Cuba Under Castro

by Stephen Lendman

Having just turned 80 on August 13 and undergone major
surgery for what may have been stomach cancer at the
end of July, a transitional time may be near in Cuba
with Fidel Castro Ruz beginning to hand over power to
his brother Raul and/or others in the months ahead.
It passed without irony or mention of imperial
arrogance in a brief front page comment in the August
19th issue of the Wall Street Journal that the US
won’t invade Cuba but a “dynastic succession” is not
acceptable.  It would have been too much to expect the
Journal to have noted that same type succession
happened in the US in 2000 and 2004 and in elections
exposed and documented as badly tainted at least and
likely stolen at worst on top of five arrogant Supreme
Court Justices refusing to allow a proper recount of
the disputed vote and, in effect, annulling the voice
of the people and replacing it with their choice for
president.  It’s called “democracy, American style.”
It also would have been too much to expect the WSJ to
challenge the language it quoted asking what right
does anyone in the Bush administration have to tell
another nation what type succession policy is or is
not acceptable.

No one can know for sure what lies ahead for Cuba or
if Castro will even survive.  But now beginning his
ninth decade and clearly facing a long and difficult
recovery, the Cuban leader may have no other choice
than to step aside in handling the country’s day to
day affairs although his influence will always be felt
as long as he’s alive and lucid.  When, not if, the
time of transition arrives, an historic era will have
passed for the Cuban people and the region.  And,
while it won’t be easy for a successor replacing a
‘legend,” the history of just Israel and the US alone
shows it can happen successfully.  It likely will in
Cuba as well because the great majority of people
there won’t tolerate a return to the ugly, repressive
pre-Castro past even though most of them never lived
through it.

Looking back, one thing for sure can be said about
Fidel Castro.  He’s the longest serving political
leader in the world having first gained power on
January 1, 1959.  For him and Cuba it marked the
successful culmination of his quest to do so that
began with his unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army
post in Santiago de Cuba in July, 1953 for which he
stood trial and was sentenced in October that year to
serve 15 years in the Isle of Pines penitentiary.  For
his efforts and while in prison Castro fast became a
legend which may or may not have helped him win
amnesty and release in May, 1955 after which he first
became a non-violent agitator against the US backed
oppressive and corrupted Fulgencio Batista
dictatorship.  Because he was censored and banned from
speaking publicly, that strategy got him nowhere and
he was forced to leave Cuba for Mexico to plan what
became his 26th of July Movement that would be the
means to take by force what no opposition in Batista’s
Cuba could achieve politically.  With few resources
and little support, Castro and 82 of his followers
returned to the Sierra Maestra Mountains in his
country in December, 1956 to begin the revolution that
would finally succeed when he and what grew to 800
loyal followers entered Havana on January 1, 1959.
His small band of determined resistance guerilla
fighters had defeated Batista’s army of thousands and
forced the Cuban dictator to flee the country.  From
that time forward, the rest, as they say, is history.

The “Liberation” of Cuba, US-Style

From the earliest days of Cuba under Castro, the US
imposed harsh conditions on the island state and waged
an unending undeclared war against it.  It wanted to
destabilize the government, kill Fidel Castro or at
the least make life so intolerable for the Cuban
people, they’d willingly allow themselves to be ruled
again by the interests of capital and the dictates of
so-called “free market” forces.  That many-decade
campaign of state-directed terror never worked and
likely never will convince the great majority of the
Cuban people to favor giving up the essential social
gains they now have for a return to what they surely
know was a repressive past. They understand if it ever
happened, it would be a throwback not just to the days
and ways of the hated Batista regime but also to the
time US President McKinley “liberated” the island from
Spain in an earlier war based on a lie.  From that
time forward until the Castro-led revolution, the US
effectively ruled Cuba as a de facto colony and used
it to serve the interests of wealth and power at the
expense of the welfare of the people.  In his time,
McKinley promised to let the Cubans govern themselves
after the Spanish-American war, but the dominant
Republicans in the Congress had other ideas and were
only willing to go along with the island’s self-rule
if under it the US was allowed “to veto any decision
(the Cuban government) made.” 

One of the earliest examples of US dominance was the
Platt Amendment the Congress passed in 1901 after the
US “liberated” Cuba in 1898.  This federal law ceded
Guantanamo Bay to the US to be used as the naval base
we’ve had ever since and granted the US the right to
intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it deemed it
necessary.  Theodore Roosevelt later signed the
original Guantanamo lease agreement the terms of which
gave the US jurisdiction over the territory that can
only be terminated by the mutual consent of both
countries as long as annual rent payments are made.
The US thus gave itself the right to occupy part of
sovereign Cuban territory in perpetuity regardless of
how the Cuban people feel about it.  The Castro
government clearly wants the US out and through the
years made its views clear by refusing to cash every
US lease payment check it got other than the first one
right after the successful revolution.

The US Embargo on Cuba

Whatever one’s view of Fidel Castro Ruz, it’s clear
the achievements of the Republica de Cuba under his
rule for nearly 48 years have been remarkable.  He
managed to do it in spite of the oppressive partial
embargo the US imposed on the island state in October,
1960 that became a total embargo 16 months later in
February, 1962 when it was expanded to include
everything except non-subsidized sales of food and
medicines and a month later banned the import of all
goods made from Cuban materials regardless of where
they were made.  The embargo was further tightened
with the passage of the Cuban Democracy (Torricelli)
Act in 1992 that legalized the encouragement of pro-US
opposition groups to act forcefully against the Castro
government.  It was made still far worse in 1996 after
the passage of the outrageous Helms-Burton Act that
allows the US government the right to sue any
corporation anywhere that does business with Cuba. 

Today the US embargo remains in place but is under
siege because of its unpopularity among sectors of the
US business community that want access to the Cuban
market.  They include oil and agricultural interests
that see the profit potential of trading with Cuba and
want to end the restrictions on it now in place.  For
US oil companies there are potential Cuban oil
reserves they want access to, and for agribusiness
there’s a significant Cuban market for their exports.
As a result, the pressure is mounting on the Bush
administration which up to now has been defiant in its
opposition to Fidel Castro and remains hostile and
punitive.  But of late the action has been in the
Congress with attempts to pass legislation and avoid a
Bush veto to ease the current restrictions and allow
some economic relations with Cuba that for decades
have been banned.  For now it’s uncertain whether the
demands of US business will win out over the fiercely
unyielding Bush administration’s anti-Castro foreign
policy.  This and past administrations have always
resisted all outside pressure to change their
multi-decade hostile policy stance that included
ignoring over a dozen overwhelming UN General Assembly
votes to end the embargo.  In all those votes
(excluding abstentions), it was nearly the entire
world voting to end it and two or three nations
wanting to keep it - the US, Israel and one or another
Pacific island.

Travel and Other Restrictions On US Citizens

To destabilize the Castro government, the US for over
40 years has also imposed travel and other
restrictions on its own citizens.  After the Cuban
Missile Crisis in October, 1962, President Kennedy
first imposed restrictions on travel to the island in
February, 1963.  Through the years, US laws have
changed at times but have grown harsher under the
current Bush administration.  Technically no US
citizen can legally travel to Cuba without a Treasury
license to do so.  Doing it otherwise will subject
anyone caught to fines up to $10,000 and possibly much
higher as well as up to 10 years in prison.  Until
2001, the travel restrictions were loosely enforced
with only 16 criminal prosecutions between 1983 and
1999.  However, all that changed post-2001, and now
anyone caught travelling illegally to Cuba stands a
real risk of heavy fine and possible imprisonment in
this time of USA Patriot Act justice and the
fraudulent “war on terror.”

For those US citizens allowed to travel to Cuba, there
are further limitations on the amount of money they
may spend there or send to the country in the case of
remittances to immediate family members there or to a
Cuban national living in a third country.  Under US
Treasury license authorization, a visitor is allowed
to spend a maximum $50 per day for
non-transportational expenses and an additional $50
per day for transportation expenses.  It’s also
permissible for persons in the US 18 years of age or
older to remit to an immediate family member in Cuba
or a Cuban national in a third country a maximum $300
per household in any consecutive three month period. 

These restrictions of movement and a citizen’s right
to use ones own financial resources freely likely
violate two or more amendments to the US Constitution
although nothing in the Constitution specifically
guarantees the freedom to travel.  At the time the
Constitution was written, the right to travel freely
was unquestioned and was unheard of before the Cold
War began after WW 11.  After that time limitations
were imposed, but challenges to them were made all the
way to the Supreme Court which ruled in 1967 that
restricting freedom of movement was an infringement of
a citizen’s constitutional rights.  Justice William
Douglas said at the time that “Freedom of movement is
the very essence of our free society, setting us
apart…..it often makes other rights meaningful.”  On
two other occasions in 1962 and 1984, the High Court
ruled otherwise by narrow margins but only under “the
weightiest conditions of national security”
necessitated by the Cold War.  It’s quite likely a
Bush-friendly majority on the present Court would
uphold the harsher restrictions favored by the Bush
administration and permit one more way for them to
destroy our civil liberties.

And they no doubt would do it despite the fact that
the right of free movement anywhere encroaches on the
right to liberty which the Fifth Amendment
specifically states citizens cannot be deprived of
without the due process of law.  This restriction also
likely violates the First Amendment right of free
expression and to be able to hear the speech of
others, gather information and associate with others
as we choose - activities that should be inviolate in
a free and democratic society.  In addition, the fact
that freedom of travel was an unquestioned right when
the Constitution was drafted is the reason for the
Ninth Amendment which grants the states all other
rights not specifically written into the Constitution.
Any restrictions thus imposed and enforced in
violation of constitutional law are a direct
infringement of our sacred freedoms, fundamental
rights and civil liberties and unless challenged and
successfully reversed in the courts are dangerous
steps toward a national security police state under
which citizens and residents have no rights.

US restrictive laws also violate international law
under Article 12 of the UN International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights that guarantees everyone
the right to leave any country, including one’s own,
and return to it. Article 13 of the non-binding
Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the
same thing as does the 1975 US - Soviet Union Helsinki
Agreement committing both nations to protecting the
right of its citizens to move freely across borders.
The US, especially since the advent of the current
Bush administration, has shown its contempt for
international and US constitutional law ruling instead
by Executive Order to pursue whatever policies it
wishes in a manner characteristic of a dictatorship
and with no restraint put on it by the Congress or the
courts.

The result is a gross infringement of our civil
liberties that will likely become far worse in the
wake of the Orwellian Real ID Act of 2005 passed by
the US Congress to become effective in May, 2008.
This law mandates that every US citizen and legal
resident have a national ID card (in most cases a
person’s driver’s license) that will contain on it the
holder’s vital personal information.  It also requires
the states to meet federal ID standards.  A likely
future requirement will be what now is mandated by
mid-2007 for all newly issued and renewed passports -
that they be embedded with a radio frequency
identification (RFID) technology computer chip that
will be able to track all the movements, activities
and transactions of everyone having them.  This is an
Orwellian dream for any government wanting police
state powers and will let US authorities know the
names of all persons in the US travelling to Cuba or
anywhere else in cases where they did it from third
countries so as to remain anonymous.  No longer, and
with national ID cards mandatory by mid-2008, the
tracking of all US citizens and legal residents will
become even easier.

Nearly Forty-Eight Years Later and Looking Back - the
Castro Revolution and His Government

Fidel Castro’s revolution likely was born in March,
1952 after Fulgencio Batista seized power forcibly by
coup d’etat after it was clear he had no chance of
winning the presidential election that year in which
he was running a distant third in the polls.  Batista,
with full backing from the US, instituted a brutal
police state that served the interests of capital and
turned the island into a casino and brothel.  It was
marked by severe corruption, little concern for social
needs, and violent crackdowns against the people to
maintain order.  Fidel Castro wanted none of it.
Despite being born into a wealthy Cuban farming family
in 1926, being educated in private schools and later
at the University of Havana to study law, Castro went
his own way.  He became politically active early on in
1947 and joined the Partido Ortodoxa Party of the
Cuban People to campaign against government corruption
and misrule and to demand reform.  He also began a law
practice in a small partnership after receiving his
degree in 1950 devoting most of his time to
representing the poor. 

Castro wanted change in Cuba and no doubt learned
back then if it couldn’t come about politically it
would have to happen by force.  As events dictated,
Castro came to power by the latter path when he became
the country’s Prime Minister in February, 1959
following the successful revolution he led.  He’s held
on to it to this day.  He kept his title of premier
until 1976 when he became the President of the Council
of State and Council of Ministers as chief of state
and head of the Cuban government and ruling Communist
Party of Cuba (PCC) that was formed in October, 1965.
Under the 1976 Constitution, the Republica de Cuba
vests all legislative power in the country’s 619
member National Assembly of People’s Power who serve
five year terms. To be elected to it, those candidates
must receive at least 50% of the eligible votes.  At
the executive level sits a 24 member Council of State
that’s elected by the Assembly and headed by an
elected president and vice-president.  The Council’s
President (currently Fidel Castro) is both Head of
State and Head of Government.  The Vice-President is
his brother Raul.  Executive and administrative power
is vested in the Council of Ministers as recommended
by the Head of State.

The PCC has governed Cuba since being formed and is
Cuba’s only legally recognized political party.  While
other political parties and opposition groups exist in
the country, their activities are minimal and the
state views them as mostly illegal.  The Cuban
Constitution allows free speech, but the opposition’s
rights are restricted under Article 62 that states:
“None of the freedoms which are recognized for
citizens can be exercised contrary to….the existence
and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to
the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism
and communism.  Violations of this principle can be
punished by law.”  That one party basis is how Cuba
has been governed since Castro assumed power, and
officially the Republica de Cuba is called a socialist
state.  It was inspired and guided by the principles
of Jose Marti, Cuba’s 19th century born greatest hero
who believed freedom and justice for the people should
be the cornerstones of any government and despotic
regimes that abused human rights should be condemned.

Castro’s Human Rights Record In A Climate of Continued
US Efforts To Destabilize and Topple His Government
and A Comparison to Hugo Chavez’s Record in Venezuela

Castro’s record as Cuba’s leader is mixed at best as
judged by the principles its “greatest hero” espoused.
Unlike his ally and friend President Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela who established a true participatory
democracy by national referendum, Castro chose not to
allow Cuba to be governed democratically.  Instead he
decided early on that he above all others would decide
what was best for the Cuban people and little dissent
would be allowed.  The result is that while Cuba is a
model state in delivering essential social services to
be discussed in detail below, it comes at the expense
of the freedom to oppose the ruling state authority.
In the past, Amnesty International reported on the
crackdown on dissent in Cuba and in recent years on
the significant increase in what Amnesty calls the
number of prisoners of conscience.  The Cuban
government claims only “foreign agents” whose
activities endanger Cuban independence and security
have been arrested, but Amnesty disagrees even while
recognizing the threat to the island by the US and the
harm done to it by years of an oppressive and
unjustifiable embargo. 

Amnesty was quite clear in its language stating: “The
economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by
the United States against Cuba has served as an
ongoing justification for Cuban state repression and
has contributed to a climate in which human rights
violations occur.”  Those violations include
accusations of police state arrests, unfair trials,
arbitrary imprisonments and the right to use capital
punishment in cases of armed hijacking even after the
Castro government placed a moratorium on the death
penalty in 2001.  While it’s true what Amnesty
reports, it’s also important to note what it doesn’t.
No attention is paid to how for decades the US
repeatedly tried to destabilize Cuba under Castro,
isolate it in the region, destroy its economy, and
failed in many attempts to assassinate the Cuban
leader. 

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has also been a US target for
elimination but charted a different course than Fidel
Castro in spite of it since being elected President in
December, 1998 and assuming office in February, 1999.
From the start, Chavez and his Movement for the Fifth
Republic Party (MVR) wanted and got his revolution by
the ballot box.  In fairness to Castro, he too
preferred that way but found it impossible under the
repressive dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.  Hugo
Chavez had a more favorable climate and once elected
sought to achieve what few other political leaders
ever do - keep his promises to the people who elected
him.  In a nation of overwhelming poverty, he wanted
to follow the vision of 19th century revolutionary
hero Simon Bolivar and his spirit of Bolivarianism to
free the Venezuelan people of what Bolivar called the
imperial curse “to plague Latin America with misery in
the name of liberty.” 

He did it with his own Bolivarian Revolution based on
the principles of participatory democracy and social
justice, convened a National Constituent Assembly to
draft a new constitution that reflected these
principles, and allowed the Venezuelan people the
right to vote it into binding law by national
referendum which they did overwhelmingly in December,
1999.  The new constitution which went into effect in
December, 2000 established the legal foundation for
Hugo Chavez to move ahead with the political, economic
and social justice structural changes he wanted for
his people.  He wanted to lift them from poverty,
guarantee them essential social services like free
health care and education to the highest level, the
right of free expression to include criticizing the
President, and the fundamental principle of true
participatory democracy so that the people have a say
in how their country is governed. 

Fidel Castro much earlier was a model for Hugo Chavez
in how he established essential social services for
the Cuban people like world-class free health care for
all and free education through the university level.
These will be discussed in detail below.  But he
failed by not fully permitting Cuba to be governed
democratically with unrestricted free and fair
elections, effective opposition parties, the right to
speak freely, openly and critically of the President
even though everyone holding political office in the
country including the President and Vice-President
must be elected to it. 

The Castro government also imposes unfair travel
restrictions on the movement of its people requiring
them to obtain exit visas to leave the island.  More
recently these restrictions were relaxed somewhat but
not entirely.  They’re still imposed on professionals
with essential skills, and in the case of human rights
activists who have the right to leave Cuba but not to
return.  These freedom of movement restrictions
violate international law under Article 12 of the UN
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
as already explained.  Seeing that Hugo Chavez and
Fidel Castro appear to be good friends and allies,
it’s to be hoped the Cuban leader or his successor
will see how successful the Chavez approach has been
in Venezuela and one day wish to alter the Cuban state
model to be in full accordance with the spirit and
letter of Bolivarianism. 

Nearly Five Decades of US-Directed Intimidation,
Destabilization and Attempts to Overthrow the Castro
Government

The US-directed terror campaign to oust Fidel Castro
began under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy
with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, continued with
“The Cuban Project” (aka Operation Mongoose) in 1961
to “help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime” and
Fidel Castro and aim “for a revolt which can take
place in Cuba by October, 1962.”  It continued under
the same and new names with many dozens of plots
through the years to kill Castro including bizarre
ones like using a poisoned wetsuit, poison pens, a
pistol hidden in a camera (that almost worked),
exploding cigars, explosive seashells in Castro’s
favorite diving places and a special hair removal
powder to make the leader’s beard fall out (maybe
believing the latter scheme would remove Castro’s
power much like the biblical Sampson lost his physical
strength after Delilah had his hair cut).  In the
mid-1990s, Noam Chomsky commented that “Cuba was the
target of more international terrorism than probably
the rest of the world combined, up until Nicaragua in
the 1980s.”  And it was conducted by US-initiated
state terrorism against the island state to remove a
leader because he chose not to govern the way the US
wished him to.

Besides the schemes listed above, the list of US
terror tactics against Cuba is far too long to list in
total here.  They include US attacks on Cuban sugar
mills by air, a 1960 blowing up of a Belgian ship in
Havana harbor killing 100 sailors and dock workers,
dynamiting stores, theaters, a Havana department store
and burning down another one.  In addition, there were
dozens of attacks and bombings and over 600 known
plans or attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro
including the bizarre ones listed above.  The CIA also
conducted biological warfare against Cuba including
introducing dangerous viruses to the island affecting
sugar cane and other crops, African swine fever in
1971 that resulted in the need to slaughter half a
million pigs, and hemorrhagic dengue fever that caused
the deaths of at least 81 children in 1981.  These
incidents were later confirmed in declassified US
documents. 

It’s also well remembered that Cubana flight 455 was
terror-bombed in October, 1976 by former CIA agent
Luis Posada Carriles that killed the 73 people on
board.  The plot was likely masterminded by Orlando
Bosch who devoted his life to committing terrorist
attacks against Cuba and trying to kill Fidel Castro.
Now at age 80, he lives near Miami and was recently
interviewed by Andy Robinson of La Vanguardia.  He
told Mr. Robinson he once nearly succeeded in killing
Castro in 1971 in Chile (with a pistol hidden in a
camera), but the assassins sent there to do it
“chickened out and didn’t shoot” even though they were
standing meters away from the Cuban leader and easily
could have done it.

Posada, too, was frank in at least one interview he
gave to the New York Times.  He said “The CIA taught
us everything… explosives, how to kill, bomb,
trained us in acts of sabotage.”  Posada, like Bosch,
spent 40 years trying to overthrow the Castro
government forcibly and was personally responsible for
many acts of violence over that period.  In April,
2005 he sought political asylum in the US, apparently
won’t get it as the Bush administration is seeking a
“friendly” country to extradite him to while ignoring
requests for extradition by Cuba and Venezuela to face
charges of terrorism in both countries.  Posada was
also likely responsible for other terror-bombings of
hotels later in the 1990s to destroy the Cuban tourist
industry with the help of CIA financing to do it.
It’s also well known that CIA trained US based
paramilitary groups like Alpha 66 and Brothers to the
Rescue in Florida are free to operate from here where
they’re regarded as heros among Cuban reactionaries.
They have no fear of prosecution or extradition to
Cuba for their crimes against the island state.

With all the detail above and much more than this
article can cover, it’s easy to understand that the
Cuban government or any other under such continued
assault to destabilize and topple it would be on high
alert at all times and would always have to take all
necessary precautions to assure the security of the
state, its leader and people.  That’s more true than
ever today as the out-of-control Bush administration
is committed to regime change on the island and set up
a Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to help
achieve it.  The Commission presented its Report to
the President in July this year detailing its plan to
return Cuba to its pre-Castro de facto colonial status
and end the Castro socialist revolution and all the
benefits it brought to the Cuban people.  In a word,
the Bush administration wants to do for Cuba what it
did in “liberating” Iraq and Afghanistan and do it by
force if necessary.  It wants to re-privatize every
publicly operated state enterprise and return the
Cuban people to the status of serfs exploited by
capital, set up a puppet government to administer the
changeover, and have it all controlled by Washington
and the corporate giants its beholden to.

Fidel Castro knows he’s under threat and must take
every measure to thwart it.  To do otherwise would be
foolish and irresponsible.  Nonetheless, no leader or
government should ever do this by denying its citizens
and residents their civil liberties nor should the
people anywhere allow them to be taken.  Benjamin
Franklin understood the danger and wisely explained
that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to
purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety.”  And he likely also said those
willing to make that sacrifice for security will lose
both.  So while all necessary precautions are fully
justified and necessary against a dangerous and
determined adversary or even in a time of war, under
no circumstances should a free people ever be willing
to give up what they always should be working for to
secure and preserve.

Cuba As A Socialist State

In the early years of the Cuban revolution, the Castro
government made a clean break with all vestiges of the
world capitalist economy.  It nationalized US
industries like the public utilities, carried out land
reform, closed down the Mafia-owned casinos and ended
long-standing and systemic corruption.  Fidel Castro
intended to build a socialist state based on the
principles of a largely state-owned, government
directed planned economy.  He did it and transformed
the nation from one controlled mostly by US capital
interests and the underworld to the current system in
place under which most of the means of production are
owned and operated by the state which employs most of
the labor force. 

But Cuba has been changing somewhat since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union that provided it with
large and vitally needed subsidies, supplied it with
oil at low prices and provided a ready market for
Cuban exports like a large portion of its annual sugar
crop it no longer could sell to the US because of the
economic embargo.  Out of necessity to revive its
economy that was severely affected in the early 1990s,
the Castro government began to allow a limited amount
of free enterprise.  To increase its agricultural
output and relieve food shortages, it changed its farm
strategy to an emphasis on smaller-sized ones and
shifted from state-owned to cooperative production
allowing farmers the right to receive a certain
percentage of the profits from their crop yields above
a basic required level.  The government’s goal was to
incentivize farmers to reach their maximum production
potential and earn income for themselves by doing it.
The Cuban government also began to allow commercial
Agricultural Markets to be opened around the country
as further incentive for farmers to produce more and
privately be able to profit from seling the excess
amount of it.  These Markets have also been a tactical
success in neutralizing the negative effects of the
country’s black market by making a more readily
available supply of affordable food for the Cuban
people able to avail themselves of it.

The government also introduced changes in the areas of
small retail and light manufacturing enterprises
loosening the restrictions on the right to operate
them as private for-profit businesses.  In addition,
the government legalized the use of the US dollar and
mounted a concerted effort to take advantage of the
island’s desirable Caribbean location to develop the
country’s tourism industry by encouraging offshore
private investment.  In 1995, the Cuban Constitution
was changed to encourage it.  It granted 100%
ownership to foreign companies in joint ventures on
the island - up from the 49% cap established in 1982.
The change brought about a dramatic increase in joint
venture agreements that jumped from 20 in 1991 to 398
in 2001 (substantially in the tourist sector).  Cuba
has benefitted from them all as a way to attract
foreign capital, boost the economy, and provide jobs
for the Cuban people.  The results so far are
significant as tourism experienced impressive growth
in the last 15 years.  The annual number of visitors
to Cuba in 2004 was about 2 million or a six-fold
increase since 1990 and the amount they spent
increased eight-fold to nearly $2 billion.  By the
year 2000, private sector employment had grown to
about 23% of the total labor force which was up from
8% in 1981.  Over the same period, public sector
employment dropped to about 77% of the total from the
92% level it was at in 1981.

Social Services under Castro

In delivering essential social services to the Cuban
people, the Castro government has had its most notable
and admirable successes.  Its through them that the
Castro revolution became firmly institutionalized in
the hearts and minds of the great majority of the
people who never before had a government providing for
their essential needs they’ll now never relinquish
without a fight.  Why should they.  Article 50 of the
Cuban Constitution adopted in 1976 and approved by 97%
of the country’s eligible voters at the time mandates
that all Cubans are entitled to receive free medical,
hospital and dental care including prophylactic
services.  The Constitution emphasizes public health,
preventive care, health education, programs for
periodic medical examinations, immunizations and other
preventive measures.  It guarantees that all Cubans
will have their health protected, and in Article 43 it
stipulates that all citizens have the same rights
without regard to “color of skin, gender, religious
belief, national origin and any distinction harmful to
the dignity of man.”  The Constitution also provides
for worker health and safety, help for the elderly and
pregnant working women having the right to paid leave
before and after birth to ensure maternal and infant
health.  In 1983, Cuba also adopted the Public Health
Law that makes it a fundamental and permanent state
obligation to assure, improve and protect the health
of its citizens including the rehabilitation of
persons suffering from physical or mental
disabilities.  These services are intended to restore
patients to active, productive lives and improve their
overall welfare. 

In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) singled
out the Cuban health care system as a “model for the
world.”  It cited its extensive system of family
doctors and sophisticated tertiary care facilities,
emphasis on its nutritional safety net, its low infant
mortality rate at 6 per 1,000 population that’s equal
to the average for the developed world and lower than
the 7 per thousand for the US.  Cuba also equals the
US in life expectancy, has double the number of
physicians per 1000 population than the US and an
overall lower mortality rate.  It also has the most
complete infant immunization coverage in the
developing world and an exemplary national health and
nuitrition education program emphasizing the
development and use of chemical-free, non-GMO,
organically grown fresh produce which it hopes to have
enough of in another decade to feed its entire
population.  And it accomplishes all this at a far
lower cost per capita than its rich northern neighbor
that spends the most per capita of any nation but
doesn’t care for over 46 million of its citizens who
have no access to health care services and many
millions more with far too little.

At the end of the 1990s, the WHO updated its findings
on health care delivery in Cuba following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union combined with the
severities caused by the US embargo.  It reported
severe shortages of needed pharmaceuticals and medical
supplies that constrained the ability of the Cuban
government to service all the medical and health needs
of its people fully.  But the Castro government has
always had to deal with hardships and shortages of
essential goods and services and most often proved its
ingenuity to handle adversity in innovative ways
eventually devising solutions to deal with them.  One
way its done it is through government investment in
and development of a world-class homegrown
biotechnology industry done in the state-of-the-art
research labs of the Cuban Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology Center.  Here Cuban scientists invented
cholesterol-lowering drugs, detection tests for AIDS,
a meningitis vaccine, remedies for hepatitis B, and
other new pharmaceuticals.  The Cuban people reap the
benefit of these discoveries free of charge and the
government earns needed foreign exchange reserves by
exporting these products to ready world buyers for
them outside the US.

The Cuban people have every reason to be proud of the
quality and breath of their health care delivery
system.  It’s world-class in stature as is the
country’s education system that’s also totally free to
all Cubans to the highest university level and shows
Fidel Castro’s commitment to the wisdom of Diogenes
who said “The foundation of every state is the
education of its youth.”  Castro offers these services
not just to his own people but uses them to export as
well to other nations needing them, particularly in
the region, as a means of barter trade in return for
essential products Cuba needs to import like oil from
its ally Venezuela.

Just how good education is in Cuba is seen in a report
on it by the Latin American Center for the Evaluation
of the Quality of Education which is part of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO).  It showed Cuban students
achieved nearly double the scores in math and
literature of any of the other 14 Latin American or
Caribbean nations currently in the organization.  It
does it because the Castro government is committed to
delivering first class education to all in the country
and mandates the right to it for everyone in Article
51 of the Cuban Constitution. 

It says: “Everybody has a right to education.  This
right is guaranteed by the extensive and free system
of schools, part-time boarding schools, boarding
schools and scholarships in all types and at all
levels of education, by the free provision of school
materials to every child and young person regardless
of the economic situation of the family, and by the
provision of courses suited to the student’s aptitude,
the requirements of society and the needs of economic
and social development.”  The quality of teaching is
also high, and class sizes are much lower in number
than in the US, and they may get down as low as 15 on
average to allow Cuban teachers more time to spend
with their students than their US, Latin American and
Caribbean counterparts. 

Cuba has also virtually eliminated illiteracy (as has
Venezuela with the help of thousands of Cuban teachers
sent to the country) while in the US the Department of
Education cites a functional illiteracy rate of 20% of
the population.  But that figure excludes a far higher
percentage of the high-school educated population that
can only read at an elementary school level and when
seeking entrance to college must get remedial help to
qualify.  The same high percentage of US high school
graduates also shows up on low-rated math skills,
again requiring remedial help to advance to to the
college level.

The Cuban education system is much different.  It’s
not just the best in the hemisphere, but it’s one that
emphasizes breath as well as quality.  All students
receive education in math, reading, the sciences,
arts, humanities, social responsibility, civics and
participatory citizenship.  The aim is to give all
Cubans the skills they need to make them better and
more productive citizens.  Its done so they may
contribute as adults to helping the nation improve and
further develop its impressive programs in health,
education, the sciences, ecology, agriculture and the
arts.

The results are impressive, yet life is still hard for
the average Cuban because of the US embargo against
the country.  It prevents many goods from entering,
including essential ones like certain foodstuffs and
drugs, that would ease conditions and make them more
tolerable.  It also makes many of those that do come
in more costly because of the greater transportation
cost to get them there from distant places like
Europe. 

Nonetheless, and in spite of the overwhelming
obstacles it faces, the Castro government has been
committed to serving the basic needs of the Cuban
people and through the years has been innovative and
unrelenting in finding ways to do it well.  As a
result, the government always managed to avoid a
humanitarian disaster by maintaining in place the
pillars of its social model that affirm a priority to
human development and essential needs.  Besides its
world-class health care and education systems, Cubans
are assured a nutritious food supply at affordable
prices and availability of it free in schools,
hospitals and homes for the elderly.  The Cuban
government also maintains a commitment to scientific
research that will produce benefits for the people as
well as attention to cultural development.  And it’s
done it all and more in spite of the severe budgetary
constraints under which it must function making the
achievements all the more impressive. 

Fidel Castro’s commitment to his people was expressed
in Law Number 49 passed one month after he assumed
power.  It stipulated that the government would
provide social services to those needing them.  The
current law assures special assistance (including
financial help) will be provided to the most
vulnerable groups in need to include the elderly,
persons unable to work and single mothers.  The
Constitution also mandates that all its citizens are
to be treated equally under the law, removed
restrictions on religious belief from the Constitution
in the early 1990s allowing Cubans the right to freely
express and practice their religious beliefs as long
as they’re not opposed to the socialist principles of
the state, and commits the government to assuring all
its people have the right to a job and access to
sports and culture.  As a result, the country has full
employment and no homeless people on the streets which
compares to its rich northern neighbor that has a
considerable problem in both areas but does almost
nothing to address them.

What May Lie Ahead For Cuba and Its People

A watershed moment may have arrived for Cuba with the
July 31 announcement that Fidel Castro underwent major
surgery for what may have been stomach cancer.  In
official post-operative statements by officials and
Fidel himself, the surgery went well and recovery is
proceeding normally although it may be long and
uncertain.  That certainly is true for a man who on
August 13, turned 80.  In the pictures released of the
Cuban leader he looked fine but not feisty as he
likely would have prior to his surgery.  At this
point, it’s likely neither he nor his doctors are
certain what his prognosis is, but they and the Cuban
people know one thing for sure.  All his life Fidel
Castro has been an unrelenting committed fighter, and
he’s not likely to change now, especially as his life
and welfare may hang in the balance.

Still, Cuba seems certain to be approaching a critical
moment in its post-Batista history.  It now must
address the issue of succession, its commitment to its
socialist principles and how it will relate to the
rest of the world, especially the US that’s totally
committed to regime change in the island state and a
return of the country to its oppressive former rule by
the interests of capital.  What may unfold ahead is
anyone’s guess so here’s one to consider.  Before the
Castro revolution, the Cuban people had only known
decades of exploitation, repression and no attention
paid to the most basic of human social needs.  But
since Fidel Castro came to power they’ve gotten them,
and it hardly seems likely they’ll ever willingly give
them up without a fight.  The US may be planning to
return the Cuban state to its ugly past, but the best
guess ventured here is it won’t happen because Cubans
won’t allow it to.  The great majority of them support
Fidel Castro and all he’s done for them.  They know he
won’t rule the island forever, and if now is the time
for him to step aside, they expect and no doubt will
get a new leader as fully committed to serving them as
the man who more than any other leader in the past
half century is a living legend.  Alive or passed on,
Fidel Castro will be a great symbol and hero to the
Cuban people.  They’re not likely ever to want to let
his legacy die.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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at sjlendman.blogspot.com