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ANOTHER PIECE BY TIM HECTOR TITLED CUBA: TWO REVOLUTIONS IN ONE COUNTRY. IF HUMAN CIVILIZATION EVER SURVIVES AND PROGRESSES BEYOND TODAY AND THE IMMEDIATE TOMORROW. I BELIEVE THE CARIBBEAN REGION WILL SERVE RESOURCES AND MODELS FOR THIS EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESSION FOR HUMANITY. IN PARTICULAR IS CUBA , LABELED DEVELOPING COUNTRY AND IS CONSIDERED POOR AND PORPHETICALLY DEMONIZED BY THE GREATEST OF GREAT IMPERIAL POWER BUT PROVIDING THE MOST FUNDAMENTALLY TECHNOLOGICAL EXPERTISE TO OTHER DEVELOPING COUNTRIES EVEN MORE SO THAN ANY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY.

CUBA WILL AND SHOULD PROBABLY MORE REVERED BY ALL DEVELOPING NATIONS AND THAN THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA COMBINED. ITS NOT A PERFECT COUNTRY BUT ATLEAST ITS LIGHT YEARS AHEAD OF HONESTLY ADDRESSING CERTAIN SOCIAL ISSUES THAN MORE SELF PROCLAIMED FREE AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES.

February 25, 2000


Cuba: Two Revolutions in One Country

I thought I would take a break from my studies of Antiguan personalities of the 20th century and respond to a U.S. reader who says it’s a long time I have not written about Cuba.

Significantly the reader said that since the Cuban Revolution is the most outstanding event of the 20th century in the Caribbean it would be appropriate that I write about Cuba for Black History Month.

Now I have not been in Cuba since 1990, and visited only recently. With the merger of political parties I felt that going to Cuba would have given rise to the primitive and ignorant anti-Communist hysteria for which the Bird regime is notorious.

Remember when in 1980 Antigua, through ACLM was among the first to take Cuban scholarships, the furore that was raised. Remember when Antiguans first graduated as doctors, dentists, economists, agronomists, vets and food technologists from Cuba the alarm that was spread around here. It was written, broadcast and telecast that these graduates from Cuban universities had been trained as soldiers. They were here to launch a military attack on the government.

The doctors could not practice. Today, right at this moment an agronomist, George Goodwin, the most amiable of men, trained in Cuba was not given a job as an agronomist in Antigua. He is still the only one. The combination of Ignorance and Power can do some dastardly, even heinous things. George Goodwin, I remind, is still the only Antiguan agronomist living in Antigua. No work.

The doctors, and vets trained in Cuba, were not allowed to work. They were not allowed to register as doctors. Trained in Cuba, a country with a longer University tradition than the United States, they were both communist and inferior. It took months of negotiations between V.C. Bird and myself before the doctors were registered. The ignorance which so often rules and overwhelms this country, will make future generations think that these were the Dark Ages.

But times change. Now the rabid anti-Communist Bird administration is sending students to Cuba, to be trained as doctors, vets, engineers, accountants, dentists etc. A small developing country denied its citizens the opportunity of education for development out of, and because of, the ignorance of anti-communism. Will it ever answer for this high crime?

How quickly history changes! Sometimes overnight. The largest number of Antiguan students on scholarship anywhere in the world are now in, not UWI, not Harvard, not M.I.T. or Berkeley, but Cuba.

Not only were we, as ACLM and Outlet instrumental in sending students from Antigua to Cuba, but we were able to extend the Cuban scholarships to neighbouring islands. Curiously, the Minister of Health in St Kitts now is a Cuban trained doctor whom ACLM and Outlet sent to Cuba on a scholarship. Such a person, I am told, could not be elected here. Backwardness reigns and rules. Not incidentally then, Antigua and Barbuda, is the only country in the Caribbean, which has never ever elected a woman. Where ignorance is bliss, it is perhaps folly to be wise, it has been written.

But that is not, definitely not my point here. Cuba, in my view, has made two revolution in the 20th century. One in 1959, the other in 18. Both led by the incomparable Fidel Castro.

The first Cuban Revolution overthrew U.S. colonial domination of Cuba. The U.S. controlled the economy of Cuba up until 1959. The first Cuban Revolution, for the first time, placed a Caribbean economy in Caribbean control. Not even the most rabid anti-Castro in the U.S. can or could dispute that.

The first Cuban Revolution had to contend then, with U.S. military invasion both actual and threatened; unrelenting U.S. efforts at political subversion accompanied by numerous assassination attempts on the leadership of the country; chemical warfare; U.S. based terrorist attacks on such targets as Cuban airplanes, tourist hotels and commercial activities. Note I have not mentioned the terrorist activities of the U.S. sponsored Cuban American National Foundation - which even now is keeping a Cuban boy of 6 years old from his natural parent - and the Brothers of the Rescue Organisation, which has acknowledged numerous terrorist bombings in Cuba.

Needless to say, every U.S. administration from Eisenhower in 1959 to Clinton in 2000 has kept up unlimited hostility to Cuba in matters large and small. The most powerful country in the world in remorseless hostility against one of the smallest.

The most horrendous act perhaps is the U.S. blockade of Cuba officially imposed on February 7, 1962 and condemned by all countries at the U.N., save and except, Israel and the United States.

An estimate of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, is best expressed by that marvellous writer of the 20th century, the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"That night, the first of the blockade in 1962" writes Gabriel Garcia Marquez "there were in Cuba 482,550 cars, 343,000 refrigerators, 549,700 radios, 303,500 T.V. sets, 352, 900 electric irons, 288,400 fans, 41,800 washing machines, 3,510,000 watches, 63 locomotives and 12 merchant ships. All these, except the watches which were Swiss, were made in the United States …… From the point of view production and consumption, Cuba found that it was not a country but a commercial peninsula of the USA"

The U.S. blockade, overnight, eliminated spare parts, for any and all of the above listed items. Any and every country would have reeled and spiralled out of control in those unique circumstances. Not so Cuba. The Cuban Revolution withstood all that and more. As I look back this is an incredible achievement, made possible only by the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people as a whole, and inspired by one of the most amazing men of the 20th century or any other century – Dr Fidel Castro.

Let me give you another measure to accurately judge the strength and power of the first Cuban Revolution. In 1959, at the Revolution’s beginning the island of Cuba consumed four million tons of oil. Then, in 1959, one ton of sugar bought seven tons of crude oil - more than enough. Then, only half of Cuban homes had electricity. And those that did then used half of what they do now. Today Cuba’s population has more than doubled to 11 million and 90 percent of the island’s homes have electricity bringing the total need up to 13 million tons of oil. Cuba meets that need. The only problem is that whereas in 1959 one ton of sugar, bought seven tons of oil, now one ton of sugar pays for only 1.4 tons of oil. The manipulation of world prices, by the invisible but definitely imperialist hand sees to that. Giving rise to the expression: Damned if you develop, damned if you don’t. And yet the Cuban Revolution has survived, a mere 90 miles away from the greatest armed might in all of human history.

On top of that over the last 40 years, a labyrinth of U.S. legislation and regulations have banned, absolutely, all commercial dealings between the U.S. and Cuba amended to include, incredibly, not only food, but medicines too. Cuba had to produce its own medicines. Cuba’s achievements in this pharmaceutical are by no means small.

U.S. legislation and regulations also blocked Cuba’s access to international financial markets and lending institutions; frustrated trade with other countries by forbidding them to sell Cuba any items with U.S. components or technology, or to sell in the U.S. goods containing Cuban parts or raw materials; while the U.S. proscribed ships, companies and entire countries for doing business with Cuba. Never was David more set upon by Goliath.

Perhaps I should just detail this a bit. The U.S. was hostile to the Cuban Revolution’s agrarian reforms, in which lands were given to the landless tillers in economic units. This agrarian reform has no equal in all Latin America and the Caribbean. U.S. sugar factories and lands were taken over by the Revolution, the United Fruit Co, now Chiquita, lost its lands and holdings in Cuba. United Fruit Co. was the most powerful institution in all Latin America after the United States. Put more correctly, U.S. policy in Latin America was the policy of the United Fruit Co. The Cuban Revolution also nationalised banks and oil companies. Cuba, was, you will remember, a U.S. economic colony.

By July 1960 the U.S. cancelled its purchases of Cuban sugar. By January 1961 it severed diplomatic relations of Cuba. By April 1961 the U.S. launched the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, with the Cuban Revolution routing the U.S. backed forces, the only time a U.S. sponsored invasion has been defeated in Latin America and the Caribbean. By January 1962 the U.S. strong armed the expulsion of Cuba from the Organisation of American States. Cuba’s diplomatic and economic isolation was complete. By October 1962 there would be the Cuban "missile crisis" when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear destruction in a face-off between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Eventually the U.S. removed its missile bases from Turkey and the Soviet Union removed its missiles from Cuba.

The U.S. trade blockade was tightened over the years, through the Torricelli Bill, the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the Helms Burton Bill or the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act. (Note how the U.S. cloaks horrendous laws in nice names like Liberty, Democratic and Solidarity).

The Cuban Revolution had to reorient its trade away from the United States to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. By 1989, 83.1 per cent of Cuba’s trade was with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; 9.9 per cent of Cuba’s trade was with the developed capitalist countries and the developing countries accounted for a mere 7 per cent of Cuba’s trade.

Cuba, it will be noted, supplied 30 per cent of the sugar consumed in the Soviet Union at prices cheaper than Soviet produced beet sugar. Cuba also supplied 40 per cent of citrus fruit used in the USSR, plus 20 per cent of the nickel, and a sizeable amount of cobalt used in the USSR. By 1990 Cuban exports of electronics and biotechnology valued some 730-800 million pesos.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and was rent asunder, Cuba was thrown on its back. It was caught, so to speak, in a double blockade between one-time friend and ever hostile foe.

Bear in mind that by 1991, the year the Soviet collapse, over 84 per cent of Cuba’s imports came from Eastern Europe and the USSR. By 1992, the value of total trade turnover (exports plus imports) had fallen to only U.S. $830 million, or roughly 7 per cent of its 1989 level.

In consequence as Andrew Zimbalist wrote "the prices Cuba paid for imported wheat, chicken, milk and petroleum rose between 16 and 40 per cent, while the prices of Cuba’s two most important commodity exports, sugar and nickel, fell by 20 and 28 per cent respectively."

To this Zimbalist adds that the pain was further increased due to the U.S. economic blockade. For in the last two years of U.S. President George Bush, he tightened the screws on Cuba even more. This produced a worse crisis. "The value of Cuba’s imports fell from US$8.1 billion in 1989 to less than $3 billion in 192. The entire Cuban economy reeled. National income was cut by 45 per cent between 189 and 1992.

By 1989, learned scholars in the U.S. were writing books entitled Castro’s Final Days, by Jorge I Dominguez Headlines appeared "The Cuban Revolution is History," "Socialism goes bankrupt in Cuba", "Cuba will quickly burn out of control" wrote the learned American scholar Gillian Gunn.

The wish was the father of those thoughts.

The second Cuban Revolution would be launched with Fidel Castro at the head of the revolutionary people. Up from the ashes a phoenix would rise.

The first Cuban Revolution had produced a health care system and education system, second to none in all Latin America. Education was free up to University level, and triple by-pass surgery was available to all Cubans for free.

Now Cuba was rocked back. Indeed, in plain terms it found itself between a rock and a hard place, literally. "The commodity terms of trade between sugar and oil, or the purchasing power of each ton of sugar, had fallen by 62 per cent from the mid 1980’s to mid 1992" to quote Archibald Ritter.

With brutal frankness Fidel Castro himself acknowledged, that Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings had fallen some 73 per cent in three years: from U.S. $8,139 million in 1989 to US$2,000 million in 1992.

Fidel Castro, the exemplary revolutionary of the 20th century had to launch a second Revolution.

Let me sum it up in the words of Fidel Castro himself at the Fourth Party Congress in 1991 "All this obliged us to shoulder new responsibilities, to meet the colossal challenges posed by these circumstances.

"Interest in water projects have been revived, with work being speeded up on the application of new techniques and the creation in this short period of 201 irrigation and drainage brigades that can prepare 100,000 hectares of land a year; the mini-brigades have been resuscitated, contingents were created, which carry out veritable feats in a minimum of time; a programme for the accelerated production of foodstuffs was drawn up and is being carried out; land has been transformed, irrigation has been extended to larger areas; the materials industry was renovated and a tremendous boost was given to it, because it is one of the industries that are basic for all development, projects began to be drawn up and work began on a large number of hotels; and we promoted scientific research centres and production plants in the spheres of biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry and medical equipment."

This is a monumental, almost unprecedented mobilisation of people and science. Big Brigades and Mini Brigades tackling national problems, nationally. Or better, people mobilised to overcome social problems by their own self-activity, for their own development, which is what socialism is. Get the point? Socialism is not nationalisation, not nationalised property. It is the mobilisation and self-organisation of a people to manage and control production by themselves, for themselves.

Nowhere else in this region do you hear of a leader mobilising people and science, with the direct intervention and organisation of the people in brigade and min-brigades. Whenever you have that in any other Caribbean country on a national scale, then you will know politics has really begun. Instead off the pro-politics in which we have been engaged these past 44 years.

Next time more on the Second Cuban Revolution. Till then think on these things.

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