CASTRO'S CUBA

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s article is informative important because of the light it sheds on the errors and miscalculations made by the United States during the Cuban missile crisis, such as Washington’s conclusion that there were 10.000 Soviet troops in Cuba when there actually were 43,000, and the belief in Washington that warheads there were no nuclear on the island, when they were there and we now know that the Soviet field commanders in Cuba were authorized to use them against an American invasion. Equally interesting is the article’s discussion of human rights violations in Cuba, including the recent abuses against María Elena Cruz Varela, who, as described by the article, “was brutally treated by government demonstrators and forced to swallow a moving declaration of principles she had written for the small human rights group Criterio Alternativo.” The article allows the reader to perceive the callousness and simplistic, scapegoat mentality with which the Castro regime views the human rights activists it is punishing, like Yndamiro Restano, Sebastian Arcos and Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz, whom Carlos Aldana, “the leading ideologue of the Politburo,” is quoted in the article as having described as “counterrevolutionary garbage... directed by the CIA.” Given the state of repression in Cuba that Mr. Schlesinger forthrightly describes, it isn’t surprising that his “Havana Diary” concludes describing Fidel Castro as “a tyrant and a bully” and wondering whether he won’t end as one of “the last of the neo-Stalinist dinosaurs.”

Given this background and the admission that “opportunities for observation” during his visit to Cuba “were limited,” it is surprising, however, that Mr. Schlesinger could even suggest that “Castro seems to retain much of his old popularity,” while in the next breath he notes that “without free speech, free press, free elections, how can one tell?” and clarifies that “the police are ever ready to suppress public protest and dissidence.” Surely the world’s experience with the fall of totalitarian states over the last couple of years should have taught us to look past the apparent “popularity” of their leaders (like Ceausescu, in Romania), particularly in circumstances like those in Cuba, which have led to a dramatic increase over the past two years not only in escapes by the disadvantaged, who risk their lives in precarious boats, but also in defections by people in positions of privilege in the government and the military.

It is also somewhat surprising, given past miscalculations, that Mr. Schlesinger would recommend normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba and argue that the embargo currently in effect hasn’t worked over the past thirty years. There is, of course, no way of knowing what would have happened over the past three decades had the embargo not been in place, but there is abundant evidence of what has happened each time this country reduced its pressure on Cuba. Three examples should suffice: In 1975 the United States eased controls that had prohibited trading with Cuba by off-shore affiliates of US companies and ended all restrictions on foreign flagships in the Cuba trade. In the face of these actions, Cuba intervened in Angola. In 1977 the United States stopped reconnaissance flights over Cuba and reduced restrictions on travel to the island. This time Cuba immediately increased its troops in Angola and sent troops to Ethiopia. In early 1979 the State Department circulated a report recommending the reestablishment of diplomatic ties with Cuba. A few month later two Soviet brigades and MIG-23s capable of carrying nuclear weapons were on the island and Castro’s major intervention in Central America began.

Now Castro would have the United States believe that these destabilizing Cuban activities have stopped because the Cuban government has become “more mature,” as he told Mr. Schlesinger. The fact is that Cuba simply no longer has the means to maintain tens of thousands of soldiers on various fronts, as it had. With the collapse of Communism all over the world, Cuba has lost the sources of support that helped with its adventurism and enabled it to hold out in the face of the embargo. In fact, without hard currency to replace its lost, cheap supply of Soviet oil, Cuba is reduced to drawing many vehicles by animal power. In these circumstances, the danger of Castro’s further exporting revolution is no doubt limited so why, one wonders in light of past experience with eased restrictions, would the United States want to lift the embargo now? It is the Cuban “New Class” and the military, which consume a large part of the island’s resources, that suffer most from the embargo; lifting it would result in the channeling of resources there, not to the people. If history teaches us anything, certainly lifting the embargo isn’t going to lead the Cuban government to a new found respect for human rights or to allow the people to freely choose the kind of society in which they want to live or the government they prefer.