Chris Bertram was a bit naughty on Crooked Timber last Tuesday, putting up a post celebrating Cuba under Castro, or rather acknowledging that Castro was not quite the mad dictator of American propaganda. The result? A thread of over 300 comments filled with decent leftists and wingnuts denouncing him for his soft stance on tyranny. Ironically in the process they showed why Chris was right in saying that anti-Castro fanatics hate Castro less for his human rights abuses than for the simple fact that he hasn’t knuckled under, that half a century of US pressure has not been able to make Cuba get in line.
It also shows how dangerous it can be to look at human rights issues without taking into account the context in which they are reported. The best example of which has been the War on Iraq, in the runup to which claims about Saddam’s awful regime were plastered all over the media, some true, others not, all of which in the end served not to end those abuses and bring the perpetrators to justice. Instead it helped to justify the invasion and subsequent occupation, which has so far has already killed a million Iraqis.
It’s not hard to see that American concerns about Cuban human rights abuses serve the same goal. It’s also not hard to see that undemocratic as it might be, Cuba would be much worse off under any US-led attempt to “democratise” it, as the example of Haiti should make clear. Democracies can commit massive crimes as well and worse, US/EU-approved and imposed “liberal democracies” usually shaft their own populations. Would you rather have Cuban or US style healthcare?
If we denounce Cuban abuses we might feel good about ourselves, but this will not end them and worse may help create a worse situation. Only the Cuban people can liberate themselves.