The life in Fidel, and Cuba

[Mike Weaver]

>From: Keith Brecher 
>The answer to the CIA's failure to assassinate Castro is provided in Craig
>Baldwin's film TRIBULATION 99: "You can't kill something that isn't alive...."

It may have little direct Pynchonian context but I'm gonna have to challenge
that one. It may be little more than a smartarse joke but the sight of a US
citizen making such a comment about Fidel is just too much to stomach.  I'm
not a Fidel groupie like a percentage of the international Cuba solidarity
scene but IMO he is one of the very few national leaders who deserves far
more respect than scorn.  Before age diminished his energy he spent much of
his time visiting factories, farms, schools and the like listening to and
talking with regular Cubans so as to genuinely represent their needs, hopes
and desires.  Not like any capitalist  'leader' would do as part of a media
circus but quietly and purposefully. Workers in a part of a factory he was
not visiting would often only discover he had been there after he had left.  

       When, in 1990/91,the ex communist Russian and  E European countries,
sucking up to the U.S., withdrew their support,  the Cuban Communist
government was expected to collapse. It staggered,  but six years later,  in
the face of continually increasing pressure from the U.S. govt,  it is
recovering  remarkably well, with one of the fastest growing economies in
the world. 
   
        The government's response to the fuel and food crisis which occured
in 1991/2 (they previously imported 60% of their food and 80% fuel) included
importing and distributing (not selling) one million Chinese bicycles -
cuban pop 11 million -and inviting anyone who wanted to take possession of
waste and unused land in their neighbourhood and grow their own fruit and
veg,  to do so.
         I spent three months in Havana last year cycling round the province
and working with gardeners,  helping them develop their patches.  I worked
with a fair range of people,  not all by any means supporters of the
government - though as many critics wanted less engagement with capitalism
as wanted more! 
        Cuba is not any kind of paradise,  the Cuban state apparatus is to a
degree self serving and self-perpetuating like any other state apparatus,
the Cuban population has its share of socio and psychopaths,  selfish sods
and greedheads just like any other slice of humanity, a key difference is
that the economic/social differentials between the richest and poorest are,
in comparison with the capitalist world,  miniscule.
  One collective garden I worked on was cultivated by a group of families,
residents in a nearby block of flats. Some were party members, some not.
The men were all workers for the national telephone or radio company. Two
were department heads, a couple more technical specialists and the others
engineers/ manual workers.  As one of the latter pointed out one evening as,
we all made our way through a couple of bottles of rum, where in the
capitalist world would you find such a range of people living in the same
way and socialising together as a matter of course?  
        Castro is not, as communist Cuba's enemies would have it, a dictator
and solely responsible for the island's recent history good and bad,  but he
does remain, for a majority of the population, a representation of their
independence from the American empire and I find it sad that p-listers are
not immune to Their propaganda.


If there are any p-listers who are also into organic gardening the
Australian permaculture group I worked with has a website plastered with
photos and reports from Havana at
http://www.peg.apc.org/~adamt/cuba/welcome.htm.

Mike
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"...if you do not love words,  how will you love the communication?
  How will you, forgive me my tropes, communicate the love?" 
R. A. Lafferty
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