Harry Targ
December
31, 2009
This month the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. This revolution, and its bigger than life heroes and heroines, has been an inspiration to peoples from the Global South, and progressives, particularly youth, in developed countries. For all its flaws, the Cuban Revolution validates the slogan of international activists who chant: "Another World is Possible."
Happy 50th Anniversary Cuba!
(Below I insert a few commentaries I have written over the years on Cuba).
Reflections on the Cuban Revolution
Today
President Bush (February, 2008) now
travels through the African continent trumpeting the United States as a model
for the peoples of the Global South. At the same time Fidel Castro steps down
as Cuba’s chief of state stimulating reflections on the role of the Cuban
revolution at home and abroad. Which country has had a more progressive impact
on the historical development of the world?
Despite enormous changes and advances since the 1959 Cuban revolution, Cuba
remains part of the Global South (what used to be referred to as “Third World”
or “developing countries”), a world which has been shaped and distorted in its
economics and politics for 400 years by the global capitalist system. Cuba,
while in many ways a developed and even industrialized country, remains closer
in economic profile and diplomatic standing and possibility to the nations of
Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America than the industrial capitalist
countries of North America, Europe, and Japan
In the words of C. Wright Mills reflecting on the Cuban revolution at its
outset, Cuba remains part of the “hungry bloc,” not in the sense of poverty and
scarcity as he meant it-Cuba is part of the developed world in these terms- but
in the sense of still struggling to achieve its right and capacity to define
its own destiny. In fact, it could be argued that Cuba’s “hunger” for
self-determination, its spirit of nationalism, is what drove the revolution in
the nineteenth century, in the 1930s, in 1959 and still drives the revolution
today.
The spirit of revolution links Cuba’s past to its present. There have been
other continuities in Cuban history as well, particularly since 1959. The most
obvious one has been the hatred and aggressive stance of the United States. The
United States suspended formal diplomatic relations with the island nation
before President Eisenhower left office, launched a full-scale economic
blockade of Cuba in the Kennedy period, initiated a long-term program of
subversion and sabotage of the islands economy and polity, and extended the
blockade to pressure other countries to cut their ties to the island’s economy.
The hostile United States policy since the 1950s has been driven by the needs
and hopes of capitalism; cold war fears of “communism;” the “realpolitic”
philosophy which says that Cuba is within the U.S. sphere of influence; and the
historically claimed right of the U.S. to control Cuba’s destiny enshrined in
the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s.
Despite this hostility, since 1959 there has been a high level of support for
the revolution among Cubans because it provided substantial economic advances
for the people and satisfied their thirst for self-determination. Consequently,
even during the “special period” of the 1990s support, while declining, held
because the revolution continued to represent the spirit of nationalism for the
vast majority of the Cuban people.
Finally, a continuous element of the Cuban revolution has been change and a
pragmatic spirit that addresses needs, possibilities, and dangers as they
arise. Cuba has been one vast laboratory experiment in which new policies,
priorities, and programs have been introduced to meet the exigencies of the
moment. Alongside inevitable dogmatisms and bureaucratic resistances has been
the willingness of Cubans to throw out the old, the unworkable, the threatened,
and replace it with the new as history requires (shifting from fertilizer,
pesticides, and hybrid seeds to organic agriculture for example). Over its long
history the revolution ended foreign ownership of the Cuban economy. It created
an egalitarian society. It provided health care, education, jobs, and a rich
cultural life for most of its citizens.
At the most fundamental level, the revolution fulfilled all of the economic and
social goals Fidel Castro articulated in his 1953 “History Will Absolve Me”
speech. For most Cubans alive before 1959, there is no question that the
revolution has been an outstanding success. This is true for their sons and
daughters if one could compare what would have been their possibilities before
1959 with what they have achieved today. The revolution has worked.
And finally, in the great debate between the U.S. and Cuba as inspirations and
models for most of the citizens of the globe, Fidel Castro might say again
“History Will Absolve Me.”
Cuban Revolution Survives Economic
Crisis; Still a Challenge to Market Orthodoxy
by Harry Targ
Summer, 1999
The Cuban revolutionary government, challenged by the United States for forty
years still survives in a post-cold war international system. The scruffy band
of guerrilla fighters, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, came to power in
1959, dethroning long-time dictator and U.S. client Fulgencia Batista.
From the beginning the United States engaged in sabotage, external attacks, an
economic blockade, ending diplomatic relations, and prohibiting U.S. tourists
from traveling to the island, all to undermine the regime and generate enough
opposition to the Castro forces to overthrow it. Despite well publicized policy
"changes" in recent weeks, the Clinton Administration is still
committed to the overthrow of the Cuban revolution. But why?
THE POWER OF A GOOD EXAMPLE
Primarily, the Cuban political and economic system remains committed to its own brand of national autonomy and socialism. The Cuban state continues to provide free health care and education, a basic rationed diet of food to all Cubans, almost free housing, and free and low-cost cultural attractions to all Cubans. Racism, and more recently sexism and homophobia, has been significantly reduced in Cuban society. And, even in the face of sabotage and covert operations against the island nation, political democratization at the local, regional, and national levels has been increasing.
Even while Cuba's articulated autonomous, communitarian, egalitarian, socialist principles are not fully achieved, the island nation 90 miles from the United States represents a challenge to what Clinton supporters call "market democracies." For the United States, all nations must cut back government programs, end supports for the disadvantaged, sell off profitable and efficient state-owned enterprises and "let the market" manage peoples’ lives. For the Cubans, "the magic of the marketplace" would mean giving up national autonomy to the 250 multinational corporations and banks that dominate the global economy, the end to free health services and education, and the dramatic shift in the distribution of the wealth of the country from the vast majority to tiny minorities (including Miami Cubans who would return to claim properties their families left over 40 years ago). In short Cuba remains an alternative model of social, political, and economic development for poor countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This the U.S. seeks to challenge.
CUBA SHIFTS FROM SURVIVAL TO REDEVELOPMENT
How is Cuba surviving the radical changes in the world and its own economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991? The collapse of the Socialist Bloc led to deep economic crisis for Cuba. Between 1991 and 1994, the Cuban gross domestic product declined by 35%, imports dropped by 75%, oil imports declined by half, and caloric intake dropped from roughly 2800 to 1735 per day. The impacts of the 40-year U.S. economic embargo in this context became all the more costly to Cuba (1997 estimates say the embargo cost the Cuban economy $800 billion just for that year alone).
The Cubans were forced to adapt to the collapse of socialism and the complete global capitulation to "marketplace" global capitalism. In 1994-95 a series of new laws were put in place to facilitate economic recovery. They included the legalization of the dollar in local transactions, shifting agriculture from state farms to agricultural cooperatives owned by groups of farmers, the opening of private agricultural markets for the sale of surplus produce, the legalization of small business enterprises run by families, and the legalization and expansion of foreign investment, particularly to encourage joint venture investments with foreign companies. (Only U.S. investors have been excluded, not by the Cuban government but by the United States government).
As to economic strategy, the Cubans committed themselves to rebuilding their
tourist industry, expanding their innovative pharmaceutical and biotechnology
industries for export, maintenance and enhancement of traditional exports such
as nickel, sugar, tobacco, and citrus, increasing research and development of
energy resources, and encouraging small enterprises as an alternative to the
black market.
By 1998, Cuba had joint venture agreements with 340 foreign companies, oil and
gas production had risen, tourism had earned upwards of $2 billion per year,
and tourist and housing construction on the island had grown markedly.
The Cuban economy has made significant advances since the depths of the economic
crisis in 1993-94 (caloric intake on a daily basis is up to 2,400 from the
desperate 1,735 figure and the vital health and education systems survive even
in weakened form) but life remains hard for most Cubans. Many must work two
jobs. Those with access to dollars live easier lives than those that do not
(maybe half the population) creating a modest but potentially destabilizing
system of economic stratification.
Tourism has created boom times but also prostitution, ugly commercialism,
overcrowding, and some unsavory cultural penetration by those from European,
North American, and Latin American societies.
However, while Cuba has been forced to make significant changes in economic
policy to relink with the capitalist global economy, it remains committed to
the original goals of the revolution-healthy, well-fed, educated citizens- and
sees the state as playing a significant role in maintaining and enhancing these
goals. Hence, Cuba continues as a challenge to the dominant market orthodoxy
that is sweeping the world and continues to the present, in word and deed, the
vision of altruistic women and men of all races struggling together to achieve
a better world for all.
Reflections
on Cuba: The Starved Rock Metaphor Still Holds
Harry R. Targ
Summer, 1994
When I was a small child my parents took me to Starved Rock State Park in
LaSalle, Illinois. Three hundred years earlier, on a rock formation 125 feet
above the Illinois River a community of Native Americans took refuge while
being attacked by enemies from below. Fully surrounded, cut off from the
outside world and its sustenance, they eventually died of hunger and thirst.
As I returned from my latest trip to Cuba in June,1994, the image of a proud,
defiant, and encircled people starved to death by a more powerful enemy flashed
across my mind. I had traveled there as a member of a delegation of
philosophers and social scientists attending an international conference at the
University of Havana. It occurred to me that the metaphor of Starved Rock better
represents the reality of relations between the United States and Cuba than
more conventional metaphors given in the media. Since Cuba's social and
political revolution in 1959, the media and the U.S. government have depicted
American-Cuban relations as a battle between good and evil-between freedom and
tyranny, democracy and dictatorship, communism and capitalism-the hallmark of
the Cold War lens to the world. And now despite the end of the Cold War around
the world, the actual policies of the United States toward Cuba remain the
same, as if nothing had changed.
Despite the efforts of journalists and politicians to portray Cuba in Cold War
terms, over the last decade scholars, peace activists, artists, health care
professionals and others have traveled to Cuba if they could show they had a
professional interest in doing so. Travelers to Cuba, along with scholars and
journalists, included Cuban-Americans who had been allowed to return home to
visit relatives. As a result of decisions made by President Clinton in August,
these categories of people, including researchers, will be severely restricted
in their travels to the island. A door which had been opening for research, and
scholarly dialogue, such as my annual participation since 1990 in the meetings
of North American and Cuban philosophers and Social Scientists, may be ended.
Those of us who have visited Cuba over the last several years have gained a
clearer picture of the changes occurring there. Those changes, as well as the
history of Cuban-American relations, suggest that U.S. foreign policy toward
Cuba is misguided. For example, it is vital to remember that the Cuban economy
and political system were shaped by 450 years of Spanish colonial rule,
followed by 60 years of almost total United States control of Cuban economic
and political life. Significant United States investments in the Cuban sugar
industry began in the 1880s and expanded dramatically over the next 30 years.
This was paralleled by the U.S. intervention in Cuba's war with Spain in the 1890s
and the virtual U.S. military occupation of the island after the end of the
so-called Spanish-American War. By the time of the revolution in Cuba in 1959,
U.S. investors controlled 80 percent of Cuba's public utilities, 90 percent of
its mines, 90 percent of its cattle ranches, 50 percent of its railways, and 40
percent of its sugar. Twenty-five percent of the deposits in its banks belonged
to Americans. Also U.S. influence over Cuba's destiny was insured by agreements
in the 1930s guaranteeing the American purchase of about 65 percent of Cuba's
sugar crop. Finally, Americans owned Havana's lavish hotels and casinos. In
short, by the time of the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cuba's economy depended on
foreign-owned exports and a foreign owned tourist industry. Most importantly,
the wealth accumulated from that economy was disproportionately distributed
among small numbers of foreign investors and wealthy Cubans, leaving most of
the population in poverty.
The inequitable economic system that had been created in the era of Spanish
colonialism and reproduced later under U.S. control was maintained by a Cuban
dictatorship supported by the United States. By the 1950s, powerlessness and
poverty had created revolutionary ferment. Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro
articulated goals of economic and political democracy, improved health care,
better education and housing, and the diversification of an economy free from
foreign control.
Throughout the eight U.S. administrations since the late 1950s (with only a modest
reduction of tension during the Carter years), U.S. foreign policy has opposed
the Cuban revolution. From the time of the first agrarian reform program in May
1959 that expropriated the very largest U.S. and Cuban landowners, the United
States has supported the destabilization and overthrow of the Cuban regime.
Although the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco when the Central Intelligence Agency
planned invasion of Cuba with 1,400 dissident Cuban refugees was crushed in
three days, the efforts to overthrow the revolutionary government continued.
Before the Bay of Pigs the U.S. canceled sugar purchases, created an economic
blockade of the island, and ended diplomatic recognition. Since the failed
invasion the U.S. has pressured allies to end their ties to Cuba, supported
subversion and assassination teams, funded various projects to destroy crops on
the island, encouraged defections and the flow of refugees to the United
States, supported at least 12,000 Cuban refugees in various covert and other
anti-Cuban projects in Florida, and periodically has threatened the island with
U.S. military assault. The United States low intensity war on Cuba gained
another weapon when Congress voted to create Radio Marti in 1983 and TV Marti
in 1990. These beam anti-Castro propaganda to the island. In 1992 Congress
further tightened the economic blockade by passing the Torricelli Bill which
restricts foreign corporations partially owned by U.S. multinational
corporations from trading with Cuba.
Few in our country know that while the U.S. hostility forced Cuba to seek
alliance with the former Soviet Union, the tiny island nation went to great
lengths to establish its own international identity and to carry out economic
programs at home that sometimes contradicted Soviet advise. For example, it was
Cuba and not the Soviet Union that initiated support for the MPLA government of
Angola in 1975. At home, Cuba for a time adopted policies based upon moral
rather than material incentives towards work in the 1960s over the objections
of Soviet advisers. In the 1980s the Cubans carried out economic policies of
"rectification" that were defined as different from those of the
Soviet Union. It is true that Cuba traded many of its agricultural commodities,
such as sugar, tobacco, citrus products, medicines, and health services to the
Soviet Union for oil, heavy machinery and other products not otherwise
accessible to Cuba. In fact, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Eastern European Bloc, Cuba carried out 85 percent of its trade with them. But
it negotiated trade agreements, not handouts. The distinction is important
because for thirty years U.S. administrations portrayed Cuba as a mere
extension and tool of the Soviet Union. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
With the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, its chief trade partner, Cuba has
initiated a variety of reforms to make up for its losses. It has committed
itself to increase tourism to earn valuable and scarce foreign exchange;
established joint ventures in this sector with investors from Spain, Great
Britain, Canada, and other countries; passed new laws encouraging foreign
investment; expanded its sophisticated government program of biotechnological
research; and increased exports of new serums and medical equipment to a
variety of countries. And despite the portrait in the U.S. media of a country
isolated from the rest of the world, Cuba has expanded its trade ties with
Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Further, it has enacted reforms allowing Cubans to use dollars to purchase
scarce goods in newly established dollar stores, transformed state-run farms to
agricultural cooperatives, and legalized the establishment of small private enterprises.
Debates about these changes have occurred on Cuban television and in thousands
of workplaces around the country.
Even before the current economic crisis Cuba had initiated a variety of reforms
to rekindle enthusiasm for the revolution and engage Cubans more directly in
decisions affecting their lives. The program referred to as a campaign for
"rectification," sought to increase worker participation in factory
decisions, to get people within communities to construct new housing and public
buildings with materials provided by the government, and to return defense to
local militias. Central to the campaign has been efforts to involve young
people and women more directly in politics.
Reforms have continued into the 1990s. Last year's election was changed to give
Cubans more of a voice in the political process. In prior elections, people
voted for representatives to municipal assemblies, which in turn selected the
provisional assemblies that then selected national legislators. In the 1993
election, however, Cubans voted directly for candidates for the national
legislative body. Eighty-three per cent of the legislators selected are serving
for the first time, including larger numbers than ever before of young people,
women, and Cubans of color.
Evidence suggests that, despite Cuba's serious economic problems, most Cubans
still support their government. At the time of the 1993 election, rightwing
Cuban-American broadcasts from Miami urged Cubans to reject Castro's regime by
not voting or by defacing their ballots. But more than 90 per cent of eligible
voters did vote, and less than 10 per cent defaced their ballots or left them
blank. Despite the fact that most U.S. media outlets never mentioned the Cuban
elections, many scholars and researchers observing the election saw it as a
referendum affirming the Cuban government. Even Cubans who blame the government
for Cuba's economic hardships regard militantly right-wing Cuban Americans,
such as Jorge Mas Canosa of the Cuban American National Foundation, who has
been a close advisor on Cuban affairs to Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton,
as more of a threat than the economic crisis. Most Cubans on the island see the
vocal Cuban Americans as political descendants of the former hated dictator
Batista and his henchmen.
In sum, several of Cuba's economic difficulties are rooted in its history of
colonial rule and then U.S. domination, economic embargo, and political and
military hostility. But the Cuban revolution has survived, creating a humane
regime for most of its population with particular successes in health care,
education, housing, and science. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates are
similar to the United States, the literacy rate is 97 per cent, one-third of
the entire population is engaged in some kind of education, and there are
eleven times more teachers now than before the revolution. While poor by many
indicators, Cuba, compared to most Third World countries, stands out for its
social and economic development and remains, even with its current
difficulties, an inspiration for millions of peoples around the world.
The implications for U.S. policy seem clear: It is time for a change. Our
policy of trying to starve the island is inhumane and out of touch with the
desires of most Cubans, whom we claim to be trying to free. Our policies are
irrational given the fact that the cold war that gave rise to them is over.
Cuba is no longer allied with a superpower enemy of the United States. Cuba is
reforming its economic and political system in line with changes occurring
around the world. And, finally, most Cubans, fiercely nationalistic and proud
of their revolution, reject what the Clinton Administration and its
Cuban-American political allies offer them: a return to a pre-1959 era of
poverty and powerlessness for the many.
It is time for the United States to begin negotiating the end of its economic
blockade and to forge political, economic, cultural, and scientific connections
with the island. It seems unlikely that U.S. policy will change, however, until
the American public becomes more informed about the history of Cuban-American
relations and the current state of affairs in Cuba. Those of us who have
visited and studied Cuba must continue to speak out and need to be heard, for
surely mutual isolation and hostility are unnatural for two countries just 90
miles apart.
Harry R. Targ is professor of political science at Purdue University. He is the author of Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 1992.
