Author: WILLIAM LAWRENCE
Colonizers
Sanders comments on Cuba
Despite what Bernie said, Fidel Castro’s economic legacy will be one of failure – but not perhaps quite as catastrophic a failure as his many detractors would insist. The Cuba of the 1950s was not some sort of golden age, though officially the country was as rich as Italy in terms of GDP per capita, that wealth was unevenly distributed, while forty percent of the population did not have proper jobs. For the rich it might indeed have seemed a paradise, but for the majority of public services such as, health and education, they were practically non-existent as life was extremely tough. That, after all, was why Castro’s revolution had such popular support.
When he took power in 1959, Fidel Castro chose, or was pushed, into conflict with its largest export market, the United States. The distant Soviet Union could buy Cuba’s principal export, sugar, at guaranteed prices. It could give other forms of economic and technical aid. But it also helped seduce the fledgling revolutionary leaders into imposing a command economy rather than a market-driven one.
In reality Cuba had little choice but to follow the economic model of its new benefactor, and to reject that of the West. In the context of the Cold War this did not seem as odd a course as it does now. Many economists at the time believed that the Soviet command economy could at least be a match for Western market economies in terms of overall growth and had the further advantage of a fairer distribution of income. It was after all another thirty years before the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and its economic system with it.
Defending Fidel Castro’s economic management became even harder after the collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. Subsidies essentially stopped. Russia no longer took the sugar crop at guaranteed prices. GDP fell by one-third in the early 1990s. There was famine – though there is a debate as to just how desperate that was. The response of the regime was to liberalize the economy in modest ways. US dollars became legal tender for a while, farmers were allowed to sell any surplus over and above their official quotas, and tourism was also encouraged. Some modern foreign cars were imported, enabling the battered 1950s American vehicles to be retired.
Matters had recovered a little. Fidel Castro himself acknowledged that there had been mistakes. But – this shows his narrowness of vision – as the economy improved through the late 1990s and early 2000s, many controls were re-imposed. Pursuing the revolutionary purity of a command economy was more important than allowing people to have higher living standards.
Since he stepped aside for health reasons, allowing his brother Raúl Castro to take charge, there has been a gradual loosening of economic controls. From 2008 ordinary people were allowed to have mobile phones. For anyone outside Cuba it seems nothing short of astonishing that people did not have phones before that.
As a result of the reforms led by Raúl Castro, the economy has boomed. And that, in a way, points to the saddest element of his brother’s economic legacy. You can understand in the context of the revolution and the US response that Cuba would head down the command economy path. To persist after the collapse of communism in an economic system that was proven not to work, to make reforms then reverse them, shows not only a lack of any comprehension about economics but huge arrogance in the face of hard evidence. It took the quiet orderly approach of Raúl Castro to demonstrate the failings of his more charismatic brother.
nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/bernie-sanders-fidel-castro-florida.html
Works Cited
Dawson, Alexander. Latin America since Independence : A History with Primary Sources, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/baruch/detail.actiondocID=1779185.
Problems in Modern Latin American History : Sources and Interpretations, edited by James A. Wood, and Anna Rose Alexander, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/baruch/detail.action?docID=5743856.
Cold War Confrontation
The climactic Cold War confrontation came in October 1962. Kennedy revealed that U.S. reconnaissance planes had spotted Soviet-built bases for intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba. He announced that the United States would impose a “quarantine on all offensive military equipment” (Kennedy 1962) on its way to Cuba. The world watched as the United States and the Soviet Union went to the brink of war when it became known that Soviet military officials had begun to construct nuclear weapons bases in Cuba. However, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned back. Kennedy’s threat to intercept Soviet missile shipments with American naval vessels forced the Cold War adversary to back down. Both sides made concessions: Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba, and Khrushchev promised to dismantle the missile bases. Kennedy also promised to remove the U.S. missiles form Turkey. The risk of nuclear war, greater during the Cuban missile crisis than at any other time in the Cold War, prompted a slight thaw in U.S. and Soviet relation.
“Christians” in Hispaniola
First and foremost, an entire novel can be written about the “Christian” treatment of indigenous populations. I can start off by saying that anyone would not associate the treatment that Indigenous people received as Christian faith, in fact it goes against everything Christianity stands for today. As we all can come to an agreement—the Christians treated the natives of Hispaniola exceptionally bad. Christians of that time failed to realize what many people still to this day don’t realize; your race, class and/or religion does not make you superior to any opposing creed. In all reality most religions share common practices and majority of the same moral codes. Their core beliefs most of the time follow the same moral compass. The Spaniards unfortunately fell into the depths of greed for money and power which overshadowed their principles. Avidity for money and power can be productive and thrive, but not when you nearly wipe out an entire race of living humans. Following the settlement of Spanish colonists, the Tainos nearly became an extinct culture. In an article I read prior to taking this course on blackhistorymonth.org, the author explains how on Columbus’ second voyage he began to require a tribute which required anyone over the age of fourteen was expected to deliver a hawks bell full of gold, and if the gold was scarce, twenty-five pounds of spun cotton. If this tribute was not brought, the Spanish cut off the hands of the Taino and left them to bleed to death.
Even though that doesn’t fully incapsulate the long horrifying mistreatment, torture, and infliction of pain they put on an entire culture, but it definitely shows you the amount of avarice the Spanish had.
Nonetheless, their objective was gold and the goal was to get the indigenous people as far away from it as possible. The religion was a mere distraction placed to give reason as to why indigenous people should leave or be forced out of their original population. Christians used religion to justify the cruel and evil treatment they pressed upon the indigenous populations. The way indigenous people were treated by the Christians drove them to extreme measures such as suicide as a way out—as suicide accounted for a large portion of the decrease of the population.