From: ez000281@hamlet.ucdavis.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: Re: Human Rights in Cuba
Date: 5 Jan 93 00:15:24 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, UC Davis

Amran Vance writes

>In article <20672@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> ez000281@hamlet.ucdavis.edu writes:
[...]
>>As to "facism" in Cuba, I suggest you read the latest "constitutio" written 
>>up by Castro, and see how he now considers his government to be "nationalist 
>>and socialist" at the same time.  The last government on earth that did this 
>>was that of Adolf Hitler.

>This is nonsense Eldimiro.

>The fact that a constitution states that the country is to be governed
>in accordance with both socialist and nationalist principles does not
>turn it into a fascist state.  

Of course not.  What matters is how these two principles are implemented in 
reality, not on that piece of paper. However, it seems to me that scientific 
socialism is incopatible with nationalism, since the fathers of socialist 
theory consider socialism to be an internationalist cause, not a nationalist 
one.  The international working class is said to have common interests 
worldwide and that's why we hear things like "Proletarians of the world 
unite!!" rhetoric of the sort which end with the cliche of "proletarian 
internationalism", etc.  So, for example, when Fidel was sending his strom 
troopers to Africa in order to defen the soviet puppet government in Ethiopia, 
the chants of internaitonalism an socialism were shoved down the throats of the 
Cuban masses.  Likewise in Angola and Nicaragua.  However, when his cronies in 
Moscow happen to get the short end of the stick, all the rhetoric about 
"solidarity with other proletarian struggles" vanishes, and instead Fidel turns 
on the twisted and sanitized interpretations of Jose Marti, since claims of 
U.S. interferences are echoed daily in Cuba.  Hoever, since el Comandante still 
wants to maintain his "socialist" image at the same time (in spite of having 
sold out his country to European and Canadian capital),  the rhetoric 
associated with "socialism" is kept on the books (e.g., free good medicine, 
free education, free food, free...).  In the meantime the common practices of 
facism are seen in Havana: intelectuals are rouded up and beaten by mobs  which 
resemble Mussolini's brown shirts, people are restricted from traveling around 
the country (much less abroad), everthing is militarized in a country where 
more is invested in "defense" than on welfare, trials last only a few days and 
executions are carried out swiftly with 10 minute appeals,  people are told to 
worry about their own job in the fascio and let the government handle 
everything else, foreign broadcasts are jammed, etc.  Seems like facism to me, 
in fact, the idea that Cubans live under facism is not mine, I owe it to a 
Cuban who spoke anonymously in a Frontline documentary, where he commented that 
the practices of ideological mobsters run by the ministry of interior was 
precisely what he had learned in school as facism.  Perhaps that Cuban was 
wrong, but it seems that Castro's ideological shift is creating new 
contradictions among the younger generations.

>Many socialist governments have adopted
>constitutional provisions designed to encourage national self-reliance and
>pride. This is particulary true of those socialist states that emerged
>after de-colonization.

Those "socialist" states have been socialist only in their names, for they 
simply put the nationalist middle class in power, while the masses got screwed. 
Hence, in places like Zimbabwe, blacks finally got power at the expense of 
putting in office a maoist dictator who sucks their blood more efficiently.  
Simmilary in Viet Nam, after "socialism" came to power the country is now full 
of foreign capital.  What other cases of "socialism" and "nationalism" (i.e., 
the working class in power) do you have to offer?  Nasser? 

Was Tanzania under Nyerere a fascist state?

Perhaps not, perhaps he was simply a populist dictator, but it seems it had a 
very efficient "socialist" military apparatus after seeing what they did with 
Uganda.

Edelmiro