CUBA

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Revolution should mark the occasion for a more critical appraisal of Cuban-style socialism/communism than was given in your July 27 issue ("Events; Revolution")

The conditions created under Spanish colonial exploitation and perpetuated by a rawly opportunistic and corrupt ruling class itself under the thumbs of Norteamericano gangsters and businessmen did make life indefensibly miserable for the majority of Cubans. The present regime has made astounding and laudible progress in eliminating hunger, disease, illiteracy and social injustice.

The denial of civil liberties under the revolution has however not been necessary or justifiable. Arbitrary imprisonments, government takeover of the press and Cuba's own officially sanctioned version of "love-it-or-leave-it" (the "leaving" portion of which excludes 16 to 26 year-old males) are violations of human rights.

The fate of the press alone is a serious matter. One of the hemisphere's oldest papers, the conservative El Diario del Marion, was the last independent to be forced under. The revolution's heros engaged in suppression found El Diario difficult to sink because it had a reputation for responsibility and generous employment terms for its workers. Miguel Quevedo, whom Fidel of the Fifties embraced, and Francesco Pares, the editors of Bohemia Libre, were forced to publish in exile for a refugee readership. Apparently something about the name was appealing because the government now publishes a Bohemia Libre also.

Newspapers, and radio and television stations, many of them former victims of Batista's censorship, were simply expropriated. The original ground for such expropriations was that mere ownership of the press by some unfairly denied others an opportunity to express their viewpoint. Consequently, instead of a spectrum of viewpoints which could at worst be called middle-class, Cuba's press has only one government line. Where could a writer living in a country which has been the victim of foreign interventionists express outrage over the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia? Insipid thought control becomes absurd. Cubans are instructed that Ernest Hemingway exploited them because he made money from writing The Old Man and the Sea.

This paper recently expressed understandably grave concerns over the possibility that a Florida Supreme Court ruling, if upheld by the federal court, would require newspapers to give representatives of viewpoints opposing editorial statements equal opportunity to reply. Such concerns would be trivial for the staff of some hypothetical Cuban Crimson publishing under far stricter controls.

Is it only malcontents, Batista's scoundrels and prospective Watergate burglarers that arrive in Florida, often by dangerous means, with only the clothes on their backs and a suitcase? Those expressing the intention to leave had their property confiscated and were forced to work in agriculture until their departure months or years later. The standard argument is that they are the middle-class. They're sore because they've been forced to give up their cherished belongings and "bourgeoisie liberties" for a better Cuba. Among them are former supporters of Fidel Castro.

Castro has had the support of the Cuban people in what he's done. Yet he had even more support when he still advocated a return to the Constitution of 1940. Overwhelming relief swept over most Cubans when Batista fled; Castro was popular enough to be supported in almost any course.

The assumptions of revolutionary action, especially those in conflict with "bourgeoisie liberties," should be examined. An appraisal of social and political movements should not ignore the degree to which individual and minority rights have been sacrificed, nor should it ignore the extent to which cultural and linguistic entities are forceably submerged or eliminated. The suppression of non-Mandarin and non-Russian speaking peoples by the Soviet Union and China and the suppression of the press in Cuba in the name of Socialist progress cannot be reconciled with humanistic values that transcend ideological arguments. The Crimson should address itself to this also.

--George Bittlingmayer