By José Manuel Prieto
November 23, 2009
This essay is an adaptation of the book-length manuscript La Revolucion
Cubana explicada a los taxistas and was translated by Esther Allen. A
video of Prieto discussing his essay with Nation contributor Daniel
Wilkinson, the deputy director of the Americas division at Human Rights
Watch, is available here.
On a day more than ten years ago I arrived in New York City--my second
or third trip to America--and studied a line of taxis in the freezing
cold: this new landscape, the United States, a country that my country
had been at war with my whole life. Or that my country had endlessly
claimed to be at war with, at least. My taxi driver was an Indian or
Pakistani with the look of one who had few friends. I spent a long
minute arguing with him, trying, at some length, to give him the address
of my destination. Finally he turned his whole body toward me and
sharply corrected me, but then, looking me over a second longer and
ascertaining that there was no great malice in me but only a newcomer's
ineptitude, he pondered my accent and asked, to sweeten my mood, "What
country you come from?"
When I told him, he exclaimed "Cuba?" and then "Fidel Castro!"
He said it in the most annoying way, snapping his fingers, smacking his
lips in sheer gusto, squaring his shoulders as he scrutinized me once
more in the rearview mirror. He had the stance, the vehemence, the
sudden energy of someone talking about a much-admired local strongman.
His English was no better than mine, but he wanted badly to express what
he felt, so he struck the palm of his right hand loudly against his left
fist: "He gave to the Americans up the ass."
I'm sure I must have leaned toward the divider to read his name through
the plexiglass; this was at the very beginning of my visits to New York,
and it was the first time I'd encountered that reaction. But if I did
read the name I don't remember it.
It was fall. I remember that and the city's distant silhouette, the gray
mass of skyscrapers. I also remember how greatly his reaction surprised
me: to think that there was so much sympathy--in America!--for the Cuban
Revolution.
In July 1999 a taxi driver took me from Barajas to Sol, in Madrid. As we
traveled across the city, we listened to news of a terrible plane crash
reported in blood-curdling detail. The taxi driver turned the dial and
found a melody much in vogue that summer, then began watching me
covertly in the mirror. When I noticed, I gave him an automatic polite
nod and immediately he inquired, "From your country?"
"No, she's from Mexico," I answered, meaning the singer. "I'm from Cuba."
As if by magic, he said, "Ah, Cuba! Fidel Castro!"--with pure delight
and no thought of giving offense.
I debated whether to smile or take umbrage, eternally amazed by the
tremendous popularity of the Cuban Revolution among the taxi drivers of
the world.
Once, in Rome, I kept my mouth shut, as in fact I've mostly kept it
shut, lost in a monologue I know I'll never impose on any poor cabbie's
good nature. A monologue about this enormous mistake: the astonishing
popularity of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. About everything
I'd like to add, to nuance, amazed as I am to see it all reduced to a
single name. And about the distress it always gives me--or rather, the
perplexity.
For, after all, shouldn't it make me happy? My country, so easily
identified among all others? Its status and relevance obvious to all,
its popularity immense across the globe? It's just that there's a
somewhat more complex vision that I would very much like to express, to
expand upon, if only my knowledge of Italian or Turkish permitted.
The Cuban Revolution explained to taxi drivers.
Any detailed explanation of it is a lost cause: that I know. The many
times I've failed, promising myself never again, and then eternally,
ineptly falling back into long tirades that do nothing but complicate
all of it even more in the minds of my interlocutors, while leaving them
nevertheless imperturbable in their faith, convinced of their truth.
Which is why, on further reflection, I've understood the advantage of a
brief explanation, with all the strength and argumentative simplicity of
cliché. Three or four points, duly set forth and clarified, an idea that
takes shape quickly and easily, as during a dinner table conversation or
the forty-five minutes of a trip from an airport to the city center.
But then there's the need, in speaking of the negative impact the Cuban
Revolution has had on so many things, to speak also of all its
achievements, how good it has been for so many other things. It's so
inadequate to paint it as the blackest, the most terrible, the most
murderous--for it isn't any of those things, not at all, though for far
too many years it has always ended up doing harm. It's impossible to
strip the Cuban Revolution of the reasons for its great popularity, its
hard-won fame.
There are touches of genius present throughout the work of the Cuban
Revolution and in its very conception. The brilliant idea--to begin
with--of defying the United States. That detail alone. For those first
several years, the energy that unfailingly impressed all those who
watched Cuba pursuing the ambitions of a great country, in full
consciousness of its achieved maturity, trying in only a few years to
make up for the backwardness of centuries. That impulse.
And it's not been mere thievery. That is one of the first things that
must be said about the Cuban Revolution. Neither Fidel Castro nor the
Cuban Revolution is a vulgar plunderer whose only goal is
self-enrichment. On the contrary, I see an entirely different trait: a
deep and terrible idealism.
Who hasn't seen this? Which of its opponents hasn't wished for the Cuban
Revolution to be worse than it truly is, for the greater weight and
forcefulness of his argument against it, to avoid confusion and keep
from having, in the midst of his diatribe, to acknowledge its better
intentions?
And then this, the most frustrating and discouraging part: the
untranslatability of the experience, the extreme difficulty of talking
about it. The most attentive and understanding of your listeners, the
one with the best heart, always fails to understand your reasons. The
most minute descriptions, the most fatiguing enumerations can't answer
all the questions or construct an intelligible overview--it's always
inconclusive. All that's most painful and disturbing is somehow left
out, a nightmare of minuscule perceptions. The despair I fall prey to in
so many taxis: I'll never explain it; he'll never understand.
Mine is not an academic analysis replete with dates and statistics but
rather one based on my firsthand knowledge of the Cuban Revolution,
which I've never stopped inhabiting for all these years, whose fiery
light has not ceased to illuminate me, vividly, for all these years.
It's an argument pulled together on the fly, whatever's easiest and
simplest, set forth to the taxi drivers of the world and the public they
incarnate.
For that very reason, it's a weak argument, easy to criticize. But
aren't our daily reactions largely, almost exclusively, based on
perceptions, intuitions, preconceived certainties? This is an inventory
of all those that operate in my head when I think of the Cuban
Revolution. And I offer it knowing full well what a thankless task this
is, foreseeing the series of misunderstandings, false accusations,
insults it could inspire across the whole battlefront of a dispute that
has gone on for decades, one that has had time to ripen and even pass
its expiration date, one for which there has been time for all the
misinterpretations any human undertaking could possibly inspire to grow
and flourish.
Embarking on the task, nevertheless, like a citizen with his coffee and
Sunday paper who reads about the advent of war with all its attendant
horror and understands in a sudden flash, it was only thus, only in this
way. And hurries to don the ridiculous combat uniform, goes out to fight
alongside younger men, the absurdity of his situation seen clearly in a
moment of respite from battle, the round lenses of his glasses raised to
the sky. Marveling, telling himself: here I am, me, sworn enemy of all
political discussion, in the trenches! Nothing good will come of this!
Yes, this is it, right here. How much do I owe you? Keep the change.
Consider this. If it's true that Cuba is a protectorate, a semi-colony
of America and its most important and precious acquisition, a country on
which America was imposed to the detriment or complete loss of its
identity, then why not agree on the following inference as well: Fidel
Castro, Public Enemy No. 1 of America, its principal accuser and public
scourge, is (paradoxical as it may seem) an American politician.
El doctor Fidel Castro: American politician.
His entire significance is due to this one fact. The confrontation with
an enemy that is part of himself, the knowledge of all its weaknesses,
the precise calculation of its conduct, the deep understanding of its
internal dynamics. That was what allowed him to imagine total flight
from America as the only way forward, using the same Newtonian analysis
as John Quincy Adams, according to whom Cuba would gravitate like a ripe
fruit (an apple?) toward the United States.
The impossibility of Adams's prediction is now clear, Ahmed (my taxi
driver), in the very simile: apples don't grow in Cuba.
Why not like a ripe orange?
Fidel Castro's reasoning was the same; he calculated--like an engineer
placing a satellite in orbit around the earth--that the only possible
way of breaking the gravitational pull of the United States was by
taking advantage of that very force to increase the momentum.
Of the orange.
Presenting it all, very astutely, as a rejection: appealing to
international opinion, staging the rupture before a very large live
audience and with widespread media coverage.
That way he ensured, while still in pre-production, that he'd have good
press in the New York Times, the coverage that may have guaranteed his
triumph, like a play that opens to sparse houses until the enthusiastic
review of an influential critic appears and its luck changes
dramatically. In that, too, Fidel Castro is an American politician: in
the awareness that everything is accomplished in the newspapers, the
media, a truth he never underestimates.
The facts of the uprising reach every home in the same easy, didactic
way as a television commercial or series, with the Cuban people in the
starring role. And what a cast! The handsome and appealing Che Guevara,
Fidel Castro himself and, in the role of villain, John F. Kennedy, also
good-looking and simpático.
It was a duel such as Cuba had never before seen in its 450 years of
existence. The confrontation in crescendo, the inconceivable spectacle
of the bourgeoisie in flight, the frenzied nationalization, beginning
with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of American property. The
anger and infinite surprise of the United States at such ugly
ingratitude from its own offspring, from an American politician, who
must have known, who was surely aware, that much of what was good in
Cuba--all the island had gained in terms of modernity, technological
advancement and well-being--came from the influence and example of the
United States.
Many who opposed the revolution and want to convince us that Cuba was in
good shape will trot out the fact that by the 1950s the peso traded at
the same rate as the dollar. We enjoyed, that is, a splendid monetary
union. So much do we owe to the United States!
Why then, I repeat, such ugly ingratitude for such beneficence?
The unusual spectacle of the greatest and most powerful country on
earth, the United States, caught up in open war with so diminutive an
adversary, like a wild animal in captivity, the astounded villagers
crowding around to poke at it through the bars of its cage: that alone
has captured the imagination of our contemporaries.
It has enabled Fidel Castro to present his triumph as the greatest, the
most unlikely, the most consummate. It's been an enormous contribution
to his cause, a wellspring of strength he's never stopped drawing on for
all these years, a subsidy no less rich and generous than the Russians'
very real millions. And the Russians contributed voluntarily, in full
awareness; the United States involuntarily, pathetically, ineptly.
Fidel Castro has never made any mistake about the nature of his
revolution, his Great Work. How insignificant it would be without the
enthusiastic participation of the United States playing the Dangerous
Predator in Captivity, for without that, without America's starring
role, the spectators would long since have ceased flocking to the show.
In essence, no progress has occurred since the beginning of the Cuban
Revolution, no alternative strategy, no change of scenery. When, out of
simple common sense or some momentary relief from internal pressure, the
United States has attempted to make a shift, to soften its stance or
even--horrors!--to abandon the game entirely, it has been coldly and
calculatingly provoked.
One of Fidel Castro's first executive visits, in April 1959, four months
after the triumph of the revolution, was to the United States. But
Castro was crafty, as memoirists have depicted him, keeping under wraps
his refusal to accept any favor from the United States, no credit or
economic aid, however minimal, nothing that might endanger (by making
him look like an ungrateful debtor) the formidable attack he was
preparing, the betrayal he was nursing in his bosom.
Which was the only possible way forward from the perspective of our
clever Fidel: only a rupture, a complete and vigorous change of course,
could be assured of success. Any sort of agreement, any extension of the
hand, would have fatally compromised his project, and therefore he
scrupulously refrained.
I have to say--without passing judgment, without characterizing the
procedure as betrayal or deep cunning--that the United States fell
victim to an astute provocation. And it fell loudly and heavily, with
all the added weight and inertia of its absolute conviction that Cuba,
in its insolence, had to be punished. But it fell with the added force
of its sincere desire to be a benefactor.
Hadn't the United States done a great favor to Cuba, rescuing it from
Spain's imperial clutches? Didn't the island owe its independence to the
United States? (Or, all right then, its charade of independence, but at
the end of the day Cuba was independent, wasn't it?) How could anyone
conceive of such thanklessness, such black ingratitude? Haven't I given
you everything? Aren't you who you are because of me?
How could you do this to me?
And the tone for all these years has always been that of bitter domestic
complaint, the voice of a betrayed spouse, the kicking and screaming of
an abandoned lover. And then, insult to injury, there's the money that
was amassed during the years of marriage, the goods acquired, my money.
Assassination plans, accusation after accusation. The ugly and
denigrating spectacle of a divorce. And the children, the bourgeoisie,
the middle class, abandoned in the revolutionary storm. I leave them to
you, you take them! And the United States took them, like a mother (or
seeing itself as a mother, terrible and vengeful), to live beneath its roof.
There's no page written about those early days of the revolution on
which the word paredón--"the wall," meaning the firing squad--doesn't
flash with fearsome glint. Chanted by groups of neighbors, chanted in
workplaces, chanted--terrible thing--by schoolchildren. A word, a
"saying of the people," that had the same chilling effect as the threat
of the guillotine in the days of the Terror.
I don't think the exact number of people shot will ever be known. Let's
admit, however, that it wasn't particularly high, that it never (this is
easily conceded) reached the level of this or that other (most
unfortunate) country.
Nevertheless, many were shot. And it was done, how shall I put it? Joyously.
All the killing carried out in those early years of revolutionary
justice, without regret or the slightest change of expression. Indeed,
that is precisely Dr. Guevara's expression in the famous photo: the
expression of a man who advances undaunted; nothing can hold him back,
and it doesn't matter whom he tramples along the way. If you happen to
believe in the inevitability of revolutionary violence and its
cauterizing and salubrious effects, then it's a nice picture. But if
you've ever thought of or seen it as I see it here--as an error into
which a country must never fall, all those deaths--then the harshness of
that gaze is terrifying.
But let's not linger over the actual number of victims, giving a
physical reality priority over the symbolic reality whose impact
continues today. An impact of such magnitude that it still now, years
later, decades later, reverberates across the country at all levels. The
ever-presence of fear in Cuba is easily ascertained, and many kinds of
behavior that are otherwise inexplicable can be ascribed to it.
The way the inhabitants of Cuba lower their voices when they speak in
public or make any mention of the government. The fear that rips the
whole country apart, the mistrust and betrayal that make any attempt at
forming a group, any spark of opposition virtually impossible. Not armed
opposition, even just peaceful opposition!
A fear some declare to be in remission: "our heroic nation" will
overcome, etc. They are mistaken. Its profound and lasting effect will
stay with us through vast zones of our future life. Several generations
are irremediably marked, harmed, by fear. There's much sadness in what
I'm saying now, a sadness no political campaign in all its optimism will
ever want to accept. But I'm not engaged in politics, and I can say it:
this damage is probably irreversible.
Ten thousand signatures are collected in a country with a population of
11 million, and this is deemed a victory--which it most assuredly is: a
great victory! But isn't it also, and shouldn't that be said as well,
clear evidence of a population harried by fear? A widespread,
deep-rooted fear. And the whole country is permeated with it, this fear
that fatally manifests itself in lack of initiative, dark uncertainty,
all that so palpably differentiates our generation from the previous
one, from people born in freedom and without fear.
Some will argue with me on this, some will say, No, there is no fear.
And I can present no counterargument, no "data." I will only add, in
bewilderment: but if I myself, if I myself, still now, as I write this,
am full of fear?
It's the most polished fiction of them all, the most captivating saga.
On the same scale as other myths of the American continent: the
Conquest, the wealth of El Dorado.
It's something like a heroic epic, with very bad bad guys and very good
good guys, its narrative technique quite primitive but magisterially in
tune with its time, a poem of rebellion against the grown-ups in which a
few young men (not particularly important that this side happens to be
Caribbean) rebel against their elders (very important indeed that this
side is the United States). Deeply resonating through the capitals of
Europe, with all the symbolic charge of leaving home and going out into
the open air of the hippie encampment, well in advance of the upheavals
of 1968 and perhaps one of the secret reasons for them.
And for those who are confused by the unswerving loyalty of so many
Latin American intellectuals, so many writers of genius, to Fidel
Castro, let me explain. They see him for what he is: the greatest
fabulist of his time, an outstanding performance artist whose famous
speeches are the most considerable part of the performance. The writers
know he is as great as they are for this one achievement: his discovery
of how to cease being a provincial in the arena of world politics, his
strategy of effectively embedding himself in world literature (or in the
world's fictions).
Maybe I'm wrong. I can hear more than one voice pounding in my ears (in
a friend's living room in Paris, in a Stockholm kitchen), shutting me
up--in keeping with our lovely island tradition--by shouting me down.
They can shout all they want.
I'll wait them out, then immediately continue to expand on what I've
just been saying: it's easy to see Fidel Castro (the hateful and
terrible Fidel Castro) as a great artist who was able to stage a massive
production (with the participation of the United States in the role of
big bully) of the myth of a confrontation between a tiny country and the
Empire, the insubordination that has awoken so much sympathy.
And perhaps therein lies the cause of his popularity within the United
States itself, which I vaguely intuit to be in the fine, supremely
American, very citizenly tradition of facing down the government:
pre-1959 Cuba viewed as a place in America where the US government had
gone too far.
His admirers forgive him--and with them, the whole world forgives
him--for having taken an entire country prisoner, for the terrible
impoverishment of its life, all in the service of a confrontation they
saw as far too costly for their own countries, a confrontation that a
public not silenced by the pretext of an eternal state of emergency, not
automatically accused of giving in to the Enemy, wouldn't hesitate to
condemn.
The Cuban Revolution awoke a tremendous enthusiasm in Latin America, fed
by the hatred and visceral anti-Americanism that the United States'
stunning and incomprehensible success arouses in the somewhat magical
mind of Latin Americans, who understand only plunder and looting and can
explain the American miracle of prosperity to themselves only in those
terms.
And isn't there also, across Europe, a certain discomfort with
America--and might that be why they were delighted to see America
"having trouble" with a very clever young fellow whose manners were
appalling, true, but who was superb in his role of denouncer, thorn in
the side? (But a terrible, tendentious and obviously limited politician,
a fast talker, a demagogue, an arrogant street hawker.)
The Cuban Revolution does not want any adult ever to emerge on its
territory, does not want there to be a moment when the enchantment of
childhood is broken, the authority of an incompetent government doubted,
in the understanding that we are adults and couldn't do any worse at
leading the country, trying to lift it out of impoverishment and misery,
to project it into the future. Or, and this amounts to the same thing: a
moment when we embrace the heresy of having our own ideas. Corrupted by
the years, infuriatingly thinking for ourselves. Such a cute little
fellow in the photo, with all the shining enthusiasm of the beginning of
life! How old and ugly today: those big ears, simply unpresentable!
If Fidel Castro has betrayed the Cuban Revolution, it happened at the
moment when the children--children of the revolution--reached adulthood.
When by dint of the passage of time there appeared, at the end of the
1980s, a reformist current, a generation of young people born and bred
within the force field of the revolution, inclined to continue with its
"independentist" agenda (or should we say its anti-US agenda) but from
within a reformed socialism, eliminating the totalitarian variable while
retaining the "Achievements" and the "Conquests."
Given the uncomfortable alternative of real change, by people who could
in no way be accused of being pro-US (as he had always rushed to accuse
the Cuban bourgeoisie or "Miami" of being), Fidel Castro chose to betray
us. Utterly.
He fell back on the old strategy of ejecting us from the game. A wave of
exile was organized that again bled the country, depriving it of a very
important group of writers, musicians and professionals who chose to
leave or were told explicitly that their best option was to leave, that
they were not trusted. And we were, I repeat, free of the taint of
antipatriotic feelings (or, what amounts to the same thing in the
perverse logic of the Cuban Revolution, pro-US feelings). In our
writings, following the spirit of the times, we had argued only for a
reform of socialism.
There are two possible readings of this.
The first invalidates what I've been saying about Fidel Castro's
independentist agenda, the principally anti-US nature of his aims, which
allows us to speak of his "resounding political triumph." This new
evidence leaves us or forces us to opt for power alone as the motive and
final explanation of his existence. This perspective explains, it must
be said, many aspects of a procedure that is otherwise inexplicable. For
when a whole generation, the generation to which I belong, appeared to
tell him, "Yes, completely understood, we're no less anti-US than you,
no less committed to the left and its vision of social justice, but also
to a government, a socialism (not capitalism!) that would be more
participatory," he chuckled into his beard and arranged for us to be
taught a very public lesson, with folkloric paredón included.
Was this because he knew and understood--this would be the second
reading--that true socialism can't be reformed, that any attempt at
improvement would end, quickly and inevitably, in a dismantlement?
I think so. I'm sure of it.
Who knew that better than he, the man who had subjugated the entire
country, brought it to its knees with his "revolutionary violence"?
Because where others--and I myself at the time--naïvely saw a voluntary
acceptance, an "election," he saw with absolute clarity that all of it
had been adamantly opposed, that it would never survive the test of a
real election or stand up to any airing out, any public discussion of
his practices and methods. That's what happened with Mikhail Gorbachev's
reforms, to which, with perfect clairvoyance, el doctor Fidel Castro was
fiercely opposed from the beginning.
For Castro and Gorbachev were historical epochs apart from each other.
Gorbachev had inherited his power, didn't know how it had been gained,
saw himself as a "good leader," someone who hadn't needed to have people
killed, who'd never gotten his hands dirty or built socialism by force
and against the popular will. Standing atop a pyramid of infinite power,
Gorbachev behaved like an heir who knows nothing of his grandparents'
effort and sacrifice to amass the fortune that he, wanting to be a good
person and not an "exploiter," is eager to squander, distribute among
the poor.
Fidel Castro's situation was very different: he was the one who'd
brought socialism to Cuba. The superhuman effort it had taken to put the
entire country onto that footing was fresh in his memory (though, let's
concede once more, he did it for reasons of the Confrontation and not in
pursuit of the mere chimera of a better life for all). He harbored no
doubt that given a choice, the public, the entire nation, would choose
to get rid of him, and fast.
Fidel Castro made no mistake about that, and in some way it excuses him
from the charge that power is, pathologically, his only objective, his
guiding passion.
He is convinced (and perhaps he's absolutely right) that he alone is the
best commander of this power, this type of power.
Which doesn't mean that either he or his power is desirable.
The Cuban people, the generation of the 1950s, were privileged pupils
graduating cum laude with a major in American civilization. They had
assimilated its teachings and been transformed into what they continue
to be today, to the despair of their many allies, the many souls who
seek to help them in their "unequal battle with the neighbor to the
north": the most Americanized nation in Latin America.
American habits, American ways of thinking, Americanness itself are
integral to Cuba, the prism through which it sees the world.
An entire nation that, having completed its education at the School of
American Civilization, began producing American businessmen, American
artists and American politicians, like our simpático Fidel Castro. But
then, in that same generation, one group saw the need and believed it
possible to consolidate our independence, accede to a more full-fledged
adulthood and achieve, in passing, well-being and development for all,
while another group, the middle class, the upper class, the so-called
national bourgeoisie, imagined for one moment that this was doable,
backed the revolt and then began to oppose it vehemently.
And when they saw themselves forced to emigrate for the reasons already
stated, they arrived in America not as a group of exiled foreigners,
immigrants who had to begin everything anew (though they did have to do
that), but with the incalculable advantage of already being an American
middle class and an American upper class, who by chance happened to
speak a different language but who adapted with stunning speed and ease.
A speed and ease that had to do with the fact that fundamentally they
had not left their country. Their genes had been homogenized by all the
television ads, the newest model cars every year and all the other
points of Cuban material existence, which was an American material
existence, in Cuba's capacity as an outlying territory.
The Miami Economic Miracle, the astonishing ascent that transformed a
sleepy tourist town, refuge for retirees, into the new capital of Latin
America, was accomplished by the same generation that brought about the
Cuban Revolution--the generation of the 1950s.
Has anyone understood that?
This is a truth that may surprise supporters of the Cuban Revolution
who, without understanding much about the reasons for the dispute, have
taken the side of the smaller country, the abused country, when what's
really going on is a desperate lovers' quarrel.
Cuba wants to be the United States.
In contrast to many perspectives around the world that are critical or
even disdainful of the obvious crudeness of much of the American way of
life, Cubans see such a life as desirable, imagine their future as
independent--but American. Ugly suburbs, ticky-tacky houses and
disposable plastic cups all figure in the mental tableau of their happiness.
Any schema that seeks to oppose "Cuban identity" to "American identity"
is false; as early as the middle of the nineteenth century, Cuban
identity was shaped, nourished and colored by American identity, which
was a consubstantial part of Cuban identity, one of its fundamental
elements. This peculiar amalgam is manifest in any sector or period of
Cuban life you might choose to name, from the very beginning of our
"national awakening," through the rather odd fact that our first
president was a Cuban-American schoolteacher, a Quaker who had lived
through more than twenty winters in America, and the no less surprising
detail that José Martí, our "national poet," the "apostle" of our
independence, was a fiery lover of America and a privileged vehicle of
the nationalist religion in its distinctive American variety.
In other words, there's always been a good deal of truth to the term
"Manifest Destiny." Not in the sinister sense of occupation and
subjugation but in that of proximity and espousal. Inevitable
transference, imitation, admiration, irritation, hatred.
And love.
Nevertheless, it's incredible how unaware the United States appears to
be of its importance in everything to do with Cuba. It acts as if it
were a normal country, one more country in the community of nations, and
not the very center, we might say--I say it decisively--of the existence
of the island of Cuba.
Like a parasol, the Cuban Revolution is more necessary and casts a
broader shadow when the sun is highest in the sky. The size of that
shadow is a generous gift of the fixity with which the star turns its
interest upon us.
Searing us with its excessive interest! If only it would go behind a
cloud, give us a respite, a chance to forget the parasol for a moment.
In the cool of the evening, what would we need the parasol for? The
Americans do not suspect how much they are loved, imitated, how we hang
on their every word, from Fidel Castro himself (perhaps more than anyone
else) down to the last little child on the island (who dreams of living
in America). A country penetrated from top to bottom by America's
influence, almost more than any other country on earth, we could say,
and without any other point of reference or counterbalance.
Cuba has never stopped feeling this: it is a basic ingredient and not a
foreign, intrusive and distorting element, as it has been depicted by
the Cuban Revolution, as I have depicted it in other parts of this
essay. Indeed, the United States is also mistaken in seeing Cuba as a
foreign territory. It is one, undoubtedly, but to a lesser degree than
perhaps any other country on earth. Hence the huge mistake of a vengeful
and thunderous demeanor, when a tender and understanding tone would be
much more appropriate, the tone of one who reproaches and admonishes his
own kin.
Judging by other criteria such as the high cost of the "triumph,"
shifting our scrutiny to the catastrophe everywhere visible, judging by
the calamitous state into which the country has been sunk, the chronic
shortages, the near indigence; judging by the vast disintegration of the
nation, the vast diaspora, we have to talk about the deep and shattering
failure of el doctor Fidel Castro (and the Cuban Revolution).
Obvious to all is the slipping away of the initial project to diversify
the economy, raise the standard of living, transform Cuba into all the
things it has pretended to be without ever being: a "medical power"
(ridiculous--what on earth is a "medical power"?) or an "agricultural
power." It's worth asking what the initial plan was, what the revolution
counted on achieving. Perhaps this would be easily traceable through
Castro's many exhausting (and frank) speeches. Was he calculating that
by, say, 1975 or 1980 he'd be able to lift the country out of
underdevelopment, or at least out of the crisis into which the
much-heralded confrontation with the United States inevitably submerged him?
If he was counting on that, it hasn't happened.
Instead, there's been year after year of unbearable scarcity, the
eternal backdrop for a population struggling to live in utmost
deprivation. For whatever reason it may be, whatever reason you or
anyone else wants to put forth--beginning, naturally, with the US
embargo--the Cuban Revolution is a resounding failure.
Honestly, I don't understand how it can be viewed any other way.
I imagine we may differ once again as to the causes. Blindness, inhuman
ambition, crippling Bolshevism and, yes, ineptitude on the part of the
United States, from my point of view; from Castro's, undoubtedly,
conspiracies, ambushes, bad luck and, yes, ineptitude on the part of the
United States.
And since this is a war (let's acknowledge that fact), then consider the
inhumanity of the general who would rather immolate his soldiers than
allow them to surrender with dignity. The commander who sees his armies
decimated day after day and his heart shudders, prepared as he is to
sacrifice all of them, down to the last man. The whole country bankrupt,
the thousands who throw themselves into the sea, all economic and
material existence collapsing, the daily failure and defeat--is that not
the work of a maniac, evidence of a heart of stone?
That would be the point of view of the commander's rational mind, if we
concede, without question, that he has one.
Shouldn't he give an honorable discharge to the country that has served
him for so long? Thank it for the effort, take pity on the women and
children? Or even on the last men standing? Until the end of what? The
embargo?
The Americans should lift it, let's concede that point: the infinite
stupidity of the embargo. But they haven't done so. Worse, the Cuban
Revolution is in no position to pressure them to do so. No less
important, the embargo causes them little or no pain or damage. It makes
no difference to the Americans: the Cuban people, their fate. But to
Fidel Castro, to the Cuban Revolution, those things are supposed to
matter. I've repeated this question until I'm blue in the face.
Shouldn't he, however much it would pain him and even though it would be
an acknowledgment of failure, let his people go, renounce the
"struggle," not force them to go with him to the very end?
This part of the story is told from the perspective of the remote
future, the distant assessment of someone making a dispassionate study
of his ancestors.
What can we do with the Cuban Revolution? Where can we put the Cuban
Revolution? Can we act as if it had never existed?
The questions take us back to the old polemic: had Cuba already achieved
its independence (as I'm inclined to think it had)? Or was it still (as
Castro's doctrine depicts it) a protectorate, poorly administered by
corrupt politicians primarily interested in enjoying Cuban beauties and
exploiting the beautiful island of Cuba?
What matters here, however, is that whichever of these answers is
correct, the Cuban Revolution happened, like it or not. The island of
Cuba is now a very different country from what it was.
Fully independent?
Yes. In fact, more independent than is prudent.
This is the foundation on which the country's future must be built. To
ignore the revolution or denigrate it would be a mistake, the knee-jerk
revolutionary quest for a tabula rasa. Far better to incorporate the
revolution thoughtfully, without ascribing guilt. As a problem, an asset
and a singularity.
And to approach it as capable administrators serene in their
inheritance, their assets managed pragmatically, without the sentimental
burden of all those black-and-white photographs. A brief time for
analysis of very recent history but no grand gestures or epic poems,
just a quiet moment spent contemplating the childish expressions of
those adults in the photos. Understandingly. To create space, strip away
all the obsolete grandiloquence. And if there's a good piece of
furniture, still solid and stable, then into the living room with it,
next to the piano, as a period detail.
That's the attitude.
No tribunals (established here in the back seat of this taxi). That's
not my intention. Not the tribunal of history, the better to understand
what happened. I've understood this today in particular, Oman (my cab
driver from Cameroon): not to judge from the height of a tribunal with a
flaming sword. To observe all of it, rather, sub specie aeternitatis.
That being said, there's nothing left but to acknowledge that the Cuban
Revolution won.
Not a drop of irony in those words. They are the winners. They'll be the
ones in charge of taking the country forward in the years to come, be
Fidel Castro alive or dead.
Frankly, I don't see how it could be any other way.
Not the dissidents, who are currently more of a civic option than a real
political one: not the representatives of the Cuban exile community,
whose possibilities are even more limited, compromised as they are
(politically? in the public mind?) by their long stay in America.
There's no one but them, the heirs to the violent and exceedingly
self-absorbed Cuban Revolution. That is: the ones who are free of the
idea of the glory and significance of the Cuban Revolution and
definitely do not see it as something that "objectively" had to occur
(never anything like that), and who are free as well of the idea that
some other "revolution" might be necessary, some new abrupt or
cataclysmic change to repair the harm wrought by that other abrupt and
cataclysmic change. They are freeing themselves from the Cuban
Revolution and loathing it mightily, but not--God save us!--revolutionarily.
Knowing how to make a break with its heritage of violence rather than
acting as if nothing had happened. A clear and public expression of
regret, an unequivocal condemnation of its excesses along with a
vindication of its best aspects (the broad social and educational
programs and all the rest), as a way of founding the country anew.
Otherwise, all forward momentum might be lost in overt cynicism, the
shiftiness of someone who acknowledges no guilt and believes and
calculates that it's possible to live, to lie, as if nothing had happened.
No settling of accounts, no rush to judgment, no Second Cuban Revolution
to rectify and cleanse away the evils, violence and social harm of the
first one.
But yes, a rejection of its deeply anti-democratic character--more the
structure of a military command than of a government--an acknowledgment
of other actors in the political spectrum, a making of space for
inclusion, a voluntary gathering in.
No longer proudly calculating that they'll be able to monopolize power
at no risk to themselves and at enormous cost to the country. Their
specificity (Fidelismo? his heirs?) identified as one point of view
among others, constituting themselves as a political party, a true
political party.
A party that ceases to be the State Leviathan that exists today,
renouncing its monstrous privilege, which is a thousand times more
aberrant than the endemic corruption of pre-1959 Cuba that the Cuban
Revolution confronted and tried to correct.
Taxi. Taxi!
Travels by Taxi: Reflections on Cuba (26 November 2009)
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