Island that Dared
Page 41
Ramon Humberto Colas Castillo, whose name I first heard in Pinar del Rio, was employed by Special Interests to set up ‘independent libraries’ in Cuban cities – his reward a job in Mississippi as a MCID researcher. In October 2005, when McCarry organised an important meeting in Madrid, Colas was there and had a long private discussion with Adolfo Franco, husband of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and then director of USAID’s Latin America and Caribbean Department. To a House of Representatives Foreign Relations sub-committee Franco gave evidence that within less than three years twenty million dollars of USAID money had been diverted, via Miami, to support Cuba’s ‘dissident groups’. In Havana I was shown a photograph of Franco presenting Jaime Suchlicki with a USAID cheque (eight feet wide) for US$1,045,000 to finance ‘a transition project’ in Cuba.
24 October. Some light relief (sort of) in today’s post. Miami’s public school system has banned a children’s book about travel to Cuba because so many parents complained that it shows pictures of schoolchildren smiling and therefore portrays an ‘idealised’ and ‘overly-favourable’ vision of the island. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Miami-Dade County School Board, claiming that the ban violates the First Amendment. Vamos a Cuba was first noticed by hard-liners after a child brought it home and her father, who describes himself as ‘a former political prisoner’, flew into a rage. Funny ol’ place, Miami. I never saw a group of Cuban schoolchildren who were not smiling.
15 November. The amount spent on bribing journalists by the US government’s Cuba Transmissions Office proves the importance of a steady flow of misinformation. The Miami Herald’s publisher recently resigned when it was discovered (through the US Freedom of Information Act) that two of the paper’s most virulently anti-Castro journalists, Pablo Alfonso and Wilfredo Cancio, had been paid, since 2001, US$175,000 and US$150,000 respectively, as ‘retainers’. The publisher, Jesus Diaz Jr, talked of ‘violating the sacred confidence between journalists and the public’. He added that the nine journalists who accepted payments would not be disciplined because ‘our policies prohibiting such behaviour may have been ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years in the newsroom’. The journalists concerned also worked for Radio Marti and TV Marti, described by many British reporters as ‘the Cubans’ source of objective news from outside’.
17 April 2007. In yesterday’s Guardian Duncan Campbell reported: Barclays Bank has told the London branches of two Cuban organisations (Havana International Bank and Cubancan) to take their accounts elsewhere in what is seen as the latest example of pressure exerted by the US on British companies to enforce its embargo of the island.
When challenged by the Guardian Barclays replied:
We operate in a number of jurisdictions around the world and that requires careful monitoring to ensure compliance with different regulations.
Last year the Union Bank of Switzerland and Credit Suisse closed all accounts with Cuban connections, indirectly referring to Cuba as ‘one of the sensitive countries’. In July 2006 the US Treasury Department added the Netherlands Caribbean Bank (an ING joint venture with two Cuban state-owned enterprises) to their list of companies with which US companies and private citizens are forbidden to do business. Early this year, the Austrian bank that sounds like a pantomime character – BAWAG – closed more than a hundred Cuban accounts citing ‘US sanctions’. An infuriated Foreign Minister, Ursula Plassnik, then informed Parliament that she had started administrative proceedings against BAWAG for breaking EU rules against applying anti-Cuban sanctions on European soil. Showing the sort of independence unknown in a Britain eviscerated by the ‘special relationship’, she proclaimed, ‘US law is not applicable in Austria … We are not the 51st of the US states’. In reaction to Barclays’ compliance, Colin Burgon MP observed, ‘Those who prattle on about national sovereignty and losing rights to Brussels are strangely quiet on the fact that the US is passing legislation which dictates policy in the UK’.
12 May. It’s interesting that despite all Washington’s efforts to isolate Havana, Cuba now has diplomatic relations with one hundred and eighty-one of the one hundred and ninety-two nations in the UN General Assembly where rejection of the US blockade is almost unanimous. Also, Cuba has been elected to ‘chair’ the 118-member Nonaligned Movement, recently returned from the near-dead in response to US plans for ‘full-spectrum dominance’.
29 June. My personal favourite, among the heroes of the Revolution, died on 18 June, aged seventy-seven. Vilma Espin was Raul’s ex-wife; they met in 1958 when she – a MIT student and daughter of a senior Bacardi executive – exchanged her palatial Santiago home for a guerrilla camp in the Sierra Maestra. They fought side by side in the mountains, married in Havana in January 1959 and in due course had four children. In their very different ways, each became a pillar of the Revolution – Vilma much the stronger. Most obits refer to her as ‘Cuba’s unofficial first lady’ which description, with its connotation of ‘a first gentleman’ in charge, would certainly displease her.
While still a bride, in November 1959, Vilma led a delegation to a congress of Latin American women in Chile and on their return Fidel asked her to found the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). Under its aegis, more than nineteen thousand women who were household servants in 1959 received special schooling to equip them for alternative jobs. The FMC played a crucially important part in the setting up of Cuba’s novel rural education and public health systems.
As one of Cuba’s most powerful leaders, Vilma drew up the 1975 Family Code which gave women equal rights and gave many men a nasty shock. They were now obliged, by law, to do their fair share of childcare and housework. Such laws never take instant effect but if the legislators are not merely posing they do gradually remould attitudes. I noticed a surprising number of young and not-so-young husbands being more domesticated than one would expect given their machismo inheritance.
Writing in The Nation (28 June) a Havana journalist, Rosa Miriam Elizalde, remembers interviewing Vilma in the early ’90s when prostitution was seeping back on to the streets as tourism expanded. Said Vilma: ‘Don’t forget that jineteras are not mere prostitutes. They are our prostitutes and we must not demonise them, because we run the risk of attacking the victim instead of attacking the wrong.’
Rosa pays tribute to Vilma as – ‘ … the first person to talk to our people about gender equality and, specifically, about the rights of homosexuals and trans-sexuals to a full life, swimming against the tide of the sort of Victorian Marxism which in our country blended with a native plague of machismo that caused much suffering to quite a few.’
About eighty-five per cent of women belong to the FMC, making it one of Cuba’s most influential institutions, and when the government declared a day of national mourning many thousands of both sexes streamed through the Karl Marx theatre in Havana to pay homage to Vilma.
9 July. This is Operation Miracle’s third anniversary. The WHO estimates that curable blindness handicaps at least thirty-seven million throughout the Majority World. With this figure in mind, Fidel visited Havana’s Ramon Pando Ferrer Opthomological Institute, on 9 July 2004, and proposed ‘Operation Miracle’ to its director, Dr Marcelino Rio Torres. When el comandante could evade the bureaucracy, things moved fast in Cuba. Within a year fourteen thousand had benefited from free eye surgery and by now sight has been restored to almost seven hundred thousand from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. Thirty-eight opthomological clinics, staffed by more than six hundred Cubans, have been established in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mali, and Panama. In all, throughout the Majority World, some forty-two thousand Cubans (doctors, nurses, teachers, agronomists, engineers) are at work.
Recently, Felipe Perez explained to a group of bemused Minority Worlders, ‘We don’t hand out what is surplus to us, what we do is share what we have.’ This prompts cynics to ask, ‘But what would all those well-qualified Cubans be doing at home? Given an ove
r-educated population and limited job opportunities on the island, doesn’t Cuba need to have them occupied abroad? Isn’t all this internationalist humanitarianism a safety valve?’
Those cynics have a point – but they’re missing another point, to do with the Revolutionary ethos. Well-qualified Cubans don’t have to work for a pittance in remote regions. They could defect and earn comparatively big bucks, as of course a few do. But astonishingly few … And what about the forty-seven thousand (to date) young foreigners who have graduated for free from Cuban universities?
Last month Dr Carlos Dupuy Nunez, leader of the Henry Reeve Brigade, spent three weeks touring England. In response to the 2005 earthquake, he and two thousand four hundred volunteers spent seven months working in Azad Kashmir. Most aid agencies moved out after two months or less. Within six days of the quake, eighty-six doctors were on the scene; within weeks the Brigade had set up thirty-two fully equipped field hospitals.
One interviewer asked Carlos, ‘Why does such a small country send so many doctors abroad? And why to Pakistan, to help a country that’s a main US ally in the “war on terror”?’
Carlos replied, ‘It’s not for glory, it’s not for material wealth, but for solidarity. Our health system is based on internationalist principles. When I first applied to medical college I got a form asking “Do you feel able to give your services for free to any people in the world?” I said “Yes”. When you grow up in this kind of society, you feel like that.’
Those keen to profit from ill-health don’t know how to cope with Castroist humanitarianism. The various brigades’ existence and effectiveness can’t be denied and they are among the Revolution’s most admirable achievements. Some even argue (a dodgy argument!) that they cancel out the injustices inflicted on jailed ‘dissidents’ who have tried to change the anti-capitalist regime that makes such endeavours possible.
Writing in the Tablet (2 September 2006), Paraguay-based Margaret Hebblethwaite (the ex-nun widow of the ex-Jesuit Peter Hebblethwaite) reflected on the thirty-five-year dictatorship of the recently deceased Alfredo Stroessner. She continued:
‘And what about the other long-running dictator, Fidel Castro, who has also been in the news for reasons of health? It seems strange to someone in Paraguay to hear him described as a dictator, for his dictatorship is of a different class. In most Paraguayans’ perception, Cuba is the country that most holds out a helping hand. Our doctors in Santa Maria are Cubans, on two-year contracts, because no Paraguayan doctor wants to live in such an economic backwater. Our blind people and cataract sufferers are flown to Cuba for free eye operations. Our bright young school leavers are given scholarships to study medicine in Cuba. If any country has put its money where its mouth is, it is Castro’s Cuba … When Castro came to Paraguay for President Nicanor’s inauguration, he received the biggest round of applause as the various presidential cars unloaded their occupants (closely followed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela – the other icon of resistance to the US). Castro later addressed a crowd in a football stadium and spoke for three hours solid. Even that did not put people off. Those who were there said he was impressive.’
Here we see the tap-root of US anti-Castroism. Forget ‘Communism’. The threat to Capitalism Rampant comes from Castroism’s proof that a non-capitalist regime can significantly reduce Majority World suffering. To free-marketeers the accumulation of personal wealth – material wealth – is the valid primary goal of every sensible person. Castroism preaches and practices concern for the poor, whose numbers increase in proportion to the free-marketeers’ global successes. It’s a new idea, this holding out of helping hands – an ethical/spiritual rather than a political revolution, a mind-set remote from Kremlin doctrines. And its potential, as a global influence, terrifies all rampant capitalism and drives the US species to frenzy.
A few weeks ago Fidel pointed out that Cuba could train seventy-five thousand doctors for the price of Britain’s new Tridents – seven point two billion dollars. It’s good to know he’s still doing his sums!
31 July. The first anniversary of what one must now think of as Fidel’s retirement. And the Revolution goes peacefully on its way.
Companies and financial institutions accused of ‘associating’ with Cuba have now been listed on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website to enable investors to avoid business links with ‘state sponsors of terrorism’. (One doesn’t know whether to laugh or swear – Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism!) The Institute of International Bankers has protested that ‘This action has been taken without prior public notice or consultation with reporting companies and other interested persons’. European tycoons are complaining that nine out of ten banks won’t open accounts for companies operating in Cuba. Yet increasing trade with many countries – especially Venezuela, China and Spain – are vitiating the blockade; last year the Cuban economy recorded a ten per cent-growth rate. Now US pressures are affecting individuals more than the state; when a Cuban children’s theatre group was invited to a drama festival in Buenos Aires the Argentinean government refused them visas. When a Miami-based consortium bought Spain’s Pullmantour cruising company two hundred and twenty Havana workers were sacked. US-owned hotels around the world have sacked their Cuban musicians. Specialist US computer programs and equipment are being denied to blind Cubans – and so on and on …
13 August. This is Fidel’s real eightieth birthday, as all readers of Leycester Coltman’s biography are aware. Aged fourteen, Fidel was determined to move from the Jesuits’ Dolores College in Santiago to their even more prestigious Belen College in Havana. He was a bright lad, academically ahead of his contemporaries, but no boy under fifteen was admitted. So Pappa acquired a new birth certificate and ‘To avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging this fraud, Fidel spent the rest of his life claiming to be a year older than he really was’.
27 August. At last month’s Havana conference on ‘The Environment and Development’ Cuba was given cause to purr. Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program, said: ‘Cuba has countered crippling energy shortages plaguing the island as recently as 2004 without giving up a long-term commitment to promoting environmentally friendly fuels. Electricity still depends too much on heavy polluting diesel generators but important steps have been taken toward developing wind and solar power with six hundred windmills now installed and plans for more. In terms of a short-term response, it is quite remarkable how Cuba, under its economic conditions, managed to solve a real energy crisis. My organisation wants to put a spotlight on these efforts.’
1 September. Granma boasts that the Reverend Nerva Cots is ‘only the eighteenth in the world’ – the eighteenth woman bishop and the first in the ‘developing’ world. Representatives of Afro-Cuban religions attended her Episcopal Church consecration. Caridad Diego, director of Cuba’s Religious Affairs Office, said ‘The government is proud we now have a woman bishop. I believe Communists and religious leaders share many ideals and we should work together for the good of humanity’. I remembered those words when a friend wrote on her Christmas card – ‘Do you know Cuba has the worst record in the world for the persecution of Christians?’ McCarry et al. at it again!
21 September. Bush II, addressing the UN General Assembly, has referred to Fidel’s illness – ‘The long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end. The Cuban people are ready for their freedom’. Felipe Perez Roque naturally led his delegation out of the chamber and later issued a statement: ‘Bush is responsible for the murder of over six hundred thousand civilians in Iraq … He is a criminal and has no moral authority or credibility to judge any other country. Cuba condemns and rejects every letter of his infamous tirade.’
On 29 September I return to Havana, hoping to see all my old friends and track down a few new contacts, people with a particular interest in Cuba’s ‘transition period’. For that’s what this decade is – and was, long before Fidel fell ill.
PART THREE
September–October 2007
Chapter 18
I had a folder of press-cuttings in my shoulder-bag, too precious to be entrusted to airline baggage-handlers, and I urged Ben to read the last few paragraphs of a Brian Wilson article. This former Foreign Office minister was the only member of the British government to maintain regular contact with Cuba between 1997 and 2005. In the Guardian (8 February 2007) he wrote:
No one in a senior government position in Britain has any first-hand knowledge either of Cuba or of the people who run it. Our influence is zero, because we have chosen to accept the Washington orthodoxy that regime change is just around the corner. Ostensibly, the justification for this position is concern about Cuba’s record on human rights. When Margaret Beckett made her first major speech as foreign secretary on human rights it was, remarkably, Cuba that was given pride of place. Our glorious ally, Saudi Arabia, did not even merit a mention. Not only the Cubans are entitled to complain about this epic display of double standards. The British are too. The Americans’ camp-followers on Cuba have never been prepared to acknowledge that a country which has lived under constant economic siege for almost half a century, and which has been subject to more foreign plots than any other might be entitled to define ‘dissidents’ in terms that do not match those of their persecutor … By recognising that regime change cannot be forced by external intervention, Britain could restore mutually respectful relationships with Cuba. There is still time. But if our sole objective is to destabilise the Cuban government and support American manoeuvres to replace it, there will be no point in even going to the funeral. Because nobody will speak to us, except the man from the CIA.