Can Cuba Survive?
By Beatriz Pages
Ocean Press. 105pp. $14.95
Reviewed by Sean Malloy
Can Cuba Survive is an inspiring and magnetic interview with Cuban President Fidel Castro by Beatriz Pages, editor of the Mexican weekly magazine Siempre!
The interview takes up current debates of socialism and Cuba, including the impact of the fall of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, democracy in Cuba, Cuban relations with the US and the 500 years celebrations.
Castro's comments are straightforward and clearly argued, placing notions of "the end of history" into perspective.
"The causes that gave rise to revolutions and socialism are very far from having disappeared from the world", argues Castro. "In the end, capitalism has meant poverty, hunger, backwardness and underdevelopment for 4 billion people."
"Since those causes haven't disappeared, how can anyone speak of the disappearance of revolutionary and socialist ideas?", he adds later.
Castro openly discusses the differences between the Cuban Communist Party's view of building socialism and the type of socialism that was being built in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
"I am aware of the historical mistakes made in the revolutionary process of the Soviet Union; I have been aware of them for a long time. Mistakes were made in various spheres, on many matters: the personality cult and abuses of power — all those things happened."
He also notes, however, that "we couldn't be involved in a worldwide ideological war against imperialism on the one hand and against the mistakes of socialism on the other, because that isn't our mission. We have priority tasks; we have our struggles and problems. But we viewed what they were doing over there with a critical eye."
The US and other advanced capitalist countries have pressured Cuba to "democratise" like eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. On this issue, Castro discusses the grassroots democracy of Cuba, some of the checks and balances of Cuba's system and his own personal accountability to Cubans and the Cuban Communist Party.
"Over 95 percent of the eligible voters have taken part in our elections, which are held every two and a half years. Meanwhile, in the United States the president and congressmen are elected with 25 percent of the possible votes, or even less", Castro points out.
Sections of the discussion are relevant to development of the revolutionary and socialist movement today. Castro discusses collective leadership and individual leadership, the renewal of Cuban the relationship between history and the individual and what makes a revolutionary.
Castro has an interesting perspective on the 500 years celebrations, looking honestly for both positive and negative aspects of Columbus' voyage and Spanish colonisation.
"Some comrades and visitors [to Cuba] have spoken of a 'meeting of two cultures'. That is the elegant — pious, if you like — way of referring to those historical events. In fact, one culture came and was imposed on another. It wasn't a meeting; it was the crushing of one culture and some peoples by others whose military technology was more developed."
He adds later that "it must be said to the credit of the Spanish that, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, they mixed with the Indians and Africans. In North America, the Anglo-Saxons wiped out almost all of the Indians; they wanted to exterminate them as a matter of principle." The Spanish "didn't exterminate the Indians in order to wipe them out. Rather, they exterminated them in the course of exploiting and extracting wealth from them."
Readers will be convinced that yes, Cuba can survive. Even more importantly, the book demonstrates that socialism is needed outside Cuba as well.