Unscripted Territory
BY SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES
 |
| Two teenagers exercise in an improvised gym in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Jan.13, 2011.- AP Photo |
Cubans understood that since 1959 the Revolution with all its faults had safeguarded the nation’s independence – national sovereignty. From 1492 (Columbus’ landing) through December 1958, foreign powers had decided the fate of Cubans.
By the early 19th century a “Cuban” had emerged -- not a Spaniard on a faraway island or an enslaved African – but a hybrid product of three centuries of colonialism who sought self-determination -- like the American colonial population in 1776.
When Batista and his generals fled, a US-backed coup effort failed. The rebels then established the modern Cuban nation, which quickly became a real and until then almost unimaginable challenge to US domination.
This unstated truth, understood in Havana and Washington, put the countries on a collision course. Washington refused to cede control; the Revolution rejected US authority. Since 1898, the US had treated Cuba as an appendage of its economy. US companies owned Cuba’s largest sugar mills, its best land, the phone and utility companies, the mines and much else. Cuban government, like those of its neighbors in the “US backyard,” had automatically obeyed Washington’s policy dictates.
Revolutionary defiance, reducing rent by 50% and passing an agrarian reform law, without asking permission, got attention in Washington. The words “dictatorship” and “communist” began appearing routinely in government-spun news reports.
The island of 6 million people with sugar as cash crop lacked both material and human resources needed to secure real independence. Washington understood this. Some US officials, wrote E. W. Kenworthy, “believe the Castro Government must go 'through the wringer' before it will see the need for United States aid and agree to the stabilization measures which will make it possible to get aid.” (“Cuba's Problems Pose Tests for US Policy,” NY Times, April 26, 1959)
When Cuban leaders either ignored or ridiculed Washington’s warnings, President Eisenhower, in March 1960, authorized a CIA covert operation to overthrow the Cuban government – ending in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs “fiasco.” In October 1960, however, in response to Cuba’s nationalization of US property – an escalating confrontation of Cuba acting and Washington punishing –Ike imposed an embargo on Cuba.
But even in April 1960 the State Department had issued its punishment guideline:“[E]very possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. ... a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” (Office of the Historian, Bureau Of Public Affairs, US Department Of State; John P. Glennon, et al., eds., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume VI, Cuba (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1991), 885.)
Havana responded by doing the unthinkable: In 1961, Cuba allied itself with the Soviet bloc. To secure independence, Cuban leaders became reliant on Soviet assistance.
In 1991, the Soviet demise left Cubans – finally -- with total political “independence” and no outside material support with which to maintain their nation. The embargo took on heightened dimensions.
In 1959, the revolutionaries in their 20s and 30s did not predict the ferocity of US punishment, nor grasp that their sin of disobedience reached beyond the dictates of US power, and to the core of a global system. Washington was the informal world capitol of capital.
In that role, Washington relentlessly attacked Cuba – even after it ceased to exercise Hemispheric hegemony. The control mantra still seeps through the walls of national security offices and by osmosis enters the bureaucrats’ brains: “We permit no insubordination.” Cubans had to pay for the resistance of their leaders. Washington’s lesson: Resistance is futile.
On December 18, 2010 Raúl Castro informed Cubans of the need for drastic reforms. Since the US embargo would remain, Cuba needed to change. To survive as a nation, its economy and labor force must become efficient and productive.
The revolution had trained, educated and made healthy the Cuban population. But, Raúl admitted, the state no longer can meet some basic needs Cubans had assumed as human rights (entitlements). One million people, he announced, would lose jobs; social programs reduced or eliminated.
Cubans’ non-productivity -- lax work ethics, bureaucratic inefficiency, and absence of initiative – had become compounded by corruption. The US embargo leads to shortages and encourages bureaucratic misdeeds. A bureaucrat enhances his income by “solving” the very “obstacles” the same bureaucrat helped create.
After 51+ years, Washington’s punishment appeared to force Cuba to accepting a shock doctrine, but without all the regressive social costs most Third World countries have paid. In 1980, a Jamaican remarked after Prime Minister Manley submitted to the International Monetary Fund’s punishing austerity measures: “We’ve been IMF’d.”
The Cuban revolution again enters unscripted territory. The bureaucracy with its adjacent inefficiencies, and the persistence of corruption, will not disappear. Reformers, however, count on deep resources – a public with social consciousness absorbed through decades of education and experience.
World geo-political changes, however, offer Cuban leaders some advantages: China, Brazil and some European Union states have become potential counters to US hardliners. With breathing space Cubans might still avoid the worst consequences of Washington’s obsolete 50 year old shock doctrine.
Saul Landau’s new film WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP premiered in December at the Havana Film Festival.
Nelson P Valdés is the Director of the Cuba-L Project.
Post a Comment