Once too often!

[Mike Weaver]

DT wrote

>To celebrate Cuba's successes in
>literacy and health care is not to ignore Fidel's tyranny --

"He's not a dictator: he's a Leo."
Best comment I ever heard about Fidel. I would suggest that anyone who 
believes Castro to be a dictator/tyrant go spend a couple of months hanging 
out with ordinary Cubans in different parts of the island.

Here is a leader of a highly educated population who has ruled for forty 
years without provoking an internal armed opposition (and think of the 
support they would have got from across the water.) Cuba's police and army 
are part professional, part national service ( which can also be served 
overseas as doctors, engineers, teachers...) They are not an instrument of 
terror!  Weapons would have been readily available should a desire for 
revolt have existed.

Yes, from the late sixties to the mid 80's Cubans were subjected to 
excesses of attempted social engineering (an art often mistaken for a 
science!) and bureaucratic ossification. This was not the work of one man 
but of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Nomination for the CP in Cuba is by neighbours, workmates and the like and 
is recognition of a person's societal qualities. This makes it likely that 
the corruption and other negative aspects which are an endemic part of any 
power structure are constantly challenged by the co-option of publically 
recognised upstanding citizens into the party's ranks.

In 1986, well before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cubans (while 
scorning glasnost and perestroika) embarked on an Era of Rectification in 
which they commenced to respond positively to criticisms of those excesses. 
10 years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc Castro is still leading a 
healthy vibrant population, not because he's a tyrant but because he is a 
flexible leader of a flexible, self critical power structure which delivers 
the general needs of the vast majority of the island's population.

Do you really think that the passionate and joyful music which is being 
received so enthusiastically all around the world is possibly the product 
of a tyranny?  The Cuban army is currently handing over to co-operatives 
profitable agricultural businesses they have been running, organic citrus 
orchards in particular. Do you think that a country with an army which 
responds to an economic crisis by making themselves self sufficient in food 
is likely to be a police state?

The sheer power and pressure exerted by capitalism may one day destroy the 
Cuban Revolution on the island but that will not stop it being an 
inspiration to future generations of anti-capitalists, nor Castro being 
seen as an historical hero, not a villain.

If this seems a little idealistic sorry, islands of hope (no pun intended) 
are few and far between.
"We are better than painted by our enemies but not as good as painted by 
our friends". That's Fidel's comment.

Weavercreature - who should be out planting onions and beans not arguing in 
cyberspace!!!
Red in thought, green in action ;-)