Editor’s note: This is in response to the column “Strong nations rise despite tyrants overseas,” published in Wednesday’s Daily Lobo. In his column, Jason Stafford argues that from an American perspective, perhaps Cuba can be viewed negatively. However, in the larger picture, he states Cuba is doing well for itself.
Editor,
Mr. Stafford has a remarkable talent for obfuscation and distortion of truth. He does an admirable job of building an entertaining and politically charged narrative. His primary responsibility, however, should be to give a fair account of Cuba’s government.
It is too easy to cherry-pick facts about a nation to make it appear wonderful. One might easily point to the high level of college graduates, powerful economy and high social spending in the U.S. and call it a paradise. To do so would, of course, ignore high racial disparities in income, high incarceration rates, government corruption and increasing financial inequality.
Similarly, when one depicts Cuba as a land of plenty with high quality of life, one must ignore rampant violations of freedom of speech, assembly and sexuality, along with military interventions in Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
For all his talk of self determination, Mr. Stafford ignores the stark realities of life in Cuba. It would take a hard-hearted and ignorant individual to defend imperialist U.S. actions in the past, but it takes an equal measure of cynicism and self-delusion to argue that Cuba’s dictatorship amounts to a socialist paradise that represents the will of the people. Castro’s commitment to the popular will was discredited the moment that he canceled elections and replaced rule of law with El Paredón. In a nation supportive of self determination, people would not be victims to reprisals for expression of their will. In a nation supportive of self determination there would not exist such Orwellian crimes as “social dangerousness.”
There is no doubt, either, that Cuba existed in a harsh dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista, but to replace that with an equally brutal dictatorship is no solution. Mr. Stafford is right to argue the Cuban people “rose up to shed themselves of tyranny and a government in which they had no representation.” To this day, however, they lack that representation they sought. In a nation with tight controls on media and communication with reprisals against dissidents, the people have no recourse for expression. To quote Bakunin, “When the people are being beaten with a stick, it is little relief to have it called ‘the People’s Stick.’”
Roberto Mancha-Garcia
UNM student
