Latin American Politics

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by saleemkvt on July 28, 2008 at 1:29pm

hi... i am from kerala i want to know about Cuba...about its stable politics atmosphere...can you sir?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mauricio H. Robotnik on July 29, 2008 at 7:06am

Cuba is a dictatorship, and if anyone thinks that dictatorships are kind to the people, like Salazar was in Portugal, he/she is mistaken.
Revolutions tend to purge their own elements because they think that if someone made a revolution against a previous regime, he is willing to make a revolution againts the actual policy.
No dictatorship is benign as they deny the basic elements of any human being: the right to express its disconformity when he thinks that something is wrong.
If Cuba`s dictatorship survived all these years is not by being benevolent but in having a united front againts the United States with it`s absurd foreign policy. And this comes from a very long time ago, 1898, when the USA declared war on Spain because a fake incident, the blowing up of the Maine war ship. And took the chance to get all the Spanish posessions like the Filipines.
Another excuse for the base of Guantànamo, for which the USA pays 24 dollars a year for rent and the check is sent back, was to defend the Panama Canal, which is another absurd, because it`s indefendible. One bomb at Gatun puts the canal out of traffic for several months, maybe years.
Even the ex Soviet Union got tired of sending one million rubles per day, and got tired of the economic blunders the Castro regime did: crops like tobacco that ruins the soil, and sugar that the Soviets took and put out of business their own crops of sugar beets.
Don`t make any mistake: the Che Guevara was an assasin, when he tried to run the economy made more mistakes. He was so stupid as trying to make a revolution in Bolivia where the masses don`t care one way or another, as long as they can chew coca and plant more crops to make cocain.
The USA made more blunders as trying to kill Castro, when the president that the mafia put in power, Kennedy, only got that the cubans rallied around Castro more than ever. The embargo is absurd, as Cuba doesn`t have the means to pay for any good, and we in Argentina are a good example. Nothing that we sent was paid for.
Any dictator wants to hear himself and Castro sickened the people with speeches that went for hours, but in the plus side we have to take into consideration that he gave his people education and health services that few countries in Latin America have, but also sent mercenaries to fuel revolutions in Latin America and Africa, and sent doctors thay they have as a surplus in exchange for oil to Venezuela.
It`s a dictatorship that went for too long a time and grabs the money that the exiles send to their families.
It will fall, no doubt, the nostalgics that lived without having to work, like in any dictatorship will attempt to revive it, but it will be too late. If you don`t believe it look what happened to the Soviet Union, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany, Litania, Estonia, Letonia, Poland, Ucrania, Uzbekistan, etc.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jose Luis Campillo on August 5, 2008 at 7:10am

Mr. Robotnik makes several assertions that can be discussed. He says that Cuba is a dictatorship. So was Spain between 1939 and 1975, till the death of General Franco. Can we criticize Franco for the simple fact that he was a dictator? I don't think so. When Franco died, on November, 20 ,1975, I was 12 years old. Democracy was not recovered till June, 15, 1977. And the Spanish Constitution was not approved till December, 6, 1978, when I was already 15 years old. So I know a bit what is not living under democracy, although I must admit that my parents, for instance, know better. The plain truth is that Franco came to power after the Spanish Civil War, which started in 1936 and ended in 1939 with Franco's victory. Both sides, Franco followers and the Republicans, had adopted very radical attitudes. For instance, in Barcelona, during the war, the simple fact of going to church on Sunday could be a cause for sending you to prison, or it could be reason enough to be killed, no matter what language you spoke. The only community in Barcelona that escaped from being killed even if they went to church was the basque community, something that proves that the murderers were not only people out of control of the public authorities in Catalonia, if it had not been so, why did basque people in Barcelona escape from death? The father of a friend of my father was a strong Franco supporter, and he was a deeply-rooted Catalan, but he hated Republicans because, during the war, they had murdered three of his siblings just because they were Roman Catholic and they went to church on Sunday. I could tell you many stories like this. If Franco had lost the war, the Republicans, most of them Communists or anarchists, would have reacted in the same way that Franco, but the opposite way round. They would have reacted in the same way that the Communists did in Russia, and they would have also murdered hundreds of thousands of people, as Franco and his followers did. The Spanish Civil War ended nearly 70 years ago, but I read and I have read, and I have memory. Neither right-wing parties nor left-wing parties are going to deceive me. I was born in Barcelona in 1963, when I suppose that many wounds from the war had already been healed. During the 60s Spain experienced a very strong economical development. I have never known what famine. I suppose that, after Franco's death, this economical development lead to the end of the political system he had built. The Republicans were not better than Franco. It's very easy to criticize Franco just saying that he was a dictator. As it is very easy to criticize Fidel Castro for the same reason. I won't, because I'm not an expert in the history of Cuba, and I have never lived there. Anyway, you must know that Franco, the so-called "fascist" Franco, never broke diplomatic relationships with Castro's Cuba, although he received strong pressures to do so. He never broke these relationships because Cuba had been part of Spain until 1898. It had been like a member of the family. Some people may think that Franco was the devil, others may think that Castro is the devil. I don't think so. But I think, as the writer from Chile Jose Donoso thought, that Americans have understood nothing of what happens in the Spanish speaking world or in Brasil. I think it's good that we have had democracy in Spain, a European country, for 30 years. In Spain, some people speak in favour of Franco's memory, and others against Franco's memory. I suppose in Cuba it will be the same thing, some people will be in favour of Fidel Castro, and some against. But I've never been to Cuba. But generally, people living in America always express themselves to criticize Castro. In the same way, I won't criticize Augusto Pinochet, for instance; I don't know Chile well enough. But, as I've realized that opinions about Franco are always bias, I cannot help thinking that opinions about Pinochet or Castro will be bias as well.

• ▶ Reply