Posted By ERICMARGOLIS
Posted 1 day ago
Icame to Havana to cover the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution
because this beautiful island holds a big place in my heart.
My parents used to bring me to Havana each winter, and we often joined
Ernest Hemingway at the fabled La Floridita Bar. He was a big, vivacious
man with a white beard and a rumbling laugh. I still have one of his
books, inscribed, "to Eric, from his friend Ernest Hemingway, Havana, 1951."
Eight years later, a Communist lawyer named Fidel Castro Ruiz stormed
ashore with 81 men to begin a guerrilla war against the U. S.-backed
Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Cuba was then a virtual American colony:
Americans owned 60 per cent of Cuba's farmland and industry.
On Jan. 1, 1959, Castro's guerrilla fighters arrived in Havana and
proclaimed a revolutionary republic. For the first time in its long
history (Havana is 50 to 70 years older than Quebec City or New York),
Cuba was genuinely independent of foreign rule.
Once Castro was in power, his comrade, Ernesto (Che) Guevara, today an
icon of romantic revolution to the uninformed, ordered the execution of
over 600 "bourgeois," then got killed leading a farcically inept
revolution in Bolivia.
In an era when America bullied and exploited Latin America, Castro's
revolution was a triumph. His resistance to 50 years of U. S. efforts to
overthrow or assassinate him, and a near-lethal embargo, was epic.
U. S. attempts to topple Castro nearly led to nuclear war with the U. S.
S. R. in 1962. The crisis was resolved by Moscow withdrawing missiles it
brought in to defend Cuba, in exchange for president John Kennedy
agreeing not to invade Cuba and pulling U. S. missiles from Italy and
Turkey. The result was a victory for Cuba and the U. S. S. R., but
Kennedy got the kudos.
The cost of Cuba's independence and dignity was poverty, dictatorship
and becoming a Soviet satellite. Today, only oil-rich Venezuela and
Canadian tourists are keeping battered Cuba afloat.
HAVANA A MUSEUM
Havana, once called "the naughtiest city on earth," is a museum of the
1950s: Decaying, melancholy, dark.
Cuba has Latin America's best medical and education system, and highest
literacy. But life in Cuba is grim: Food and power shortages, endless
queuing, grinding poverty and constant supervision by secret policemen
and Communist party informers.
Castro blames this misery on the U. S. embargo. The U. S. blames
Castro's rickety Stalinist economics. Both are responsible. Cuba has
suffered 50 years of the kind of collective punishment that Gaza is now
experiencing. The U. S. has maintained its crushing boycott under the
pretext that Havana holds 200 political prisoners and is Communist. Yet
the U. S. cheerfully deals with Communist China and Vietnam, and itself
holds 36,000 Iraqi political prisoners, not to mention Guantanamo.
I hope one of president-elect Barack Obama's first acts is to demand
Congress end the hypocritical, idiotic embargo. Even half of Miami's
once fanatically anti-Castro Cubans now support ending it.
Obama could neatly break the Cold War ice by flying down to Cuba for a
round of golf. Or let Canada, which is hugely liked in Cuba, open the doors.
It's high time the West Indies' largest island was welcomed back to this
hemisphere and given civilized treatment. Equally important, Chinese
influence is moving into Cuba and Russia is reasserting its strategic
presence. Moscow plans to rearm Cuba's military. So the U. S. has little
time to lose.
First Fidel, and now Raul Castro, have been happy to keep the U. S. at
arm's length. An end to U. S.-Cuban hostility could bring up to two
million U. S. tourists a year.
The dying Communist control system could not withstand this invasion. So
the party, which refuses to implement Chinese-style reforms, may keep
Cuba frozen in time.
The age of ham-handed Yankee imperialism in Latin America is over. Cuba
raised the banner of revolt and paid the price. We should now help Cuba
rejoin the polity of Latin American democratic nations and hope
Washington will have learned to tread lightly in Cuba and show more respect.
Eric Margolis writes on international affairs for
Sun Media. He can be contacted at eric.margolis@sunmedia.ca.
http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1393466&auth=ERICMARGOLIS
No comments:
Post a Comment