To Fidel Castro by Pablo Neruda

[Pompey Bum]

Well, Fidel was an inteligent man, I do not think he ever believed he killed people to kill ideas ,rather the men who fought for ideas that he saw were against his vision of Revolution.

Yes, by killing them. But when you exterminate dissident journalists you also exterminate their ideas. Fewer ideas, fewer dissidents, more power for his family. He was an intelligent man, though, and a cultured one. Pol Pot would have had him butchered.

Fidel, as most revolutionaries, never stop fighting. In the case of Cuba, of course, they had to keep fighting for much longer than necessary. That was his mindset, sort like those former athletes who keep trash talking to each other on TV - they keep playing.

It was probably more like the idea of permanent revolution, which was then being practiced by Mao. That's another good way to stay in power indefinitely.

I think his logic was more in like "It is illegal to be against us" and with time this softned a lot.

According to ABC's This Week with George Stephanopolis (a sympathetic liberal news program), the repression of dissidents has actually worsened since Raul has been in charge. Apparently the only only thing that's softened has been American foreign policy. The party may be over though. We'll see.

He was of course contraditory, his ideal is one thing, his pratical side another. I do not enjoy, aprove, defend (if I justify, this does not mean I think the justification make it ethical, only helps me to understand why) torture or murder, but the overal simplification of Fidel as Hero or Monster is a mistake. He was both.

Fine, to understand is not to condone. But Mao was (and still is) a hero to millions, and he was one of the greatest monsters in history. Being both means nothing. It is important to speak the truth about what Castro was. Mao, too. People should know.

Did I tell you I was conceived on the night Batista fell? It's a funny thing to know, but I do.

[Red Terror]

Fidel Castro tortured and murdered dissidents because it gave him more power if he extirminated their ideas. It is circular to argue that the state to which he and Batista reduced Cuba proves that Cuban society was at a state in which murder and torture were necessary components. They weren't. They were just conveniences to which two killers availed themselves (three if you count Raul).

Oh hell, I may as well have breakfast now.

Where is your proof that Castro tortured anybody??? You got your "proof" from some corporate news outlet or the U.S. government??? ... Oh, the same people who were loudly claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and American troops would be welcomed as liberators??? Nice propaganda!!!



Read, pause, and reflect Dr. Michael Parenti's ingenious observations!

Excerpt From his book Blackshirts And Reds:

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.

Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.
Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.
Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . . These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

Decentralization vs. Survival
For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”

Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.
By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.

The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. “Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history.”
Stalin’s prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.
All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.

The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were “not a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands–the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, “liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China.”
In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).
Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it.

[Ecurb]

It's easy for us Americans to criticize the evil acts committed by others (like Castro). Battling our own evils is more difficult, but, potentially, more effective. We Americans may actually be able to stop drone assassinations, free some of the 2 million citizens currently imprisoned in our country, and prevent our country from torturing people.

This neither ameliorates nor justifies any of the wicked acts by which Castro (or other foreign dictators) repressed people. Nonetheless, perhaps caring for our own wounds is more noble than picking at the scabs of other people's.

[Ecurb]

duplicate

[Pompey Bum]

It's easy for us Americans to criticize the evil acts committed by others (like Castro). Battling our own evils is more difficult, but, potentially, more effective. We Americans may actually be able to stop drone assassinations, free some of the 2 million citizens currently imprisoned in our country, and prevent our country from torturing people.

I agree in principle that looking to our own affairs ought to be a priority. We are however linked to Cuba by treaty and (whether anyone likes it or not) by proximate geography and therefore as a matter of national security. Our affairs and their affairs are awkwardly joined at the hip. The diplomatic situation may or may not survive the current political tides. But it is also likely that your wishlist of curbing drone strikes and emptying the prisons will be tossed into the fire and go up in smoke. But Trump has been making some noise recently about not torturing people, which I see as a step in the right direction. If we continue in the current thaw with Cuba, it is at least conceivable that stronger economic ties could provide some leverage in getting Raul to behave. That didn't work with China, though, and I'm not holding my breath.

Nonetheless, perhaps caring for our own wounds is more noble than picking at the scabs of other people's.

It's important to speak truth to history. And if the human rights situation truly is getting worse under Raul Castro, then we should acknowledge it. We overlook an awful lot with China, though, (or whoever looks doesn't talk), so again I am not optimistic. Right now a lot depends on how much pressure Trump wants to put on Cuba over human rights in order to get other kinds of concessions. Also remember that Raul is 85. There's going to have to be another change pretty soon.

[Ecurb]

As a Christian, Pompey, you probably believe that we are all evil, and in need of redemption. Neruda's poem seems a more fitting tribute to Fidel Castro's death (atrocities notwithstanding) than screeds about his wicked deeds. Fidel Castro was a seminal figure in the world, and beloved of many (although hated by many, as well, with good reason). History has plenty of time to write the true story. His story is a human story, filled with ambition and courage, as well as narcissism, lack of compassion, and violence. Perhaps his death is a time to reflect on his humanity -- no longer with us -- rather than his inhumanity, which, upon his demise, is eternal.

[seerseenbyseein]

I seem to recall that Pope John Paul went to Cuba before he died and sat down with Castro and the two of them had a heart to heart talk. I recall also that when that same (great) pope went to Austria and the former Nazi who was then prime minister (or do they call the high guy president too?) Kurt Something or Other, tried to chum up to him, John walked away from him.

Pompey, I think John Paul knew Castro a hell of a lot better than you do.

[Pompey Bum]

As a Christian, Pompey, you probably believe that we are all evil, and in need of redemption. Neruda's poem seems a more fitting tribute to Fidel Castro's death (atrocities notwithstanding) than screeds about his wicked deeds. Fidel Castro was a seminal figure in the world, and beloved of many (although hated by many, as well, with good reason). History has plenty of time to write the true story. His story is a human story, filled with ambition and courage, as well as narcissism, lack of compassion, and violence. Perhaps his death is a time to reflect on his humanity -- no longer with us -- rather than his inhumanity, which, upon his demise, is eternal.

Actually my view is that the human potential for evil grows exponentially when it is hidden in dark places. Ignoring Castro's crimes only serves the next torturer-killer at the expense of the next victims. The same is true of Batista. It has nothing to do with hate. It has to do with facing the things human beings are capable of doing to one another without flinching or without pretending. It is easier, of course, to turn one's head and sing a happy song. But that is neither a just approach nor, I think, a particularly safe one.

Pompey, I think John Paul knew Castro a hell of a lot better than you do.

Okay. I mean, I find your opinion sanctimonious and irrelevant, but you are certainly welcome to it.

[seerseenbyseein]

Actually my view is that the human potential for evil grows exponentially when it is hidden in dark places. Ignoring Castro's crimes only serves the next torturer-killer at the expense of the next victims. The same is true of Batista. It has nothing to do with hate. It has to do with facing the things human beings are capable of doing to one another without without pretending. It is easier, of course, to turn one's head and sing a happy song. But that is neither a just approach nor, I think, a particularly safe one.



Okay. I mean, I find your opinion sanctimonious and irrelevant, but you are certainly welcome to it.

Sanctimonious? Goodness man, you're the Christian, not me! I respect John Paul not because he was a Catholic pope; the vibration of the man spoke and still speaks to me.

As for Castro--I have to go on the same gut feeling grounds, mainly because he has been so demonized so long as a matter of national policy in this country and many others...I mean, do I take Alex Jones's word for it or my own tummy's?

[YesNo]

Where is your proof that Castro tortured anybody??? You got your "proof" from some corporate news outlet or the U.S. government??? ... Oh, the same people who were loudly claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and American troops would be welcomed as liberators??? Nice propaganda!!!

I would like to see some evidence as well. I have been wondering for decades why the US has not established more open relationships with Cuba, but my knowledge of the events is sketchy and my trust in what I hear is low anyway.

It seemed clear to me that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when the Bush administration kept insisting it did and that is because the UN inspectors could not find those weapons. That should have been the end of the matter, but instead we had a war.

[Dreamwoven]

I would second YesNo's post immediately above.

[Pompey Bum]

DW: I no longer respond to Red Terror's posts because I believe he is a minor. I assume adults can handle political discussions, but I don't want to involve children. I should really put him on my ignore list. There, I just did.

YesNo is on my ignore list, too. That means I normally can't see his posts. I see a white bar instead, although there is a button that allows me to view the post if I suspect he is up to something (as he is now). He knows all this. He's just trying to make a fight because he is angry with me.

Castro's human rights record is well documented. I'll leave a couple of links for you, but you could easily do this for yourself. The real issue not whether the abuses occurred but if they were justified given Castro's achievements and historical context. My view is that they were not, and I have given my reasons above ad nauseam. You are obviously free to make up your own mind. I have no problem with disagreeing with you or anyone else on the point. But I am not going to remain silent.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/...ord-repression

http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...129-story.html

[Red Terror]

The link to human rights watch does not even mention torture. It mentions the following: "During Castro’s rule, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire generations were denied basic political freedoms." This list is hardly indicative of genocide!

The second one where it shows Colonel Rojas's execution is baloney. Colonel Rojas was a murderer and tortured people. He was sentenced to death at a summary trial after the battle of Santa Clara in which Che presided.

The third link of the Chicago Tribune also does not mention torture and is an opinion piece by a right-wing nutjob columnist. Bye-bye!!!

DW: I no longer respond to Red Terror's posts because I believe he is a minor. I assume adults can handle political discussions, but I don't want to involve children. I should really put him on my ignore list. There, I just did.

YesNo is on my ignore list, too. That means I normally can't see his posts. I see a white bar instead, although there is a button that allows me to view the post if I suspect he is up to something (as he is now). He knows all this. He's just trying to make a fight now because he is angry with me.

Castro's human rights record is well documented. I'll leave a couple of links for you, but you could easily do this for yourself. The real issue not whether the abuses occurred but if they were justified given Castro's achievements and historical context. My view is that they were not, and I have given my reasons above ad nauseam. You are obviously free to make up your own mind. I have no problem with disagreeing with you or anyone else on the point. But I am not going to remain silent.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/...ord-repression

http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...129-story.html

[Dreamwoven]

DW: I no longer respond to Red Terror's posts because I believe he is a minor. I assume adults can handle political discussions, but I don't want to involve children. I should really put him on my ignore list. There, I just did.

YesNo is on my ignore list, too. That means I normally can't see his posts. I see a white bar instead, although there is a button that allows me to view the post if I suspect he is up to something (as he is now). He knows all this. He's just trying to make a fight now because he is angry with me.

Castro's human rights record is well documented. I'll leave a couple of links for you, but you could easily do this for yourself. The real issue not whether the abuses occurred but if they were justified given Castro's achievements and historical context. My view is that they were not, and I have given my reasons above ad nauseam. You are obviously free to make up your own mind. I have no problem with disagreeing with you or anyone else on the point. But I am not going to remain silent.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/...ord-repression

http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...129-story.html

I didn't know there was such a thing as an ignore list, still less how it works. Not sure what the point of it would be.

[Pompey Bum]

I didn't know there was such a thing as an ignore list, still less how it works. Not sure what the point of it would be.

It gets rid of people you don't wish to know anymore. You always have the option of looking, but after a while you stop caring--you just let them fuss. It's actually quite effective.