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Castro's Catastrophe:
A Visit to Today's Cuba
(NewsMax.com)
Barry Farber
Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001
In a rational world this riddle would be ruled out of order as asinine and
impossible. Alas, in this world the riddle flies. Here goes. What country
with an ideal climate, arable land, good work force, no drought, no flood,
and no war has FOOD RATIONING?
All you red-baiters whose hands shot up immediately are right. The answer is
Cuba!
I just returned from Cuba. It was my third visit to Cuba under Castro, but
my first in 40 years. I raised money for Castro in New York when he was in
the mountains fighting Batista. I thought Fidel Castro would be the new
Simon Bolivar and bring democracy to all the countries south of the border.
My love for Castro lasted for at least 10 days after his takeover, by which
time I had witnessed the circus trials. (Literally. The first ones were in a
circus tent, the rest of the circus having fled when Castro entered Havana!)
Those quicky "trials" were a mocking prelude to firing squads that worked
big-time overtime from one end of the island to the other.
So how are things now in this, the 42nd year of Cuba's communist revolution?
They're so bad you don't gloat.
You gloat when Krushchev vows "We will bury you!" while the bathtubs in
Moscow hotels lack stoppers. You gloat when Free China, Taiwan, with its
economic success and political freedom makes Communist China look like a
pack of unambitious turtles. You don't gloat about Cuba. You pity Cuba.
Havana was once the most cheerful city in the Americas, possibly the world.
The colors blazing forth from the most delicious Spanish architecture
anywhere, including Spain, made a tourist in pre-Castro Cuba feel that just
looking around was worth the price of admission.
That was then. Today after more than four decades of Fidel's rule you've got
to stretch your imagination to envision the deterioration.
Imagine getting a call from a woman (or man) whose looks you really liked in
high school 40 years ago. Let's say she found your number and called you and
suggested lunch. The undisciplined mind figures: "She was great-looking
then. We're both older. So are our eyes. Maybe she'll still look great to
me." Sure. Good luck! Havana is the world's champion faded lady. You wince
now when you see the decrepit facades that once made you want to lean out
the back window of your taxi and applaud.
Nobody in Cuba accepts Cuban money. The dollar, made legal after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, not only dominates, but monopolizes. Please
understand. I'm not saying the hotels, restaurants, shops, taxis and tour
guides PREFER American dollars. I'm saying they will ACCEPT ONLY American
dollars.
My daughter Celia asked a clerk in a rum-and-coffee store if she could pay
in Cuban pesos. The clerk laughed in her face, literally and forcefully. A
nation's currency is the common stock of that country. The valuation of Cuba
Inc. is flat-out zero.
A woman can tell if a man finds her attractive. A man can tell if a woman
finds him attractive. And an American can tell if a foreign population finds
America attractive. America is overwhelmingly attractive to the Cuban
people. A lot of Canadians, Danes, Dutch, French, British, Swedes, Spaniards
and others are calling on Cuba today. So the Cubans you meet aren't quite
sure where you're from at first. When they learn you're American, they give
you what comic Jimmy Durante used to call the "Big Hello."
Cuba differs from other communist countries in one interesting respect.
During the Iron Curtain period of the Cold War, communist regimes denied
reports of food shortages and drab dwellings and the like and dismissed all
such negativity as "capitalist propaganda." Cuba admits it's in deep
difficulty but blames the American "blockade." Not embargo, mind you, but
blockade, as though American warships were patrolling the island making sure
no food or medicine gets through. Castro has placed a large bet that the
Cuban people will believe America, and not communism, is to blame for Cuba's
misery.
Impartial opinion differs over whether Castro is losing that bet or has
already lost it.
When I was last in Cuba in 1960 Che Guevara was still alive and got about 5
percent of the Cuban revolution's glory in posters, banners, songs and
legends. Today Che gets nearly 100 percent. You see Che Guevara posters,
postcards, T-shirts and huge portraits across the face of buildings, while
hardly any pictures of Fidel intrude. Why? This reporter suspects Fidel is
lowering his profile because he knows he's made an utter dodo of his
beautiful, fertile island. Fidel may be wise to let Che have all the
"credit."
One thing surprised me. On our first day in Havana we were guided to a
briefing at the Cuban-American Friendship Society, a poorly run Castro
propaganda center for Americans visiting Cuba. The speaker, speaking in
English so weak he was obviously a political and not a professional
appointee, tried to explain Cuba's plight.
"In 1990," he explained, "The Soviet Union collapsed."
He then clasped his arms in front of his heart and – so help me God – said
the following.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed, we in Cuba felt as though the sun had gone
out. The Soviet Union was to us like the sun."
The Soviet Union – which had holocausted 6 million Ukranians in a deliberate
"famine," entered into a pact with the late Adolf Hitler, occupied Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia by virtue of a pact with that same Adolf Hitler,
slaughtered thousands of Poland's officers in Katyn Forest, occupied and
communized Eastern Europe after World War II, initiated the Cold War,
slammed down the Berlin Blockade, launched the Korean War, brutalized the
Hungarians fighting for freedom in 1956, rolled tanks into Czechoslovakia in
1968, built the Berlin Wall, and forced millions to flee to freedom and
hundreds of thousands to die in the vain attempt – this, by a Castro flack,
is the "sun"!
I have not lived long enough, nor shall I, to see and hear all that I'd like
to. But at least I've heard a grown man with a straight face stand up in
front of an audience of intelligent Americans and hail the Soviet Union as
"our sun, the sun that went out on us."
One wanted to reply, "A sun that shows no sign of going out on us Americans
and others who inhabit democracies is freedom and the rule of law."
But until things change in Cuba, such talk would be like dropping a
honeysuckle down the Grand Canyon and expecting an echo.
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