I’ve always been fascinated with the childish simplicity of the International Left’s arguments against all things American. It is the typical Antifa, anarcho-syndicalist, Noam Chomsky position that all the evils of the modern world have one primary cause, the United States. Granted this is a necessary position for socialists because it creates an easy scapegoat for the failures, or rather catastrophic outcomes of every socialist experiment to date. The utopia has yet to be realized only because the American Imperialists have stymied its ascendence at every turn.
Castro’s Cuba has been a favorite pet of activists of late. After the July 11 uprisings on the island nation, the regime launched a massive crackdown on its participants, complete with secret police and storm troopers. The Biden Administration, to its credit, has sanctioned Cuban military officials. But activists, including Susan Sarandon, Oliver Stone, Jeremy Corbyn, and Code Pink have taken up the cliche’d reasoning that the popular uprising itself wasn’t due to conditions created by the Cuban socialist government, but rather by US economic sanctions against that government. They have called for ending the restrictions on dollars flowing into Cuba in a petition entitled, “Let Cuba Live.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, however, points to a better recommendation from the Center for a Free Cuba: “Let Cubans Fish.”
“This is no joke,” she writes. “A Caribbean sea teeming with marine life contains abundant protein. Yet it’s nearly impossible for Cubans legally to reel in dinner to feed their families. This is more proof, as if we needed it, that socialism is for morons.”
Totalitarian crimes often take a very simple route with one aim: to deny agency to the population under its control.
Cuba suffers from a mix of lingering Soviet ideology and Castro crime-family despotism. For example, as the Center for Free Cuba’s brief noted, a July 2019 fishing law requires “a cost-prohibitive license and carries additional restrictions and penalties.” Boat ownership is forbidden too, lest the slaves flee the plantation. The upshot is that “most citizens are not permitted to fish for their supper from a shoreline or fresh water source.” If fines are not paid, perpetrators face prison.
If Cubans could feed themselves, that would be one less dependency that the regime could hold over them. If Cubans could own boats, they would flee the island en masse. And the idea that an inflow of money would somehow make it to the common people without being intercepted by the elite in charge is patently absurd. Jorge Carrasco summarizes the reality in Cuba:
An economic abyss still separates the regime’s leaders from average workers earning less than 30 dollars a month. The new rich bourgeoisie are no longer big businessmen, capitalists, and entrepreneurs, they are the relatives of important military personnel and members of the Communist Party who still control the most luxurious hotels, restaurants, and bars on the island. Almost nothing remains of the Revolution’s promises of opportunities and civil liberties for all, for which so much blood was spilled.
“The shortage of dollars that the military dictatorship is now experiencing is the point of the sanctions,” says O’Grady. “The policy is designed to tilt the balance of power toward the Cuban people by weakening the regime.”
Unfortunately—and to illustrate how in vogue socialism is right now—the Biden administration’s deputy assistant secretary for Cuba issues at the State Department is Emily Mendrala. She is a former executive director for the leftist think tank, Center for Democracy in the Americas, and she has regularly regurgitated the myth that the United States alone is to blame for the misery of the Cuban people.
In retort, the Center for a Free Cuba provides a translated quote from Cuban scholar Carlos Alberto Montaner (note the term “blockade" is used because this is how the Castro regime refers to the economic embargo):
The blockade does not prohibit fishermen in Cuba from fishing, the dictatorship does;The blockade does not confiscate what farmers harvest, the dictatorship does;The blockade does not prohibit Cubans on the island from doing business freely, the dictatorship does;The blockade did not destroy every sugar mill, textile factory, shoe store, canning factory, the dictatorship did;The blockade is not responsible for Cubans being paid with worthless pesos and stores sell you products with American dollars; the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible that Cubans are beaten and imprisoned for thinking differently, the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible that there are hundreds of Cuban political prisoners who have not committed any crime, the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible for sending Cubans US dollars that they give to you in worthless pesos in the Western Union, the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible for the dictatorship building hotels and the roofs that fall on Cubans' heads, the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible for hospitals in Cuba that are disgusting, the dictatorship is;The blockade is not responsible for not having water in homes, for not maintaining the aqueduct system, the dictatorship is.