Carter & Cuba-WW Edit'l Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 23, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: CARTER AND CUBA President Bush says he intends to deliver a major speech in Miami on May 20 that will announce measures to tighten the blockade against Cuba, putting more restrictions on both trade and travel to that country. The bellicose attitude of this administration towards a country struggling to maintain its splendid socialist achievements in health, medicine, housing and employment for all is a serious threat. Solidarity with Cuba by the progressive movement here is more important than ever. At the same time Bush was announcing his intentions, Jimmy Carter was in Havana--the first former U.S. president to visit Cuba. He took a different tack, calling for an easing of the sanctions, which of course would be welcomed by the Cuban people. Carter also used an address broadcast on Cuban television and radio to make a strong appeal to the government to allow opposition political parties. "Cuba has adopted a socialist government where one political party dominates, and people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements," he said. He backed opposition demands that a referendum be allowed on political rights and on allowing Cubans to own small businesses. He promised that if Cuba changed its political system, "Cubans, not foreigners," would "decide the future of this country." The Cuban Revolution is very deeply rooted among the people and has little to fear from the small dissident movement. Nevertheless, the progressive movement here should not be taken off guard by Carter's remarks. His implied promise that the United States would respect Cuba's sovereignty if it changed its political system in the direction of bourgeois democracy flies in the face of reality. Many examples can be given of U.S. subversion of governments chosen in multi-party elections, especially in Latin America- -Guatemala and Chile are only the most dramatic examples. But we don't even have to go back in history. Just look at what happened in Venezuela last month. It proved that the imperialists are as anti-democratic as ever when the political mobilization of the people is seen as threatening their profit interests. The government of President Hugo Chavez was overthrown for 48 hours in a coup led by a group of generals and the heads of Fedecamera--the chamber of commerce. Chavez had been elected in a landslide that represented the repudiation of the old political parties by the masses. His government had conducted seven elections in the last three years--not only to fill political posts but also to establish a National Constituent Assembly that rewrote the Constitution, broadening the rights of the masses. Every step taken by the Chavez government had been ratified by the masses through elections. The right-wing political parties representing the corrupt elite have continued to function. The means of communication- -radio, television, newspapers--are totally in the hands of the right. They tried to facilitate the coup by disseminating lies that Chavez had resigned, when in fact he was kidnapped by the generals. The coup failed because millions of people didn't believe the big business media. They surrounded the army barracks and the presidential palace and forced the coup leaders to flee. And what did the great "democratic" government of the United States, that supposedly respects elections, do during this critical period? The Bush administration publicly congratulated the coup leaders. There is a growing body of evidence to show that privately it helped stage-manage the takeover. Otto Reich, the right-wing Cuban American who is now assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, is acknowledged to have been in phone communication with the leaders the morning of the coup. And the April 16 New York Times carried a virtual admission of the U.S. role. "We were not discouraging people" from making the coup, said "a Defense Department official who is involved in the development of policy toward Venezuela." Even after all these years of material difficulties caused by the U.S. blockade, the socialist government in Cuba doesn't have much to fear from the internal opposition. But the development of Cuban socialism has been greatly affected by the enormous menace of U.S. imperialism. Invasions, sabotage, bombings of hotels and airplanes, nuclear threats, over 100 attempts to assassinate President Fidel Castro, attacks on Cuba's right to trade with the world--all this has been part of a reality not mentioned by Jimmy Carter. It says a lot about the opposition that none of this seems to bother them that much; that they gladly accept support from the government responsible for endless attacks on their country. There is dialog and debate in Cuba. Major decisions are discussed in the elected National Assembly--and really important changes are debated in all the mass organizations. Decisions have been made that were later rescinded after much discussion--like the free farmers' markets of the mid- 1980s, which were abandoned after it was shown that millionaires were springing up, not the farmers themselves but the middlemen who brought their produce to market. It was odious to the Cuban people that a market speculator could earn so much more than a worker, even skilled doctors, teachers and administrators. The progressive movement in this country knows that while people here may be able to vote for different candidates, the results of capitalist elections are always the same: the rich win. It should reject Carter's preaching to Cuba on democracy, while taking advantage of the attention focused on the blockade to campaign more vigorously than ever against it. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. Subscribe wwnews-on@wwpublish.com. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-05.19.02-06:47:41-8768