Posted on 12/21/2004 4:52:51 PM PST by SmithPatterson
Can Castro avoid democracy?
By John Hughes
SALT LAKE CITY – The dramatic power play in Ukraine, where huge crowds demonstrating for democracy forced the Russian-backed regime that had run a rigged presidential election to run another vote this Sunday, has captured headlines in most countries around the world.
But not in Cuba. Not a word about this drama has been uttered on the state-controlled television and radio news programs, or appeared in the state-controlled newspaper Granma. It is too touchy for Fidel Castro's regime, which itself bars democratic elections, imposes censorship, imprisons dissenters, and resists pleas from the international community to abandon its dictatorial ways.
Instead, perhaps as a bizarre diversion from political pressures without and economic travail within, Mr. Castro last week ordered a military mobilization of his people, ostensibly to prepare for a US invasion of Cuba.
It came on the heels of more trying economic setbacks that have thrown many thousands of Cubans out of work. In November, the regime was obliged to close down 118 manufacturing plants for want of electric power. Since Russia pulled the plug on its subsidization of Cuba, the regime has been unable to pay the market price for Russian oil and has been obliged to rely increasingly on its own oil production for the generation of electric power. But Cuban oil has a 10 percent sulfur content, which is highly corrosive, causing damage to Cuba's aging machinery, for which there are few replacement parts.
Compounding these industrial problems is the drought-induced collapse of the critical sugar crop, ordinarily harvested in November, but now postponed to January. Only 56 sugar mills will be processing the crop, about a third of the usual number, and some 200,000 of the half million Cubans who normally process the crop will be out of jobs.
Castro has recently suffered other setbacks and disappointments.
The recent visit to Cuba by China's President Hu Jintao did not result in the hoped-for Chinese investment of major proportions.
Cuba has also lost revenue from an apparent money-laundering scheme shut down recently by the New York Federal Reserve. The US Senate Banking Committee uncovered cash deposits of some $3.9 billion from Cuba in a Swiss bank. Ernesto Betancourt, a onetime senior economic adviser to Castro who became disenchanted and later headed the US government's Radio Martí, says it is unlikely that Cuba could generate that dollar volume itself. He suspects the cash, of dubious origin from sources outside Cuba, was funneled through Havana's Banco National - with a substantial discount to Castro - and on to the Swiss bank.
Castro has had a chronic shortage of foreign exchange. Last month, he outlawed the dollar for internal commercial transactions. Cubans must now trade dollars they hold, largely from Cuban exiles in the US, for "convertible pesos," paying the state a 10 percent commission.
With increasing economic problems at home and little prospect of a mellowing relationship with newly reelected President Bush, Castro has been turning to the European Union for help. He would dearly like to tap a $30 billion EU foreign aid fund and get favorable duty-free treatment from Europe for Cuban exports. But there is this problem of disaffection in some European countries with Castro's deplorable human rights record.
In an attempt to sweeten European opinion, Castro has recently released 14 of 75 prominent dissidents arrested last year and sentenced to decades-long imprisonment. The catch is that they are released under a licencia extrapenal, which means they can be hauled back into prison at any time and are thus living with a sword of Damocles suspended over them.
Castro wants the European Union to change the rules that presently admit all Cubans, including dissidents and relatives of political prisoners, to EU embassies in Havana.
In an impassioned Wall Street Journal article last month, Martin Palous, the Czech ambassador to Washington, said closing EU embassies in Cuba to dissidents would send a message of appeasement to Castro that would badly harm the dissidents. A former dissident himself in the Czech "Velvet Revolution," Ambassador Palous said the Czech Republic has worked hard to unite the free world in support of Cubans. Because Czechs had lived under a communist dictatorship themselves, they understood the crushing weight of totalitarianism. They knew well the situation of the "brave Cuban people ... being harassed, blackmailed, ridiculed, persecuted, and jailed."
Palous deplores some in Europe who want to adopt a "new policy of détente with the Cuban dictatorship," by closing their embassies to dissidents. It would be, he wrote, "an unconscionable act."
Amen to that.
• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News.
Well... I guess we have to wait until Fidel finally dies. Hopefully it won't take too long.
Cuba...our 51st state....within 15 years.
Are you sure? Isn't PR enough? It's not that Cuba is avant garde when it comes to technology and natural resources. But hey, maybe cheap and abundant rum and cigars will make an economic difference...
With his many friends at CBS? Yes.
Wouldn't be a bad idea, we could use it as a military outpost and for their sugar cane...could be good for our economy.
Yes, he can avoid democracy.
He will die, then democracy will come to Cuba.
Can Castro Avoid Democracy?
......he NEVER has avoided socialist-communist-democracy!
Nope. And Cuban expatriates with wheelbarrows full of cash will transform that country completely within an year of Castro's last, fetid breath.
Bring it on, b*tch...
With the death of Fidel Castro only ten months earlier, followed by the rapid collapse of his opressive totalitarian regime, Cuba has experienced a remarkable turnaround of fortunes. Flush with capital from Cuban expatriates in Florida and other Carribean locations, the beginnings of democracy are starting to take hold.
Not everyone welcomes this turn of events however. Notable American media celebrities flocked to Castro's Cuba shortly after the 2004 presidential election, seeking what they thought was a safe haven from conservative Republicanism - oh, and a good source of cheap domestic help.
Sitting in a local bar near the downtown area sit two of the Mainstream Media's former old guard, watching with disdain as young Cubans piece together the foundations of free enterprise.
PJ: Dan?
Dan: Yeah Pete?
PJ: I sure miss Fidel.
Dan: Yep.
I doubt it. One of the things Castro has succeeded at doing is forging a strong Cuban national identity. Even the Cubans who are fighting against his government are fighting for a democratic, and not "American", Cuba, and there is practically no support anywhere on the island for "merging" with the United States. After a half century of propaganda, I'd guess that it would take at least a generation before any serious support could be mustered for that proposal. Heck, Puerto Rico STILL isn't interested, and they've been a full-fledged U.S. Territory for HOW LONG?
Besides, Cuba would just become the ultimate welfare state anyway. The sugar industry is low-profit nowadays (we have half of the sugar industry we had in 1970 because it isn't profitable...it only works in Cuba because of the socialist price controls), so there will be no big gain there. All we'll gain is another tourist spot, so you can assume that California, Hawaii, Florida, and other tourist havens will fight the entry heavily. And what else will we gain? 11 million people with an average income of less than $3000 per year, a 1940's level standard of living, no major exportable industry, one of the highest birthrates in the western hemisphere, all of whom are immediately going to demand welfare and free healthcare because the "old government gave it to them". I fail to see the benefit to the U.S.
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