Emmanuel Yawe
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The biggest irony about the United States of America is that it considers its revolution of 1775 as the only legitimate revolution in the western hemisphere.The American Revolution was the result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in early American society and government, collectively referred to as the American Enlightenment.
Americans rejected the oligarchies common in aristocratic Europe at the time, championing instead the development of republicanism based on the Enlightenment understanding of liberalism. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a democratically-elected representative government responsible to the will of the people.
This was by all standards a progressive move not only for citizens of the US but for humanity in general. Unfortunately, the relationship between the country and Cuba has gone gaga since the Cubans led by Fidel Castro decided to take their destiny in their hands the same way Americans ousted the oligarchs from metropolitan Europe.
The two countries have a relationship dating back to 1898 long before the Castro-led revolution. At the end of the Spanish-American war, a defeated Spain signed away its rights to territories it had occupied for long — including Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam — over to the US, which subsequently granted Cuba its independence with the stipulation that the US could intervene in the country’s affairs if necessary. This clause was later struck out. But the American insistence that she be granted a perpetual lease on its naval base at Guantánamo Bay was not.
What the powerful and prosperous United States did to its poor and weak neighbour set the stage for the events that produced the Castro revolution. Cuba effectively became a backyard country reserved for the decadent dregs of American capitalism. Drugs, gambling, prostitution and homosexuality became the order of the day in Cuba. The American criminal gang popularly known as the mafia had an eye on the country too for they used Havana as a conference centre in 1946. Fidel Castro and his followers found the US domination and paternalism repulsive.
On January 1, 1959 he and his band of freedom fighters successfully overthrew the incompetent and corrupt government of General Fulgencio Batista. The United States immediately recognized the new regime. But Castro could not be deceived. He defied the US at every turn – and got away with it - to the admiration of other Latin Americans.
Few months after he took over power, Castro visited Washington and met with Vice President Richard Nixon. He was the toast of the media who found his olive green fatigues and endless speeches something spectacularly new and different. But the Americans underestimated the depth of Castro’s bitterness to the long history of exploitation against Cuba.
Castro’s government was moving at a speed that perplexed Americans. He seized private land, nationalized hundreds of private companies — including several local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations — and imposed heavy taxation on American products.
The early 1960s were very turbulent years for the revolutionary government of Castro. There were many subversive, top-secret U.S. attempts to topple the Cuban government. The most dramatic of these was the Bay of Pigs — the CIA’s botched attempt to overthrow Castro by training Cuban exiles for a ground attack. Between 1961 and 1963 according to Time magazine, “there were at least five plots to kill, maim or humiliate the Cuban leader using everything from exploding seashells to shoes dusted with chemicals to make his beard fall out. The Get Smart-like plans never worked and Castro’s Cuba soldiered on, angry as ever at the United States.”
In frustration, President Kennedy issued a permanent embargo against Cuba on Feb, 7 1962. He however made sure he had bought 1,200 Cuban produced cigars for his consumption before he did so. The U.S. strengthened its embargo rules in 1992 and again in 1996 with the Helms-Burton Act, which applied the embargo to foreign countries that traded with Cuba. The 50 year old embargo has almost brought the people to their knees but for their belief in the system they have created which has served them very well since 1959. And that is ironically the greatest achievement of the Cuban revolution. For a country as small as Cuba to have stood up to a giant like the US for this long is an achievement nobody thought was possible.
But beyond that, Cuba has gone on after 1959 to show the world that a society can be built on the solidarity of the human race and not on the basis of class, sex, religion, colour of the skin etc. Cuba was instrumental to the liberation of Angola. Cuban forces defeated those of Apartheid South Africa and thus demystified the belief that they were invincible. Black Africa owes Cuba a lot.
The equality of the human race is the greatest lesson the revolution of 1959 has thought the world. Through this, the country has achieved a real revolution in education, has produced miracles in health care, agriculture and many other fields of human endeavour.
When the embargo was slapped on Cuba in 1962, President Obama was barely a year old. The world has changed and the conditions under which the embargo was launched have also changed. It is amazing that America wants to enforce the embargo forever. One great thing President Obama can do for humanity is to lift the embargo now.
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