> On 8/28/2011 12:57 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> According to Tariq Ali, who claims to have gotten it from Chavez, Fidel told him many times not to make the same "mistake" he did - setting up an authoritarian repressive state. Fidel advised him that elections would make Chavez more secure, not less.
>
> I remember reading a long time ago that he gave the same advice to the Sandinistas.
It goes back further than that, to shortly after the Cuban revolution and the failure of Che and other Latin America guerrilla leaders to replicate its success through the establishment and growth of "foci" in terrain similar to the Sierra Maestre. I think I recall rumours of disagreements between Fidel and Che concerning the latter's foray into Bolivia. After the Cuban revolution, the US government went into high gear to train and supply counter-insurgency forces in the region. The failure of subsequent attempts at armed struggle inevitably lowered the near-term revolutionary expectations of the Cubans and their continental allies and forced them into electoral politics and a more gradualist political strategies resembling that of the prewar social democrats - Allende's government being the paramount and most tragic example.
BTW, I would be surprised if Fidel or any other Cuban leader would use the formulation "authoritarian repressive state" to describe what they see as a people's democracy or proletarian dictatorship where the masses have more say than in a liberal democracy. Did Tariq actually attribute this expression to Fidel verbatim or via Chavez or has the term been employed here by Doug in the context of the present thread?