Stuart Munckton
The assumption that the Cuban revolutionary government will inevitably collapse after the death of President Fidel Castro underpins much of the coverage of Castro's illness in the corporate media. The August 5 Sydney Morning Herald ran an article by Michael Gawenda headlined "After Castro" that was typical.
The Cuban Revolution, Gawenda claimed, "will soon fade into history" when Castro departs from the scene. The article drips with the cynical smugness that coats much of the coverage of the Cuban Revolution in the "liberal" wing of the corporate media. Castro is a "relic of another, and for some, more romantic time" and "Like Castro, the Cuban revolution's best years are behind it".
For the corporate media, the Cuban Revolution is Fidel Castro. The other 11 million Cubans are written out of the story, or appear as passive victims of a megalomaniac dictator chasing a socialist utopian fantasy that all sensible people gave up on years ago.
Gawenda made no mention of the revolution's impressive social gains — which might go some way to explaining how the revolutionary government Castro has headed for 47 years has survived the numerous attempts of its powerful northern neighbour to destroy it.
By breaking with the profit-before-people orthodoxy of capitalism, Cuba has made big steps forward in attending to its people's social needs. It has a first-class health care system, provided overwhelmingly for free, and the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America, according to a UN Millenium Development Goals report from last September.
In 2003, Cuba had one doctor for every 189 people, while Australia had one for every 416 people and the US has one for every 358, according to the World Health Organisation. Education, including at university level, is provided entirely free in Cuba.
These gains have been made despite a US economic blockade that the Cuban government estimates has cost the island US$79 billion.
The difference between the Cuban and Australian governments' approach to the world's poor is starkly revealed in regard to East Timor. While Australia has manoeuvred to steal the offshore oil wealth that Asia's poorest nation is entitled to under international law, Cuba has sent hundreds of doctors who provide much-needed health care free of charge.
Gawenda parrots Washington's claim that it is working to "help the Cuban people in the transition to genuine democracy". However, an article published in the Wall Street Journal on the same day as Gawenda's is a lot more honest about Washington's real goals. It reported that "US business from tourism to energy are eyeing the island" and noted that "Cuba also recently discovered as much as 9.3 billion barrels of oil off its coast".
The WSJ is less optimistic about the prospects for US corporations returning to loot Cuba, as they did with impunity before 1959: "Is immediate change likely in Cuba? Probably not."
A July 31 paper by the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs pointed out that after more than a decade of struggle following the collapse of the USSR, Cuba's main trading partner, "the island is making a relatively extraordinary recovery". Cuba's new economic growth "has captured the attention of free-market, capitalistic economists who once deemed Cuba's large state-controlled sector to be too inefficient to support a prosperous economy".
Far from being a "relic of the past", the example of the Cuban Revolution is spreading throughout Latin America, most decisively in Venezuela, where the revolution led by socialist President Hugo Chavez is advancing in alliance with Cuba.
If the Cuban Revolution could survive the heavy blows it suffered in the 1990s, then it is far from certain that the inevitable transition of leadership from Fidel Castro to others — in circumstances where the country is moving forward on a number of fronts — will lead to the revolution's death.