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USA-Cuba
(ENGLISH)
USA & CUBA: ENEMIES OR ACCOMPLICES?
Sometimes I wonder whether the governments of the USA and Cuba are enemies or accomplices. Granted, they exchange very strong words about the embargo. But such show allows the Cuban regime to play the victim, while the American government plays the tough guy to satisfy the powerful in the Cuban exile community. In the meantime, the exiles themselves go the island packed with dollars, in fact, helping to finance the dictatorship, with the full complicity of the United States of America.
WHAT'S YOUR VERDICT?
LETTER FROM AUSTRALIAN FRIEND:
> WHAT'S YOUR VERDICT?
It has long seemed obvious to me that for all their posturing to the contrary, ALL governments are basically accomplices. Their enemies are their OWN people.
The governments of the US and USSR put on a big show about being cold war enemies for a long time, but the only thing they ever fired at each other was hot air. But they DID use each other as excuses for oppression of their own people (McCarthyism, Stalinistic purges etc) as well as dictatorial control over any nations who expressed any aspirations for self-determination (the USSR in Eastern Europe, the US in Vietnam, Latin America etc).
Every day you can see this sort of thing happening.
In Vietnam, you had largely poor, black Americans who had been demanding fair treatment by their leaders, sent overseas to kill (and be killed by) poor Vietnamese who had been demanding fair treatment from theirs. America finally withdrew, but not until the NLA (Vietcong) had been almost completely destroyed or forced into the North Vietnamese camp, so the winners were not the people of South Vietnam who had risen up against their own despotic leadership and its US supporters, but the Communist party of the North, who then sent their own cadres south to take over where the capitalist dictators had left off.
Western leaders demonised Saddam Hussein during the Gulf war, but no serious effort was made to get rid of him. Fleeing conscripts were massacred in huge numbers while his 'Revolutionary Guards' were allowed to withdraw virtually unscathed. When the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs rose up against him, the West stood silently by while those 'Guards' slaughtered them. When Saddam's agents were accused (on very flimsy evidence) of plotting to kill George Bush, the US reaction was to fire missiles into a residential suburb of Baghdad at 2:00AM. There was no chance of hurting Saddam or his spies, just the cleaners in the office block that was targetted and a few dozen sleeping civilians in the surrounding homes. The continued sanctions are starving the people of Iraq, who have no say in whether or not the military build chemical weapons (in fact they're the most likely target of those weapons), and will get no help at all if they try to get rid of the leaders who do have a say, but do you think that Saddam or his friends are going hungry?
At the Rio Earth Summit a few years ago we saw George Bush insisting that the developed countries would do nothing more about pollution control until the developing ones had introduced stricter regulation, and Mahathir Mohammed (of Malaysia) saying that developing countries could not be expected to clean up their act until the richer ones led the way. Voila! No one does anything, which suits Bush, Mahathir and their corporate friends and screws the ordinary people in both rich and poor countries.
Lately in Australia, the political and business elite have been insisting that we need to 'engage' more fully with Asia (which is true), but represent Asia as if the whole continent shared the values of the military and corporate despots that tend to run most of its countries. So we get leaders here insisting that the Australian press needs to use 'self-censorship' in order to avoid hurting the delicate feelings of Asian tyrants, (thus reducing Australian freedom of speech), while the likes of Suharto, Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew are portrayed as speaking for 'their' people (thus muffling the voices of ordinary Asians).
The 'Free Market' is about convincing the workers in country 'A' that they have to accept lower wages and conditions in order to compete with country 'B', while those in country 'B' are being told the same thing in order to compete with country 'A'. The real competition is the elite of both countries vs the people in both countries.
When you think about it, it's inevitable.
Castro flies all over the world, stays in top hotels, goes to expensive functions with corporate leaders and generally hobnobs with the 'beautiful people'. Not much in common with your average Havana construction worker, but a lot like, say, Bill Clinton. Is it surprising that Castro and Clinton might find that they share more objectives with each other than either of them share with workers in their own countries?
-Michael
(SPANISH)
EE.UU. Y CUBA: ENEMIGOS O COMPLICES?
En ocasiones me pregunto si los gobiernos de los EE.UU. y Cuba son enemigos o complices. De acuerdo, ellos intercambian palabras muy fuertes acerca del embargo. Pero tal show permite al regimen cubano hacerse la victima, mientras el gobierno norteamericano se hace el tipo duro para satisfacer a los poderosos del exilio cubano. Entretanto, los propios exiliados van cargados de dolares a la isla, de hecho, ayudando a financiar la dictadura, con la absoluta complicidad de los Estados Unidos de America.
CUAL ES SU VEREDICTO?
LA CUBA QUE NECESITA ESTADOS UNIDOS (FRAGMENTOS)
FUENTE: El Nuevo Herald, 18 de agosto de 1996.
Por Carlos Villalba Bustillo
Seria que los norteamericanos si previeron, por conocerlos bien, lo que los cubanos del exilio aportarian al desarrollo de la Florida?
Es probable, como lo es que el gobierno del Tio Sam no quiera, por ningun motivo, que la actual situacion politica y economica cambie por temor a que, desaparecido Fidel Castro, la plata cubana de la Florida regrese a la isla y el antiguo balneario se quede sin industriales, banqueros, comerciantes y profesionales cubanos. Poca gente sabe cual es la magnitud del intercambio existente entre la Florida, las Antillas y el Caribe, aparte del que tiene con varios paises de America del Sur, la Comunidad Europea y el sudeste asiatico.
Estados Unidos bloqueo a Cuba hace 35 anos, pero no es cierto que haya pensado en la posibilidad de una invasion directa. Por que? Por temor al ejercito de Fidel Castro? Porque no queria quebrantar los principios de no intervencion y autodeterminacion de los pueblos?
LA AÑORANZA CUBANA
No. Sencillamente porque los norteamericanos saben que el cubano anora a su pais y suena con volar a su solar a reencontrarse con el tabaco, el azucar, el son y la alegria. Y tumbar a Castro es facilitarle ese retorno, y el del patrimonio que contribuiria a la reconstruccion de una nacion arruinada por el aislamiento y la insolidaridad practicada durante los dias aciagos del distanciamiento ideologico. Para que hacerle ese mal a la Florida? No es mejor expedir leyes absurdas, como la Ley Helms-Burton, que halagan a los cubanos del exilio sin erradicarlos del sitio donde les fue bien desde el punto de vista economico?
EL ANTICASTRISMO NORTEAMERICANO
En cambio, incomodar a Castro sin tumbarlo es mantener incolume la inversion consolidada por los exiliados cubanos en el pais que los acogio y que vio nacer a dos nuevas generaciones orgullosas de la oriundez norteamericana, pero anhelantes, como sus padres y sus abuelos, de llegar a la patria de cuyas entranas tambien se sienten pedazos.
Los gobiernos norteamericanos le piden a la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, patrona de los cubanos, que haga inmortal a Fidel Castro.
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