Cuba Lifting the Veil

© 2016 Carlyle MacDuff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/19/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6955-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6956-7 (e)

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Contents

Introduction

Fidel Castro Ruz

Raul Castro Ruz

Dr. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

The Committee for the Defence of the Revolution

Propaganda, Symbolism and the Cult of Personality

Jose Marti and other Revolutionaries

Living Standards

Education

Medical Services

Friends and Allies

The USA

Sport

What of the Future?

WHAT MAKES CUBA SO DIFFERENT AND

INTRIGUING FOR THOSE IN THE FREE WORLD

IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

THIS BOOK EXPLAINS WHAT MAKES LIFE SO DIFFICULT FOR CUBANS WHO SEE NO CHANGE AFTER BEING RULED FOR OVER FIFTY SEVEN YEARS BY FIDEL AND RAUL CASTROS CONTROLING COMMUNIST REGIME.

I have lived inside the Monster and know its entrails

Jose Marti

Apostle of Cuba

Dedicated to the People of Cuba

Introduction

Since 2013 the free western world appears to be increasingly developing a view that change is taking place in Cuba. That hopeful opinion is held largely by people who observe the politics of the island from the outside looking in. The author spends most of his time at home in Cuba and consequently is in daily contact with the reality within the island and observes that for its people there is little change to perceive. The key question is whether the Cubans are suffering from mass myopia or those who are outside looking in are suffering misapprehension.

Cubans are denied what is perhaps the least recognized but possibly the most important right for those who live in the free world. That is simply the right to openly disagree with the opinions of others and especially with political viewpoints. The Castro communist regime rigidly demands conformity to their view, no other is permitted. That imposition has not changed and there is no indication whatever of any such change being introduced or anticipated. In 2002, then President Fidel Castro added a clause to the Constitution making socialism ‘permanent and irrevocable’ leaving Cubans without hope of change or future choice.

The author who holds a British passport is married to a Cuban and their home is situated well away from the popular resorts. He has travelled the 1300 km long beautiful island from the Roncali Lighthouse on tip of the Guanahacabibes Peninsula in the west to Baracoa in the east, the point at which Christopher Columbus landed in November 1492. Doing so has given him a great respect and affection for the people of Cuba and a love of its beauty. His experience enables him to describe in this book the reality of Cuba in the 21st century, not that which the relaxing holiday maker or tourist may perceive at tourist resorts concentrating on providing the all-inclusive four ‘B’s’ of the Beach, the Bedroom, the Booze and the Buffet.

Tourists enjoying a respite from busy life in free western societies in the popular resorts of Varadero, Holquin, Cayo Coco, Trinidad or Vinales or pursuing the wider tourist experience of the back-packing routes including Maria la Gordo, Pinar del Rio, Soroa, San Antonio de Los Banos, the Zapata peninsula, Cienfuegos, Camaguey and Baracoa will often as a consequence of talking to Cubans providing them with services in hotels, coaches and casa particulars (bed and breakfast) gain a little knowledge of life in Cuba beneath the tourist resort veneer for the average Cuban and with that experience may thirst for more.

With very strictly controlled access of foreign media, Cuba which was listed in 2008 the year of resignation by Fidel Castro as one of the ten most censored countries in the world has strictly limited the flow of information from Cuba to the outside world since 1959 and this book is written to fill at least in part, that void. Today’s younger generations fortunately have only records of the Soviet communist empire which played such a significant world role in the 20th century, but should note that of the thirteen nations occupied by the USSR when liberated and then given the opportunity for democratic elections, none elected communist governments. Political history demonstrates that the only way for a communist government to rule is by establishing a One Party State with no options available to those subjected to such government. Cuba was until the implosion of the USSR a faithful minion and ally most obviously demonstrated by hosting Russian nuclear weapons and until 1989 the Russian controlled USSR had significant military presence in Cuba which acted as a willing satellite utilizing military equipment supplied by Russia in thirteen countries mainly African and Arab. More than twenty five years have passed including the so-called ‘special period’ which followed the Soviet Empire implosion in 1989/90 and when food shortages became so acute that already meagre rations were further reduced. However the Castro family controlled regime still insistently pursues without any perceptible change, its myopic dream of a permanent one party socialist state, having no concern about the people of Cuba experiencing what Winston Churchill so accurately described when saying that: the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

The author believes that another Cuban revolution was almost inevitable and necessary during the 1950’s in Cuba which was then controlled by the Batista dictatorship which had achieved power in a coup and which operated in cahoots with the US Mafia under the leadership in Havana of Meyer Lansky. It is his view that had Fidel Castro remained true to his supposedly original views – in 1952 he was a candidate for the Orthodox party until the election was cancelled by Batista and if he had in 1959 following a period of military rule necessary to establish stable administration, law and order, held open free elections, the Cuba of today would be very different and Fidel Castro like Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela would have earned a similarly honoured place in world history for freeing his people and introducing real democracy. But Fidel Castro in his craving for control and personal power chose otherwise, he chose communism and dictatorship.

There are those who have various degrees of interest in the history and myths surrounding the leaders of the revolution and their control of the one party political system which has ruled the island nation for over fifty seven years. Disciples of that communist system may recall former President Fidel Castro in retirement usually termed El Comandante explaining around 2010 in his then daily column ‘Reflections’ in Granma the official daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, that to him socialism and communism are one and the same and describing the system in Cuba as ‘socialismo’, this book may assist them in their endeavors if seeking the truth.

Those socialist faithful who make the pilgrimage to worship at the shrine of Dr. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara at Santa Clara dutifully wearing the much publicised image of their hero on their T-shirts may well dismiss this book as a capitalist plot written to decry progressive thinking. They may even admire the large political hoardings promoting the much extolled advantages of ‘Los Ideas’ apparently emanating from the fertile depths of the octogenarian minds of the Executive Council of the Communist Party of Cuba. Perhaps appropriate advice for them is to try living on the Cuban average earnings equivalent to $20.68 per month or if over 65, a pension of $8 per month for such is the real measure of the success of the system they apparently admire and advocate for others if not perhaps for themselves

Socialist academic thinkers often explain the misdemeanors and incompetence of a variety of socialist/communist governments as being a consequence of failure to pursue true socialism. They will talk of such governments including those of the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Syria, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi and Cuba as practising state capitalism or of deviating from true pure Marx and Leninist theory. For those who live in the real world, socialist practice by such regimes is reality rather than adherence to the imaginary paradise of such thinkers and to the lovers of freedom and democracy those forms of socialism in practice have proven to be ugly.

Unwitting tourists visiting Cuba may fly there on Cuban airlines owned by the military and flown by military pilots, land at militarily controlled airports, transfer to military owned hotels on military owned coaches, smoke Cuban cigars and drink Cuban rum both produced by military owned companies, and purchase their souvenirs at military owned shops. They may also rent a car from a military owned agency and travel the island making stops for fuel at military owned gas stations all without awareness that the various ‘companies’ purporting to be commercial are all in fact, subsidiaries of GAESA the Cuban military holding company.

Current President Raul Castro Ruz unlike older big brother Fidel who graduated in Law at Havana, did not complete his University education and unlike those intellectuals who similarly to the hairy revolutionaries of the Sierra Maestra possess a beard to scratch whilst ruminating, proved unable to sprout a decent one but in compensation and to appear more mature, adopted smoking a pipe, a practice he later abandoned along with a moustache. He is perhaps best described as intelligent, devious, and possessing in abundance what are known in the western world as street smarts. Humour however is not one of his perceivable characteristics. Raul was a committed communist long prior to Fidel joining the Party having toured parts of the communist controlled Eastern Europe in 1953 observing the power and control of its leaders and initiated a long and fruitful relationship with the Soviets and the KGB. Whereas Fidel is remembered as the leader of the revolution of 1959 and as the much photographed and filmed raised forefinger wagging demagogue addressing the proletarian masses in Revolution Square, Havana for seemingly endless hours under the hot sun of