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Deluded foreigners are blind to the reality of Cuba’s wretched regime
Some are armchair communists. Others are fooled by the glamour. But times are changing
A former Cuban comandante, who had taken part in the Bay of Pigs on the Cuban side, once told me of his unease with his former communist beliefs. “If only the desire for human equality had been expressed as a spiritual quest – equality before God as it was in the Christian church – rather than as a political goal, a lot of conflict might have been averted.”
It was 1996 and we were waiting for a concert in Havana’s cathedral to begin. I remember being astonished by his remark at the time. But after you spend a while on the island, you get used to the fact that the vast majority of Cubans speak openly of their dislike of communist ideals. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t a dissident”, a journalist told me on the same visit. The system, as it continues to be, “just doesn’t work for the majority”.
It is outside Cuba where the strength of belief in the island’s communist regime has long appeared to be strongest. In fact, Britain might well have the highest per capita number of supporters of the Cuban regime via the Cuba Solidarity Campaign of any country in the world. This speaks of a concerted blindness, but also needs some explaining.
Many will be armchair communists. Others will back the Cuban regime out of sheer dislike of the United States. But there are many others who visit Cuba from rich countries and believe they’ve encountered a true alternative to capitalist democracy.
Never mind that they may not have spoken much to any actual Cubans apart from appointed government “minders”. Or that tourism was (certainly in the 1990s) tightly controlled so that no Cuban citizens were allowed into hotels where tourists spent their gilded time. A grotesque apartheid ensued: life was golden for tourists, but an impoverished quagmire for ordinary Cubans.
Supporting Cuba has long been a way of keeping alive the idea of some ideal society, without having to experience the downside oneself. Or for some to express unease with capitalist excesses, and back a return to a simple life (even if the causes of that simple life are imposed by a totalitarian system).
It is also, in all probability, related to a nostalgia for the political certainties and the material design of the 1950s and before: the cars, the bars and the glamour were all more beautiful then – even if most such products were created by arch-capitalists, their remnants and their disintegrating shells remain evident in Cuba today and in their decay still have the capacity to charm the undiscerning.
It is not for nothing that communist Cuba sells itself with the boleros of the pre-Revolutionary period. If North Korea had charm and salsa and innuendo and beaches, a lot of politically naïve people might also be advocating its merits. The architecture, the landscape and the people of Cuba are famously charming, and the stories of Che Guevara remain a popular constant for a part of the Left that may resent having to shift in response to changing times.
There isn’t otherwise any logic to the Left’s continued support for the regime. The claim by the Cuban Solidarity Campaign to support the Cuban people’s right to self-determination is confused. The call for the US to keep its “hands off Cuba” ignores the fact that this is precisely what the US has been doing for nearly 70 years. Cuba also urgently needs help from its neighbour, where millions of its former citizens now live in exile and would earnestly like to assist.
Politics of elsewhere
News of Cuba’s desperation, however, has led some to believe that the island’s liberation from an oppressive government could finally be near. The collapse in its relations with Venezuela in January after the arrest of Nicolás Maduro deprived Cuba of oil, and the absence of food, electricity and water is propelling its population towards starvation.
Millions of Cubans have long been anticipating liberation, even if in vox pop videos made by the BBC they talk of their loyalty to the government. (Surely the BBC understands that people living in a police state cannot talk openly of their real opinions for fear of being reported to authorities, which would lead them to lose the only advantage they may conceivably have?)
But those who watch and wait on the outside are different and more sanguine now. Many exiles once believed that they might finally reclaim the house they left when they were young, that they might recapture the Cuba that once existed.
These dreams have long since died as the island has been all but destroyed. There are no industries left, except potentially tourism. The sugar mills barely operate. There is nickel but a Canadian company has now departedafter threats from the US to impose tariffs on those who trade with the regime.
Many things have happened in the last three months. The fuel quarantine, the US indictment of Raúl Castro, the US food lift. But what is the next step? Cuban Americans have one clear idea: that a political transition has to precede any economic transition. For them, this is the sine qua non of any further engagement with Cuba.
There are tantalising suggestions that the US might be envisaging some sort of role for the Catholic Church in the first instance. On my visit in 1996, churches were being reopened for the first time since the communist regime clashed with Rome in the 1960s. By the 1990s, it was being seen as a useful conduit of charity for the regime, and in 1999 Pope John Paul II arrived to universal fanfare.
Sadly his anti-communist ethos did not have the same effect as it did in Eastern Europe, even if Fidel Castro did change out of his military fatigues and put on a suit for the occasion.
Today, the Catholic Church remains the only “private” property owner on the island, and as Marco Rubio (the son of Cuban exiles himself, who has recently held meetings in the Vatican) put it when addressing the Cuban people directly in a televised address last week, it is the only means by which the US is prepared to deliver aid to Havana. The Church – and the Pope – now hold some cards in an unfolding drama.
But the Miami Cubans also need to play Trump. One can sense from Trump’s own remarks that he is being flattered into taking some kind of action. (“It looks like I’ll be the one that does [something for Cuba],” he says). But there is also a high chance of disappointment.
Perhaps Trump will settle for the same kind of collaboration he now has with Venezuela, making various demands in relation to the release of political prisoners and the end of the Russian and Chinese listening stations. It may be that the regime will agree, playing for time until it can muster its next big anti-American ally. Reports that Cuba has acquired Iranian drones suggest there are useful allies available. But to orchestrate only a partial manoeuvre in Cuba would disappoint Cuban Americans and that could be electorally damaging.
Cuba’s regime has deep roots and it remains a totalitarian state which owns every element of its economy. Government agents play an important role in controlling individuals. Venezuela’s decapitation is one thing; Cuba’s would be another altogether: the system itself would be very likely to be able to survive a decapitation of its leader. It has survived the death of Fidel and the retirement of his brother Raúl.
So Trump has a very difficult dilemma. He might reflect that the politics of the outside have been one of the principal reasons for the durability of Cuba’s crippling regime. Cuba has long since been kept afloat by the politics of elsewhere.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
