Cuba performed a miracle by maintaining sovereignty

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, who died last month. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • This is especially relevant in the backdrop of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture whose interpretation of these ideals is quite antithetical to that of Castro’s groundbreaking Revolution.
  • Let’s start with a standard and familiar comparison with the United States, which sought to sniff out the Revolution’s life from the very start.

Fidel Castro’s life prompts us to ask afresh some enduring questions about the meaning of freedom, of democracy, of human rights, of social justice.

This is especially relevant in the backdrop of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture whose interpretation of these ideals is quite antithetical to that of Castro’s groundbreaking Revolution.

Let’s start with a standard and familiar comparison with the United States, which sought to sniff out the Revolution’s life from the very start.

Universal free health care, housing and education are unheard of in America, despite the huge share of its massive budget spent on these.

More poignantly, Cuba and the superpower are worlds apart in their treatment of minorities. Or simply put, the toxic racism of the Western world is rare in Cuba.

To the Western mind, all these achievements may have been real, but they were cancelled out with a caveat: that Castro was a “dictator”.

That multi-party democracy – of the sort that throws up a Donald Trump – was trampled on in Cuba.

That Castro’s human rights record was “dismal”.

For a Cuban peasant who had lived a hard life of cutting sugarcane under an oppressive landowner, was the Western-style “freedom” to shout subversive inanities on the public square to be equated to the security of free education for his children and subsidised housing for his family?

And what was more precious for the average Black Cuban living under post-slavery segregation?

The superficial “democracy” defined by musical chairs or the exhilarating dignity of equality the Revolution introduced to his life?

Elections as a way of recycling leaders are, of course, critical in rejuvenating a society’s political health.

Yet a common refrain from citizens across the world is how voting does not change their lives, that the politicians they elect are all of a kind, saying the same things, and mostly doing nothing.

China does not pretend to be that kind of democracy.

And perhaps because of that the development strides she has made in the last four decades have never been matched by any other major modern state.

While in office, Castro went through 10 US presidents.

None of them did anything remarkable – certainly not Barack Obama – comparable to what he did to Cuban society, or command the sort of influence he had across Latin America.

Donald Trump’s “eulogy” for Castro described him as a “tyrant.” Trump can be excused for the spaced-out way he sees the world.

Still somebody should help him catch up on the bloody pogroms carried out by CIA-backed butchers in Latin America.

One of them, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, was imposed through the machinations of a villain who, from time to time, is advising the US President-elect on matters of foreign affairs, Henry Kissinger.

A rag-tag gang of religious misfits called al-Qaeda was enough to drive the US to introduce a law to snoop into the private communications of ordinary people, to torture detained suspects and to suspend habeas corpus.

The eyesore of Guantanamo prison – located in an annexed part of Cuba – is still there.

None of its inmates has ever been put on a proper trial and convicted.

Cuba on the whole remained sane despite a cruel economic blockade imposed by the US since 1962 and the constant fear of an invasion. The West insists it won the Cold War because of its “superior” ideology of liberal democracy and free market capitalism.

Nevertheless socialism, per se, does not explain the other side’s weakness.

The Soviet Union was overwhelmed and outspent by the sheer resources of the West.

Plucky Cuba has performed a miracle in consistently maintaining her sovereignty in the face of the embargo being enforced by the most powerful state in the world.