WHAT HAS SOCIALISM DONE FOR THE PEOPLE OF CUBA?

"The foundation of every state is the education of its youth." -- Diogenes (412 - 323 BC)

The late January 1998 visit of the Roman Pontiff to the shores of revolutionary Cuba has pushed the Western press into conniption fits of joy, for implicit within every major dispatch is the heart felt hope that John Paul II will signal the end of the regime.

While no one knows what tomorrow will bring, the hopes of the voracious markets of materialist consumerism fuel the dreams that Cuba will soon return to the tender mercies of the pre-Revolutionary past, when the island was the whorehouse of the Caribbean, and a ripe reservoir of cheap, exploitable labor.

For over 35 years, the relatively small island has persevered in the struggle of going its own way, defying the colossus to the North, the US. For daring to exercise the right of self-determination, the US has tried for over a quarter of a century to strangle Cuba.

In Castro's remarkable state welcome address marking the Pope's visit, the 71 year old revolutionary condemned the blockade as a form of "slow genocide." He spoke powerfully and movingly of his youth in Jesuit schools where he was taught hatred and antagonism of non-Catholics, like Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. He remembered going to colleges (which only the wealthy and well-to- do could afford) wondering, "where are the black people?"

The church of his youth did not change that outrageous reality, but the revolution did. Today, even in the face of the most repressive, and longest- lasting blockade in US history, education is free for all Cubans. Indeed, the literacy rate in Cuba (96%) is among the highest in the world.

Moreover, medical care is free in Cuba, or available to those that can pay for a very meager price.

The church didn't do this; the revolution did. Indeed, if "democracy" is such a holy blessing, let us not consider Cuba, but let us look to the United States.

Given public policy driven by big business interests, and the consequent whittling away of social programs for the poor, is higher education accessible to most Americans? Is medical care? Here, it is available to those who can afford it, a stark contrast to Cuba, which is always damned for its human rights violations by the Western press. What of the human right to learn? What of the human right to health care?

Here, the dollar is the deterrent of what happens to man. In Cuba, man is at the center of the social and political organization.

It is easy to talk about social problems, but it is quite another thing to do something about them.

Cuba, under Castro, in the face of a blockade that is a de facto act of war, has used its relatively meager resources to not only address serious social problems of the nation, but internationally as well. In 1976, Cuba sent troops to Angola where, at Coito Carnivale, their forces beat South Africa's armies, and thereby opened the door to the end of the Apartheid regime, and the emergence of the ANC as a political power in the region. Castro proudly exclaimed, "we are not only a Latin-American nation; we are an Afro-American nation also."

Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz can be said to be a secular priest who has acted with the power of the state to redress the indignities and disabilities of the poor. The nation may be ragged, but it is not beaten. He has not preached only, he has practiced his creed of socialist revolution and restoration of basic human rights that are unimaginable in the bank vault of wealth in the West. Who has done more for the poor?

C u b a  S o l i d a r i t y  C a m p a i g n
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