatical, doctrinaire, murderous brother, 90 this August, nears death. Raul Castro always has been a quiet, efficient, undemonstrative man, not given to the rhetoric of propaganda and ideology.

Perhaps he will play Mikhail Gorbachev in Cuba, proposing to introduce freedom inside communism, knowing that any influx of freedom spells the approaching end of the long agony of the Cuban people.

May it be.

 

 

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