A death in Cuba exposes business as usual

Posted By José R. Cárdenas Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - 4:30 PM Share

Sadly, the tragic death of another Cuban dissident hunger striker will not change conditions in that island-prison nor provoke governments to reassess their historical indulgence of the Castro regime's crimes. Business as usual will continue.

In fact, this week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is in Cuba promoting business opportunities for Brazilian companies. She plans no meetings with Cuban dissidents.

But the Jan19 death of 31-year-old dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza will not be in vain. Indeed, when decent people arrive in Cuba to pick through the rubble left by the most oppressive regime this hemisphere has ever seen, his sacrifice -- and that of thousands of Cuban martyrs before him -- will be rightly honored on Cuban soil.

But if there is one immediate purpose that the tragic death of Wilman Villar can serve, it is to put the definitive lie to the currently fashionable meme that Cuba, under Raúl Castro, "is changing."

For example, according to the Associated Press, Cuba just wrapped up a "dramatic year of economic change." The BBC informs us, "Cuba expands free-market reforms," while Reuters adds, "Cuba to free 2,900 in sweeping amnesty."

Frankly, the only thing sweeping Cuba these days -- besides the ongoing state repression -- is the hyperbole in foreign correspondents' dispatches.

I have dealt with Cuba's smoke-and-mirrors reforms in this space before, but to briefly summarize, all interested observers need to know about Cuban "reforms" are two things:

They signify no new recognition of the inalienable rights of the Cuban people by the regime. "Allowing" a few new bits of heavily circumscribed individual economic freedoms is hardly indicative of fundamental change. The relationship between state and citizen remains the same -- although instead of controlling 100 percent of the economy, the regime will now control 99.5 percent.

Secondly, recent changes are not meant to reform the system but to save the system. Allowing Cubans to repair children's dolls outside the purview of the state does not mean Cuba is on the road to a free market; it means the regime is looking for new ways to generate revenue through confiscatory taxes of limited private economic activity.

Raul Castro himself serves as the best spokesman that the regime is not contemplating any kind of fundamental reform. Speaking recently at a party conference, he said, "There has been no shortage of criticism and exhortations by those who have confused their intimate desires with reality, deluding themselves that this conference would consecrate the beginning of the dismantling of the political and social system the revolution has fought for more than half a century."

To be sure, the hyperbole surrounding recent changes in Cuba has an ulterior motive. It is meant to apply pressure on U.S. policymakers to make unilateral changes in U.S. policy, because Cuba is ostensibly "reforming." Thankfully, the Obama administration so far hasn't taken the bait. In fact, last September, the President took the matter head-on, saying, "They [the Castro regime] certainly have not been aggressive enough when it comes to liberating political prisoners and giving people the opportunity to speak their minds."

Indeed, at a time when no quarter is being given to undemocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, the suggestion that the U.S. should lessen pressure on an undemocratic regime ninety miles from our shores strikes a wholly discordant note and is unlikely to be entertained by any serious policymaker. The Cuban people deserve no less than what the peoples of those regions deserve: the freedom to live their lives as they see fit. Clearly, that concept was as alien to Muammar al-Qaddafi as it is to the Castro brothers -- which is why they deserve the same fate.

ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images

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SARTOPOEUS

11:13 PM ET

February 1, 2012

I wonder what you think is change then?

With the beginnings of private ownership, statements about need for more dialogue within the party and the inescapable fact that most of the leadership is heavily aged. What makes you so certain that Cuba is still a static system. I don't find your examination of this convincing.
In fact it seems to me your blog post just exposes more of the same from power players in our own government.
Not that I seek to say Cuba is a sterling example of reform, but the party is indeed talking about term limits.
I'm just hoping that does happen.

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-28-CB-Cuba-Communist-Party-Conference/id-1f0cf43218b24c319bcdbbb5d05648e1

 

RICHARD CHEESEMAN

11:55 PM ET

February 1, 2012

Indeed nothing has changed ...

... in the US empire's campaign of propaganda lies against Cuba.

This latest manufactured "martyr," the unfortunate Mr Villar who died while imprisoned, is a perfect case in point. Lauded to the skies and supposedly mourned by the US imperial regime, its vassal allies and its servile, ultra-conformist media, Mr Villar appears in the empire's narrative as a martyr to freedom.

In reality, (as the AP belatedly reports his wife admitting), Mr Villar was jailed not for a political crime, but for assaulting her in public and then resisting his subsequent arrest, while drunk. He only joined the US-funded opposition after his arrest, and his supposed "50 day hunger strike" somehow took place between December 29 and his death on January 19.

One wonders what exactly Mr Villar was a martyr to? Presumably his US patrons consider that in the act for which he was arrested he was striking a blow for the freedom of drunken wife-beaters everywhere.

What is really grotesque about the sad case of Mr Villar is that even after this particular media fabrication has already been exposed as bogus, the fakery nevertheless continues to feature as pseudo-fact in cynical imperialist discourse like this article above. The propaganda lies are so thickly encrusted that reality never peeps through.

 

MJKT

5:09 AM ET

February 2, 2012

Authoritarian Cuba more dangerous than authoritarian China?

It seems as though we treat authoritarian Cuba as more dangerous and menacing to the United States than authoritarian China. With China we have huge and open trade. Our government is always trying to get the Chinese military to increase ties with the US military. We are constantly engaged with China on nearly every level. Does China have no issues with dissidents? Is the Chinese government making steps toward democratic reform?

Yet tiny little Cuba which is no threat to the US is shunned with nearly no economic or diplomatic relationship with the United States. We have the same policy toward Cuba we've had for over 50 years. Gee, just any day now it's finally going to work! Right?

If the US is only interested in human rights and democracy in Cuba, why does our relationship with China not mirror our relationship with Cuba? My guess is that the US is less interested in human rights and democracy in Cuba and more interested in...

1) Cuba allowing US corporations to do business there, and
2) US presidential politics. US presidents need to win Florida to get elected. Therefore, they have to hold US foreign policy hostage to a small number of Cuban exiles in Florida who are hell bent on punishing the Castros and have just enough votes to make a difference on who gets elected President of the United States.

Cuba is no threat to the United States. We need to scrap our very much failed policy of isolating the people of Cuba. We need to end right now the US government's taking away the right of American citizens of free association and travel with the country and people of Cuba. It's twisted that the land of the free limits the freedom of its own people in order to try to encourage freedom in Cuba. Is the regime in Cuba a good regime? No, absolutely not. Are they any worse than the regimes of many other nations with whom we've over the decades we've engaged (such as, oh, say the Soviet Union)? No.

 

JMWAVE

11:45 PM ET

February 2, 2012

Death in Cuba

Foreign Policy should be more concerned about the 76 people killed by Posada Carriles as well as by that terrorist's roaming Miami after being convicted by the courts in Panama for his involvement in the plans to blow up an auditorium full of students. Panama has reinstated his conviction. He is also wanted in Venezuela for his crimes. Talk about death in Cuba? 20,000 plus killed by Batista and his Miami cronies in seven short years? FP should also be concerned about the death under prison and custody of US citizens here in the good old USA as well as the hunger strikes going on in US prisons. What is more, the violations of human rights by the USA in Guantanamo, Cuba and elsewhere. Of course is better to use Cuba as a decoy. As long as this failed policy continues the USA will continue to have international problems and moral ineptitude. No one except those who benefit form an inhumane and failed policy believes the kind of decrepit propaganda about Cuba exposed on US media.
Milton Sanchez-Parodi

 

KATELIN

9:35 PM ET

February 25, 2012

So shocking. This seems to

So shocking. This seems to happen time after time and keeps being swept under the rug. Mothers Ring

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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