Re: Cuban doctors escaping?!

[Chris Brady <chris_brady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Of course it is a feather in the hat of capitalism to have one of the
famous doctors of Cuba defect.  It was ever thus.
Defectors for one side or the other are propaganda victories.
Or farts in the bathtub?

Anecdote:
I met a Cuban doctor in Buenos Aires a couple of years ago.
It was at a party.  He was drunk  We had been introduced by
a mutual friend.  He ranted about how good doctors have it
in Argentina, and how his wife and children back in Cuba
don?t have half of what an ordinary doctor would have in the
civilized world.  Mark my words here: they are his!  When I
countered about how there were no people in Cuba who lived
as poorly as those in the villas de miserias surrounding BA, or
Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo or Quito or Bogota or Caracas or
Santiago de Chile or Mexico City he said that in Cuba everybody
lived poorly, maybe not abject misery but that is life, there will
always be poor.  But Whyshould everyone be poor?
He demanded: Why can?t there be at least some people,
useful ones who can rise above and have a chance to be
happy, to provide better lives for their loved ones?  Why should
we in Cuba be deprived?  Why can?t we have those opportunities?
He sounded like Jose Cubas to me.
He was a drunk asshole. He disgusted me.
(In my younger years I might have picked a fight? )

But what is the difference between El Duque (the Cuban baseball
pitcher who defected and helped the New York Yankees [a perfectly
symbolic choice] win the World Series) and this MD?
Both attained a status provided by the revolution and both are
eager to betray that very revolution.  Why not? Are they saints?
What should we as Marxists expect?  The effect of material
conditions or some idealism?  Where do the best material
conditions exist for a top baseball pitcher in this world?

Of course, we can?t condemn all Cuban baseball stars and
physicians, but as a class they would be more likely to betray the
cause of equality and justice because they are celebrated as special,
and rewarded as privileged individuals in the revolution.  Because of
their very special privilege, this exaltation tends to encourage
elitism.
A doctor might believe s/he is better than the average person
because s/he has special knowledge.  You would have to forget
that doctor?s knowledge is provided by the people, and the doctor
would not be a doctor without the people.

Intellectuals as a class are more predisposed to elitism because of
material conditions, and so are more likely to be traitors to the
revolution.  This was proved over and over in Chile, China, Cuba,
et cetera.  At first we thought it was because they were of the
bourgeoisie and that the post-revolutionary societies could
produce intellectuals of, by and for the people.  I think in part
it was true, but as far as I can see, in the counter-revolutionary
reformations these intellectuals did not look back?

The blockade has a built-in selector: people who are not
?special?, that is people who were not nurtured and developed
and thus potentially top-bid commodities in the marketplace,
 have no reason to go to the USA ?that would not be fleeing.
Race, gender and age play dynamic roles as well.
In the USA the strong and a/im-moral prosper.

How does that play to this crowd?

YFTR,
Chris Brady