Saturday, December 3, 2016

INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS

In the late 1950s, business matters took me on frequent visits to Cuba thus saw Cuba before Fidel, during the time of the Dictator Batista, during the rebellion against him, and at the time of the triumphant arrival, after Batista fled the island, of Fidel, in Havana.

Let it be said that, despite being a rather vocal critic of Fidel, I have always been sympathetic to him.  I have always felt that he was sincere in trying to resolve the problems of Cuba, which were real and palpable, even as I disagreed with how he went about it.  I felt that he should have used, as a model, another island State, authoritarian Singapore, rather than swallow the completely alien, and unproven doctrine of Marxism-Leninism.  

When Fidel came down from the Sierra Maestra he had the complete and utter devotion of the Cuban people and he could have led them to an indigenous solution to the problem of reforming Cuba, while becoming a non-aligned nation and out of the Cold War.  Instead altar boy Fidel, though an intellectual, exchanged the Bible for another off-the-shelf  catechism, instead of writing his own. 

3 comments:

  1. Totally agree on the analysis. Having said that, may I suggest that we should share complicity in Fidel's heady mistake when we pinned him against the wall in attempting to return to the American status quo in the Pearl of the Caribbean ... you know, the corrupted, hedonistic playground? It wasn't in our best interests to "drain the swamp" there either.

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  2. Sometimes U.S. imperialism doesn't go according to plans either. How many mistakes do we wish that we could undo as well? ... all in the name of freedom? ... and democracy? Obviously other motives were at work as well.

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  3. Firstly, I agree on our own myriads of mistakes in Latin America, and our own complicity in not trying to continue to reach an understanding, for political reasons, to keep Cuban refugees a Republican voting bloc, but to perhaps, tell of a time that I saw, with my own eyes, of a brief moment when it could have been so different if only ideology had not gotten in the way.

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