* Updated *
Following is a comment that I just added to the mix at Matt's recent blogpost on Cuba. For a guy who doesn't speak Spanish well and who's never been to Cuba, I didn't know I could get so worked up on the subject. Must be my happy childhood memories of "Guantanamera"! Don't neglect to read Matt's original post and the other comments, too. (What follows is edited slightly from its original form.)
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Communist Cuba has been a pet cause of liberals and leftists for almost 50 years. It
has hosted the Venceremos Brigade from the 1960s to the present day, harbors extremist
fugitives from American justice (Black Panther Party
honchos Huey Newton and Assata Shakur), and indulges mainstream fugitives from post-Soviet truth (Oliver Stone, Charlize Theron).
The
New Left of the early 60s backed the revolution there from the
get-go. Soft liberals -- as well as many Cuban Communists -- were taken
in by Castro's pledge to institute democracy. Lee Oswald used the "Fair
Play for Cuba Committee" as a cover to pose as a wacky leftist in order
to assassinate John Kennedy. (In the opinion of many Republicans Kennedy was the last remotely honorable Democratic
president -- to whom Richard Nixon and the Republican Party prudently ceded the 1960 presidential election despite having sufficient reason to contest and/or remain bitter about the results.) Personally, I was raised
on career Communist Kulturkampfer Pete Seeger's recordings of
the Cuban nationalist tune "Guantanamera" -- a non-Communist, patriotic song long exploited in the service of la lucha. In fact I attended the same summer camp in the 1980s which Pete Seeger had attended in the 1930s -- something of which I used to be proud.
Communist Cuba has been an enemy of freedom as we know it
on at least three continents: at the first opportunity it installed
(presumably) nuclear missiles aimed at North America, and it exported
war to Bolivia in the 1960s and to Angola in the 1970s.
When la dictadura
falls, there will be a vacuum of political leadership that will need to
be filled. Hopefully that need is being addressed already. Yet the "culture war" as it relates to
Cuba is already being waged. That is a good thing.
When I think of the prison that is Cuba I think of the description in Armando Valladares's Against All Hope of political prisoners being drowned in a shit-saturated sewage ditch under a baking sun on that Caribbean gulag aka Isla de Pinos. By comparison Camp X-Ray is a Travelodge (with room service) and The Shawshank Redemption a children's bedtime story.
It's
up to the American and Cuban (and Cuban-American) Right to set the tone for this
culture war, because if we allow types like Reinaldo Arenas and Wim Wenders to control the debate, we'll betray the Cuban people yet again.
- Un hombre sincero
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Let's see, the subject of last year's Passover post was the Soviet Union. This year it's Cuba. Next year in Tehran!
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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:
* (Update 04/03) * My dear blogbuddy Fausta left a must-read comment about Reinaldo Arenas's work in the comments section. Please read it.
* Fausta, with whom I sometimes argue -- but always patiently, carefully, and constructively (and therefore, Gentle Reader, instructively) -- suggested in the comments that Arenas's life and work are a direct subversion of the Cuban regime. Indeed. When it comes to truth, Fausta and I are always on the same side of the debate. And we always root for each other, even when we're on opposing sides of the debate. It's just that here I'm keen to push the empirical and analytical envelopes in a certain way.
* My (first) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police, whom I expect to pound on my door because I mentioned Reinaldo Arenas as neither a hero nor a victim, although in many ways he was both (and both at the same time): My phrasing is deliberate, and I own it. I don't suggest banning from the cultural debate the import of Sr. Arenas's life and work and death (by suicide), nor diminishing their potential contributions to it. As if I'm capable (or desirous) of suppressing truth! All and everything I'm saying is that his life and work and death should not set the tone of the debate.
* My (second) preemptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Lest you accuse me of being barren of compassion for anyone who suffers and dies -- so wastingly and so wastefully -- from AIDS, or for anyone who lives on after loved ones have died from AIDS, you need to surrender the calculating portion of your intellect (if only for a moment) to my sonnet "When Late We Lie."
* My (third) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Now -- does "silence = death"? Or is silence golden? (Hint: that's a trick question.)
* My (fourth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I've always got one finger pointed in your general direction. You'll have to guess which one, though.
* My (fifth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I'm happy to debate any issue with anyone, it's just that -- by way of some kind of neoconservative "affirmative action" -- defectors from the PC Thought Police are encouraged to apply. (Need more encouragement? Go read Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy.)
* My (sixth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: The blogosphere's on to your devilish masters!
* Found a suitable "Guantanamera" video! After everything, este viejo's still got his moves. Just like the Cuban people. Take it away, papi!:
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