Thursday, August 03, 2006

The end of the road for Castro? - Not the end of the road for Cuba and the Cuban people!

Fabian Escalante, former head of Cuban intelligence with the job of revealing attempts at the leader's life, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. Among the more amusing is the cigar assassination attempt. Unfortunately, Castro stopped smoking in 1985, so the cigar trick cannot be used any longer.
Castro's disease and operation is followed with keen interest in Washington. President Bush has spoken. He has said that the US will support Cubans who will "build a transitional government in Cuba committed to democracy". There's a lot of interference in Cuban affairs.
Actually, Castro was not a Soviet inspired communist in the first place. He just wanted the corrupt Batista dictatorship supplanted by a more development oriented regime.
The US made him a hard core communist.
Castro was in favour of land reforms which antagonised the Americans because big American multinationals owned large parts of the land on the island. Through a series of measures and counter-measures the conflict escalated. In the end Cuba had nowhere to turn to, but to the Soviet Union.

If the Americans want to turn Cuba into a semi-colony again, dominated by American investments, and with a prostitute waiting in the hotel bed for the visiting businessman, this is not necessarily in the best interest of the Cubans.
American style democracy and capitalism is not what they're yearning for, even though a lot of the Cubans probably want some democratic change and more freedom. There are, however, other kinds of democracy and capitalism than the American brand.

3 Comments:

Blogger Sophia said...

Castro made of Cuba and Cuban society a great country and great people, like it or not and be with him or not. ideologies have sometimes their toll of suffering on people but they don't only have negative impact, they also have positive impact on nation building.

8:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They have lacked some basic freedoms, like freedom of the press. But the American embargo has taken its toll too.

6:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, the US will never be happy until the Mafia are back in charge in Havana.

7:34 PM  

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