Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 29, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I don’t care how much equality, health care and education opportunities Fidel Castro gave to the Cuban people, his 50 years in control of Cuba (to be precise it was a few months shy of half a century) did not make Cuba a shining example for other countries to follow. His long rule did not make Cuba a paradise for others to emulate. After 50 years of domination, Cuba under Castro came close to being a failure.
People loved Castro for different reasons, and it would take dozens of columns to explain the nature of Castro and the nature of his rule. Castro became a world phenomenon not because he made Cuba a classless society where all Cubans enjoyed freedoms in all senses of the word – political, economic, social, cultural, psychological – but because he stood up to the US.
We loved Castro because in the words of countless souls, he stood up to the might of Yankee power. But even if you justify loving Castro for that reason, you have to ask yourself if Castro’s courage against the Americans brought freedom, liberty and justice to the Cuban people. It did not.
A majority of those people who loved and worshipped Cuba would not want to live the type of life the average Cuban lived under Castro. Is life only about food on the table, a house to live in, and a healthy life for your family? I think I have a little insight into what meaning humans bring to their lives. I think I have some understanding of how the average person sees human existence. Yes, people want to be free from the burden of poverty. But even the poorest person cherishes liberty, and liberty is a philosophically based value. Liberty is not an economic phenomenon only.
The average person, since time immemorial, yearns for a life that is based on individual choice. There was no such value under Castro. Castro brutally took away philosophical choice. He gave the Cubans free education, free housing, free transportation, free medical care. But that was it. He took away the essence of philosophy in them.
Cubans couldn’t live where they wanted, couldn’t change profession or occupation if they wanted, couldn’t visit any country they would have liked to, couldn’t read any literature they desired, couldn’t embrace any type of art they chose to; couldn’t buy and wear their preferred fashion. No country is free and could be described as free if its people live with such restrictions.
Only one citizen had the choice of embarking on a path he wanted without the intervention of the State regulating his choice and that was Castro. Funny that in Cuba, a citizen couldn’t sell his house in the city and live an introverted life by the sea, or leave the medical profession and become a permanent rural grower of tomatoes.
Permanency belonged to one man only – Fidel Castro. Only he was allowed to have a permanent profession – ruler for life. It is incomprehensible that people who admired and loved Castro couldn’t see through his dark, pathological obsession with power. Why would any person want to rule his/her country for fifty years? Isn’t something deadly Freudian about such a human?
I love reading about the hundreds of millions who love Castro, but they would not live in a country whose ontology resembles Cuba. So you have these Caribbean academics who work for fine money in fine North American and European universities, and they are big fans of Cuba. But their existence is determined by choices such as the right to take holidays back home, buy expensive cars, build expensive houses and engage in cultural and sexual choices that would not be tolerated in Cuba. And though they hate the cold and the snow in America, Canada and Europe, they would not teach at Cuban universities even if the curriculum is taught in English.
There has been misplaced joy the past 55 years about what Castro brought to the Cuban people. This is an area that cries out for research. Exactly what did Cuba achieve under Castro? Where is the research in science, technology and related subjects? Castro brought in a Spanish expert for consultation on his prostate cancer. After 50 years in power, what manufactured goods did Cuba export to the world?
Oh yes, there is a water-tight explanation. Cuba was kept in economic stranglehold because of the American embargo. But if that was the case, why wasn’t there hard bargaining with the Americans? While maintaining its dignity and sovereignty, Cuba could have offered compromises. After all, Cuba needed the trade. In a strange twist of fate and irony, Castro needed the embargo to keep power.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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