Revolution » 50 years later, many noble goals have fallen short
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 12/31/2008 08:45:50 PM MST
Havana » The young teacher was seething.
"Fidel!" he spit. "Let me tell you about Fidel!"
He shifted from broken English into Spanish, letting fly a few
profanities from his native tongue. In a seaside bar crowded with young
Cubans, Alejandro Peña did not bother to lower his voice.
"Fidel was a coward," he fumed.
On billboards and in shop windows, in magazines and on television, Fidel
Castro's iconic image is as ubiquitous here as ever. But nearly a year
after the ailing leader officially ceded power to his brother, his aura
has lost its luster among many on this troubled island.
Peña's counter-revolutionary assessment of Cuba's longtime ruler --
which the teacher broadens to include current President Raul Castro --
is now common in Havana, even though it still can be dangerous to
publicly scorn the Community Party's elite. In the black market of
personal opinions, of which this bar seems to be a trendy bazaar, there
doesn't appear to be enough profanity to go around.
For many older Cubans, however, Castro retains the cult of personality
he cultivated since taking power on Jan. 1, 1959. But on the 50th
anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, mystic and memory are giving way to
the realities of a country of 11 million people where the young have
little opportunity and many of the promises of the revolution have yet
to be fulfilled.
To evaluate the successes and failures of the Castro regime, a good
starting point is 1953. Charged with leading an attack against a
military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, Castro rose
in his own defense to deliver what was reported to have been a four-hour
speech in which he detailed crimes committed under the rule of
then-President Fulgencio Batista -- and to describe a list of actions
the revolutionary government would take once Batista was overthrown.
In the speech and later revolutionary writings, Castro called for an
impartial justice system, free schooling, full employment and fair wages
for all Cubans, access to subsidized health care and reinstatement of
Cuba's 1940 constitution, which Batista had suspended.
These principles, Castro said, were the guiding lights of revolution.
And in the light of those successes, he promised, " La historia me
absolverá ," -- "History will absolve me."
And justice for most
If history ever absolves Castro of his failures, it won't happen on Erik
Luna's watch.
"The abuses that have been committed have been despicable," said Luna, a
professor at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney School of Law who has
made a number of academic sojourns to Cuba as a visiting scholar and
lecturer at the University of Havana. "The treatment of dissidents and
independent journalists is reprehensible."
Among a number of historic hypocrisies in Castro's famous speech were
his repeated complaints that he was a political prisoner who had been
deprived of his basic legal rights. A half century later, Castro's
regime is notorious for the way it has treated its political prisoners.
"When it comes to political crimes in Cuba," Luna said, "the justice
system has been hijacked. It is controlled by the regime and outcomes
are predetermined."
But Luna is quick to point out that this is not the only way to measure
Cuba's justice system.
"With regards to the vast majority of crimes, the Cuban system is no
worse and may be far better than many other countries in Latin America,"
he said.
Luna said Castro's government set up a judicial system that, in most
respects, "is hard to assail." That's certainly not "real justice" as
Castro described in his 1953 speech. But Luna said it's also not the
abject failure often depicted by American political leaders.
An education in disappointment
Taking aim at Cuba's pervasive poverty, inequality and joblessness,
Castro came to power with promises of school and work for every Cuban
who wanted "to earn their daily bread honestly." Fifty years later,
every Cuban has a right to a public education. Those who have the
aptitude -- or who have the proper party connections -- get a free
college education.
But many can't get work in the fields in which they are educated. And
almost everyone supplements their government income -- typically no more
than $20 a month -- by working por la izquierda -- on the left.
That's how Adalberto Diaz started cooking. After studying mechanical
engineering in college, Diaz was assigned a job in a Havana hotel.
Unhappy, he decided to follow a completely different path: He opened a
bakery out of his home kitchen.
The underground pasteleria didn't last long -- the steady flow of flour
in and cakes out aroused the suspicion of Cuba's police. Not content to
spend his life paying bribes to keep his small business afloat, Diaz fled.
Today he is a chef instructor at Utah Valley University and a regular
fixture in the studio kitchens of several Salt Lake television stations.
Who does he credit for his success?
"It might surprise you, but I have to thank the Revolution," Diaz said.
"I was very lucky. I got an awesome education -- a lot better education
than a lot of people who go to college here in the United States."
When it comes to education and work, Diaz said, Castro "did everything
he said he was going to do. He gave everyone an education and he
provides everyone a job."
The problem, Diaz said, is that Castro couldn't keep it up. There
weren't enough meaningful jobs. And educated people would not be content
with trivial tasks for long.
"We learned in school that revolution is change," he said. "When Castro
stopped changing with the times, that is when the Revolution ended."
The price of free health care
After 14 years away from the island of her birth, Adriana Flores
returned to Cuba in September to visit her dying mother. But as Flores
stepped off the bus on the island's eastern seaboard, it was hard to
feel nostalgic -- she was simply too angry.
"The cancer my mother has, it could have been treated," she said. "But
there is a long wait for treatment here, and by the time they got to
her, it was too late."
Flores said Cuba is a fine place to get sick with a cold, to break an
arm, or to suffer from nearsightedness. "But if you are more seriously
sick, you must have connections."
Assailing the Batista regime in the infancy of his revolution, Castro
complained that "public hospitals, which are always full, accept only
patients recommended by some powerful politician." Fifty years later,
there is a doctor in every Cuban neighborhood, medical care is free and
the island exports hundreds of medical experts to troubled nations
around the globe.
But when Dr. Catherine DeVries made her first trip to Cuba in 1999, she
was disheartened by what she found. On a visit to the Havana hospital
where surgeons operate on children with urological conditions, DeVries
saw a woeful lack of resources.
"They pretty much had nothing," said DeVries, founder of the Salt Lake
City-based IVUmed, which provides support and surgical education for
urologists in developing nations. "They had a room that looks like a
storage closet -- that was the operating room -- and in it they had a
light that smoked when you turned it on."
But DeVries noted that Cuba is not alone in using its health care budget
on universal basic care rather than improving advanced care.
And, she noted, that decision was made independent of the kinds of
economic pressures Cuba faces under the U.S.-led trade embargo.
A power for change, changed by power
Arturo Castro is proud of his surname, though he is no relation to his
country's longtime ruling family. At 62, he's just old enough to
remember the first time he heard Fidel Castro's name. It was shortly
after the attack on the barracks at Santiago de Cuba and Arturo, who
grew up in nearby Guantanamo, recalled the children in his neighborhood
playing a new game.
"It was called 'revolution,' " he said.
"We later learned that this was not a game," he remembered. "There were
times after the Revolution that were difficult. But under Fidel I
learned to read. When I was old enough, I was provided work and a home.
... I know for certain that my life is better because of what happened
in 1959."
That is a point that Frank Argote-Fryere seems willing to concede -- or
at least not to contest. The professor of history, who lectures on Cuba
at Kean University in New Jersey, notes that quality of life indicators
such as education, health care, life expectancy and infant mortality all
place Cuba on par with far more industrialized nations -- and
significantly above much of the rest of Latin America.
But in the end, Argote-Fryere said, Castro followed a strikingly similar
path to the man whose power he usurped. Like Batista, Castro went from
revolutionary to strongman, making good on promises of progress where
convenient to hold onto power.
It's unlikely, though, that Castro ever saw it that way. "Castro was
never known for self-reflection or self-criticism," Argote-Fryere said.
"He was motivated more by power than anything else."
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