H.L. Mencken observed, a century ago when Eugene V. Debs was the controversial crank on stage, that the “Socialist who goes to jail for his opinions seems to me a much finer man than the judge who sends him there, though I disagree with all the ideas of the Socialist and agree with some of those of the judge.”
So good for Sen. Bernie Sanders stepping out to give us his courageous take. And for generously conceding, “Of course you have a dictatorship in Cuba.” But then, again, Bernie ploughed forth -- Fidel Castro “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed the society." Uproar ensued; Bernie doubled down: “Sanders defends comments praising Castro's Cuba,” headlined CNN. “'The truth is the truth.'”
This was not a comic riff on another authoritarian, uncompellingly defended: Well, at least Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Yes, Sen. Sanders, “it's unfair to simply say everything is bad.” Cuban baseball is first rate. And you are correct that the Cuban Revolution “transformed society.” The country’s economy was, in the 1950s, one of the world’s wealthiest, at about 30% of U.S. GDP per capita. That was Italy’s level. Since 1960, US income (in real terms) has more than tripled, but Cuba today hovers at less than 10% of the USA – experts do not believe the officially reported numbers – and is among the Hemisphere’s poorest places. And, yes, those ratios mean that that living standards for farmers and workers actually fell over the Revolutionary half-century. Economists Marianne Ward and John Devereux, writing in the 2012 Journal of Economic History, document these trends and sift through to the take-away: “With hindsight, the fact that central planning ended badly for Cuba should come as no surprise. Over the last fifty years, Cuba has replicated the failings of command systems elsewhere albeit in a uniquely Cuban fashion.”
The working man has not gotten a fair shake under Cuban Socialism. Ain’t that the truth?
Yes, it is. But the abject economic failures of Castro’s Cuba are perhaps less interesting than its touted successes. “They have made some good advances in healthcare,” notes Sen. Sanders. Indeed, Cuba has poured resources, despite a collapsing economy, into the sector. It has a very high ratio of doctors to patients. But its most publicized triumph – infant mortality rates below those of the United States – are a cruel hoax. As reported in a 2018 article in Health Policy and Planning, Cuba claims just 4.3 infant deaths per 1000 births (against the U.S. rate of 5.7) because it misreports. And far worse.
To claim prized statistics, Cuba incurs miscarriages at an astonishingly high rate. “Physicians likely reclassified early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths, thus deflating the infant mortality statistics and propping up life expectancy.” With appropriate adjustments, Cuban infant mortality is actually between about 7.5 and 11.
Pregnant mothers are given wide access to Cuban medicine. For a (now) poor country, that is not nothing. But can we handle a bit more truth? It is not simply child welfare that is the focus of medical attention. Cuban physicians “worried that a mother’s behavior might lead to missing the centrally established targets will prescribe the forceful internment in a state clinic (casa de maternidad) so that they may regulate her behavior.” A woman’s right to choose? “Physicians often perform abortions without clear consent of the mother.” The state stats are bumped as pregnancies are terminated by the Party.
The same brutal paradoxes appear when considering Sen. Sanders’ enthusiasm for Cuban education. He states that Fidel Castro “went out and they helped people learn to read and write. You know what, I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing."
No doubt. And progress has been made in literacy rates. Now, consider the scope of that literacy. The Castro Revolution clamped down on free speech, jailed political prisoners, and often been fond of executions (putting more than 70,000 ideological opponents to death). For decades, homosexuals were interned in “re-education” camps. One “member of Fidel and Raul Castro’s inner circle,” wrote scholar Lillian Guerra in 2010, in a study of state targeting of LGBTQ citizens, “estimates that between 30,000 and 40,000 young people were interned, of whom 72 died of torture and abuses, 180 committed suicide and 507 were hospitalized for psychiatric trauma.”
This approach to civil liberties is horrific all on its own. And it is an educational issue. With the rise of the Internet, the island nation emerged as “one of the least connected countries in the world.” In 2017, Amnesty International asserted that Cuba’s “controlled and censored Internet risks Cuba’s achievements in education.” Cuba outlawed private ownership of computers until 2008, and for two decades access to the web was permitted only from government offices. The state effectively prohibited Internet access by private citizens. “Home connections were virtually non-existent before December 2016,” writes Freedom House. Some citizens can go online today, but non-approved websites and apps – Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia – are foreclosed. There is a (state-monopoly) mobile operator, featuring exceptionally low penetration, and censorship: “text messages containing the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘hunger strike’” are blocked, warns Amnesty International. The organization protested the imprisonment of Danilo Maldonado in January 2017. His crime: “painting Se fue (he’s gone) on a wall after Fidel Castro’s death.”
Sit back down, you VC opportunists: attacking this Information Monopoly is a bit more difficult than disrupting capitalism with seed money from Silicon Valley. Investment funds are allocated by the regime, not greedy bankers or billionaires, and computer programmers are licensed by the state.
Freedom House (2018) rates Cuba’s Internet Freedom as 79 out of 100 – with 100 being the worst. (Venezuela is better at 66, while the USA is awarded a 22.) The post-Castro government yet continues to “educate” the populace with their unchallenged ideology, remaining “one of the world’s… most repressive environments for information and communications technologies.” The state continues to “harass, detain, and jail independent digital journalists” for crimes that include “usurpation of legal capacity.” When the commissars own the means of information production, speaking your independent mind is an act of social inefficiency and subject to off-the-shelf regulatory sanction.
So, give Cuba high marks for literacy. But don’t expect them to post many Wikipedia entries. And least not now. But maybe soon. In recent years, Cuba has been edging away from socialism, allowing a tad more private ownership and a splash of competition. It’s why there’s any access to the Internet outside of government offices. Hey, that’s progress, and it’s educational.
When Bernie waved his red flag many bulls charged. The Castro Bro’ has been whacked by Democrats seeking nomination (Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer), Democratic congressional members with Cuban American constituents (Rep. Donna Shalala, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell), and by Republicans bidding for Florida (Sen. Marco Rubio, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart).
The whole affair seems so…. 1980s. That’s when the Iron Curtain had yet to fall, hipsters wore Che Guevara Tees, and Bernie Sanders basked in the glow of a Moscow honeymoon – singing “This Land is Your Land” with true believers. It was when readers of The Nation signed up for Leftist tourism, traveling to the Soviet Union on an expedition chronicled brilliantly by P.J. O’Rourke as Up the Volga on a Ship of Fools.
Led by their hopes and dreams, the radicals used their AMEX cards to fly to Russia. They were led to gray, planned cities, and led through smoky Soviet factories where Communist Party spokesmen explained how merry and prosperous were the workers. At each stop, the Americans – earnest, if secretly referenced by the apparatchiks as “useful idiots” – would ask the guides: Could you tell us what proportion of their wages do the workers spend on housing? Reliably, the state agents would report a shockingly low percentage. The Americans would giggle in delight. That was a delicious “truth.”
O’Rourke found the tour guides to be great drinkers after hours. They filled with cynical gusto as soon as they ditched their tedious American charges, and trafficked in ribald anti-Socialist jokes. P.J. delighted in the spectacle. “These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.”
If Bernie makes it to the White House, let’s take pride: he will not need to do likewise.