[A-List] Progressive Cuba-Bashing by Richard Levins

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15-Jan-07, 08:25 AM 

Progressive Cuba-Bashing


By Richard Levins


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Prof. Richard Levins 

 

 

NOTE: This article appeared originally in Socialism and Democracy. We are
grateful for their permission to republish.

	

 

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Cuba is not a dictatorial regime. There is a whole complex of elected
assemblies at all levels, mass organizations of labor, women, and farmers,
and all sorts of NGOs that make Cuban socialism what it is (more on this
below). It is facile and disingenuous to brand this profoundly participatory
political system as "dictatorial." 


In the mid-1960s, when Che Guevara dropped out of sight to begin his
guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, some on the left were asking whether Fidel
had had him murdered. In the late 1980s, some were quick to assume that the
trial of the Cuban general Ochoa on charges of attempting to organize a
drug-ring in collaboration with the Medellín cartel was really a political
purge. What is striking is that these accusations against Cuba were accepted
by so many without investigation, as if the abuses that were alleged were
only to be expected and therefore must be true.

 

Why are so many progressives and liberals taken in by even the most
outrageous falsehoods about Cuba? Why do they often accept uncritically the
line of the Miami and Washington reactionaries about Cuba when they doubt
almost everything else from these sources? Possibly some are tired of
nay-saying all the conventional wisdoms. They do not want to appear
"hard-line" or "ideological," and rejecting Cuba is a cheap and easy way of
being a little more mainstream. Cuba may be relegated by some to the list of
youthful enthusiasms from the time when "we thought we could change the
world." This stance is reinforced by the accumulated cynicism of many
defeats that says that no place can be all that good, that all dreams come
to naught. Or, perhaps since Cuba's socialism is one of the few to have
survived, it has become harder to romanticize it.

 

But, mostly, this vulnerability of the left to rightist propaganda is
derived from the discouraging experience of the Soviet Union and eastern
Europe and the unwarranted assumption that Cuba has a similar regime. As
well, too many progressives have accepted cold-war anti-communism
assumptions: that all Reds are the same and that any accusation against any
of them is probably an understatement, that they support good causes only to
serve their own noxious ends, that revolutionaries once in power are all
cynical manipulators and monopolizers of privilege, and that their public
statements are merely propaganda. The burdens of internalized cold war
anti-communism and conventional political science allow for careless
judgments and casual denunciations.

 

Dismissal of Cuba is sometimes simply an off-handed remark in writings about
other subjects. For example Marc Cooper wrote a piece in The Nation,
"Remembering Allende" (9/29/03). It was a thoughtful commentary, reflecting
real experience, knowledge, and sympathy for the Chilean struggle. But in
the course of it he threw in a careless unsupported denunciation of Cuba,
referring to "the wholesale jailing of dissidents and summary executions by
an ossified and dictatorial Cuban state." He is of course free to disapprove
of the trials of political de-stabilizers in April 2003. But by linking the
execution of hijackers to the trials of the "dissidents," he makes it appear
as if dissidents were executed. In fact the hijackers were not political
people. Two of them had prior criminal records, and they were threatening to
kill their hostages. Most of us oppose capital punishment and support
worldwide calls to eliminate it, but this does not justify singling out this
case as an example of Cuban depravity.

 

It is worth looking more closely at Cooper's comments in The Nation, his
article in the L.A. Weekly (April 18-24, 2003), and the letter organized by
Leo Casey and signed by Cooper and by other progressives and liberals, many
of whom should know better and some of whom undoubtedly do. Anyone the least
bit familiar with Cuba knows that it is anything but "ossified." Cuba has
been undergoing rapid changes since 1959, including the transformations of
education and health care, the adoption of the Family Code, two agrarian
reforms, the adoption of an ecological pathway of development, and the
gradual invention of a mixed participatory and representative political
system. There was the struggle against homophobia in the '70s, the
encouragement of whistle blowing during the "rectification" campaign of the
'80s, the Special Period after the collapse of foreign trade with the Soviet
bloc and the tightening of the US blockade, and the legalization of dollars
in a dual system of currency with the Cuban peso. As well, Cuba has
experienced a tremendous increase in tourism, the phasing out of dependence
on sugar, widespread decentralization, and the current "Battle of Ideas."
This last refers to the campaign to increase university enrollment, as well
as to raise the cultural, scientific, and political level of the whole Cuban
population. During the decade 1993-2003 the Cuban economy, even measured by
the misleading GDP, grew four times faster than the average for Latin
America. Musical and artistic styles, movie making, and theatre are also
constantly changing.

 

Cuba is not a dictatorial regime. There is a whole complex of elected
assemblies at all levels, mass organizations of labor, women, and farmers,
and all sorts of NGOs that make Cuban socialism what it is (more on this
below). It is facile and disingenuous to brand this profoundly participatory
political system as "dictatorial." As for the "the wholesale jailing of
dissidents," the trial of the 75 Cubans was not for "thought crimes." They
were accused of being financed, supported, guided, and even organized by the
United States Interest Section in Havana in its efforts to overthrow the
Cuban government. The Casey letter refers to the "dissidents" as
"independent thinkers." But given their close ties to the US Interest
Section and the Miami right wing (amply documented by the prosecution at the
trials and not challenged by the defense),[1] this seems at best naïve. When
one of the "dissidents," Gustavo Arcos, suggested that dialogue with Cuba
might be productive, he was scolded by the head of the Miami right wing,
Jorge Mas Canosa, who warned that dissidents inside Cuba "have no business
making any proposals whatsoever without first consulting with the leaders of
the exile community."[2]

 

The Casey letter repeats the claim made by the mainstream US media that the
trial was closed and "without adequate notice or counsel." In fact, 44 of
the accused had lawyers of their own choice and the rest had court-appointed
lawyers. Their lawyers and family members were present at the trials.
Several weeks from arrest to trial may seem short to Cooper, coming as he
does from a country that guarantees a speedy trial but where prisoners are
often held for months or even years before trial.

 

The letter describes the trials as "reminiscent of the Moscow trials of the
Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin." But the defendants in the Moscow
trials were falsely accused of conspiring with foreign intelligence
services. None of the Cuban defendants denied their links to the US Interest
Section. The Soviet defendants were tried after a long period of being held
incommunicado. The Cuban defendants were held for a few weeks and had free
contact with their families and lawyers. The major evidence in Moscow was
confessions, extracted in some cases by torture and intimidation. The
evidence in the Cuban case included eyewitness testimony, photographs, and
physical evidence, including money. There was never any claim by anyone
involved that the accused were abused in any way. The Moscow purges, aside
from a few show trials, were conducted by special administrative tribunals,
set up outside the judicial system. The Cubans were tried in regular courts.
And, what is more important, the Moscow trials ended in many death
sentences. There were no death sentences in the "dissidents'" trial. The
death sentences were handed down in the non-political case of hijacking,
taking of hostages, and threatening to kill them. While many, if not most of
us, may oppose capital punishment in this or any case, nobody was condemned
to death for political charges. Cooper's conflating of the two cases is
evidence of his anti-Cuba prejudice.

 

The letter ends by pronouncing that the Cuban state "is not a government of
the left, despite its claims of social progress in education and health
care." Claims? The Cuban achievements in education have been verified by
UNESCO surveys showing that Cuban third and fourth graders perform so much
better in language and mathematics skills than the rest of Latin America
that UNESCO returned to test them again.[3] The Pan American Health
Organization and World Health Organization both recognize the phenomenal
health statistics.[4] But perhaps the letter signatories know this and
simply dismiss them as mere social progress. Feeding the hungry, healing the
sick, and educating the illiterate are not very exciting to the well fed,
healthy, and college-educated.

 

Cooper and Casey et al.'s letter-signers decide that the Cuban government
really loves the blockade. Cooper says that the trials "help confirm my
longtime suspicion that Castro lives in mortal fear that his most powerful
tool of social control, the US embargo, will one day be lifted." And the
letter argues that the Cuban actions "amount to collaboration with the most
reactionary elements of the US administration in their efforts to maintain
sanctions and impose even more punitive measures against Cuba." It is a
serious claim to assert that the Cuban government really loves the blockade;
it should at least be supported by serious argument. It is not. The
underlying assumption is that Havana blames the US for all its troubles. It
doesn't. It's too busy talking about the lack of resources, lax enforcement,
bureaucracy, and other homegrown failings. While the harm the US government
causes Cuba is certainly important in Cuban consciousness, the main "tool of
social control" is the shared sense of building a more just and equitable
society despite the aggression. The Cuban report to the Secretary General of
the UN specifies exactly how the blockade harms Cuba. The report details the
injuries field by field, in lives and in money, in higher prices paid for
medicines, in medicines they couldn't get (for instance, the Pedro Kouri
Institute of Tropical Medicine could not obtain diagnostic kits for
identifying SARS), and in extra shipping fees for their imports. They
offered estimates of an economic impact of some 79 billion US dollars over
the 44 years of siege, or about $1.8 billion per year.[5] The Cuban national
budget in 2003 was some 11.5 billion pesos (26 pesos to the dollar). Imagine
what could have been done if that amount had been available for investment
in economic growth.

 

Finally, Cooper lapses into pop political science, writing that "the Cuban
State [is] concerned with maintaining its monopoly of power above all else."
Once again it is given to us as wisdom without supporting evidence or
argument. Yet this claim is almost never true of any regime. Even George
Bush, who rigs elections and manipulates news in order to stay in office and
who clearly enjoys being "the War President," wants the presidency in order
to carry out a particular program with messianic fervor. He would never
protect the environment, provide health care, guarantee universal free
education, or separate church and state, just to stay in office.

 

There are also more subtle instances of the US-based left-liberal community
dismissing Cuba. For example, Achy Obejas begins a review of Alma
Guillermoprieto's book Dancing with Cuba as follows: "It's been a while
since Cuba, that caiman-shaped Caribbean isle, ceased to be a place on the
map. At some point, it came unhinged and floated away." And a bit later,
".if Cuba inspires, it also provokes despair." These comments reinforce the
notion within the US left that it's over, that Cuba is no longer worthy of
our support or even interest. This thinking is no doubt influenced by the
anti-communism and cynicism so prevalent in this country.

 

More than 16,000 days have passed since President Eisenhower declared that
"Castro's days are numbered." A whole generation of progressives has grown
up with Cuba-bashing as a steady background. Antagonism to Cuba has been a
constant of US policy through all the changes of administration. Despite any
differences in style and strategy, they all aimed to destroy a revolutionary
society that almost alone in the world has resisted domination by the
corporate empire. It is clear that the Bush administration is escalating
this war on Cuba. This is a continuation of more than 40 years of
aggression, during which the US government has used military, terrorist,
economic, diplomatic, and disinformation weapons to weaken and isolate Cuba
in the hopes of overthrowing Cuban socialism. There have been guerrilla
bands organized by the CIA in the 1960s and more than 50 attempts to
assassinate Fidel Castro. A Cuban civilian airliner in flight from Venezuela
was downed in 1976, and Cuban diplomats have been murdered. A "transition to
democracy" is supposed to result from these aggressions by increasing
popular dissatisfaction until it becomes disaffection, by promoting
international isolation, and by the murder or natural death of Fidel Castro.

 

The history of United States propaganda warfare and dirty tricks in the Cold
War, against the Mossadegh government in Iran, against the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua and the Allende government in Chile shows that the US government
exercises no moral restraint on the stratagems used to justify its policies
and hide its interventions. The discussion in Judith Miller's book Germs[6]
shows that the US government considered as a legitimate option even the
blowing up of a commercial airliner and blaming it on Cuba. As the more
violent interventions, such as military invasion and assassination attempts,
failed and then fell out of favor (although violence is certainly still
being employed), greater emphasis was placed on covert political
intervention and disinformation campaigns. Anti-Cuban propaganda is now
focusing on discrediting or discounting the most inspiring achievements of
the revolution. The recent Bush administration document on a "transition to
democracy in Cuba" has a complete program for capitalist restoration that
promises such things as a comprehensive immunization program for Cuban
children, universal education, and environmental protection, as if Cuba were
not already ahead of the United States in all three.

 

Given what we know, progressives should approach all fresh incidents and
accusations against Cuba in the light of this history of cynical
disinformation aimed at justifying escalated aggression. Our first reaction
should be one of skepticism. We should examine the evidence offered, check
the Cuban response to the accusations, and make sure we are not taken in. We
must not automatically assume that Cuba has all the faults of eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union. Progressives need to place what they see and hear in
the context of the siege of Cuba. I will review the scope and impact of this
siege in the next section. Then we will be better placed to examine how Cuba
really works and to refute Margaret Thatcher's depressing claim, "There is
no alternative."

 


The Siege of Cuba


Phillip Agee and others have shown that US funding of dissident activity in
Cuba adds up to more than $25 million since 1992.[7] Directly appropriated
funding is an underestimate. Some funds are channeled through third
countries such as Spain and even Norway. The war against Cuba is directed
from two major centers: Washington and Miami. The Washington center is
controlled by the White House and includes the National Security Council,
the CIA, the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, the Agency for International
Development (AID), ad hoc interagency working groups, and their allies in
Congress. They combine clandestine operations, largely CIA, with diplomatic,
legal, and propaganda activities. Further, they work through
non-governmental organizations. AID alone has distributed some $20 million
to groups such as Freedom House, the Center for Free Cuba, the Institute for
Democracy in Cuba, the Pan American Development Foundation, Partners of the
Americas, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the Sabre
Foundation, Florida International University, the International Republican
Institute and many others. Some are longstanding collaborators with the
government's schemes, others were established for the Cuba operations, still
others have legitimate as well as noxious activities.

 

The Miami center is based in the right wing of the exile community. Its
economic base is the network of medium-sized and large businesses owned by
Cuban Americans and serving the emigré community and Miami as a whole, and
the professional counterrevolutionaries who can mobilize broader rightwing
resources. It serves US policy goals for Cuba and for the rest of Latin
America. In return it receives favorable publicity, training, funding,
guidance, access to government agencies and toleration of shady business
practices.

 

Its core has been the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) until it
split recently after the death of its founder. It is a legal umbrella
organization organized by Jorge Mas Canosa at the instigation of CIA officer
Richard Allen, who called for the creation of an organization "that could
speak with one voice." The CANF groups around itself a large number of
smaller overlapping organizations engaged in propaganda aimed at US policy
makers, the general public and Cuba. They also engage in propaganda and
harassment aimed at Cubans outside their country. Groups such as Brigade
2506 (veterans of Bay of Pigs), Abdala, Alpha 66, Omega 7, Commando F-4 and
CORU are openly military and sabotage units. Some of their members have been
trained by the CIA and used in such operations as Iran-Contra, the civil war
in El Salvador, and the invasion of Grenada.

 

After the failure of Operation Mongoose (the Kennedy plan to overthrow the
Cuban government with armed and terrorist actions in the 1960s), many of the
terrorists branched out into more varied forms of struggle. José Basulto's
career is illustrative. A veteran of Bay of Pigs, he served with CIA
infiltration teams, shelled a Havana theatre and a hotel from the sea, and
then began to present himself as a non-violent resister. He organized
Brothers to the Rescue supposedly to help rafters, but also to test Cuban
communications and provoke confrontations. A similar case is that of Carlos
Alberto Montaner who began by placing bombs within Cuba, went into exile,
and was later trained in clandestine skills at Fort Benning by the CIA. He
is now a central figure in the new "moderate" counterrevolution. He is based
in Spain where in 1990 he founded La Unión Liberal Cubana and in 1991 took
the initiative to form La Plataforma Democrática Cubana as a coalition of
political parties within Cuba. He urged dissidents to form these parties,
the Liberal Party, the Coordinadora Socialdemócrata (Elizardo Sánchez,
Vladimiro Roca) and the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Oswaldo Payá). He
explained to them that the purpose in forming these parties was not just
ideological but a means of tapping the resources of the like-minded
international organizations and of getting access to European governments.
But with the collapse of European socialism there was once again an increase
in violence. From 1990 to 2000 there were some 108 terrorist actions against
Cuba including the shelling of hotels from the sea and the placing of bombs
in five hotels. Prominent leaders of counter-revolutionary groups move back
and forth freely between violent and non-violent actions. The dissident
organizations within Cuba have ties with many of them. Even though the role
of the dissidents is public relations at present, they have occasionally
been assigned minor intelligence tasks by the US Interest Section, such as
finding the home addresses of Cuban leaders who might be targeted for
assassination.

 

There are a large number of counter-revolutionary groups that split, unite,
change names, overlap and quarrel. They disagree on tactics and vie for
resources. Therefore there are frequent attempts to unite them. There are
various umbrella groups such as the Concilio Cubano that includes 140
groups. In January 2004, the Carter Center hosted another such conference to
gather the counterrevolution together. It is often said that US policy
toward Cuba is irrational, given the absence of a Cuban threat to US
security such as Soviet missiles or terrorist bases, and is continued only
because of the connections and the campaign contributions of the Cuban
rightwing in Miami. But the real reason for US hostility is more political:
Cuba represents a bold challenge to US domination of Latin America, living
proof that a small third world country can stand up to the colossus of the
north. Most of all, Cuba shows that another world is possible. It is this
continuing challenge that gives the Miami gang political clout in Washington
as well as Florida. This clout is more a consequence than a cause of
Washington's policy. In this way, the political influence of the Miami
Cubans is analogous to that of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States: in
both cases a policy originating in US geopolitical concerns creates the
space for the ethnic-based lobby to have an impact.

 

The emigrés have friends in high places in government and are represented in
Congress especially by Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ross Lehtinen. The
Bush administration has been particularly eager to recruit emigrés such as
James Cason and Otto Reich into State Department and National Security
posts. The US agencies and the emigré foci work together but also have their
conflicts. The FBI and CIA don't completely trust the emigré groups and
infiltrate them. Occasionally operations of one or another Miami group has
been interrupted by the Coast Guard or FBI and their activities have become
public. After a brief flurry of publicity the culprits usually are quietly
released. At times the criminal activity of emigré terrorists cannot be
hidden, as when in 1984 Eduardo Arocena of Omega- 7 was tried for the murder
of a Cuban diplomat in New York. In this case, the defendant got even with
the CIA by revealing that he had released in Cuba plant disease germs
provided by the CIA.

 

Within Cuba the rise and fall of "dissident" activity reflects outside
political events. With the end of the Soviet bloc, enemies of the revolution
expected the imminent collapse of the Cuban revolutionary government and
increased hostile activities in all arenas, especially with information
warfare. Here is where the internal "dissidents" come in. Their main task is
to provide ammunition to discredit Cuba. They do this by inventing incidents
or inflating real deficiencies of the society so that they can be presented
as the norm.

 

The "dissidents" that are known are those engaged in more open activities
(as distinguished from those engaged in espionage and sabotage). They number
perhaps a few hundred individuals belonging to a shifting set of
organizations with similar goals. The distinction between the Human Rights
Party (some 15 members) and the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights or the
Comité Pro Derechos Humanos, or the Asociación de Periodistas Independientes
de Cuba and the Federación de Periodistas de Cuba is usually that their
leaders can't get along with each other and compete for attention and
funding. The Comité had some 15-20 members all of whom earned their visas
and left, so that the present group is completely new. Groups claiming to
speak for "free" unions, librarians, journalists or doctors arise, regroup,
disappear and then show up again under new labels but with familiar faces.
Disaffected individuals become "dissidents" for a variety of reasons and
then join the "dissident" world of cliques creating images of their own
political importance and competing for US support. They often leave their
jobs to work full time as professional "dissidents" living on subsidies from
abroad but claim they were fired because of their dissent. Although at
present there is no significant social base for the counterrevolution in
Cuba, the growing sector of employees of foreign corporations and
proprietors of small businesses (now numbering some 150,000 people and, with
their families, perhaps half a million) may some day begin to demand
political influence as a class, perhaps around issues of taxation. This
might change the political situation from the maneuverings of marginal
disaffected individuals to one of class conflict.

 

The dissidents are all linked directly or indirectly to US operations
through the United States Interest Section in Havana, the CANF, and foreign
governments of Spain, Czech Republic, Norway, and Lithuania, among others,
and foreign NGOs. On visits to Miami their leaders meet with emigrés
involved in both propaganda and terrorist activities. For instance, Social
Democrat Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz met with leaders of the PNUD (Partido
Nacional de Unidad Democrático), a group that supports armed actions. None
of these organizations straighforwardly call themselves Partido Terrorista
Revanchista or Coordinadora Unitaria de Asesinos, of course. Today the major
strategic ploy of the US government and its Cuban assets is the call for a
democratic and peaceful "transition," and its newer allies posture as
"moderates."


How Cuba Works


The Cuban revolution was one of the great liberating events in Latin
American history; it threw off half a century of United States imperial
domination that had sustained a corrupt pseudo-democracy while sponsoring
the systematic looting of the country's wealth. Cuba began to build a kind
of life that is equitable, just, sustainable, and participatory. Even
without the continued hostility and aggression from the United States, this
was an overwhelming task. 

 

When the old ruling class left the country, it took with it its colonels,
police chiefs, torturers, and the corrupt politicians who had looted the
national treasury. It left behind a poor, plundered country with decrepit
industries, eroded landscapes, high unemployment and illiteracy, few doctors
(most of them in Havana), and a typical colonial economy of sugar
monoculture. The Cuban working people have improvised, copied, backtracked,
invented, compromised and forged ahead to create the present work in
progress that has won the admiration of people throughout the world. It is
far from perfect. Socialists do not talk of perfection. The term "workers'
paradise," used now as a putdown by enemies of the revolution, is not a
claim by participants or observers who know the enormous difficulties,
frustrations, and contradictions of the process of changing a whole society
and also changing themselves.

 

Cuba is a socialist society with a mostly socialist economy. Two different
principles of distribution have coexisted in Cuba: the socialist principle
"to each according to work" and the communist principle "to each according
to need." The principle of distribution according to work accords wages with
a remarkably small spread to all who work, who have worked (pensioners), or
who study: the median wage for all wage-earners in Cuba is 250 pesos a
month, while a cabinet minister earns only 450. In addition, goods in short
supply such as opportunities for vacations at tourist hotels are given as
bonuses and awards to outstanding workers. Cooperative farmers earn their
share of the cooperative's returns, often taken as monthly advances as well
as at the annual settling of accounts.

 

The principle of distribution according to need is reflected in social
consumption available to everyone: free healthcare and education up to and
including the university level, subsidized basic rations, school meals, and
daycare, cheap and widespread access to cultural and sport activities. In
addition to what is universally available, special arrangements are made to
meet unequal needs: diabetics, pregnant women, and nursing mothers get
special rations. There are schools for the disabled with employment
guaranteed afterward, and special programs for the many young people who
dropped out at the start of the Special Period (when jobs were not available
and education no longer guaranteed employment). There is teacher training
for those who work with deaf-mute and autistic children and university
programs for seniors. Teachers are sent to children too isolated to get to
school daily, and photovoltaic solar collectors are placed in schools in
remote locations that are off the national electric grid. There are also
programs to develop special talents in the arts and sports.

 

That said, it is important to recognize that after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and, with it, the bulk of its international trade (which
brought on what is known in Cuba as the Special Period), foreign capitalist
enterprises and joint foreign/Cuban companies have been allowed to operate
in Cuba in order to capture some needed hard currency. Small-scale private
businesses were also legalized. Capitalist economics undermines these
socialist/communist principles of distribution. It promotes inequality by
paying exorbitant salaries to marketing and managerial personnel, especially
in the tourist industry. Profitability, marketability, and family
connections determine reward in private restaurants, private repair
services, the private sale of their own tapes by musicians, and remittances
from family abroad. Although the opportunities for corruption are much more
limited than in the United States, there was a range of remunerative
activities (theft, diversion of state property, gambling, prostitution, and
black marketeering) that grew during the height of the Special Period, when
people individually had to take care of what was formerly provided
collectively. There was a general relaxation of social discipline in that
emergency, a tolerance for victimless crimes committed to solve urgent
personal economic problems. It will take some time to recover from the
impact of this period on people's consciousness.

 

Most Cubans own their own homes and the others pay minimum rent toward
purchase. Of the millions of children who sleep in the streets in the third
world, not one is Cuban. Healthcare is not only free but also uniformly
distributed. Cuba has the best healthcare in the developing world and is
even ahead of the United States in some areas such as reducing infant
mortality. Quality education includes such innovations as a limit of 20
children per teacher in primary grades, 15 in junior high and 10 in high
school. Since everybody has a right to education, there are some schools in
the most isolated places with only a single or a few pupils. Cultural and
recreational facilities are also widely diffused throughout the country.
Employment is a right, and when industries reduce their staff or close, the
workers are guaranteed other jobs with at least equal pay, or else
retraining, return to school, or unemployment compensation. Today
unemployment stands at about 3%.

 

Most Cubans believe that they are inventing a new kind of democracy,
superior both to what Cuba had before the revolution and to what they see
today in the United States and other capitalist countries. In these liberal
democracies public office is a marketable commodity and the end result of
all the political excitement at election-time is that the same group of
people who own the economy continue to own the government. Cubans describe
their own system as a way of getting as many people as possible to help run
the country through a mixture of participatory and representative processes.
Cubans are very aware of the history of defeats in the early struggles for
national independence and workers' rights, defeats caused in large measure
by divisions in the movements. This has given Cubans a strong sense of the
importance of unity as a political goal. Their system is designed to reach
consensus rather than promote adversarial conflict. Consensus is sought
through extensive discussion at countless meetings in the workplace, the
neighborhood, and the 2,200 non-governmental organizations. In fact, when I
once asked a meeting of ecologists how aliens on a spaceship flying over
Cuba would know there was socialism down below, the answer was, "Everybody
is at meetings." The purpose of the meetings is to reach a consensus strong
enough to mobilize the active participation of the membership, their
enthusiasm, energy, and ideas. The premium placed on consensus is a source
of strength for the revolution, but also can at times lead to intolerance of
deviant opinion.

 

At these meetings the major issues of concern to Cuban society are
discussed. The Federation of Cuban Women led the discussions on the Family
Code and regularly examines the status of women in order to identify
obstacles to full equality and make proposals for removing them. The
farmers' association leads on questions of agriculture, and so on. In 2004
the new farmers' cooperatives initiated discussions on their relations with
the state, the degree of autonomy, how to reconcile their need for an
adequate income with the need of the urban population for inexpensive food.
In 1993, at the height of the economic crisis of the Special Period,
workers' parliaments were convened at thousands of workplaces to discuss
which of the revolutionary achievements had to be retained at all cost, what
compromises could be made, which of the emergency measures that the National
Assembly was proposing were acceptable. They rejected a tax on wages. Every
six months the union leadership meets with the heads of government
departments to examine issues of wages, bonuses, compliance with the
regulations of labor protection, the grievance system, and other issues of
concern to the unions and to the country.

 

Cubans from the age of 16 vote in elections for the municipal and provincial
assemblies and for the National Assembly.[8] The elections are non-partisan
rather than single-party. The Communist Party runs no candidates although
individual members are prominent among those nominated. Nominations for
municipal assembly elections take place in open neighborhood meetings, where
from two to eight candidates are proposed. There is no campaigning, nor any
of the apparatus of lobbyists, speechwriters, and public relations
consultants that goes with it. Rather, biographies of the candidates are
posted giving their occupation and contributions to society. In some ways
they resemble job resumés, or the candidate listings for the Boards of
Directors of food cooperatives or professional societies in our country. The
voting is by secret ballot and the counting is public. In about 10% of the
districts, run-off elections have to be held because nobody has won more the
50% of the votes. Elected representatives hold weekly office hours and twice
a year have formal report-back meetings with their constituents. Direct
elections are also held for the provincial and national assemblies, with the
difference that at these levels there are single candidacies that are
determined by candidacy commissions composed of representatives from mass
organizations led by a union representative. Among the concerns of the
candidacy commissions is the composition of the elected bodies by gender,
race, age, and occupation. It is important to have all sectors of the
society represented, and progress in the participation of underrepresented
groups is noted with satisfaction.

 

Another aspect of election results is their role as referendums on the
revolution. Counterrevolutionaries call on Cubans not to vote or to turn in
blank or damaged ballots. Some 10% of the eligible voters either do not vote
or do not submit valid ballots. Not all of these represent protest. However
this gives a rough idea of the extent of disaffection. When I ask friends
whether they are satisfied with their representation, I get a mixed
response. Some representatives carry out their duties formally and respond
to complaints in bureaucratese, while in other districts they energetically
promote their neighborhood's interests.

 

Cuba has a parliamentary rather than presidential form of government. The
31-member Council of State, elected by the National Assembly every 5 years,
acts on behalf of the National Assembly when the latter is not in session.
Fidel Castro is the elected head of the Council of State. A few words are in
order about the role of Fidel Castro. He is undoubtedly the outstanding
political leader in the Americas in the last hundred years. Like Bolívar and
Martí he led the struggle to free his country from foreign rule, in this
case from the pseudo-republic run from the US Embassy. Unlike the other two
he has continued to lead the construction of a new society based on
equality, social justice, and sustainability. He has a dual role, as a
symbol of the revolution and as its most able politician. When crowds
throughout Latin America cheer "Fidel! Fidel!" he knows that it is a cry of
admiration for the Cuban revolution rather than his personal charisma.
Within Cuba, his formal position is as a delegate to the National assembly,
elected from his home district in Santiago by secret ballot. The National
Assembly then elects him to head the Council of State, also by secret
ballot. Many Cubans see him as a superb visionary and strategist and a not
very good administrator. My personal preference would be for him to
relinquish the administrative position of Prime Minister and concentrate on
what he does best, but this is the Cubans' decision, not mine.[KLW note:
This is the one error I detected in this article: Fidel has not held the
position of Prime Minister since the early 70s. But Levins' point is still
clear.]

 

There are unresolved problems of Cuban democracy, but the ones the Cubans
are concerned with are not the ones that foreign critics are most interested
in. One example is that membership in elected bodies is not a full-time paid
job. Delegates continue at their day jobs. They do not always have the
expertise to rule on the more technical issues that arise. Another is the
lack of resources for governments to use, especially at the local level. The
struggles against racism and sexism are vital elements in meeting Cuba's
goals of equity. Old Cuba experienced a combination of an inherited Spanish
colonial racism and an imported North American variety. Advances in
eliminating racism are visible in the widespread and growing Afro-Cuban
leadership, in the self-identification of Cubans as an Afro-Caribbean
people, and in the deeply felt solidarity with Africa that sent Cuban
soldiers to fight the South African apartheid regime when it invaded Angola.
It is seen in the recognition of the Yoruba and Congo religions as co-equal
with Christianity. But racist discrimination persists. For instance, there
are no black prima ballerinas in the National Ballet, and Afro-Cubans are
still underrepresented in academic fields and overrepresented in vocational
schools. After making racial discrimination illegal, Cuba has become aware
that this is not enough and that action is needed to extirpate racism from
the culture as well as to prevent its re-introduction by foreign investors.
One Spanish hotel chain was thrown out of Cuba in part because of racist
hiring practices.

 

The full equality of women has been a revolutionary goal from the beginning,
with its specific content evolving as consciousness deepens. The Cuban
Family Code recognizes equal responsibility of men and women to contribute
to maintaining the household and proclaims equal rights to work, study, and
leisure. However women still work 4-6 hours a day at housework in addition
to their paid jobs and participation in all sorts of organizations and in
government. There are many stories people tell about how the Family Code
works out in the complex struggles within the family. This struggle is also
seen in a high divorce rate. As one women's leader explained: "Men dream of 

women who no longer exist, and women dream of men who do not exist yet."
Still, among the children of my friends, relations between men and women are
much more egalitarian than in the older generation.

 

Women occupy 36% of the seats in the National Assembly, are a majority of
the professionals and 26% of the directors. In my own areas of experience,
the Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment, the minister and
at least one vice minister are women. The director and all vice directors at
the Institute of Citrus Research, the dean of the faculty of mathematics and
other centers were all women, many of them Black.

 

Nevertheless sexist attitudes and discrimination persist, and women are not
yet 50% of leadership. The Federation of Cuban Women recently held workshops
on why there are not more women leaders. They refuted the idea that women
are reluctant to take on those posts, and blamed continued underestimation
of women's capacity to lead.

 

At the time of the revolution in 1959, ecology was not part of the program
for the new society. There was, however, awareness of the erosion and
deforestation caused by four centuries of foreign rule and that, as a small
country, Cuba had limited land and fresh water. Many separate ecologically
sound programs were initiated but the prevailing view was developmentalist.
That viewpoint, especially popular among economists and planners, saw
development as the progression from "backward" to "advanced" along the path
previously followed by Europe and North America. It required making use of
vast quantities of energy, and a narrowly calculated "efficiency." In
agriculture this meant high inputs of pesticides, fertilizers, mechanical
power, and expensive animal feed in giant monocultures, i.e., industrial
agriculture. The ecologists argued that this kind of modernization
undermined the productive capacity of the land, made systems more vulnerable
to natural and economic disasters, and poisoned nature and people. They
developed an alternative approach based on biological pest control, the use
of nitrogen-fixing crops and bacteria, on compost, earthworms, and
beneficial fungi to improve soil fertility. They proposed a combination of
mechanical and animal traction, with a diversity of crops among regions,
within farms and even within fields.

 

In 1975 the new Cuban Constitution proclaimed environmental protection as a
duty of the state and the whole society, and all enterprises were required
to include environmental impacts in their plans. Despite the continued
predominance of the developmentalists in agriculture and industry, there
existed a variety of programs in ecological agriculture, alternative energy,
urban planning, and occupational health. These, along with some programs
working to protect biodiversity, resist desertification and erosion, and
replant forests, gradually coalesced into an ecological perspective in the
course of the struggle.

 

The ecologists won. When imports from the Soviet Union and eastern Europe
were suddenly cut off and the high-tech path was no longer an option, there
was in place an articulate community of ecologists, a tested alternative
technology, and a spreading ecological consciousness available to meet the
emergency. Ecologists-by-conviction were joined by the new
ecologists-by-necessity.

 

Nevertheless, there were setbacks because of material scarcity of the
period, for example, the cutting of wood for fuel, and a laxity in the
enforcement of environmental regulations. But there were also notable
achievements: organic agriculture has become the rule in the organopónicos
and huertos orgánicos (organic orchards), the urban vegetable gardens that
provide a great deal of the food for the cities and are spreading on rural
farms. Forest cover has increased from 14% of the Cuban land surface at the
time of the revolution to about 23% today toward a target of 27%. Freon is
now being replaced as a refrigerant by the Cuban sugar cane derivate LB-12
which does not destroy the ozone layer. The water pollution level is being
reduced at the rate of 5-10% per year. Cuba has signed on to the
international treaties concerning the environment and climate, and holds
workshops to evaluate its own compliance. An ecological society is gradually
becoming a conscious goal reflected in policy and education. Cuban socialism
is evolving toward a society in which the goals of development are the
overcoming of poverty, the improvement in the quality of life, and a
sustainable relation with nature rather than a race for unlimited increases
of production and consumption at all cost.

 


Conclusions


The campaign against Cuba is an integral part of the United States' new
imperial stance in the world, its claim to the right to intervene in other
countries and "take out" leaders they don't like or force "regime change."
We should be demanding that Congress reverse the laws aimed at strangling or
coercing Cuba, laws that violate international law. If the US escalates its
aggression against Cuba, no matter what the excuse, we should be ready to go
out in protest immediately, to defend one of the very few societies in which
equity, the satisfaction of basic human needs, participatory democracy, and
international solidarity are first principles.

 

We need to free our movement from cold war ideology. Only then can we begin
to challenge the disinformation war against Cuba. We have to be ready to
reject new excuses for the blockade and other coercive measures and to
correct the dismissal of Cuban achievements. What we can learn from Cuba is
that there are living alternatives to the way we do things here and that the
Canadian national health system is not the only model for providing
healthcare for everyone. In healthcare, education, and environmental
protection, catching up with Cuba can be a worthy national goal.

 

We would then be in a position to offer Cuba real criticism, well informed
and respectful. Foreign progressive critics have had their impact in the
past, in the struggle against homophobia, for example, and for ecological
agriculture. The rich American traditions of people's struggles can be a
source of valuable insight for the Cubans, while their creative solutions to
enormous problems can be a source of hope for us. Cuba warrants the respect,
appreciation, and solidarity of progressives in the United States and
throughout the world. *

 

I thank Rosario Morales for help in reworking and editing the manuscript.

 


Richard Levins is John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, Department of
Population and International Health, Harvard University. His theoretical
interests have been applied to problems of community development as part of
the Board of Directors of OXFAM-America and chair of their subcommittee on
Latin America and the Caribbean from 1989 to 1995. Working from a critique
of the industrial-commercial pathway of development, he promoted alternative
development pathways that emphasize economic viability with equity,
ecological and social sustainability and empowerment of the dispossessed. As
part of the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group, he has helped to
develop modern agroecology, concentrating on the whole-system approaches to
gentle pest management. The "Dialectical Biologist," co-authored with
Richard Lewontin, presented the authors' approach to the study of the
philosophy, sociology and history of science. He has received awards as a
pioneer of the ecology movement in Puerto Rico, for long term contributions
to the development of agricultural ecology in Cuba, the Edinburgh Science
Medal (Scotland) for contributions to science and the broader society, the
Lukacs 21st Century Award for contributions to statistical and mathematical
ecology, and an honarary doctorate in environmental science from the
University of Havana.


 

[1] [Ed. Note: see Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Luis Báez, "The Dissidents,"

reviewed elsewhere in this issue.]

[2] Cited in Global Justice, Publication of the Center on Rights Development

Vol.4 #1, Fall 1993, from Gustavo Arcos, Twenty Years and Forty Days: Life

in a Cuban Prison.

[3] Christopher Marquis, "Cuba Leads Latin America in Primary Education,

Study Finds," New York Times, December 14, 2001.

[4] See also Sarah Boseley, "Cubans tell NHS the secret of £7 a head

healthcare," Guardian (London), October 2, 2000

[5] Cuba's Report to the UN Secretary General on General Assembly Resolution

58/7, "Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo

Imposed by the United States of America Against Cuba" (2004), p. 31.

[6] Judith Miller et al., Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).

[7] See Philip Agee, "Terrorism and Civil Society as Instruments of US

Policy in Cuba," Socialism and Democracy no. 34 (Summer-Fall 2003).

[8] On Cuba's constitutional structure, see Peter Roman, People's Power:

Cuba's Experience with Representative Government, updated edition (Lanham,

MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).