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Cuba : Just Another Third World Country
WASHINGTON : As Cuba approaches the 33rd anniversary of the Cuban revolution, dally life in Cuban cities has become as difficult as it was during the dire mld-1960's when even the most basic necessities were scarce or simply unavailable.
Shorn of its vanguard role tn the world socialist movement. Cuba is coming to resemble other Third World nations.
Nevertheless. President Fidel Castro remains as optimistic in 1991 as in December 1956, when he told the 11 bedraggled survivors of a guerilla invasion of Cuba that "the days of the dictatorship are numbered".
At 65. Castro continues to run Cuba as if he were leading a team of television adventure heroes. Denouncing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party and the "myth of bourgeois democracy". Castro has reasserted his faith in Leninism and the Cuban brand of socialism.
Behind his proud oratorical facade, however. Castro concedes that Cuba must make critical adjustments in the face of the drastic slashing of Soviet aid and trade. Without the Soviet oil subsidy. Castro has had to offer a debt-for-equity swap to creditors and legalise some private service operations. Cuban foreign debt is thought to be around US 8 billion.
The limited economic liberalisation has not been matched by political relaxation. however.
To understand the Cuba leadership's apparent Infiexi bility. one must look to the lessons that Castro learned during his long career and has converted into unbreakable political guidelines.
Central among these are his views on dissent. In 1868. 1895 and 1933, Cuban Independence and social justice movements were foiled by division. Vowing not to commit the same mistakes as his predecessors. Castro has equated public dissent with treason.
From the beginning of the revolution, Castro has insisted that opening the country to fractious political debate encourages "imperialism” (the United States) to re-enter and devour its old. albeit informal, possession.
To enforce unity, Castro has maintained a semi-siege mentality. Just as Washington policy-makers are driven by the notion of punishing Castro. Cuba s President is fixated on maintaining the facade of
Cuban oneness to avert US aggression. Dissenters have been punished, often with prison terms.
The Cuban revolutions unifying themes — pride, sovereignty, accomplishments of nationhood — served for nearly three decades to camouflage burning issues around religion, race and gender — themes that Castro has finessed through reforms and slogans
Socialism offered mass par-ticipotion, but not choice, without which spiritual life was less than fulfilling. National heroics became substitutes for personal or community initiatives. The compensations were that Cubans had better medical care, education and social ser vices than other Third World countries.
Cubans watched the physical transformation of their nation along with Its leap onto the global political stage. From 1959 until the late 1980's Cubans could play roles on several continents.
But with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Third World liberation has become untenable.
An historic era ended, and with tt. Cuba's role as vanguard.
Cuban troops have left Africa. Cuba plays no part In current Middle East maneuvering. Revolution is dead — or at least dormant — tn Latin America.
Strip the outdated rhetoric from the speeches and resolutions of the recent party congress, and one discovers that Cuba has become just another Third World country, except for the role of the Cuban state. Castro himself has conceded that Cuba's global role has diminished dramatically while its domestic problems are shared by the vast majority of nations in the South.
In the 1990's, free market dogma assigns the Third World state to service foreign capital, police its population and maintain a cheap and docile labour force.
Cuban state institutions, however, still dominate the society.
The Cuban state discourages Initiative, hoards and wastes resources and Inhibits not only
discussion, but decision-making itself. Once and agent for positive change, the Cuban state to now an albatross on the backs of the people.
Castro has Insisted that markets which existed long before the rise of commodity production mean capitalism. And capitalism, of course, would mean the death of the Cuban socialist experiment.
'Soclallsmo o muerte' (socialism or death) has become the official slogan. The
joke on Havana streets to that the two words will appear as synonyms tn the next dictionary. But this doesn't mean collapse to imminent.
It does Indicate that Leninism and the facade of Cuba unity to as outmoded as the US dogma of the Cuban "threat*. As capital begins to dictate the limits of Cuban socialism. Castro cannot keep Cuba closed politically and Invite half a million European and Canadian tourists each year, along with investors hungry for quick profits.
Some Cuban-Americans translate the daily roster of complaints amidst Cuba's precarious economic situation info a prediction that Cubans will rise up like the people of Eastern Europe and overthrow the government that has brought them into the grim present reality. — IPS