Every summer, colorful orange lanterns spring up in
my front yard, as per photo. When picked, they retain their shape and color for
a very long time. We’ve had a mild
summer so far, which is very nice. Last night, I believe it went down to the 50’s
and this is August in DC?
Having been there in 2006,
before independence, I am totally broken-hearted and devastated by the continuing civil war in South Sudan, a
nation that only came into being 3 years ago. It started out with nothing and
now has even less because of the rivalries of its two ambitious leaders. I see
no solution if they are unwilling to compromise and come up with a genuine power
sharing agreement. Their warrior followers have been dragged into fighting,
which will stop instantly when the leaders command them to do so.
Here is a video of Pyongyang, at least the best showcase
parts, showing it to be a more modern city than some of us would have imagined.
http://vimeo.com/102051605.
Of course, this video was
shot with North Korean government approval and only in selected areas of the
capital, but, still, the subway system looks quite modern. While the
architecture is grim, the buildings do appear to be well-maintained. Those
buildings reminded me of some I saw that had been constructed in post-communist
Cuba. And, although some of its people may be going hungry, North Korea has
been able to maintain its nuclear arsenal.
Apparently Nicaraguans are not flocking like other
Central Americans to the US because it’s much easier for them to cross over
their southern border into Costa Rica. While Costa Rica is not exactly welcoming
or as prosperous as the US, it’s a Spanish-speaking country with a somewhat
higher standard of living and does not require a terrible and risky journey
north, including through very dangerous Honduras.
The news media and many
elected officials have been inflating the border
crisis, in my opinion. And the debate continues in the usual polarized way:
are those arriving genuine refugees fleeing danger at home or are they simply blatant
law-breakers? Their actual numbers
compared to an overall US population of over 300 million means that they could probably
be absorbed with little effort or effect. However, many non-Hispanic Americans
are fearful of being outnumbered and of the unfamiliar, which has always been
the case with immigrants. As I’ve said before, without immigrants, both legal
and illegal, US population could shrink. Cities such as Detroit welcome them.
However, Congress keeps fees for citizenship high to deter newcomers from actually
becoming citizens and voters.
In rare good international
news, Maliki finally resigned in
Iraq.
Fidel Castro
has celebrated his 88th birthday, and while he is now a shadow of
his former self, people around the world are remembering both his triumphs and his
misdeeds. A website called Plataforma Cuba Democracia Ya (Platform Cuba
Democracy Now) describes him as “a psychopath
and murderous dictator,” incapable of any sympathy for human suffering, who
will die safely in his bed without ever acknowledging his crimes. Will Fidel survive
me? I’d like to visit Cuba again before I die.
Most of my readers are not
particularly bellicose, but a few, perhaps rhetorically, have suggested that
the US might simply invade Cuba and thereby
finally get rid of the Castro regime. Someone of Cuban heritage has even urged targeted
drone strikes to finally wipe out both Fidel and Raul. Quite obviously, in this
day and age and under present circumstances, a military attack on Cuba is not
going to happen, quite apart from President Kennedy’s long-ago missile crisis
pledge.
Freedom of communication and association
are fairly universally recognized human rights that the Cuban government has formally signed
onto, but does not actually allow in practice—for example, a gathering of more than
3 unrelated persons requires a permit. Furthermore, Cubans never voted for such
restrictive laws, nor for their own government for over 55 years, a government whose
support is so fragile that it does not dare permit Cubans to talk with each
other or meet freely. When I was in Cuba, people were using sign language to
keep from being overheard. From the dictatorship's perspective (and Cuba is not
alone in this), open communication is considered subversive, hence
USAID’s necessarily secret efforts to facilitate communication in Cuba, which
have been labeled subversive and USAID contractor Alan Gross is now serving time for bringing in satellite phones.
Although he may have been seized on the excuse of the phones, it was
more probably to exchange him for the Cuban Five incarcerated in the
US--now only Three, as two have been released and have returned to Cuba. After
Bergdahl’s prisoner exchange and release, Gross’s family asks why not the Cuban
Three for him?
USAID has been roundly accused of bungling—and it arguably has bungled since its secret practices
in Cuba have been revealed. Yet, European groups and embassies have not been
particularly criticized for providing communications equipment, often in secret,
and allowing Cuban dissidents to use
their internet.
In the Peace Corps, which has wrongly been
conflated with USAID and even accused of being a CIA front, we were not allowed
to take sides in any election, local or national, or to make statements that might be construed as political--those were our
"rules of engagement," rules for our participation and also for our
own protection as we lived out in the boondocks away from other Americans,
and is also why the PC is allowed in China, a one-party state.
Is Cuba now justified in accusing USAID of trying to undermine its government? Yes and no. No,
in the sense that the actual content of communications was not being dictated
or even suggested by USAID. Yes, in the sense that the Cuban government does
not allow free speech or assembly, so facilitating those would be a violation
of its laws, laws dictated by the regime and contrary to international treaties
that Cuba has signed, and not formulated with citizen consent. Cubans flocked
to USAID’s discredited Twitter program and often pass thumb drives
hand-to-hand, so they appear eager for modern communication. It’s probable that
the indirect intent of USAID’s communications measures has been to open a space
allowing citizens to decide whether they really want the Castro regime to continue
in power; the likelihood is that many or even most do not.
On the other hand, revelation of USAID’S secrecy undermines diplomatic
trust, and trust between US and Cuban leaders needs to be improved if there
is to be peace and cooperation between our two nations. Trust is always a
two-edged sword. Trusting opens each party up to a double-cross. Also, in the
case of the Cuban regime, it means supporting and doing business with an
oppressive government and thereby strengthening its hand. As with opinions regarding any dictatorial
regime, there are Cuban exiles on both sides of this argument, some pushing for
more cooperation, others for more isolation.
Nationalism and national sovereignty are the Cuban regime’s main claims to legitimacy and
to non-interference in its internal affairs. At the CELAC (Spanish
initials for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,) meeting
held last Jan. in Havana, rights were declared to inhere in states, not in individuals
(the US was not invited). (In the US, the
Supreme Ct. has ruled that corporations also are individuals with individual
rights to free speech.)
Nationalism
and today’s existing nation states are not sacrosanct, being relatively new entities on the world
stage with somewhat arbitrary and artificial boundaries that are not always
fixed, as we have just seen in Ukraine. Diplomacy
is sometimes useful, sometimes not—it depends on whether it’s being conducted
according to agreed-upon rules. Rules
of diplomacy may make for smoother interactions—Obama shook hands with Raúl Castro,
yet the Archbishop
of Santiago, Dionisio García Ibañez, pointedly dared to avoid shaking Raúl’s outstretched hand during Pope Benedict’s visit.
Nationalism
has begun eroding as a result of the internet, global travel, and international
commerce. International reputation in an internationalized world is also becoming
increasingly important, as Israel is
finding out. People are
questioning whether Israel needed, in the name of national security, to
massacre Gaza civilians to "pay back" or prevent those puny
rockets, given that the US had already furnished Israel with the Iron
Dome, not to mention sophisticated weapons. Destroying the tunnels into Israel
was understandable, but, regrettably, that apparently required hitting
civilians crowded into in Gaza’s small territory. Hamas’s motives for inviting attack are
unclear and it’s doubtful that Palestinian civilians would have wanted Hamas to
continue with the suicidal rockets, although now positions on both sides have
hardened making it difficult to see a solution, except that both sides should
want the fighting to stop. Probably Hamas wanted Israel to talk with it, to
acknowledge its existence, which is now finally happening, though indirectly.
All that bombing by Israel only increased anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments
in the Muslim and wider world --and against the US as well, with consequent
risk to us. Israel absolutely needs US support to survive in a hostile
neighborhood, yet Netanyahu dares to bite the hand that feeds him, publicly
criticizing and going over the heads of President Obama and Secretary Kerry knowing
that most Congress members and a majority of the American people either support
or dare not oppose him.
The notion
of universal human rights, including
the right of Palestinian civilians to life, however, is also gaining ground and
has influenced my own perspective as a long-time Amnesty International member. Even
where there is considerable internal citizen support in a country, national laws
and practices may still yield to international pressure, such as has happened concerning
child labor and child marriage, polygamy, FMG, religious freedom, and, most
recently, the overturning of Uganda’s draconian anti-sodomy laws.
A woman
from Argentina staying with me recently urged me to view Part I of Stephen Soderbergh's
"Che, El Argentino," quite lengthy by itself, over 2 hours. It
came out in 2008, but I missed it then. It's very carefully done, interspersing
scenes in color of the guerrillas' campaign with black-and-white newsreel-type
footage at the UN and of Che’s interviews in the US. Sometimes what appears to
be actual newsreel footage from that time is shown together with grainy
movie footage making it hard to tell the difference; it almost seems
like a documentary. No subtitles for either Spanish or English, but
occasionally in the NY scenes, an interpreter is present. Even there, it was a
realistic touch that the interpreter when speaking English has the
slightest hint of a Spanish accent--nearly all of the Spanish interpreters
I’ve encountered in my work are native Spanish speakers and have that slight
accent in English. Many of the Cuban characters have Cuban accents. However,
the Che figure, while very skillfully played by Benicio del Toro, a native of Puerto
Rico, did not sound to me like he had an Argentine accent. His 1964 UN speech
appears in the film, cited also in my Cuba book on pp. 154-155, “Fusilamientos,
sí, hemos fusilado, fusilamos y seguiremos fusilando mientras sea necesario.
Nuestra lucha es una lucha a muerte.” [“Executions, yes, we have executed,
we execute, and will continue to execute as long as necessary. Our struggle is
a struggle to the death.”]
According
to the credits, the movie was filmed in NY, Spain, Mexico, and Puerto
Rico, but since I've traveled the whole island of Cuba, I can vouch that it
looks like the real thing. The second part apparently deals with Che’s mission
in Bolivia and his death, overall a very realistic portrayal. The Che figure
calls some of his recruits "maricones" (faggots) and stragglers are
shot out in the mountains with their hands tied behind their backs. The Fidel character
nods his head and wags his index figure while talking, something I saw
frequently during Fidel's endless speeches on Cuban TV back when I was
traveling to Cuba. My housemate downloaded it, she says, from piratebay.se
for the movie and Vuze.com for the player, in case you're interested.
While Che
and Fidel promised free speech and press, in the film and in real life, they
never actually allowed it. Nor was Che strictly truthful when he declared,
"We don't belong to either the USA or the USSR.” It's no surprise that
many who fought against Batista then moved over to fight Fidel when his
direction became apparent, consequently spending more 20 years as Fidel’s political
prisoners, as recounted in my book.
I asked a fellow Spanish interpreter now living
in another city about the Che film, as he had also seen it and was actually present
in Cuba during the revolution. He once worked high up in the Cuban bureaucracy
and his late parents had been declared "Heroes de Revolución." Here’s what he
said about the film:
I
thought it was an adequate representation of what happened, but did not delve
into why it happened and gave a very one-sided and overly sympathetic view of
Che's personality. I never met him and only saw and heard him three or four
times during his public appearances and have a very ambivalent, contradictory
view about him.
This portrayal seems
difficult to reconcile with tales of Che as the Butcher of La Cabaña fortress
who never responded favorably to appeals from death sentences and who liked to
be present during executions. There are also conflicting
versions as to how he behaved when he was captured and executed. My temporary
conclusion is that although as a human being, he might have had some positive
qualities, he became a fanatic whose beliefs in the justice of his ideals and
the necessity to struggle for them overrode all humanitarian concerns. For him
the end justified the means and this was his fatal flaw because it led to
violent human rights abuses which totally dehumanized him.
For an actual documentary about Cuba, I recommend one mentioned on
pp. 348-351 in my Cuba book, Grandchildren
of the Cuban Revolution (Nietos de la Revolución Cubana), available for free via Google on Vimeo.com and Lockerz.
No comments:
Post a Comment