Socialist Cuba: Slander and Reality

WORKERS WORLD
EDITORIAL
Socialist Cuba: Slander and reality
Published May 1, 2008 7:34 PM

http://www.workers.org/2008/editorials/cuba_0508/

An April 28 Washington Post editorial grudgingly admits the Cuban economy is
growing and life for Cuban workers is improving. It says, “Cuban President
Raúl Castro has introduced a handful of micro-reforms.” Cubans can “buy
cellphones, computers and microwave ovens.” The Post points out rightly that
the movement is growing, even in Congress, to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

But at a time when living conditions for U.S. workers—with incomes slashed
by job losses, pay cuts and shortened working hours—are sinking under the
weight of skyrocketing food and fuel prices, the Post diverts attention from
this bleak reality, as well as the fact that socialist Cuba is moving
forward. How? By pulling out the old and tired false charges that Cuba
imprisons 55 “dissidents” and suppresses those who plead their case, the
“Ladies in White.”

The Post ignored the Cuban Foreign Ministry statement about the U.S. State
Department’s latest creation: “One of the groupings that have been
particularly sponsored, backed, and financed by the U.S. Interest Section
has been precisely the so-called ‘Ladies in White,’ which has currently been
chosen by president George W. Bush and his special services as a spearhead
against Cuba. ... Only in the course of the present year, 2008, the U.S.
government has allocated 45.7 million dollars to pay to its mercenary groups
in Cuba and put up provocations. ...” These are U.S. tax dollars misused to
attack Cuba.

Can it also be that the Post editors missed the front page New York Times
article (April 23) reporting that 2.3 million people suffer in U.S. prisons?
Quite a number are internationally recognized political prisoners—including
five Cubans who tried to prevent loss of life by observing Miami-based
paramilitaries planning violence against Cuba. The Cuban 5 now serve
life-plus terms in federal prisons.

Did they miss that the police who killed Sean Bell were acquitted this week?
That people of color, immigrants, white workers and youth are brutalized
daily by capitalist state agents, from cops to “homeland security” agents to
neo-Nazi/Klan/Minuteman racists?

While the life expectancy for U.S. women is declining, the life expectancy
for Cuban women is lengthening, meeting or exceeding that of the U.S.—an
astounding accomplishment for a small developing country.

Health care in Cuba is free and universal. Health clinics have been
modernized and high-tech clinic facilities are being constructed. Cuba
shares its medical accomplishments by sending doctors around the world,
building hospitals, clinics and medical schools, and training doctors from
other countries.

Education is universal and free, and Cuba has the highest literacy rate in
the Americas. In the U.S., an increasingly privatized education system
provides substandard education for the working class, particularly in
oppressed communities. Schools in Cuba have been renovated, while they
crumble in cities across the U.S.

The Post scoffs that Cuban “state workers may get deeds to apartments they
have been renting for decades.” But getting a paid deed after decades of
paying a very low rent might seem like a better idea for the one out of
every 194 U.S. homebuyers who received a foreclosure notice in the first
three months of 2008.

From banks to General Motors, which announced 3,500 additional layoffs on
April 29, more U.S. workers are losing their jobs. Meanwhile, Cuban
unemployment is only 1.8 percent.

As the 50th anniversary of the Cuban socialist revolution nears on Jan. 1,
2009, it is important to review the relentless attempts by U.S. imperialism
to turn back the clock: direct military attacks like the “Bay of Pigs”
invasion; covert terror bombings of department stores, hotels, an airliner
and other buildings in Cuba and other countries; an economic blockade
designed to starve the Cuban people into submission; biological warfare
against economic targets and human beings; unsuccessful assassination
attempts against Fidel Castro; and funding “dissidents” who can be used in a
propaganda campaign to hide the profound and widespread support for the
Cuban revolution.

Developing the potential of human beings is socialist Cuba’s priority, not
profit and exploitation. Cuba’s accomplishments are well known and
internationally acknowledged.

Socialism—even socialism attacked every minute by a giant imperialist
neighbor to the north—improves life for workers. State Department slanders
published as Washington Post editorials can’t erase that.

Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php