Year 501 (29 page)

But for those who believe that there are limits to what the criminal mind might contemplate, there is still more. “With Cuban soldiers in Angola to support the Marxist Government, Mr. Castro made himself an obstacle to a negotiated settlement of that country's civil war in the 1980's.” Connoisseurs who miss
Pravda
in the good old days will recognize this as the
Times
spin on Cuba's support for the government recognized by virtually everyone apart from the US, and its success in repelling US-backed South African aggression, thus setting the stage for a negotiated settlement, which Washington at once disrupted by continuing its support for its terrorist clients to ensure that the war, which had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destroyed the country, will leave the remains in the hands of South Africa and Western investors.
16

Whatever one may think of Cuba, such performances provide an enlightening “exposure of the cynical, obsessive workings” of a propaganda system of mechanical predictability, run by an intellectual class of truly awe-inspiring moral cowardice. Matters have changed little since the days when the
New York Times
editors, 60 years ago, hailed our magnificent record in the Caribbean region, where we were acting with “the best motives in the world” as Marines pursued the “elusive bandit Sandino” with the cheers of Nicaraguans ringing in their ears, contrary to the whining of the “professional ‘liberals'”—though it was unfortunate, the editors felt, that the clash “comes just at a time when the Department of State is breathing grace, mercy and peace for the whole world.” In Cuba, we were able “to save the Cubans from themselves and instruct them in self-government,” granting them “independence qualified only by the protective Platt amendment”—which “protected” US corporations and their local allies. “Cuba is very near at hand,” the editors proceed, “to refute” the charge of “the menace of American imperialism.” We were “summoned” by the Cuban people who have, finally, “mastered the secret of stability” under our kind tutelage. And while “our commercial interests have not suffered in the island,” “we have prospered together with a free Cuban people,” so “no one speaks of American imperialism in Cuba.”
17

Commentators affect great anguish over Castro's crimes and abuses. Would that it were believable. Demonstrably, for most it is utterly cynical pretense. The conclusion is established conclusively by comparison of the hysterical outrage over Castro's human rights violations and the evasion or outright suppression of vastly worse atrocities right next door, at the very same time, by US clients, acting with US advice and support. History has been kind enough to provide some dramatic test cases to prove the point.
18

The professed concern for “the true interests of the Cuban people” and for “democracy” need not detain us. Concern for the “true interests” of US business, in contrast, is real enough. The same is true of the concerns over public opinion in Cuba and Latin America. Kennedy knew what he was doing when he sought to block travel and communication. The fears are understandable in the light of the Cuban public opinion polls cited earlier, or the reaction to its Agrarian Reform Law of May 1959, acclaimed by one UN organization as “an example to follow” in all Latin America. Or by the conclusion of the World Health Organization's representative in Cuba in 1980 that “there is no question that Cuba has the best health statistics in Latin America,” with the health organization “of a very much developed country” despite its poverty. Or by a UNICEF report on the “State of the World's Children 1990,” reviewed in a Peruvian Church journal, which lists a series of Latin American countries as among those with the highest infant mortality rates in the world, though Costa Rica and Chile have low rates for the region, and “Cuba is the only country on a par with developed nations.” Or by the interest in Brazil and other Latin American countries in Cuban biotechnology, unusual if not unique for a small and poor country. Or by the kind of discussion we can read in the Australian press, safely remote, reviewing the efforts to achieve the “historic strategic objective” of restoring Cuba “to Washington's sphere of influence”:

That Cuba has survived at all under these circumstances is an achievement in itself. That it registered the highest per capita increase in gross social product (wages and social benefits) of any economy in Latin America—and almost double that of the next highest country—over the period 1981-1990 is quite remarkable. Moreover, despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban is still better fed, housed, educated and provided for medically than other Latin Americans, and—again atypically—the Cuban Government has sought to spread the burden of the new austerity measures equally among its people.

Worse yet, such perceptions are hardly unusual in the region itself, a product of direct experience and relative freedom from the rigid doctrinal requirements that constrain US orthodoxy and its European camp-followers. They are commonly articulated by leading figures. To select one poignant example, Father Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the Jesuit university of El Salvador (UCA), wrote in a Latin American Church journal in November 1989 that for all its abuses, “the Cuban model has achieved the best satisfaction of basic needs in all of Latin America in a relatively short time,” while “Latin America's actual situation points out prophetically the capitalist system's intrinsic malice and the ideological falsehood of the semblance of democracy that accompanies, legitimates, and cloaks it.”

It was for expressing such thoughts that he was assassinated by US-trained elite troops as the article appeared, and buried deep beneath shrouds of silence by those who feigned great indignation here.
19

As in numerous other cases, it is not Castro's crimes that disturb the rulers of the hemisphere, who cheerfully support the Suhartos and Saddam Husseins and Gramajos, or look the other way, as long as they “fulfill their main function.” Rather, it is the elements of success that arouse fear and anger and the call for vengeance, a fact that must be suppressed by ideologists—not an easy task, given the overwhelming evidence confirming this elementary principle of the intellectual culture.

In the 1980s, the US extended its economic warfare, barring industrial products containing any Cuban nickel, a major Cuban export. Those not affected by political Alzheimer's might recall the US Treasury Department order of April 1988 barring import of Nicaraguan coffee processed in a third country if it is not “sufficiently transformed to lose its Nicaraguan identity”—recalling the language of the Third Reich, a
Boston Globe
editor observed. The US prohibited a Swedish medical supply company from providing equipment to Cuba because one component is manufactured in the US. Aid to the former Soviet Union was conditioned on its suspension of aid to Cuba. Gorbachev's announcement that such aid would be canceled was greeted with banner headlines: “Baker Hails Move,” “Soviets Remove Obstacle to U.S. Economic Aid,” “The Cuban-Soviet Connection: 31-Year Irritant to the U.S.” At last, the grievous injury to us may be relieved.

In early 1991, the US resumed Caribbean military maneuvers, including rehearsal of a Cuba invasion, a standard technique of intimidation. In mid-1991, the embargo was tightened further, cutting remittances from Cuban-Americans, among other measures. In April 1992, gearing up for the election, President Bush barred ships that go to Cuba from US ports. New laws proposed by congressional liberals, cynically entitled the Cuban Democracy Act, would extend the embargo to US subsidiaries abroad, allowing seizure of cargo of ships that had landed in Cuba if they enter US territorial waters. The ferocity of the hatred for Cuban independence is extreme, and scarcely wavers across the narrow mainstream spectrum.
20

There has never been any effort to conceal the fact that the disappearance of the Soviet deterrent (like the removal of the British deterrent a century earlier) and the decline of East bloc economic relations with Cuba merely facilitates Washington's efforts to achieve its longstanding aims through economic warfare or other means. Candor is entirely in order: only the most devilish anti-American, after all, could question our right to act as suits our fancy. If, say, we choose to invade some defenseless country to capture one of our agents who no longer follows orders, and then try him for crimes committed while on our payroll, who could question the majesty of our system of justice? True, the UN did, but our veto took care of that childish tantrum. Even the Supreme Court has since accorded the US the right to kidnap alleged criminals abroad to bring them to justice here. Not for us the qualms of Adolf Hitler, who returned a German emigré abducted by Himmler's gangsters from Switzerland in 1937 after the Swiss government protested, appealing to basic principles of international law.
21

In a typical commentary on Cuba's happy plight, the editors of the
Washington Post
urged that the US seize the opportunity to crush Castro: “For his great antagonist, the United States, to give relief and legitimacy to this used-up relic at this late hour would be to break faith with the Cuban people—and with all the other democrats in the hemisphere.” Pursuing the same logic, the editors, through the 1980s, called upon the US to coerce Nicaragua until it was restored to the “Central American mode” of the Guatemalan and Salvadoran terror states, observing their admirable “regional standards”; and scoffed at Gorbachev's “New Thinking” because he had not yet offered the US a free hand to achieve its objectives by the means condemned by the World Court (in a judgment that discredited the Court, the press and liberal commentators concluded). The
Post
speaks for the people of Cuba just as the State Department did in the Eisenhower-Kennedy years; as William McKinley spoke for “the vast majority of the population” of the Philippines who “welcome our sovereignty” and whom he was “protecting...against the designing minority” while slaughtering them by the hundreds of thousands; and as his proconsul Leonard Wood spoke for the decent (i.e., wealthy European) people of Cuba who favored US domination or annexation and had to be protected from the “degenerates.”
22
The U.S. has never been short of good will for the suffering people of the world who have to be protected from the machinations of evil-doers. As for the
Post
's love of democracy, charity dictates silence. Its peers scarcely differ.

The Cuban record demonstrates with great clarity that the Cold War framework has been scarcely more than a pretext to conceal the standard refusal to tolerate Third World independence, whatever its political coloration. Traditional policies remain beyond serious challenge within the mainstream. The most obvious questions are ruled illegitimate, if not unthinkable. We can anticipate, then, efforts of the usual kind to ensure that the “ripe fruit” drops into the hands of its rightful owners, or is plucked more vigorously from the tree.

A cautious policy would be to tighten the stranglehold, resorting to economic and ideological warfare to punish the population while intimidating others to refrain from interfering. As suffering increases, it can be assumed, so will protest, repression, more unrest, etc., in the predictable cycle. At some stage, internal collapse will reach the point where the Marines can be sent in cost-free to “liberate” the island once again, restoring the old order while the faithful chant odes to our grand leaders and their righteousness. Transitory tactical concerns might accelerate the process, if a need is felt to arouse jingoist passions. But it is unlikely that Washington will veer far from the policies outlined in the Bush Administration National Security Policy Review already cited (p. 132).

Chapter 7

World Orders Old and New: Latin America

1. “The Colossus of the South”

“When the resources of that vast country are taken into account,” the editors of the
Washington Post
wrote in 1929, “it becomes evident that within a few years Brazil will become one of the leading powers of the world.” “The United States rejoices in the rise of this great republic in South America,” which “has found the road to permanent prosperity and peace.” The euphoric predictions seemed not unreasonable. “Brazil is notable for its tremendously favorable combination of large size, low population density, and rich endowment of natural resources,” Peter Evans observes, and it had nothing to fear from external enemies. In the second half of the 19th century, real per capita income rose more rapidly in Brazil than in the United States. Its leading export, coffee, was under control of local capital (Brazil provided over 80 percent of world output by the turn of the century). Some weaknesses were showing: the economy relied so heavily on exporting primary products that this rich agricultural country had to import even food staples. Nevertheless, the “colossus of the South,” as the
New York Herald Tribune
termed it in 1926, appeared to be a true counterpart to the Colossus of the North, well-placed to rise to prosperity and power. It seemed, indeed, “a mighty realm of limitless potentialities,” “a nation which staggers the imagination,” as other US journals described it.

The
Wall Street Journal
, in 1924, offered a more caustic glimpse of the future: “No territory in the world is better worth exploitation than Brazil's.” Five years later, “American businessmen boasted a larger share of the export market than their British rivals” and “New York had replaced London as the major source of new capital investment” (Joseph Smith). US investment grew tenfold from 1913 to 1930; trade more than doubled, while that of Britain declined by nearly 20 percent. The picture was much the same throughout the region. Direct US investment in Latin American enterprises almost doubled to $3.5 billion in the 1920s, while portfolio investment (bonds and securities) more than quadrupled to over $1.7 billion. Venezuelan oil under the Gómez dictatorship, mines in Bolivia, Chile and elsewhere, and the riches of Cuba were among the favored targets. From 1925-1929, US capital inflow to Latin America was about $200 million a year, while the annual outflow to US investors was about $300 million.
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