A Tale of Two Countries
On April 14, Latin American officials will gather in Colombia for the sixth Summit of the Americas. But the region’s oldest dictatorship will not be represented, to the delight of Washington and the dismay of Hugo Chávez. Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos did not invite Cuba to the summit, citing a lack of “consensus” among the other countries, though he did meet with Raúl Castro last month in Havana and said that “we really appreciate [Castro’s] desire to take part in the meeting.” Santos has worked hard to improve bilateral relations with leftist regimes in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador, while also maintaining warm ties with the United States, so the decision on Cuba was a sensitive one. In the end, he managed to make the right choice without incurring too much diplomatic blowback from the Chávez bloc.
As it happens, Colombia and Cuba are each marking a significant anniversary this year. Ten years ago, both countries were at a crossroads. The South American nation was holding a presidential election amid terrible violence from drug-running Marxist rebels and paramilitaries. Meanwhile, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá was receiving global praise for his Varela Project, a petition drive aimed at forcing real democratic change within the Communist constitution.
A decade later, Colombia is a nation transformed — “a prospering dynamo,” in the words of journalist Mac Margolis — but Cuba is still ruled by a brutal dictatorship that has rejected political liberalization and is now desperately trying to stave off an economic crisis. Indeed, if Colombia symbolizes the enormous progress that Latin America has made in the new millennium, Cuba remains a stubborn relic of the region’s autocratic, impoverished past.
It may not be a member of the BRIC club (Brazil, Russia, India, China), but Colombia has been included in the so-called CIVETS bloc (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa), another group of emerging-market countries with great economic potential. Joachim Bamrud, the executive editor of the Latin Trade Group, has said that “Colombia is set to be a star for many more years,” noting that it “offers a far easier business environment” than Brazil. The World Bank reports that Colombia now has one of the three “most business-friendly regulatory environments” in Latin America and the Caribbean. Under Presidents Uribe (2002–2010) and Santos, there have been astonishing reductions in violence, though we should acknowledge that Colombia still suffers from major security issues. (Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon correctly argues that the United States should increase military assistance to Bogotá.)
While Colombia was being transformed, the Cuban government was tightening its grip on dissent, despite the best efforts of Payá. His Varela Project stemmed from Article 88 of the 1976 Communist constitution, which allows citizens to propose laws if they can collect at least 10,000 signatures from eligible voters. Payá secured more than 10,000 supporters for his democratic-reform petition, and in May 2002 he presented it to the Cuban National Assembly. Just days later, Jimmy Carter discussed the Varela Project during a visit to Cuba, and the European Parliament subsequently honored Payá with its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. By that point, unfortunately, the Castro regime had cooked up its own sham “petition” and amended the constitution to reaffirm an ironclad commitment to Communism. Then, in early 2003, the government launched a massive crackdown, jailing dozens of human-right activists, including many allies of Payá.
When Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Cuba last month, he saw a country whose political system and economy appear to be stuck in a time warp. Prior to his arrival, many democracy advocates were jailed, lest they organize public protests. Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the Sakharov Prize in 2010, called it “a wave of repression.” (After Benedict left the island, the imprisoned activists were released.) While Benedict urged Havana to introduce greater political freedoms, a senior Cuban official responded by telling reporters, “We are updating our economic model, but we are not talking about political reform.”
Speaking of the Cuban economic model, much has been made of Raúl Castro’s minor reforms, which have expanded opportunities for Cuban entrepreneurs and taken various other baby steps toward boosting private enterprise. Yet in the 2012 Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, Cuba ranks 177th out of 179 countries, and it scores dead last for “investment freedom” and “property rights.” For that matter, only North Korea scores lower for “business freedom,” “financial freedom,” and “labor freedom.” The truth, as Yale historian Carlos Eire wrote last year, is that Castro’s reforms are “a desperate, ridiculous attempt to camouflage repression and maintain the current status quo.”
Over the past decade, Colombia has shown Latin America — and the world — what real change looks like. By contrast, Castro has left the Cuban economic system basically intact. As for free and fair elections, the regime no longer even pretends it is moving in that direction. Indeed, a decade after Payá brought his pro-democracy petition to the National Assembly, Cuba seems further from political freedom than ever.
This article is available in Spanish here.
In relation to the economy, communism is a massive failure, resulting in dire poverty and misery of a nation’s people. But the Cuban leadership prefer communism because communism brings absolute power and control over Cubans. And for those whose lust for power and control is insatiable, that is all that matters.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up Marxism in a nutshell.
Well said, madam.
Linda, Mark:
Actually, that is a superficial answer to the problem. Sure, there are opportunists who want that power, but why is socialism/communism/collectivists voted into power? Unless you understand the philosophical underpinnings of the “movement”, than you can never fight it effectively.
At root, collectivists’ beliefs come from Plato and Immanual Kant. Kant, who claimed that reality (the phenomenal) was unknowable to the average person, that truths could only be derived from elites – such as himself – by thinking divorced from reality (the nuomenal world – his feelings) “Critique of Pure Reason”, 1776. He invented the moral principal which underpins the communist philosphy and carries the movement forward to this day – Altruism. In that book he stated; “an action is not moral unless you derive no benefit from it whatsoever”.
You must sacrifice yourself for your fellow man; if there is one person on the planet who has less than you, it means you are derilect in your duty! You have no right to your own life, nor the fruits of your labor/thinking!
It doesn’t matter that it is IMPRACTICAL – that it has never worked and never will; it only matters that it is the moral way to live! (They know it doesn’t work) Until you attack the morality of Altruism, there is not one reason you can name why you shouldn’t be marched into the sacrificial furnaces at the point of a gun.
Until the 1940s there was no voice who opposed the communists on PHILISOPHICAL grounds, and the “conservatives”, especially the religious right cannot fight them on philisophical grounds without a complete reexamination of their beliefs.
Ayn Rand was that person, and to fight for the right to your property, your life and your freedom, it is necessary to learn the fundamentals to oppose them on philisophical grounds, particularly ethical and political philosophy. In addition to her novels, she has written many books on her philosophy. Study her works. Take the oath:
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never be a slave to another man, nor allow another man to be a slave to me!”
Aside from the fact that the property stolen from many people who are now Cuban-Americans has not been returned, why should we still care about Cuba (or any other Latin American country) being communist?
Is their own people’s suffering really all that important to us? Or are we afraid that if more Latin American countries go commie, that property owned by Americans will be confiscated?
It seems to me that it would be a good thing if more corporate-owned property overseas were confiscated; then maybe corporations would do more investing in America.
This is a comment of eye-watering stupidity and stunning moral cretinry.
Your concept, if I can even use that word, of private property is of an infantile nihilism worthy of Proudhon, the 19th Century imbecile who infamously declared that “property is theft”.
And as for why we should “care about any Latin American country being communist”, I’d begin by inviting you to have a look at this:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/iran_building_missile_base_in_venezuela.html
“You’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.” –Bob Dylan
My wife and I just returned from several weeks visiting friends in Colombia. The article may understate the dramatic changes that have occured there! It is a BOOMING free country!
I have to admit, upon returning, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of government interference in our lives that I didn’t see there! Change apparently in both places! Time to fix our mess in 2012!
I moved to Colombia for personal reasons four years ago, and I can attest that the country is growing rapidly and has the potential to do a lot more. I see new construction starting somewhere almost every day, and I am amazed at how much more is available now than when I arrived.
There are definitely issues with security, but not around the major cities -Bogota, Medellin, Baranquilla, Cartagena (though Cali seems to have some issues). Since I have been here, there have been no terrorist incidents near me. The bigger concern is the drug gangs, though in my experience as long as you steer clear of that culture you are not likely run into them.
There is still a long way to go. Many point out that Colombia has the largest income inequality in Latin America. I respond that it is not surprising that this country has a hard time overcoming that (relative to other LA countries) because there are still large parts of the countryside that still (or until very recently) have been off-limits to investment due to the 40-year Communist war. Those areas are populated with very poor people who have no access to jobs other than subsistence farming. Those that leave arrive in the cities with no education and therefore little ability to find good work.
I am not excusing the right wing paramilitaries that also cause a lot of the problem. They were created in the late 20th century as private mercenary groups to protect the wealthy against the guerrillas and drug gangs, but as that need has decreased, they have morphed into criminal enterprises themselves. Unfortunately, given their origins those groups do have more connections with the powerful in Colombia, and despite the daily news about new prosecutions, they will be tough to wipe out.
Frankly, both the Communists and the Right Wing Paramilitaries are the opposite sides of the same coin – drug profiteering. Both get most of their funding through sales or transport of cocaine. While I am in favor of support from the USA, the best thing we could do for this country is to legalize the trade in order to take it away from the criminals. While I am not in favor of drug use, our drug war has been no more successful than was Prohibition, and we should learn from that nearly century old lesson. Just as we have problems with alcohol today, they are small compared to those created by Prohibition, and I believe the same would be true if we called off the drug war.