Fidel Castro

The world press has on the whole taken a very negative view of Cuba. However, as the Bearded One said on his way into life-saving surgery, the battle of ideas that was underway when he came into office in 1959 is still very much unsettled.

The Cuban Revolution brought to power socialist revolutionaries violently opposed to the corrupt, dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Baptista. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was a third world backwater, beloved of the American Mafia, a playground for the rich and famous even as the population wallowed in disease ignorance and poverty. Fifty years, on some would argue nothing has changed, but the facts say different.

Here is a brief look at the State of Cuba today, its Socialism or Death.

National identity
Thanks in large part to the demonisation of their government and the economic embargo slapped on her by her big neighbour to the north, Cuba has achieved a defiant sense of national identity. While the rest of South America withered under Operation Condor and the US jackboot, Cubans have kept waving their Star and Stripes, forging a distinct national identity that celebrates the islands cultural heritage and its socialism.

Food Sufficiency
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its massive aid to Cuba, the cash-strapped island nation was compelled to re-visit its socialist roots and seek means to provide sustenance for its hungry millions. The growth of purely organic science led agriculture has been praised around the world, and is offering a template for organic, urban farming throughout the world.

Politics and Government
Human Rights organisations around the world have roundly condemned the Cuban government for its intolerance of political plurality and dissent. Thousands have been corralled into jails for ‘anti-socialist’ activities and for ‘betraying the revolution’. Advocates of the Cuban regime acknowledge the repression of dissent, but say it has been driven to this by countless plots on the life of its leader, and numerous attempts at over-throwing the government, most of them sponsored by the USA.

The situation is such that even today, among Cuba’s ‘opposition’, many will not accept American aid, and most insist that even in the absence of Castro and his regime, the socialist experiment will live on in some shape or form.

Education
Cubans are blessed with one of the world’s best education systems. A high teacher to student ratio, and a guarantee of free schooling from birth to university has led to a literacy rate that UNDP puts at 96.8% , compared to the USA’s 99%.

Health
Cuba’s health system is famous around the world for conferring first world healthcare on a third world country. With a life expectancy at birth of 77 against the USA’s 78, and an infant mortality lower than the USA’s, Cubans do have a lot to be proud of. Cuban doctors number 590 per head of population against the USA’s 549. Moreover, this has been achieved at a spending of $251 compared to the USA’s $5,711. Socialist efficiency, what?

Economic Indicators
Resource poor Cuba’s GDP stands at per head of $2,300 and national GDP of $26 billion (CIA) against the UNDP’s $3,600. Compare this with the UNDP’s other figures for Cuba’s neighbours. Argentina the region’s most materialistic consumers, GDP stands at $3,860, Chile’s at $4,360 and Mexico’s at $6,230.

Was the landing of the Granma worth it? That is a question only the Cubans themselves can answer, but Castro’s true legacy is that he has left this question for us. Privatisation around the world has never been successful at improving the lot of a country’s poor. Further free market’s are never truly free as has been shown by the protectionist policies of the EU against China in the Bra Wars, or the US steel tariffs on China, or the subsidies enjoyed by Western ‘free-market’ farmers.

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So, was the landing of the Granma worth it? That is a question only the Cubans themselves can answer, but Castro’s true legacy is that he has left this question for us. Privatisation around the world has never been successful at improving the lot of a country’s poor. Further free market’s are never truly free as has been shown by the protectionist policies of the EU against China in the Bra Wars, or the US steel tariffs on China, or the subsidies enjoyed by Western ‘free-market’ farmers.