Let’s talk about Rep. Keating’s take on Cuba.
Last July our man in Congress voted to approve an amendment to a bill that would restore Bush-era restrictions on travel to the beleaguered island nation.
By way of explanation a Keating spokeswoman said in an email to the Cape Cod Times: “Congressman Keating does not support policies that might benefit the Castro government until it ceases hostilities against our country and repression of their own people,”
With this sort of thinking, Keating flunked a litmus test of progressive sensibility, not to mention Cuban Revolution 101. “Hostilities against our country and repression of their own people” ? C’mon. I didn’t think anyone outside the city limits of Miami still argued that.
Keating’s view seems especially benighted. But even a common argument in favor of lifting sanctions fails to see Cuba clearly: Sure, the revolution has been a miserable failure but it’s meanspirited to go on punishing the people for the government. Easing restrictions would only demonstrate the superiority of the American Way economically and politically, etc, etc.
That’s better than Keating’s position but it still doesn’t get it. Herewith, based on information widely known or at least knowable from mass media (or wikipedia), a stab at The Case For Cuba.
First, there has never been a Cuba not in a sense an outgrowth, a response, an aspect, of American capitalism. There seems no question that Castro and cohorts risked their lives inspired only by the ideal of rescuing their country and most of its people from an unjust, corrupt regime-under the pro-US business dictator Batista–in Roosevelt’s famous quip about another pro -US Latin American dictator, “our son-of-a-bitch”. It is no stretch at all to say that U.S. Capitalism caused Cuba’s revolution.
A popular explanation of the revolution’s continuing failure to hold elections is that Castro just kind of liked the dictator lifestyle, mouthing off for hours on end, showing off riding around in a jeep in his old fatigues. There’s another way of looking at this. Having risked everything to achieve a just revolution Castro and his fellow revolutionaries were understandably not about to throw it away.
The U.S. government’s disdain for the new Cuban government’s initial friendly overtures , the embargo, and of course Bay of Pigs made it pretty clear that the U.S. had chosen to support corporations and those who profitted from them over the welfare of the Cuban people. Given the relentless hostility of the huge Power only 90 miles away, it was not an unreasonable thing for the revolution’s leaders to keep a firm hand on the reins as long as necessary. In a real sense, U.S. policy effectively prevented democracy in Cuba.
And of course, as we know, the ideals of the revolution have had practical payoff. Thanks to the hostile U.S. policy Cubans lack a lot of the comforts we think makes for a good life, but they have achieved benefits in health and education the so-called richest nation on earth doesn’t have.
And it’s not a small thing that, unlike the majority of citizens in the U.S.democracy, most Cubans apparently don’t feel like victims of a system which rewards the few with obscene wealth and while neglecting the many. Almost certainly, one of the reasons Cubans haven’t overthrown Castro (as he overthrew Batista) is that they understand the difference between dictators, between one with their best interests at heart and one of the U.S.’s SOBs.
In short: Yes, Castro, though brave and genuinely idealistic, has made mistakes, but the revolution has not been a mistake. And given the context, it has not been a failure. On the contrary, the Cuban revolution despite all its problems and the suffering of its people has been an achievement hard to find anywhere else in the world.
Rep. Keating’s perspective on Cuba displays a scary misunderstanding not only of that one country but of how the U.S. -dominated world operates in general.
If you think that in voting for Keating in the upoming election you are getting someone in the progressive (Studds, Delahunt) tradition of this seat, you might want to think again.