Cuba and the Struggle for Survival: An Interview
The following is an edited and enhanced interview conducted by radio journalist Rick Smith (The Rick Smith Show, “Where Working People Come to Talk,” WLYH, Carlisle, PA,) in August 2008 with Dr. Doug Morris, Eastern New Mexico University Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Rick Smith: One of the things I love hearing about is what is happening in other countries. I like to hear from the inside and I like to hear different opinions. This is why we have our next guest, Dr. Doug Morris, from Eastern New Mexico University. He just returned recently from Cuba, and I am always interested and fascinated to find out what goes on in the closed-arena there. Why did you go? I can’t go, as far as I know…how did you get there?
Doug Morris: I went as part of the “Research Network in Cuba Group,” (http://www.cubaconference.org/home.html) sponsored by the US based “Radical Philosophers Association” (http://www.radicalphilosophy.org/). The group does research in Cuba and participates in a yearly conference at the University of Havana as part of that research, and shares that work back here in the US in various academic and public settings. A number of the participants travel back and forth to Cuba numerous times over the year to carry out research and to keep open lines of communication, for example around socialist economics and agriculture. The group travels legally on an academic research general license provided by the US State Department. There are different categories for research and legal travel to Cuba, including journalistic research, so one would guess that you would be able to obtain a license to do “legal” journalistic work and research in Cuba. We should add that it is not Cuba that is trying to keep US citizens out of Cuba; rather, it is the US government that is violating our Constitutional right to travel.
I should also say that the reasons for going to Cuba are many, and also share that I am not an expert on Cuba. Cuba is not my primary area of academic interest, but more peripheral. Cuba remains a source of interest and inspiration mostly because Cuba is attempting to carry out a social project outside of the global neoliberal model, a neoliberal model that places profits first and is a source of many global calamities and much human suffering. Cuba’s project, filled with contradictions and struggles, is working to ensure that people come first. Cuba remains an inspiration because they have accomplished so much under very trying conditions and circumstances, not least of which is the presence of the hostile global behemoth just to the North.
Cuba, as one Cuban scholar pointed out, always “walks on a razor’s edge, and does so in a world that stands on the edge of a precipice.” In other words, Cuba, always struggling to survive, is often forced to pursue policies against their basic commitments, but they must survive, and they are trying to survive as a socialist island in a rising sea of neoliberal abominations. There is no rule book available for revolutionaries so they can simply open to page 155 to find the answer to the latest dilemma. Cuba, though it walks on a razor’s edge, is an inspiring source of alternative political, economic, agricultural and pedagogical knowledge that we, standing on the precipice, so desperately need as we now face ever-growing global threats through climate change, ecological catastrophes, growing poverty and inequality, food and hunger crises, water shortages, political authoritarianism, corporate tyranny, and an increasingly militarized globe. So, Cuba has been designated the only sustainable society in the world by the “World Wildlife Fund,” and that is of great importance at a time when a sustainable human future is in serious question.
As to Cuba being a “closed-arena” one must be careful on how that gets interpreted because people in the US will use that to intimate that Cuba is some kind of Stalinist society in which people lack all freedoms, where everyone lives under constant surveillance and fear, where people are abducted from the streets in the middle of the night if they disagree with State opinion, where people are sent off to torture camps, etc. But that is not the case in Cuba, although one might draw links between what was just described and the US base at Guantanamo, a real core of human rights abuse on land that belongs to Cuba but is occupied by a US Naval base. The “closed-arena” in Cuba is partially a myth created by US propaganda in order to keep the US population distanced from understanding what really happens in Cuba, and partially a consequence of Cuba living constantly under the threat of US aggression, a situation that compels certain forms of centralized control and suspicions that may occasionally result in forms of repression beyond that which one could support.
One might ask why US power is interested in keeping US citizens from understanding what is happening inside Cuba, and I would argue that the primary reason is that Cuba is working to carry out an experiment in economics and politics that puts human interests and well-being first, is committed to ecological rationality and sustainable agriculture, and assumes that there are sets of human rights that should be honored, for example, the rights to food, health care, education, housing, employment, access to culture, sports, participation, etc. Cuba sees these rights as basic to human needs, and they should not therefore be available only to those who can afford them in the market. The problem with Cuba from the perspective of US power, I would say, is that if Cuba succeeds in carrying out this people-first experiment in politics and economics, it will demonstrate the legitimacy of what in Cuba is called “people’s power.” The Cuban revolution violated 150 years of US policy and belief as expressed in the Monroe Doctrine, i.e. US power owns the hemisphere and US power will determine who does what and in whose interests, etc.
Soon after the Cuban revolution the Kennedy Administration made it clear what the problem was. The Cuban model, they suggested, was providing a source of inspiration for people across the hemisphere who had been robbed and exploited for hundreds of years, people who now might want to follow the Cuban example and take matters into their own hands to advance their own interests and live lives outside of misery, poverty and despair. Of course, if that interferes with profits and power concerns, that is intolerable from the perspective of US power. So, one of the central problems with Cuba from the view and interests of US power is that Cuba can show that a society can be run by the people through various interactions between formal and informal democracy, between participatory and representative forms of democracy, and, crucially, Cuba can demonstrate that a society can be run in the interest of people without resorting to a profit-based and tyrannical economic system.
And, secondly, the threat of US aggression is very real as history has demonstrated quite clearly. More than 200 years ago, John Adams argued that Cuba is a “natural extension of the US,” and that Cuba should be annexed by the US. Jefferson wrote that “Cuba [is] the most interesting addition that can be made to our system of states,” and John Quincy Adams referred to “the inevitability of the annexation of Cuba,” suggesting that it would eventually fall into US hands by the laws of political gravity, like “a ripe fruit.” In the 1850s, the US “Ostend Manifesto” warned against Cuba becoming “Africanized [like Haiti]…with all the attendant horror for the white race.” In addition, of course, were commercial interests, and by the 1880s Cuba was a key US commercial “partner,” especially around sugar. The US provided 70% of the Cuban market. Prior to the US intervention in Cuba’s second war of independence, the US undersecretary of war, J. Breckenridge wrote that Cubans were incapable of managing their own society, that they had only “a vague notion of what is right and wrong,” and therefore the US should “destroy everything within our cannon’s range of fire, impose a harsh blockade so that hunger runs rampant, undermine the peaceful population, and decimate the Cuban army.”
In 1901, the US forced the Cubans to accept the Platt Amendment, still used to “justify” the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. It also gave the US the “right” to intervene in Cuban affairs anytime to “preserve Cuban independence” [but not independence from US intervention, of course], and to protect life, liberty, and crucially property. The US acted on the amendment in 1906 and militarily occupied Cuba until 1909. From 1901 until 1959 and the triumph of the revolution that overthrew the US backed Batista dictatorship, Cuba, in Robert Scheer’s words “was more of an appendage of the US than a sovereign nation.” Most of the land and resources was under various forms of US control.
The US has, for close to fifty years now, been hostile to the Cuban revolution, has wanted to reestablish US domination over Cuba, and has engaged in outright military aggression, economic strangulation of multiple sorts, endless forms of terrorism, biological and chemical warfare attacks, diplomatic maneuvers to isolate Cuba, introduced legislation such as the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill to punish Cuba and other countries that deal with Cuba at a time when Cuba was in dire straits and in need of serious assistance not further punishment, sponsored people who carried out bombing attacks in Cuba or blew-up a Cuban airplane (killing all on board), planned dozens of assassination attempts against Cuban leaders, engaged in widespread propaganda attacks around the world against the Cuban experiment (a good portion of it through US embassies), funded anti-Cuban think tanks, etc.
We should also keep in mind, that if we consider the definition of terrorism to be “the use of force and violence, or the THREAT of force and violence, to intimate, coerce or control, in order to advance ideological, political, religious or economic interests,” a close paraphrase of the official US definition, then the US is engaged in terrorism 100% of the time because the announced policy of its willingness to not only attack anyone, anywhere, anytime for any reason, made formal in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, and demonstrated in the illegal US attack against Iraq, but the US also reserves the “right” to use nuclear weapons in a first strike. That means the US is always engaged in the THREAT to use force and violence around the world, i.e. always engaged in terror. Cubans are well aware of this, and we should be too.
The continuing hostility against the Cuban revolution is grounded, arguably, in three main considerations. The first is the commercial and financial losses for US business interests in Cuba. The “Wall Street Journal” referred to the revolution as a “watermelon.” The more you slice it “the redder it gets.” For example, Cuba nationalized the oil refineries. Cuba had signed a trade deal with the Soviet Union in early 1960, and it included Soviet crude. At the command of the US government Texaco and Standard Oil refused to refine the crude, thus forcing Cuba to nationalize the refineries. Nationalizations were carried out with offers of compensation based on the reported assets and earnings provided by the companies in their official record. These assets and earnings were typically underreported in order to save on taxes.
The second is Cuba’s commitment to pursue a course of economic, political and social development that is independent of US hegemony, and the concomitant threat that the Cuban revolution could provide inspiration for others in the region to challenge US domination.
Advisor to JFK, Arthur Schlesinger stated that the problem with the Castro regime, i.e. the Cuban revolution, was that it represented a successful resistance to US hegemony, and that defiance undermined 50 years of US policy in the region. In other words, the Cuban revolution was providing an emancipatory opening for people to move beyond subservience and subjugation. In short, as the Administration said, “the poor and underprivileged [i.e. exploited] might demand opportunities for a decent living,” and that is simply unacceptable. The Kennedy Administration responded to this “threat” by implementing the “Alliance for Progress.” Interestingly, about ten years after the Alliance began, a major US study demonstrated that Cuba, the one country excluded from the Alliance, was the only country that had achieved what the Alliance purported to be carrying out, for example, advances in public health, education, transportation, as well as the integration of rural and urban sectors.
And, the third is Cuba’s commitment to international solidarity, revealed in Cuba’s international projects in medicine, literacy, and agriculture, as well as “Operation Miracle,” through which more than one million people have been treated to restore their vision. Cuba demonstrates that international relations can be built on solidarity rather then exploitation, domination and aggression. And then there is the matter of people’s power, i.e. people taking matters into their own hands.
RS: What was the purpose of the conference in Cuba?
DM: The purpose of the conference includes efforts to build bridges of solidarity and understanding between Cuban and US academics and Cuban and US citizens. The conference itself revolves around different areas of research including research in economic matters, philosophical issues, education, agriculture, various forms of social organization, history, projections about what kind of future we should struggle for, the role that civil society plays in creating popular empowerment in Cuba and the role that civil society could play in producing citizen empowerment in the United States, etc.
RS: Would you say we are not politically empowered in the United States?
DM: I would argue that the Cuban population is much more politically empowered than the population in the United States for a fairly simple reason, one that is surely considered a controversial perspective by many people in the US. Cuba has a much different, more wide-ranging and stronger concept of democracy than we have in the United States.
In the United States the notion of democracy basically stops at the most elementary, rudimentary and least developed form of democracy, electoral democracy. Every two or four years, people are permitted to vote for a set of candidates who are essentially pre-selected by the owners of society, the business class. Anyone who challenges the interests of the owners is essentially marginalized or excluded from serious consideration. The case of Dennis Kucinich demonstrates this rather clearly. We vote for one or another of the corporate sponsored candidates and very little changes in terms of the public interest being advanced, in terms of public well-being improving, in terms of pursuing the overall public good, in terms of the public developing capacities, resources and knowledge to meaningfully and effectively shape politics in ways that represent real public concerns, such as universal health care, environmental protection, a political system that responds to public concerns, better education, less militarism, infrastructure repair and development, a fairer economic system, etc.
Electoral democracy in the US generally produces a form of competition limited to major parties funded by wealthy elites and the corporate sector, and while public interest and enthusiasm, in some sectors, can be temporarily elevated by the hyper-spectacles that are regularly presented during campaign season, the barrage of PR materials, or by the constant repetition of largely empty slogans around “hope” and “change,” the final result is that very little of substance changes in regards to policies that promote, represent or fulfill public interests, needs and concerns, or stimulate public empowerment.
The public is largely aware of this sham, and that is surely one reason why participation in electoral democracy is so low in the US. In electoral democracies, voters vote every two or four years, with virtually zero input into policies and programs, but as George Soros makes clear, “markets vote every day,” suggesting that without meaningful forms of democratic participation in the economy and in social arrangements, democracy remains a largely empty and formal vessel, a shadow that hides the substance of power and decision making which lives and works largely at the corporate level.
In Cuba, I would suggest, they have extended the idea of democracy beyond electoral democracy (they do have elections in Cuba, contrary to what we have been taught in the US), to include political democracy, which is the beginning of more participatory forms of democracy, as well as social democracy and economic democracy. So, elections in Cuba are not funded and controlled by elites but organized by the people.
RS: Wait a second, how it that possible? Castro has been the leader their for a long time, is he being elected? What I keep hearing is that he is a communist dictator.
DM: Cuba, as I understand it, is carrying out an experiment, and this has to be emphasized, what is happening in Cuba is an experiment being carried out under extremely harsh conditions not of their own choosing. Still, it must be said that Cuba exhibits none of the chronic human abominations one witnesses in most other countries of the region: there are not droves of homeless people rotting in gutters, no children starving, no mass illiteracy, no high levels of infant mortality or unemployment, no death squads roaming the countryside, no monstrous inequalities, no high levels of political and social instability, etc. There is a housing crisis, but there are programs underway to address the housing crisis. For example, in 2006 Cuba constructed roughly 110,000 new houses, and in 2007 roughly 67,000 new houses. They project that if they can average 50,000 new houses per year for ten years, they will have addressed the main issues of the housing crisis, and they are on target to meet those expectations.
What they are attempting to do in Cuba is mobilize the collective intelligence and imagination of a population of people to manage and run the society and they are doing it through a combination of participatory and representative democracy organized through local and national political organizations such as the Youth Communist League with roughly 800,000 members of young people between the ages of 14 and 30, the Communist Party of Cuba with roughly 1.5 million members (it should be noted that the Party is not an electoral party, that is, the Party does not participate in the nomination or election of political candidates at the local, provincial or national levels of assembly elections, nor can the party propose legislation in the representative political bodies – this is not to say that the Party lacks influence in Cuban politics, it is clearly very influential across Cuban society in its role as sort of protector and stimulator of socialist consciousness and in encouraging people to, as they say, “Be like Ché,” which essentially calls for developing a concern for and a commitment to the collective good and a willingness to make sacrifices for the collective good).
Then there are the mass organizations that include the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Women’s Federation, the Worker’s Unions, Student Federations at the University, Secondary and Elementary school levels, professional organizations and the organs of the state which include judicial bodies, the armed forces, the Organ’s of People’s Power that include the National, Provincial and Municipal Assemblies, and the Popular Councils that serve as a bridge between neighborhoods and Municipal Assemblies, the Council of State, and the Working Commissions of the National Assembly of People’s Power. The National Assembly has legislative authority and the delegates to the assembly are elected by the Cuban electorate. The National Assembly chooses from among the members of the Assembly the Council of State. The Council of State is then responsible for selecting the Council of Ministers.
As I understand it, the Council of State selects a president, but the president must first be nominated at the level of his local municipality in order to achieve the status of National Assembly representative who then moves into the Council of State, etc. Furthermore, as I understand it, the status of President does not accord any dictatorial powers, but it does provide the opportunity for the President to present arguments for or against any piece of legislation. There are numerous cases over the years in which Fidel argued one way and others argued the other, and Fidel’s position did not carry the day. Legislation and decrees must be ratified by the National Assembly. Fidel’s status, or now Raul’s status, provides a symbolic and influential power in Cuba that others may not have by virtue of their participation in the Cuban revolutionary struggle since the early 1950s, in particular since the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, 55 years ago this July 26th.
At the same time, one should note that there has been a significant turnover in the Cuban political system over the last decade or so, and many of those running the system are in their 30s and 40s. The creation of the Popular Councils in the early 90s, in the early years of the Special Economic Period (after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost roughly 85% of its trade overnight), was carried out as a bulwark against centralization and bureaucracy and as a way to enhance local government power and popular participation. Candidacy Commissions, made up of people from the mass and popular organizations and presided over by members of the worker unions were established to organize the provincial and national assembly elections. Their primary purpose is to ensure a fairer representation from across the populace. In other words, the citizenry is involved in both nominating and electing its representatives. Provincial and national elections are held every five years, and municipal elections every 2 ½ years.
Roughly half the representatives in the National Assembly are from the Municipal Assemblies and the other half are comprised of national figures who are politicians, scientists, intellectuals, artists, athletes, workers, etc. Of particular interest to the audience for this program in the US, “where working people come to talk,” is the role of unions in Cuba and the worker assemblies. Isaac Saney, in his book, “A Revolution in Motion,” describes how Cubans are involved in an intense political learning process and how “the system responds to popular demands for adjustment.”
In 1993, during some of the worst times of the Special Economic Period when the Cuban economy was in the gutter, and Cubans were suffering, the National Assembly wanted to introduce a tax on wages. Union representative opposed this proposal on the grounds that the workers had not had an opportunity to discuss and debate the measures. The National Assembly thus delayed any action until the worker’s parliaments could meet. There were three months of meetings, over 80,000 meetings, involving over 3 million workers where these matters were discussed and debated, and new proposals were offered. National policy reflected worker views. When the new tax law was finally passed the taxes were primarily on the self-employed rather than on wage workers. This is one example that demonstrates how mass consultations and input from citizens distinguish the Cuban experiment from other countries.
All Cuban citizens can vote upon turning 16, and they can be nominated by fellow citizens in local popular assemblies at the age of 18. So, people are nominated in neighborhood mass assemblies at the local level to serve in Municipal Assemblies. It is a process of consultations and dialogues within popular and community organizations. We should also note that
Cubans possess the capacity to recall the representatives they elect if it is determined that the performance of the representative is unsatisfactory. This Cuban right is carried forth in periodic meetings, sort of accountability sessions with constituents, where representatives report on their work.
Let me return to the point of moving from electoral democracy to political democracy, and then from there into social and economic democracy. Democracy becomes more engaging politically when forms of effective and more participatory political representation are permitted and encouraged. In short, where there is established public controls on the financing of elections, not private control by those who own the society; where access to vital information is available and accessible rather than the kinds of limited access we experience in the US through the dominant corporate media where we very seldom learn what public opinion really is and only see it refracted through corporate interests; where the role of lobbies is constrained (so in the US the oil lobby spent roughly $83 million last year and will probably surpass that figure this year in attempts to direct legislation and voting their way…the pharmaceutical industry, the Chamber of Commerce, Phillip Morris and General Electric are near the top of lobbyists working to ensure that policies are endorsed and legislation passed to protect and promote private power, corporate profits and wealth for the privileged…), so lobbying would be constrained except to the extent that lobbying is carried forth in the public interest not to promote private power and wealth.
Political democracy also would be a form in which legislative bodies are empowered to carry out the will of the people, by the people and for the people; with the people having opportunities to recall candidates who are not serving the interests of the public; where there are instruments through which the public can express its interest and concerns through forms of collective consultation, dialogue, discussion and referenda; and where there are more equitable and responsible distributions of power. To some folks in the US this “of, by and for the people” notion of democracy would sound crazy, but it does reflect a rather Lincolnesque notion of democracy and that is as American as apple-pie, yes?
Democracy becomes more meaningful when politically engaging forms are combined with electoral forms in the context of social forms that recognize citizenship as a component of a social contract in which rising standards of living are measured through how well the society provides access to basic services and needs around food, recreation, education, social security, health, housing, arts, and transportation. In short, effective citizenship is rooted in social justice, a de-commodification of society, as well as equality of rights and conditions because people are fundamentally citizens in a participatory democracy rather than consumers in a profit based and undemocratic and dehumanizing market system.
Basically, in a social democracy needs are not satisfied through the ability to purchase commodities but are seen as a social right and duty. This form of social democracy eliminates the rampant exclusionary prejudice present in commodified markets where goods, needs and services are available only to those who have enough money and power for purchase rather than being available to all by virtue of their condition as citizens and human beings living under a mutually fulfilling and responsible social contract. This is the de-commodification mentioned above. In the United States, all of the goods and services mentioned above, from food, to health, to education, to sports, etc. are not available to people as a human right, but are seen as a privilege and available only to those who can purchase them on the market. I would suggest that is very anti-democratic and it has the consequence of dehumanizing people and social relations because too many people lack the ability to have their needs satisfied and they don’t live in a culture dedicated to fully developing their capacities.
RS: We are talking about Cuba and during the break Dr. Morris shared an interesting observation when hearing this John Lennon song. Can you share that with the audience?
DM: Sure, the song is John Lennon’s “Power to the People.” In Cuba, the popular form of democracy is called “People’s Power.” Under harsh circumstances, filled with many conflicts and contradictions, some successes and some failures, and in no way static, it could be argued that they are attempting to create a form of people’s power in which the population can participate in meaningful and effective ways in shaping the decisions and managing the organization of how people live together with one another in society in order to satisfy needs and fully develop human abilities.
RS: So, they are really trying to be the antithesis of America; instead of us being the “me” society, they are really trying to be the “we” society.”
DM: They are definitely the antithesis of the neoliberal model that has been imposed on the world. One of the serious struggles for Cuba is that Cuba is a tiny island attempting a people-first experiment in politics and economics and it is trying to exist in a rising sea of global neoliberal capitalism whose values are in opposition to the values that Cuba is trying to implement. The Cuban values they are trying to implement, not always successfully, Cuba is not “Utopia,” and in fact, Cuba is not interested in utopia, they are interested, in mobilizing people to create a people-first social order around the values of social justice, critical inquiry, respect for others, a rising standard of living measured not in the accumulation of commodities but in the flourishing of human well-being, full and meaningful employment, substantive forms of equality and freedom, freedom of the sort where people have the knowledge and ability to make meaningful choices that impact their lives, sustainability and ecological rationality, around notions of civic courage and a deep concern for the collective good because they understand that the free and creative development of each is conditioned on and nurtured by the free and creative development of all and the free and creative development of all is conditioned on and nourished by the free and creative development of each.
That is in opposition to the neoliberal values that are rooted in self-interest, profiteering, privatization, hyper-individualism, ruthless competition and rapacious greed. All of this gets back to a comment made earlier in your show about people falling through the cracks in the United States. If you operate a society on those neoliberal values you are going to have large and growing numbers of people sinking through the cracks because there is little sense of the common good and little sense of mutual responsibility.
So, getting back to notions of democracy, a substantive democracy cannot stop at the level of formal electoral procedures, it must develop projects and processes dedicated to the ongoing creation of a good and decent society grounded in promoting inclusive, informed, involved and energized citizens. It must be a society that recognizes and understands the crucial and reciprocal links between social conditions and individual fulfillment. I don’t want to suggest that Cuba has succeeded in all of these domains, and I don’t want to suggest that Cuba is without serious struggles, mistakes and contradictions politically, economically and socially, but as I understand the struggle in Cuba, the development of more substantive forms of democracy, economically, politically and socially, is central to the Cuban project of empowering the citizens.
Integral to such projects and processes is economic democracy. That, arguably is the most advanced form of democratic unfolding, and it is virtually entirely lacking in the US because the economy is under the control of tyrannical institutions called corporations, institutions over which the public has very little control, especially since the introduction of neoliberalism’s agenda of deregulation, i.e. eliminating the capacity for the public to regulate what corporations do, and privatization, i.e. policies that hand over all public spaces to corporate exploitation, including the space of the public mind. For a compelling discussion of substantive democracy, I would recommend a fairly recent piece by Atilio Boron, called “The Truth About Capitalist Democracy.” It is published in a wonderful Monthly Review Press book titled “Telling the Truth,” edited by Leo Panitch & Colin Keys. It is part of the ongoing Socialist Register series, always worth reading.
So, in the end, I think one can say that because the Cuban experiment provides a deeper and more expansive notion of democracy through which Cuban citizens can participate more broadly in running and managing their society, the Cuban population is more empowered than the US population.
RS: One thing I find most interesting is that one of Cuba’s largest exports is the export of doctors. They export doctors to Venezuela, for instance, in exchange for oil. What is amazing to me is that this is a country that has no surrendered to neoliberal, IMF, WTO plans. They have not been pried open as an export model. They have remained their own entity and have found ways to exist despite all the pressures against them. On the one hand you say it is an amazing story, but on another hand you say aren’t a lot of their people suffering in poverty and starvation. We see this in the media when they talk about Cuba, they never say anything good. I’m excited to hear about what you are saying, but is the other side true as well.
DM: It depends how you measure poverty. Cuba is a poor country, no doubt. But if understanding poverty is linked to access to basic human needs such as food, health care, education, housing, child care, recreation, and we look at Cuba’s infant mortality rate, life expectancy and measures of sustainable development, all areas in which Cuba has equaled or surpassed the US, and then also note that in Cuba there is not really the ability to profit off the suffering and exploitation of others because it is a non-profit based society, and add the more egalitarian distributions in Cuba, then the poverty in Cuba is of a much different sort than one finds in most other countries of what is sometimes called the “developing” world.
Furthermore, Cuba, a poor country, exports more doctors than any country in the world, as far as I know, and those doctors work with the poor. It is one of the Cuban examples of working to address the horrors of poverty on an international scale. The others include the literacy workers and the agricultural workers Cuba sends to other countries to assist in addressing issues of poverty. So, an important question would also be “how is it that Cuba accomplishes so much, given so little.” And answering that question would lead us to start examining the benefits of alternative ways of organizing society; that is, ways of organizing built around social, political and economic democracy.
The poverty at the height of the Special Period when Cuba lost about 85% of its trade virtually overnight, when the GDP was down roughly 40%, and caloric intake was at the level of Haiti, that was very serious poverty, but Cuba survived, and that survival points to the resilience of the Cuban revolution. One might say that during this harsh period Cuba attempted to equalize the suffering and also ensure that those who needed assistance most were given assistance first.
As of 2005, the Cuban economy basically had recovered to where it was back in 1989 before the onset of the Special Period. In 2005, the GDP was up 12.5%; in 2006, it was up 12%; and in 2007 it was up about 7%. This is compared to an average in Latin America between 4 and 5%. Around the world one in five people live in abject poverty. In Latin America, about 60% of the people live in poverty and a good portion of those people live in abject poverty. Latin America, outside of Cuba, has the most acute inequality in the world. One would be hard pressed to find many people in Cuba living in abject poverty, in part because of the social programs in Cuba that provide access to food, health care, education, etc., and Cuba has the lowest rate of inequality in Latin America.
Around the world there are about 100 million street children. In Cuba, one sees no street children. Half of the world’s more than a billion people living in severe poverty are children. In Cuba, there is a major investment in children; so again, one would be hard pressed to find any Cuban children suffering under conditions of extreme poverty. 90 million children in Latin America live in poverty. 200 million children around the world lack access to basic health care. Cuban children have access to health care. There are about 115 million children around the world of primary school age who are not in school, and who will probably remain illiterate. Cuba has a 100% literacy rate, and virtually all Cuban children attend schools that produce what some consider the best education in the hemisphere at the elementary level.
So, you don’t see Cuban children going hungry the way you do in other developing countries. You don’t see elderly people eating cat food to survive. In the United States 13 million children live in poverty. About 10 million children lack health care coverage. Millions of US children attend schools that provide at best a very poor education in schools that are deteriorating. 50% of the children in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. live in poverty.
People here often talk about a lack of freedom in Cuba, and there are some freedoms lacking. For example, Cubans are not free to live in a society that does not provide health care for all of its citizens. Cubans are not free to live in a society that does not provide a great elementary education for its children. Cubans are not free to live in a society dedicated to international relations grounded in domination and military aggression. Cubans live in a society that is dedicated to carrying out international relations founded in solidarity and that gets back to your point about the export of doctors, the export of literacy workers, and the export of agricultural workers, both scientists and farmers. The latter export is crucial because Cuba is carrying out an experiment in sustainable agriculture that is very successful and that is one reason why Cuba is considered the one country in the world that has achieved a point of sustainable development.
So, Cuba is engaged in an internal struggle for a people first society, while at the same time they always have a foot in international solidarity. The international relations with countries like Venezuela help to ensure that the social project in Cuba based in human dignity, social security and meeting human needs continues in the context of being a poor society that has been living for 50 years now under the threat of US military violence, under US terrorism and US propaganda against Cuba, the economic blockade.
So, yes, Cuba has poverty, for sure, but it is not the kind of poverty one sees in every other Latin American country.
RS: During the break we were talking about another freedom in Cuba. We have family medical leave in the US, but it is unpaid, in Cuba apparently it is paid medical leave. When you think about it, that is an important family value.
DM: Absolutely, that is a deep family value. For example, maternity leave in Cuba, which has also been extended to fathers, provides mothers 18 weeks of leave, 6 before birth and 12 after birth at full pay, and an additional 40 weeks at 60% pay, and they keep their job. There is a national subsidized day-care for children starting at one year of age. In 2003, the leave-option was extended to fathers for 60% pay for 40 weeks. So, families can now decide if the father or mother stays home with the children during those 40 weeks. Labor laws have also been passed to protect women from work-related activities that may be harmful during pregnancy. Women have six paid days of leave during pregnancy to attend prenatal care sessions and examinations. Creating social programs that support families are deep investments in family values.
Cuba has a social contract that grows out of something very, very important. Any serious social contract should grow out of a very serious commitment to the well-being of young people and Cuba ensures that every child is well-fed, has access to great education, access to health care, and Cuba sees children as a vital investment in the future. Furthermore, providing access to employment, and now a project directed toward meaningful employment, social security, health services and primary care along with preventive medicine, multiple forms of education including a new “univeralization of university education” program through which Cuba wants to work to ensure that every Cuban receives a university education, literacy projects, social assistance for the sick, etc. are all social commitments linked to family values, because the values families bring to the table are not disconnected from the values encouraged in the society in which the family is living and growing.
RS: OK, now the BIG question...considering that we seem to revel in the fact that we have 1,300 billionaires. How many billionaires do they have in Cuba?
DM: ZERO!
RS: Ah, there the problem…
DM: Cubans live in a non-profit based society. That is a key value difference in Cuba. That is why, arguably, people develop a different sense of having a link in a chain of human activity and why one could argue that there is a different set of “family values” in Cuba. In the United States we often lack an understanding of our links through this chain of human activity because our relationships are mostly driven through commodities and we thus develop a relationship with the next commodity we are driven to purchase. That is not so true in Cuba because it is a non-profit society, so you don’t have people promoting commodities through 24/7 advertisements and commercials. In fact, in Cuba you don’t see billboards advertising commodities, you only see billboards celebrating the accomplishments of the revolution, or reminding people of the plight of the Cuban Five (see: http://www.freethefive.org/ ) where the billboard announces accurately “In prison in the US for fighting terrorism.” The Cuban Five have been in US prisons now for ten years because they were engaged in a fight AGAINST terrorism.
So, in Cuba, rather than developing relationships with commodities, people have greater opportunities to develop a concept of what it means to develop meaningful and supportive relationships with fellow human beings. Again, I do not want to paint a utopian picture. Cuba does definitely have serious problems, but miraculously there is a lot of resilience in the Cuban struggle and they have found ways to continue this project under harsh conditions.
Phone question: I was wondering what it might take to become a citizen of Cuba, and I was wondering if Dr. Morris was going to become a citizen of Cuba or if he is going to remain a US citizen?
DM: the first part of the question I cannot answer, what it would require to become a Cuban citizen. As to the second part, it is easy: I am going to remain a US citizen.
RS: OK, so you have laid out a very utopian view of Cuba, one that most people have never heard, including me. It seems like a great place, so why do we see people leaving? Why would anyone leave?
DM: People regularly leave any area of the world to go to other areas. I am sure that plenty of people leave Pennsylvania every day to go to other areas of the US. These moves are typically driven by economic reasons. Historically, when poor countries exist next to rich countries, some people in the poor country will make the choice to try to go to the rich country in an attempt to improve their economic situation. It is not an entirely irrational decision under the circumstances. Cuba is a poor country, and it is located next to the richest country in human history, the United States. So, it makes sense that some Cubans would be leaving in order to try to get to the US.
In the US media there is often a flood of coverage when Cubans leave Cuba and it is presented from a perspective that suggests that Cubans are leaving because of political persecution.
But even the US Interest Section in Havana states that they are hard pressed to find real cases of political persecution in the processing of visa applications. In the 1990s they wrote that most people were applying in order to escape deteriorating economic conditions. They noted that human rights cases are the least solid category of the refugee program and they are the most susceptible to fraudulent claims. So, Cuban emigration does not exist in a historical vacuum. We rarely hear that roughly 600,000 Colombians fled in the years 1999 to 2002, or of the more than 500,000 who left Ecuador in the same period.
Compared to the rest of Latin America the number of Cubans leaving, legally or illegally is almost surely both relatively and absolutely lower. Still, the number of Cubans who leave is overplayed in the public mind because of the overblown coverage Cubans receive. So, we hear about Cubans but we do not hear about Salvadorans, Haitians, Peruvians, etc. who leave. In addition, there is a long-term US policy of encouraging Cuban emigration, something that is not done with other countries. “Radio Marti,” a US propaganda station that encourages Cubans to leave, broadcasts regularly into Cuba. During the “Special Period” the US intensified the blockade by passing the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill, both designed to make the Cuban economy scream, with the concomitant impact of encouraging Cubans to leave for economic reasons.
Cuba and the US signed an immigration agreement in 1994 calling for the issuing of a minimum 20,000 visas by the US per year. The number of visas offered by the US typically falls far below that number. Cuban law is clear regarding immigration. People can leave Cuba after they have received the proper documentation and authorization to do so from the country to which they wish to migrate. Then there is the Cuban Adjustment Act. Because of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans receive preferential treatment compared to other immigrants.
Cubans are welcomed by the US far more than any other migrants from Latin America and with special conditions attached for Cubans. Cubans get a greased path to work-permits, a social security number, and permanent residence status in the US. While others are generally seen as economic refugees Cubans often fall into the category of political refugees, from the US perspective, and are given what amounts to political asylum. That designation is essentially US propaganda. A political refugee must clearly demonstrate a well-grounded fear of persecution to be granted asylum in the US, but persecution has little to do with US judgment in the case of Cuba.
Persecution in Cuba compared to persecution in many other Latin American countries over the years is virtually invisible. When Haitians fled the vicious and murderous US backed military dictatorship in the early 90s they were clearly escaping from very harsh political repression and persecution. The standard US response was to send them back to Haiti, sometimes to be killed. The same was true of Guatemalans in the 1980s, etc., etc. There are many such cases.
While Cuban immigrants are granted political asylum virtually 100% of the time, those from other countries are only granted asylum in a minority of cases, well-under 50%. Unlike others, Cubans have no stringent requirements. Cubans who make it to US soil are typically granted financial assistance for basic necessities, for education, a fast track to employment, access to welfare and unemployment, etc.
We could ask some other questions: “Why do so many Mexicans leave?” “Why is there not a Mexican Adjustment Act, or a Haitian Adjustment Act?” If there were such acts, how many Mexicans and Haitians, not to mention people from every other country in Latin America, would go to the US? Clearly, there would be millions of people rushing across borders.
So, given all that is done to encourage Cubans to leave, and to grease the path to the US, one might ask a different question, “Why do so few Cubans leave Cuba?” I think it was at the 1994 “Pan American” games where the US put on a major propaganda effort to entice Cuban athletes to defect. Huge sports contracts were offered, there were billboards put up to make the offers very visible and very attractive. Of the many hundreds of Cuban’s who participated in the games, only a few decided to defect. We should note that 1994 was the height of the Special Period when Cubans were suffering most. Athletes from other countries told the Cubans that if the US offered them the same things they were offering the Cubans, virtually 100% of the people would take the offer.
If we want to understand some of the darkness behind US foreign policy imperatives, we might reflect on why the US has over the years typically returned people to hellish conditions of repression, back to countries with the worst human rights records, where people suffer poor health, malnutrition, possible death squad terror, homelessness, high infant mortality, poor education, etc., but when it comes to Cuba, a country with perhaps the best health care and education in Latin America, the best reforestation project, the most serious commitment to sustainable agriculture on the planet, an infant mortality and life expectancy rate soon to surpass those of the US, some of the best scientific research in all of the Americas, the US is working overtime to encourage people to leave? Again, at the core, I would argue, is US power’s opposition to the Cuban “people-first” rather than “profits-first” project.
RS: The more I learn about Cuba the more I am amazed that in this country we are not following best practices. We are not attempting to do things differently to make our lives better. We seem to be plodding along the same path and it is leading down the same failed road we have been in the past.
DM: Can I mention one last thing related to that where Cuba is offering an alternative that I think the rest of the world should study very carefully? There is a growing global food crisis. Last year alone 100 million more people were put into conditions of chronic hunger, beyond the 800 million who already live in conditions of chronic hunger. Cuba is carrying out an agricultural experiment in sustainability that is unlike any experiment, as far as I know, being carried out in any other country.
The Cuban experiment, part of the larger decentralization and expansion of democracy experiment in Cuba, is rooted in an ecological rationality that involves: bio-control of pests and the use of organic fertilizers, along with animal traction in place of tractors that use fuel and despoil conditions (farmers also discovered they can develop a relationship between an animal and the interactions with local environmental conditions and of course no relationship can be established with a tractor); soil conservation; a decentralization of control and decision making that has encouraged more popular participation; a diversification of crop production and crop adjustments even at the very local level of a single farm; a redistribution of land to farmers; a commitment to small farms that inspires more worker participation, production, enthusiasm, and a sense of belonging; fair prices for farmers (contrary to the neoliberal model that is undermining small farmers across the globe) without increases in food prices at the market; increased community participation which includes a tapping into local knowledge; the creation of energetically and democratically organized cooperatives called “Basic Units of Cooperative Production;” environmental education programs in rural communities; and an inversion of the standard pattern of rural to urban migration.
In Cuba there is an urban to rural migration. All of this is carried out within Cuba’s continuing commitment to the larger humanist social project. Whereas in the not too distant past more than 80% of farms were under State control, that has been reduced to under 15% as part of the decentralization plan and the commitment to small, organic farms that link the land to the people and the people to the land and that encourage the democratization of production, distribution and consumption.
So, this Cuban revolution in sustainable agriculture is a possible model that could raise people’s ecological consciousness across the world, transform the way we think about the relationship between people and the environment and between people and people, and perhaps, from that, we can also develop a consciousness around alternative forms of economic and political organization grounded in forms of substantive democracy.
Istvan Meszaros, in The Power of Ideology, reminds us that at this point in human history anything other than global solutions to the crises and challenges we now confront is really unacceptable because our problems on a global scale are so immense and multiple that the elementary conditions for human survival on the planet are seriously in peril. Perhaps the Cuban example, even with all of its conflicts and contradictions, can inspire us so that we can develop a consciousness on a global scale in order for people to better understand Jose Marti’s point of how our “homeland is humanity,” and start to build relations evolving from another of Marti’s maxims: “from the good of all; for the good of all.” Viva la revolucion!
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Scott Morris, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Technology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM, and an outreach coordinator for the Radical Philosophers Association (see: http://www.radicalphilosophy.org/). Research interests include critical pedagogy, film, literacy, and the US culture of militarism. He can be reached at: dmorrisscott@yahoo.com