Opinions

War of Words

This Week's Topic- Fidel Castro

 

 

 

After nearly five decades in power, Fidel Castro finally
stepped down as President of Cuba last month.

As one of the world’s longest-serving rulers, Castro brought
great changes to his country in the aftermath of his self-
styled “People’s Revolution” of 1959. But is Cuba actually

 

better off today because of him?

Castro was good for Cuba

Pro

By Liam Britten

ie never understood why the right-
wing of politics has always gotten
their rocks off from Castro-bashing.
Considering all the Suhartos, Pinochets,
and Shahs the right has supported, Castro
has always seemed like a benign fellow
in comparison. But the right has always
seen Castro as the monster next door
because of his anti-corporate stance, not
because of how he treats his citizens.
That’s because in their rush to criticize
a dictator, the right hasn’t thought at all
about whether or not Castro was good
for Cuba.

What right-wing analysts never
seem to consider in their critiques of
Castro’s regime is context. Yes, if you
compare Cuba to Canada or the US, it
borders on being a failed state. But let’s
not forget that this is a small island in the
Carribbean; the region itself has never
done too well (thanks to colonialism,
but that’s a screed for a different day).

This is a region that has been enslaved
ever since the 15" century, where public
welfare has always been a secondary
concern to the search for profit. But
Castro changed that all. He provided
health care, living wages, education, and
rations to all citizens, and this concern
for the citizenry—as opposed to foreign
corporations — sent a shockwave through
Latin America, and I doubt leaders such
as Morales, Chavez, or Allende would
have come on the scene without the
precedent set by Castro.

Now, I’ve been to Cuba, and
contrary to popular belief, tourists do
get to see the countryside away from
the resorts. It is indeed an impoverished
nation, but there is fully functioning
state machinery there to take care of
the people. When I went to Cuba the
complaint I heard was how people didn’t
get beef when they wanted it; when
I was in the neighbouring Domincan
Republic, by contrast, people didn’t

Just another dictator

Against

By J.J. McCullough

) if you will, a small
Latin American country ruled by an
authoritarian dictator. This dictator
came to power in a military coup, a self-
styled “revolution” that finally deposed
a tired and ineffective government.
In power, the man ruled harshly, as all
dictators inevitably do, but also brought
great prosperity and wealth to his once-
impoverished nation. Today, his country
is much better off because of his years
of rule, and stands as an impressive
success story to many within the regional
neighborhood.

In such a scenario, would you say
the deaths of a few thousand political
dissidents would be negligible when
contrasted against such an otherwise
productive political legacy?

You don’t have to wonder too hard,

eS

because such a dictator really existed,
and his name was Augusto Pinochet.
Coming to power in a violent coup in
1973, Pinochet spent the next dozen
years aggressively modernizing the
economy of his native Chile, bringing in
a series of dramatic free-market reforms
designed to offset the bankrupting
mismanagement of Salvador Allende,
the Marxist physician-cum-president
whom he overthrew and replaced. Under
Pinochet, deficits shrank, the GDP rose,
and Chileans came to enjoy among the
highest standards of living in all of South
America—a status they still enjoy to this
day.

Pinochet was vile and ruthless
in many other ways, of course. His
secret police routinely practiced torture
of the most nightmarish variety, and
the right to free speech was harshly

even have adequate drinking water. The
Dominican Republic has democracy,
and is capitalist, yet the invisible hand
of the market has not been very kind to
them. The Caribbean is an impoverished
region, and for the right to expect the
Cubans to become the malnourished,
underpriviliged “rugged individualists”
that the Dominicans are certainly doesn’t
sound to be in Cubans’ best interests.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Cuba
has for decades been blockaded from the
US. This means no trade either way, and
no humanitarian aid from big American
charities. This is, in my opinion, the
primary reason why Cuba broke: face it,
if Canada was 100 per cent cut off from
trade with the US, we’d be in poverty too.
I would say Castro has done an excellent
job in diversifying their workforce to get
off of their sugar dependency. Cubans
with university training travel all around
Latin America and provide income for
Cuba by working abroad. Of course,

trampled. The problem is, to many, this
is Pinochet’s only legacy. Rather than
the complex figure he was, the Chilean
general is routinely portrayed as an
incredibly two-dimensional caricature
of unabashed tyranny and murder. I
remember a while ago Time magazine
had a cover story on the difference
between Good and Evil, and Pinochet
was profiled inside as a key case study
of the latter, alongside Hitler, Stalin,
and Pol Pot. It’s all par for the course.

This kind of thing is infuriating
not because I believe General Pinochet
should somehow be immune to
criticism—far from it—but rather
because of the enormous double standard
of liberal judgment that is highlighted
each and every time the man is publicly
denounced.

Fidel Castro was, by absolutely

 

 

this can’t possibly make up for the
lost sugar revenues, but I’d like to see
Stephen Harper try to manage a Canada
that didn’t get to export to the US; he’d
probably just have a yard sale, then we’d
be on our own.

When criticizing Cuba, it’s
important to remember that democracy
is not a magic potion that fixes every
problem a country faces. There are
plenty of countries in the Caribbean,
and the developing world in general,
that have democracy, but poverty often
makes democracy unfeasible due to
the corruption and radicalization that
often occurs. No, Cuba faces far greater
problems than that, and I would say
that Castro has done an excellent job in
uplifting his people. The right needs to
recognize that it doesn’t really matter
who’s in charge if the lives of the people
are improved as a result; after all, isn’t it
the people those right-wingers say they
care about? Viva!

every measurable standard, “as bad” a
dictator as Augusto Pinochet. In terms
of sheer body count, he is in fact quite
a bit worse, having killed well over
10,000 people, compared to Pinochet’s
two or three thousand, depending on
whom you talk to. Castro’s prison
camps were certainly no more pleasant
than Pinochet’s prison camps, and his
secret police were no more forgiving
when they arrived in the dead of night to
haul off whichever family member had
committed some imagined crime against
the regime that week.

Yet people—in the media, academia,
our own government, and elsewhere—
continue to hold up Castro as if he was
something more than just a petty junta
thug, largely on the basis that he a)
hated America, and b) was left-wing.

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