There are numerous liberals among the Miami Cuban population, many of them key in the Democratic Party leadership in Southern Florida. Among the rank and file of many Miami Cubans are some very ordinary people who came here because they wanted the sort of opptys denied in Cuba. To make a Manichean distinction between Cuban Cubans and Miami Cubans is really to understand almost nothing about humanity or even Cuba.
In political terms: the leadership of the Miami Cuban exile organization are of course overtly right-wing. But how would you characterize the politics of Cuban Cubans? Are Fidelistas socialists? We know they are certainly not liberals!
As to raping Cuba, with all due respect I suggest you look into the structure of Cuba's "leading industries." They are almost in their entirety mixed joint enterprises with some (very right-wing) foreign capitalists doing some very handsome economic pillage if not rape. In every case, these foreign corporations are given free course to exploit Cuba's natural and human resources. The "socialist" state merely acts as a repressive labor broker, gang-pressing Cuban workers into working for peanut wages so that the foreign capitalists can make maximum profit. Back in the 90's I did a lot of reporting on the Cuban resort hotel industry. The Spanish manager/owners of the Melia chain raved about the profitability of their Cuban holdings, their most profitable in the world. What a great deal they had. The Communist Youth conducted work speed-up campaigns to build the hotels ahead of deadline, the statre-run unions enforced total labor compliance and discipline -- no messy strikes of the sort that might pop up in Spain or Brazil. Once the hotels were built, the Spaniards contracted with the Cuban state as a labor agency. The Spaniards paid about $300 a month per Cuban worker to the state, the state paid the worker the equivalent of about $10 a month (plus, of course the "social wage"). And of course, inefficient or unruly workers were fired without cause or contract. What a great deal for everyone except the Cuban workers.
Well, wait, I take that back. I interviewed several Cuban hotel maids and car valets who had quit their white-collar university-education level jobs to work in the hotels because they had the chance of picking up a couple of dollars a day in hard currency tips. Quite dignified!
Cubans have indeed suffered from the US economic embargo, though Cuba is free to trade with most of the rest of the advanced capitalist world -- and it does. They have also suffered enormously from Castro's hare-brained notion of "socialism" in one small, underdeveloped impoverished country. When Castro nationalized eveyrthing, right down to snow cone stands and bootblacks in 1965, the economic game was over. More than socialist, Cuba's economic, political and social structure more closely resemble a family-owned latifundo.
it is indeed quite unlikely, as you say, that Cuba's future economic viability resides in anything to be offered from Washington or Miami. Those recipes are as bankrupt as the current ones provided by Havana. And for that matter by MR which can only offer high-carb, low calorie servings of warmed-over anti-imperialist rhetoric. That, my friend, will feed excatly nobody.
On 10/8/06, politicnow at aol.com <politicnow at aol.com> wrote:
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> In a message dated 10/8/2006 7:24:41 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, mcooper at thenation.com writes:
> I find it rather revealing that the MR editorial must resort to a quote from 45 years ago to make its supposed point. No doubt there are some among the "Miami Cubans" who wish to privatize everything. But it's really a caricature to suggest the only options are the status quo or savage capitalism.
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> Actually the article doesn't imply that at all. It states that savage capitalism is poised and ready to rape Cuba--which it is--and I wonder what percentage of Miami Cubans are "democratic socialist" or even "liberals"? A very small percentage of course. The religion of authoritarian "free enterprise" is the Miami Cuban religion and we all know that. Yes, there ought to be a way for Cuba other than the rugged capitalism of the United States or the ragged socialism of Fidel for the Cubans, but that way is unlikely to come from Washington or Miami. I guess it may be rude to mention that perhaps some of the poverty of Cuba might be the result of the embargo of Cuba.
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> Mark Derderian, Denver
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
> -- Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle"
-- Marc Cooper Associate Director Institute for Justice and Journalism Visiting Professor Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California mcooper at thenation.com __._,_.___
-- Michael Pugliese