Saturday, February 02, 2008

Assessing the future of Cuba

Assessing the future of Cuba
by Aldo Bonincontro

We have known from the mass-media that the actual Communist leader or
dictator of Cuba is old (he should be already more than 80, if I well
remember) and, above all, ill and weak, after a surgery on his bowels
for an infection.

Castro passes much of his time at bed, despite the regime propaganda
showing him smiling and active with his friend or allied Hugo Chavez,
President of Venezuela and.
In the practice, he's nearly retired from active politics.

His power is now in the hands of his brother, some years younger, but
not credited of Fidel's personality and ability.
So, it's possible that Fidel Castro dies within few years or even months
and this could be the end of his regime, too based on his presence and
control.

Every dictatorship is always in crisis when the dictator dies,
differently from democratic regimes, in which the power is shared among
many subjects and political parties and organisms and the continuity is
much easier, not bound to the power control and the repressive ability
of a single leader or a restricted group of leaders.

So, it's possible that the Cuban Communist regime will disappear, but
replaced by what?

Fidel Castro has been repressive and his prisons are still full of
political prisoners, the journals and the mass-media can't freely
criticize the regime and its exponents, but he has granted a good public
health and school system, free for people, so that the Cuban hospitals
are rather good and efficient and paid by the State and even the medical
research is very advanced in Cuba, while the
public school has nearly eliminated the illiteracy, as never it could
happen with the private school, only for rich people.

Tourism is in development, but it doesn't seem that it has devastated
the environment with floods of cement made of hotels, residences and
private houses.

The "soft" solution that, personally, I hope it will become reality, is
that a new constitution of Cuba create a democratic regime, but fixing
the impossibility of a public services privatization and the sale of all
the goods belonging to the State, so that Cuban people wouldn't discover
the drama of being excluded from a hospital or from the purchase of a
medical drug only because they have too little money, as it happens in
the close "big enemy", the U.S..

The U.S. and the exiled Cuban organizations, (very anti-Communist and
bound to the American Right) wouldn't make pressure to force a radical
laissez-faire economic system and/or a Right anti-Communist political
regime, otherwise, the opposition of a great part of the Cuban public
opinion would be strong and bloody, feeding terrorism, violence and even
a civil war.
A pacific post-Castro transition to democracy is also in the interests
of U.S. that can become a political friend and good economic partner of
the new regime without imposing to it a subordinate role.

I don't know if this "soft" way will become a reality and I'm not very
optimist; the shortsighted and arrogant policy of U.S., especially after
the 11/9/2001, doesn't induce the U.S. Administration (if ruled by the
Republicans, but also by the Democrats), to adopt an intelligent,
pacific and not intrusive policy towards Cuba.

The political and military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the
U.S. Administration has failed mainly in BUILDING PEACE, DEMOCRACY and
STABILITY, makes real my fear that the desire of U.S. to create in Cuba
a capitalist and U.S.A.-friendly regime at any cost, can cause a bloody
and long civil war in Cuba.

It would be necessary that also the EU would help Cuba to built its
democracy without sacrificing what Castro has created of positive on the
altar of the "modern" wild capitalism of businessmen and the
multinationals, but I don't think that this Europe, still an open
building site, without an unique foreign policy, will have the force of
helping Cuba not only with good speeches full of democracy and freedom
and also against certain U.S. interests.

I fear that, after Castro, Cuba would become again similar to what it
was during the former Batista regime, destroyed by Castro in 1959: the
brothel of America and not only, a paradise for gangsters, mafiosi, tax
evaders, speculators and work exploiters.

The fact that, already today, the prostitution of Cuban girls for
tourists and foreigners is very diffused at every level, is surely not a
good sign for the future.
What else the Cuban people will accept to sell or give away in the next
future?

http://www.helium.com/tm/368814/known-media-actual-communist

No comments: