The Sunday Times on the Web

Commentary

10th January 1999

Castro: The defiant one

By Mervyn de Silva

Front Page |
News/Comment |
Business | Plus | Sports |
Mirror Magazine

Home
Front Page
News/Comment
Business
Plus
Sports
Mirror Magazine

'Nobel Laureates applaud Castro' read the headline in our daily paper. Yes, only Fidel Castro could earn such a rare salute - not by presidents and prime ministers but from men who have earned international recognition for their unique contribution to the human heritage. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Latin America's foremost writer and a Nobel-man himself recognised Fidel as a great writer. We have had the privilege of watching him as a brilliant orator who could keep any audience spell-bound. He was speaking as the new chairman of the Non-aligned movement, succeeding Sri Lanka's Junius Richard Jayewardene - Fidel in his guerrilla uniform and the Sri Lankan president in his white toga looking like a Roman Senator.

Castro's historians have re-written the past. In order to exploit Cuba's fertile lands, the Spanish decided to import African slaves to replace the lost manpower of the aborigines. The struggle for freedom many centuries ago - liberation is a word familiar to any reader of Cuban history and literature. But the huge neighbour, the United States has been the traditional enemy. And so to the new, the post-war foe, the U. S. and Yankee capitalism". In a knee-jerk reaction the Cuban leadership turned to the Soviet Union, the other "superpower".

US Intervention

But the Soviet Union could not support - economically or militarily, tiny Cuba in the backyard of the rapidly rising "superpower", the United States.

The American intervention took many forms - the use of Cuban exiles who had made a new home in Florida and other American states to subvert the Castro regime once the US found the new Cuban policies increasingly anti-Washington. Thus the several attempts to assassinate him, which Castro publicly identified as CIA plots.

Finally, a better planned, more sophisticated strategy of "isolation" has been adopted.

But Castro had anticipated that particular American option. Few students of the non-aligned movement know that Cuba was one of the independent "third world" countries which participated in the Belgrade conference. (Sri Lanka's prime minister, Mrs. Bandaranaike, was one of the participants in that historic summit). While Tito's socialist Yugoslavia identified the "main enemy" as the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro identified "Yankee imperialism" as the principal threat. Geography was the determinant.

It is a mistake, however, to see the Russian connection as a factor that diluted Cuban non-alignment, just as it would to interpret Tito's non-alignment as primarily anti-Moscow. The threat perception of each prominent non-aligned state, Yugoslavia or Cuba, and geopolitics, gave their foreign policy and diplomacy a tilt and nuance. Sometimes it could be an individual, certainly a popularly elected leader like Salvador Allende of Chile, strove to liberate Chilean foreign policy from its pro-American, past.

Thwarted at home Allende sought to restore his fortunes by departing on November 30 a fifteen-day foreign trip that took him to Mexcio, the United Nations, Algeria, Soviet Union and Cuba. What's more he defied the IMF Pro-Cuba and anti-IMF/ World Bank which was too much for the Chilean armed forces, big business and Washington. Allende defied the Army, the U.S., and the ruling elite - and he was no Castro. Chile had only two options - junta (pro-US) or a Cuban style uprising. The Chilean junta moved, observes Kissinger in the Years of Upheaval, to prevent Allende having his way.

With the Soviet troop pull-out from Cuba many a Latin American specialist anticipated a steady improvement in US-Cuba relations. But no. As a result, Cuban foreign policy has acquired a distinctly Latin American or regional emphasis. On Tuesday, Washington announced it would ease some restrictions, such as dollar remittances to Cuban families from migrants now working in America - up to 300 US dollars. Much more was expected when Mr. Clinton was re-elected. But Mr. Clinton has more urgent tasks on his personal agenda. A closer Castro-Clinton bhai-bhai understanding will have to wait, what with impeachment as item No. 1 on the House agenda. All the anti-Castro policies - economic blockade to isolation and assassination plots - have failed.

A Nobel Peace Prize for Fidel Castro? Do I see a hand go up? Meanwhile Castro builds socialism in one country defying the US and its policy to isolate him.


Hulftsdorp Hill

Editorial/Opinion Contents

Presented on the World Wide Web by Infomation Laboratories (Pvt.) Ltd.

Hosted By LAcNet

Commentary Archive

Please send your comments and suggestions on this web site to

The Sunday Times or to Information Laboratories (Pvt.) Ltd.