"The Denial of the Dead" - A Response to Nadine Fresco
Chomsky, Noam & Gordon, Max & Clark, Joseph
The topic of "denial of the dead" that Nadine Fresco addresses (Dissent, Fall 1981) is an important one. Examples abound. Thus Indonesia is now mounting still another military campaign in...
...Numerous statistics confirm the described living conditions in Cuba...
...I then elaborated (the omission is indicated in the text by . . .) that I have no interest in Faurisson's work and feel no responsibility to become familiar with it merely because I defend his right to free expression, a trivially obvious point that is considered scandalous in Fresco's circles...
...Halperin notes that three-quarters of all Cubans were literate before Castro came to power...
...The courts took Baynac's view...
...Conditions in Cuba and in democratic, oil-rich Venezuela showed similar contrasts in Times reports a few years ago...
...Such "denial of the dead" is systematic and widespread and involves the major ideological institutions of our society, a rather important fact, given our responsibility for death and suffering, which is not small, and our ability to help overcome such horrors, which is considerable—or would be, if it were not for the effectiveness of "the denial of the dead...
...There is no record of a single strike, though workers admittedly have grievances...
...Huge strides have been made in the battle to eradicate infectious diseases, infant mortality and deaths from cancer and heart disease...
...Salvador believed Castro when he promised, before the seizure of power, that there would be democracy, free elections, and freedom...
...The general topic, then, is no doubt important...
...That "crime" was punished with a 20-year prison sentence under unspeakable conditions...
...221 Ziegler warns of the danger of "insane aggression" against Cuba by the Reagan administration...
...incredibly, he revives the KGB propaganda of the Korean War that American germ warfare is responsible for Cuba's swine flu and other livestock diseases...
...That is what "it is important to emphasize...
...Fidel gets a consensus that is not democracy Western-style, but it is surely some kind of democracy...
...226...
...This by no means exhausts the record of Fresco's misrepresentations...
...The World Bank, according to an article in the New Republic (Dec...
...Years passed, came Khrushchev and his revelations that torture had been substituted for judicial procedure in the Soviet Union...
...Alert to the nuggets of fact among the endless words in a Castro speech, Thomas quotes Castro as declaring that Cuba is adrift not just in a "river of troubles...
...it ignores economic and social rights...
...Huber Matos, another hero of the revolution against Batista, met a similar fate...
...In all the study I've been conducting on the advice of Max Gordon, I've discovered no opposition— that is, no legal opposition...
...Among the rather special targets of Castro's concentration camps, prisons, and torturers have been the poets...
...In 1976 the U.S...
...Cuba's political system, institutionalized during the past seven years, is now based on popular election of Municipal Assemblies...
...Fresco adds one qualification: she states, in a footnote, that it was improper to refer the matter to the courts...
...No Communist regime can exist without systematic informing against neighbors...
...All that is in the past...
...journals on the 'Butz affair," which one might think would be more important here than the writings of an obscure professor at Lyons...
...While lack of democratic guarantees has led to substantial power abuse, could Cuba—or any regime trying to prevent or limit U.S...
...There was "no mistaking the crowd's energy or enthusiasm...
...Mac quotes New York Times correspondent Jo Thomas on some of the advances made in Cuba...
...Of these, 62,700 completed college...
...Of the quest for utopia there is no end...
...The CIA publication cited life expectancy in Cuba in 1977 at 70 years, as against 73 in the U.S...
...The reason Castro double-crossed the Lewises is evident in their interviews that were later cited by Halperin...
...It's true I'm no hero...
...The implication that only in Cuba is there wide rural participation in political life is significant, as discussed below...
...FRESCO OBJECTS to my skepticism about Faurisson's contribution to the revival of anti-Semitism in France—skepticism shared by most if not all serious commentators in France, to my knowledge...
...But there are more direct ways of determining how well Cubans' material needs are met...
...The other countries exhibited much more inequality...
...The petition that outrages Fresco was submitted to the court that was, in her phrase, "called upon to pass judgment" on Faurisson's writings...
...But Castro managed a mean kind of revenge...
...By contrast, the Times' Warren Hoge (May 10) described Guatemala as a land with high infant mortality, primitive living conditions for all but the wealthy, and 80 percent illiteracy...
...Here are a few: • A recent CIA publication, The Cuban Economy: A Statistical Review, compares income distribution in Cuba, the U.S., and eight other Latin American countries...
...This could be crucial as Cuba continues to give political, moral, and civil support to freedom struggles in oppressive dictatorial regimes, as all revolutionary forces move toward unity in these freedom struggles and as Washington attempts Cuba's destruction...
...For this he was not only removed from trade union leadership but sentenced to a 20-year jail sentence...
...But Howe's argument has another facet I'd like to address in some detail...
...Alfredo, another former slum-dweller, is also quoted: "Today the worst problem our country faces is the food shortage...
...He urged "severe measures against negligence, apathy, indolence and irresponsibility...
...Probably a fairly accurate rendition of what I said, and not in the least "confusing," except to those who are trying to conceal their commitment to a form of the Zhdanov doctrine by impugning the motives of those who defend freedom of expression...
...The Batista dictatorship was a rotten regime, its overthrow an urgent necessity...
...After studying the subject, I came up with a finding quite different from Mac's: without human rights there can be no democracy and no socialism...
...I have taken far more controversial stands than this on the same principle, for example, in support of the right of people I regard as war criminals to teach or even to conduct counterinsurgency research, at a time when it was being used to murder and destroy...
...Fresco claims that I condemned the French intelligentsia, without qualification, as "totalitarian," and so on...
...There is not a single Soviet diplomatic move that doesn't get a chorus of approval from the entire Cuban press...
...on the contrary, I have "confused" her by repeatedly expressing such a judgment in such terms as those cited above...
...And Faurisson does not injure the survivors as the Communists have done...
...FOR FRESCO, none of this raises any question of "legal rights" or any "rights issue" whatsoever...
...He winds up his article: The Cuban revolutionaries have profoundly transformed their country: A wretched exploited people among whom famine, endemic diseases, illiteracy, humiliation and unemployment were rife has, in 22 years, become a proud, active people who are decently fed, housed and educated...
...Fresco is disturbed by my use of the term "contempt...
...To quote myself: "It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers...
...Western diplomats estimated that about 200,000 Cubans wanted to emigrate (2 percent of the population...
...The clothes shortage is as much of a problem as the food shortage...
...It is a kind, of course, that has nothing to do with civil liberties, but we are talking here of a consensus of the people in the processes of government...
...liberation struggles in Latin America...
...Cuba's education progress is well-known...
...It is by using all the documents, all the testimony of witnesses now at our disposal—and God knows that they are not lacking—in order to produce an irrefutable denial" (of his theses...
...Thomas wrote (New York Times, June 8, 1980): "Emigration, as in the past years, is serving as a safety valve...
...Nor have I discovered an instance in the last 23 years of anyone who publicly criticized Fidel or Raul...
...Mac argues that in a less-developed country such as Cuba a small section of the citizenry yearns for life in the fabled U.S...
...embargo, the dangers it faces from the Reagan administration, etc...
...Even as to the embargo, Mac might have quoted Raul Castro, the dictator's brother who on November 30, 1979 said that the embargo has been used "as an excuse to hide our deficiencies and inefficiencies...
...This is no doubt "confusing" to those who pretend that defense of Faurisson's rights entails defense of his views, a constant refrain in Fresco's circles...
...The differences, however, are substantial...
...Cuba's was the lowest in Latin America...
...Some pointed out that although Cuba grows citrus, it is difficult to find an orange or a lime in Havana...
...Finally, Mac's quaint phrase "security methods that tend to limit civil liberties...
...After the overthrow of Batista, David Salvador was elected head of the trade union organization...
...Thus Indonesia is now mounting still another military campaign in Timor in the course of aggression that has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people while creating conditions similar to those of Biafra and Cambodia...
...You could vary your meals...
...A week earlier Thomas described a march of "hundreds of thousands" in a demonstration "expressing contempt" for the emigres...
...Thus the April 20, 1980 Granma displays a photo of a 17-year-old as a hero...
...Schori's views, of course, are not necessarily persuasive for Howe...
...She refers to my statement that "I have frequently signed petitions—indeed, gone to far greater lengths—on behalf of Russian dissidents whose views are absolutely horrendous...
...Most of the 1980 refugees were working people...
...But if adherents of Cuban communism abroad are asked what percentage of the Cuban population was illiterate before Castro, you might get some imaginative responses...
...break with Cuba and before the embargo...
...This is true especially about the "economic rights" the Cubans have won but that are absent in democratic countries...
...Veteran New York Times correspondent Alan Riding has observed (Jan...
...He added cheap transportation, housing with furniture that generally included refrigerator and TV set, and full employment...
...That workers would be deprived of freedom under Castro was soon made clear...
...I have dealt with Cuba in such detail not only to demonstrate that democratic socialists do have a basis for choice between El Salvador's revolutionary guerrillas—even if they should follow a Castrotype course—and the military oppressors, and not only to indicate the absurdity of the Reagan-Kirkpatrick thesis that "totalitarian" regimes like Castro's are worse for their people than the "authoritarian" oligarchies...
...Maurice Halperin, who lived and taught in Castro's Cuba for years, bothers to make such comparisons...
...While racing toward a goal of a 10 million-ton sugar harvest in 1970, the Cuban Communists managed to wreck the rice cultivation that had been increasing to the point where Cuba once was practically self-sufficient in that basic grain...
...I was in Mexico early in 1977 when President Portillo told an international meeting that for most of humanity, guarantees of political and civil freedom are inadequate for the achievement of human rights...
...The sources of the exodus have been explored in detail and will be touched on below...
...Its highly centralized power structure, while effective in blocking the persistent CIAinduced subversion efforts to which Cuba has been subjected, has led to substantial abuses of political and civil rights...
...This poses a political problem...
...But we may put this question aside, and keep to her flat statement in the text that there is no "rights issue" in the Faurisson affair...
...The silence of some defenders of gay rights in our country about gays' persecution in Cuba has been deafening...
...I elaborated further: "But it is not by silencing him that you prove that his theses are ill-founded...
...The guerrillas, he reports, were fully aware of the consequences of any coup attempt for postwar consolidation and recovery...
...We now know of the many CIA attempts to assassinate Castro and to penetrate Cuba with thousands of agents for sabotage and subversion...
...and leaves when given the opportunity, as in 1980...
...Others in France have seen the issue differently...
...we want them to know the facts" into some sort of support for Faurisson's theses...
...participates in the Cuban Revolution...
...Need one add that sugar cultivation never reached within 2 million tons of its 1970 goal and rarely matched the peaks of sugar production under Batista...
...Howe's premise is that the civilian-guerrilla coalition, headed by a social democrat, will not survive in case of victory and the democratic socialists will be eliminated...
...1982) Arenas explains why he was allowed out of confinement: "Because I admitted my 'errors,' . . . the regime considered me a broken reed...
...But "housing is crowded and scarce, food 222 is rationed, clothing is expensive and difficult to obtain and even sewing needles are prized, and the government has called for more austerity and sacrifice...
...Halperin tells the dramatic story of the sociologists Oscar and Ruth Lewis in Cuba...
...In short, what makes the Faurisson affair different is not the need for readers of Dissent to "understand Faurisson's thought," but rather the civil libertarian issues that arise...
...I presume that Fresco shares this contempt for the commissars while not being too pleased at the fact—and fact it is—that the same principle applies to those 219 she praises for condemning the petition in question as "scandalous" because support for the right of free expression was not coupled with a critical analysis of Faurisson's views (Pierre Vidal-Naquet...
...A 1979 work on world health declares that while Cuba is economically a Lesser Developed Country [LDC], its levels of health care, health, and health systems "correspond to Developed Country standards...
...Some 2,500 Cuban health specialists and 3,500 educators are working as teachers and advisers in 20-odd underdeveloped countries...
...But it is true that in Fresco's circles, such attitudes are rare...
...Liberation...
...From 1975 on, the U.S...
...An even more startling fact is cited by Sovietologist Jiri Valenta: "in 1980, for the first time in its history, Cuba . . . had to import a large quantity of sugar...
...2): "Everywhere in Latin America, except Cuba, millions of rural inhabitants are still excluded from the economic and political lives of their countries...
...from leaving and compelled the boat captains to take common criminals, some sick people, even several suffering from 224 leprosy...
...Earlier that year, Alan Riding observed in the Times (Jan...
...establishment defines them solely in political and civil rights terms...
...There is nothing "confusing" in this, nor does it imply that I refuse to express a judgment on his conclusions with regard to the Holocaust, as Fresco insinuates...
...Castro gave them his solemn promise that they could conduct a study in Cuba, unhampered and uncensored...
...The reason for the lack of such articles seems plain...
...In the past two years Cuba has been hit by blights decimating sugar, coffee, and tobacco crops, while African swine fever has been destroying hog herds—an unprecedented combination of calamities...
...It merits study by democratic socialists, many of whom dismiss it offhand as aping Moscow...
...She complains that I "confuse everything" still further by stating, in a transatlantic phone call that appeared in a somewhat garbled version in Liberation, that "I don't know enough about his work to determine if what he is claiming is accurate or not...
...In opposing support for the guerrilla forces, Howe dismisses in a surprisingly offhand manner the claim that left "totalitarian" regimes at least look after their people's material needs...
...VARIOUS TIMES CORRESPONDENTS have confirmed Ziegler's brief description of current Cuban life...
...This type of participatory "democracy" reached its highest form of organization under Stalin...
...But there were a few who did...
...Still we don't eat as well now as we did before the Revolution...
...When I signed this petition circulated by Serge Thion (whom Dissent readers will recognize from his article published here), I assumed that that would be the end of the matter...
...She does indeed present a balanced picture of progress as well as failures...
...In signing the petition I was not, as Fresco claims, an "innocent victim of a quasiPavlovian automatism," but rather was following an obvious principle from which I have never departed (contrary to lies in the press that I will not review): namely, that the right of free expression is not to be restricted to views of which we approve, to people who do not in our judgment "mock the facts...
...Cuba is still a Lesser Developed Country and, as in any such country, a section of the citizenry yearns for life in fabled America, especially if passage is available and settlement aid assured...
...for Venezuela, it was 64...
...At least now people can get their fair share of whatever there is...
...Herbert Matthews, one-time chief Times foreign correspondent and later an editorial board member, wrote in a 1975 study, Revolution in Cuba (p...
...Thus she cites an article by Jacques Baynac in the socialist Le Matin, omitting his critical conclusion: that it is wrong to "defend, in the name of freedom of expression, the right to mock the facts"—"facts" determined, one must assume, by some board of commissars that he will select...
...30, 1981), reported that "Cuba's per capita GNP is smaller now than it was under Batista...
...He told of the "large number of abandoned children, mothers without child support...
...Cuba is exporting its dissidents and its unemployed as well as some of the inhabitants of its jails...
...Surely this is a striking example, still in process, of "denial of the dead...
...Salvador was finally released three years ago...
...One can appreciate her annoyance...
...Earlier the president of the Cuban central planning board, Humberto Perez, reported (Granma, Jan...
...The average for Lesser Developed Countries was 60...
...As to municipal or any other kind of elections, I recall a test the late David Spitz suggested for the democratic claims of any regime: ask where the head of the opposition party is, in an office or a jail...
...The remainder of her comments on my alleged role in this affair is mere bluster, designed to obscure this issue...
...a high percentage was black...
...was second...
...This shameful judgment accords to the state the right to determine official truth (despite the protestations of the court) and to punish those who "irresponsibly" deny it...
...Secretary of State Haig has indicated that the Administration is "studying" what to do about Castro, who is depicted as responsible for instigating all anti-U.S...
...There is an added factor...
...Charges of sabotage have been muted apparently because hard evidence is lacking...
...Popular public activities through constitutionally mandated mass organizations are enormous...
...They were arrested and tortured by Castro before the U.S...
...As for the repeated efforts to read into the petition some insidious content that is plainly not there, I will simply quote my "Elementary Comments": "I have little doubt that the commissars and apparatchiks have carefully perused these petitions [in support of dissidents], seeking out phrases that could be maliciously misinterpreted, in an effort to discredit these efforts to prevent the suppression of human rights...
...Mac advises us that the Cuban version of democracy "merits study by democratic socialists...
...Senate Intelligence Committee testimony in 1977 traced to CIA operatives an epidemic of swine fever that destroyed 500,000 pigs in 1971...
...For a detailed account of the economic disasters inflicted on Cuba by Castro, Mac could do worse than refer to my article "Thus Spake Fidel Castro," Dissent, Jan.-Feb., 1970...
...This principle would effectively undermine the defense of civil rights for people with unpopular or horrendous views, the most serious case...
...He had fled from his parents at the Peruvian embassy and Granma proudly quotes his revolutionary declaration, "when I found myself with those people, all those homosexuals, bullies and criminals," he realized that he was a revolutionary...
...Rather, I have objected to his suspension from teaching under the threat of violence and to invoking the power of the state to punish those who are "irresponsible" in their treatment of historical fact...
...Mac pays scant heed to the Cuban press, which repeated ad nauseam that only antisocial elements, "scum of the earth," were leaving...
...This happened even though Soviet advisers campaigning for what they called a "division of labor" among the "socialist" countries had persuaded the Cubans to resort to that old colonial vice—monoculture...
...No one exceeds Castro in his condemnation of Zionism...
...Why then do we not find a spate of articles in U.S...
...There's a real Freudian slip when Mac puts quotes around the word "totalitarian...
...My recollection is that this qualification did not appear in the French version of her article...
...The Castro regime sometimes denies that it persecutes homosexuals, but its propaganda about the 1980 exodus belied such claims...
...Prior to the exodus of the 125,000, previous flights brought nearly 1 million Cubans to our shores...
...He described food consumption, education, health and dental care in terms similar to those above...
...the gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 20 percent was six times...
...The May 19, 1980 Granma, organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban CP, said publicly for the first time: "The socioeconomic conditions of our country still, disgracefully, engender lumpen' and also engender emigration...
...it was 15 in the U.S...
...When Castro embarked on the path of Communist dictatorship, Salvador opposed it...
...Jo Thomas decribes some of the refugees and their comments: "The people who swarmed to the Peruvian embassy clamoring for a better life compared their lot with that of the exiles returning on tours from Miami...
...But Fresco asserts that "If the Faurisson affair did not become a rights issue in France, it was for the simple reason that it wasn't one...
...With U.S...
...By 1980, it was almost 73 in Cuba...
...The difference, he noted, was that Cuba alone has carried through the agrarian revolution...
...To this I have raised no objection...
...For a time he allowed diplomatic relations with Israel...
...Why do we find articles addressed to "those wishing to understand Faurisson's thought" (Fresco), but not to those wishing to understand Butz's thought...
...About 11 years ago, for a year's duration I was the accidental recipient of streams of propaganda material from Cuba, including the "Intercontinental" magazine...
...If one must first examine the views of such a person and assess them before supporting his rights, then few will feel qualified to join in such support...
...My expressed view was that if his influence is as great as Fresco believes, the proper response is not to deny civil rights but to use the ample means available to combat it and "to seek the causes of these vicious developments and work to eliminate them...
...A textile worker told him that many found life there a "hell...
...4, '81) that the real problem Cuba presents to Washington is the popularity of its example because of its attention to problems of hunger, illiteracy, and disease...
...What I wrote, however, in my statement "Some Elementary Comments on the Right of Freedom of Expression," to which Fresco refers, is that my remarks were restricted to "certain segments of the French intelligentsia...
...Certainly, what I say does not apply to many others, who maintain a firm commitment to intellectual integrity...
...Thomas notes that "when the last refugee boat leaves the port of Mariel, President Castro will still have problems with foreign exchange, shortages and unemployment...
...Salvador had been leader of the anti-Batista rebellion in Havana, so when Castro came down from the mountains the city was already liberated...
...From Havana last year Kenneth Briggs wrote (April 26) that Cuba has become a Third World "showcase" for its "social services to its 10,000,000 citizens...
...The judgment condemned Faurisson for failure of "responsibility" and "prudence" as a historian, and for "allowing others [!] to use his polemics" for nefarious ends...
...corporate exploitation of its economy—defend itself effectively against U.S.-backed subversion without tight security methods that tend to limit civil liberties...
...Should someone have done so, I would regard this with the same contempt as is deserved by the behavior of those who denounce the petition in support of Faurisson's civil rights, and for exactly the same reason...
...The claim is shaky, he insists, after the 1980 exodus of 125,000 Cubans...
...Fresco compares the above quote with a statement in which I noted that one should have contempt for a scientist who disregards the likely consequences of his work, for example, a Nazi scientist, or investigators of race and IQ—who certainly "allow others" (how could they avoid it...
...By exporting people, Cuba is also alleviating consumer demand...
...But a crucial point at issue here is its concern for the welfare of its people, as against the total absence of such concern by the oppressive autocracies that Washington embraces...
...I would not want these comments to be misunderstood as applying beyond their specific scope...
...Income of the top 10 percent was 21/2 times that of the bottom 20 percent...
...What has eluded Mac in his reading of the Thomas dispatches is that she addresses the very matter raised by Howe: that the Cuban exodus was a consequence, among other factors, of the failure of left authoritarian regimes to take care of the material needs of their people...
...Before presenting the fruits of my study I would suggest to Mac that he reread some of his (and my) 223 mercifully forgotten writings about the Soviet Union and China...
...Democratic socialists, I suggest, ought to be interested in how Cuba's non-capitalist society so close to home is working, what is wrong and what is right with it, what political changes it has undergone as a result of institutionalization in the past six years (they have been dramatic), how it differs from the U.S.S.R...
...True, the French courts were "called upon to pass judgment" on his writings, but "it is important to emphasize that the Faurisson affair is not an issue of legal rights," in fact, there is no "rights issue" whatsoever in this affair...
...218 The well-known historian Alfred Grosser writes: "I consider it shocking that M. Faurisson is prevented from teaching French literature at the University of Lyons on the pretext that his security cannot be assured...
...225 When Irving Howe received Max Gordon's response, he said that his own reply to Mac would be: What good is anything without freedom...
...Similar comments apply to France...
...A sharply different prospect is offered by Pierre Schori, secretary of the Socialist International's special commission on Nicaragua and El Salvador, who is also the international secretary of the Swedish SDP Schori writes, in the SI's bulletin Socialist Affairs (1/81), that he found both civilian and guerrilla leaders of the revolutionary coalition "unequivocal" in their commitment to the coalition's durability and confident of each other's readiness to honor that commitment...
...It is precisely here that we crucially disagree...
...An article in Socialist Affairs (4/81) by Jean Ziegler, Swiss Social Democratic parliamentarian who visited Cuba recently, pleads for SI relations with Castro, who has invited them...
...Now I buy whatever food we have in the ration book...
...I added the equally obvious point that no sane person would comment, say, on Faurisson's treatment of the Kremer diaries without having investigated what he has to say...
...Wealth is highly concentrated, and all groups and individuals seeking to ease the poverty are "targeted for elimination...
...That is why they have supported the Soviet attack upon Solidarity and hailed the suppression of the Polish trade unionists...
...it does so significantly), the damage done by CIA-induced sabotage and the U.S...
...It is common in her circles to interpret a criticism of them as a criticism of "all of the French intelligentsia" (Paul Thibaud...
...All of this has long been in print...
...The average for LDCs was one for 4470...
...By 1980 it was 19.3 for Cuba, as against 19 for New York City and 40 for Harlem...
...In the earlier years of the Castro regime there were entertaining examples of Castro's criticism of Soviet communism...
...Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, and Chile in 1973 were open democratic societies...
...It was crude, semiliterate pamphleteering...
...He would learn that, as in China and the Soviet Union, the Committees constitute a gigantic network of informers...
...the total population of Cuba is barely 10 million...
...When the horrors of the Moscow trials and mass executions of the 1930s in the Soviet Union were reported in the "capitalist" press, Mac (and I) countered with . . . the achievements of the FiveYear Plan...
...They are suspiciously similar to his present contentions about Cuba...
...Mac cites the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and municipal elections, with multiple candidates, as proof of democracy...
...The same publication gave Cuba's infant mortality rate in 1977 as 25 per 1,000 live births...
...In 1954 Khrushchev reported that with a population some 30 percent greater than that of Czarish Russia in 1916, there was more livestock—cattle, pigs, sheep—and more food in the Russia of 1916 than in the Soviet Union after the triumph of "socialism...
...It was incredible that anyone, young or old, could take this advice seriously...
...In a display of moral cowardice, the court claimed that it was not restricting the right of free expression, but only punishing Faurisson for availing himself of it...
...For example, he attacked the Soviets for removing the nuclear missiles from Cuba...
...it would be interesting to have a record of her public protests in France against the idea of a trial for "falsification of history...
...In that ocean of suffering which constitutes Latin America, Cuba is today an island of light...
...Raul called for eradicating "the most important and deforming causes of the manifestations of work and administrative negligence and lack of discipline...
...He was one of 125,000 "antisocial" elements who came to this country in 1980...
...Since these stands evoked no protest, it follows that the uproar over my defense of Faurisson's rights is an exercise in hypocrisy, pure and simple...
...Who would be interested in understanding Butz's thought...
...Frankly, her point about "contempt" escapes me...
...Cubans appear "adequately fed, housed and employed, children receive a solid grounding in the three R's, along with a heavy dose of Marxist ideology...
...His recent book (The Taming of Fidel Castro, Berkeley, 1981) points out that Cuba "was not a typically underdeveloped or Third World country, a misconception which Castro later assiduously promoted as a justification for the poor economic performance of his regime...
...As she notes, Faurisson has his counterparts in the U.S., for example, Arthur Butz...
...I think she is right, but not for her reasons...
...In a speech to a congress of journalists (March 29, 1980) General of the Army Raul, as he is always referred to, explained the single most important concept of Cuban journalism: "In the first place, we should underline again that in our country bourgeois so-called freedom of the press has died its death...
...Timorese males aged 15-50 are being press-ganged into military service, leading church sources to predict that famine will recur with the threat of full-scale genocide...
...From Caracas ten days later Juan de Onis wrote that crime and juvenile delinquency affecting the city were attributed by Venezuela's president to the "monstrous inequality" between rich and poor...
...There are many others like it...
...But Fresco, like others in her circle, does not wish to engage this issue, not surprisingly...
...Mac rejects Howe's suggestion that this is indicated by the 1980 exodus of 125,000 Cubans...
...press effectively suppressed the massacre carried out with U.S...
...A startling 2,500,000 graduated in the 1976-80 period from elementary, junior and senior high schools, college, technical and teacher training schools, and the Worker-Farmer Adult Education Program...
...Appetites were stimulated by reports from Cuban-American visitors following the removal of barriers...
...But U.S...
...The U.S...
...Cuba is far from a socialist model, politically or economically...
...In the same issue, an insert is headed: "Orwell, Thou Should'st be Living at This Hour...
...Whether consciously or not, the electoral system "apes" the Paris Commune of 1871...
...The Cuban leader "knows better than anyone" the backlash effects that a coalition disruption would have on Latin American liberation struggles...
...The U.S...
...That should not, however, preclude accurate comparisons of the economy before and after, or even in matters of education and literacy...
...Mainly this consisted of advice to young peple to pick up the gun, prepare the bombs, and to wage a new kind of revolutionary struggle— urban guerrilla warfare...
...He insisted that the "guarantees of health services, education and work" are basic to human dignity...
...10, 1980) is totalitarian: "intransigence against all that implies the slightest departure from revolutionary principles, neglect of duty, and tolerance of deviant attitudes and behavior...
...Perhaps it is that one should also view Faurisson with contempt...
...He prevented many relatives of refugees already in the U.S...
...On April 20, 1977, Paul Montgomery wrote that Havana was a city ringed with dairy farms under intensive development to guarantee milk for schoolchildren, yogurt, and ice cream...
...In general, youths of military age and Cubans with university degrees may not leave...
...Nearly 60 percent of the population under the old regime was urban...
...In an interview for Encounter (Jan...
...6, 1980) that the country was falling behind its plan and there was an "unfavorable economic situation throughout the period...
...Surely after the heroic struggles of the Polish workers for the right to organize free trade unions and the suppression of Solidarity, the connection between democracy and human rights should be clear to anyone, democratic socialist or not...
...Dire poverty has disappeared from Cuba...
...How many Communist professors have been excluded from teaching for having denied the existence of the Gulag...
...5,000 completed medical and dental schools...
...Mac does concede difficulties in the Cuban economy but he attributes some of these to the American embargo, which is real...
...THOUGH THERE MIGHT BE some argument as to whether Cuba is authoritarian or totalitarian, the medicine that Raul Castro prescribed for its economic ills (Granma, Feb...
...Portillo's embrace of Castro in defiance of Reagan may be partly due to the fact that Cuba offers its people precisely the guarantees he named...
...Impoverishment was not one of them...
...They "cannot earn a living, so many children turn to crime...
...I place quotes around socialism as it pertains to the Communist countries because the study Mac urged me to undertake led me to conclude that there can be no socialism without democracy...
...MAC IS DISMAYED at Irving Howe for dismissing "in a surprisingly offhand manner the claim that left `totalitarian' regimes at least look after their people's material needs...
...Others fleeing their country complained that while Cuba was building installations in various foreign countries, there was "a housing shortage at home...
...BEARING IN MIND the nature of the "crimes" of Salvador and Matos, we read Max Gordon's question: "While lack of democratic guarantees has led to substantial power abuse, could Cuba—or any regime trying to prevent or limit U.S...
...Howe had written about left authoritarian regimes that didn't provide for the material needs of their people, besides violating human rights...
...According to Thomas, the exodus included many young people who do not remember prerevolutionary Cuba and say they want more of life's goodies...
...The Maximum Leader explained, "It would be better to say that we are sailing in a sea of difficulties and the shore is far away...
...The imprisonment of the poet Heberto Padilla became a concern of those intellectuals who had for long argued that Castro's communism was "different...
...One who defends the civil rights of some person incurs no obligation to evaluate his views, or even to be acquainted with them...
...A little further study might have enabled Mac to discover that the brutal beatings of people who tried to get into the Peruvian embassy, but failed, was the work of these Committees...
...A third of the capital's 1 4 million people live in shantytowns on the hillsides that ring the modern concrete city," de Onis reported...
...A relevant question is how democratic socialists perceive human rights...
...diplomatic support, with arms provided in an increasing flow by the Human Rights Administration in the certain knowledge that they would be used for these ends...
...The material aid it gets from the Soviet Union limits its freedom of action in international affairs...
...But the Cuban Communists finally admitted that conditions in Cuba were producing the exodus...
...corporate exploitation of its economy—defend itself effectively against U.S.-backed subversion without tight security methods that tend to limit civil liberties...
...q 220 Irving Howe argues ("Looking into El Salvador," Summer 1981) that democratic socialists have no viable option in the El Salvador struggle since its likely outcome is either victory for oppressive military rule or Communist-led dictatorship...
...My aim is to encourage democratic socialists to look more closely at the Cuban experience, and its significance for Latin America, as it really is, and not as Washington has sought to depict it...
...Every additional statement of mine has been in response to deceit concerning my willingness to defend his right of free expression...
...The poet Armando Vailadares has been in jail since December 27, 1960, and he's been treated so brutally that he is now paralyzed in both legs...
...q NADINE FRESCO was sent a copy of this communication and felt that she had said all that she wanted to say and all that was necessary in her original article in our Fall 1981 issue...
...Somehow, Cuba survives in Mac's mind with at least some aspects of economic achievement and, more miraculous, democracy...
...15), that the 4 million-member Committees for the Defense of the Revolution provided— a remarkable mass base for [Cuba's] Revolution...
...But Fresco confines herself to only one special case: the attempt by Robert Faurisson to deny the Nazi Holocaust...
...If anyone happens to be interested, I will gladly complete the story...
...No one has ever raised an objection...
...That promise was broken, but not before some fascinating data had been amassed...
...also a considerable number of homosexuals...
...Fresco complains that I "confuse everything" by reiterating my often-expressed views on the Holocaust, for example, that it was "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history...
...Single candidacies are barred, for example, and the Communist party is prohibited from interfering in elections...
...Reinaldo Arenas's novels and poems won him plaudits in the earlier years of Castro...
...to use their work for nefarious ends, and may therefore be punished by the state under the neoStalinist doctrine that Fresco claims raises no "rights issue...
...IN DISPATCHES FROM HAVANA describing the exodus in 1980, Times reporter Jo Thomas wrote (April 27) that 21 years after the revolution Cuba "is a country where children wear shoes, go to school and have milk to drink, a country with good health and a standard of living the poor only dreamed of before...
...Early on when Castro made it clear that dictatorship and not democracy would be his course, Matos made a simple request, that he be allowed to withdraw from politics and return to teaching...
...Cuba is surely not the open democratic society envisioned by democratic socialists...
...Raul Castro admitted (Granma, April 6, 1980) that people lacked the necessities of life because they couldn't afford to buy them abroad, and therefore "our country is facing serious restrictions...
...The Cuban Communists know this very well...
...Interestingly, Schori observes that Castro "shares this attitude...
...Nothing like a man like Armando Valladares...
...Fresco writes that "Hitler would undoubtedly have been overjoyed" at the spectacle of the Paris trials—that is, at the spectacle of the resort to state power to punish the expression of views regarded with near unanimous revulsion, with a deceitful cover to try to obscure the plain facts—note that I have not discussed the scarcely less scandalous "libel" trials...
...had one medical doctor for every 660 people...
...Substantial firsthand testimony, including some from Socialist International sources, indicates that as a whole Cubans live far better than people in Latin American repressive societies...
...wealth and power behind it, the CIA had little trouble engineering their overthrow and replacing them with brutal military dictatorships...
...True, Faurisson was "compelled, in May 1979, to request of the secretary of education a transfer to teaching correspondence courses" after being "lightly molested," and "the president of the university chose to suspend his classes," but this raises no issue of academic freedom...
...And there is no "Butz affair," because he has not been driven from his position at Northwestern University by violence and brought to trial for "falsification of history...
...We can perhaps gain some insight into the factual question by considering the impact of Butz's writings on American society...
...By reading the word as "totalitarian" and gracing it with quotes Mac managed to convey his skepticism about the concept...
...I elaborated on this point in a letter to Democracy, which the journal predictably refused to publish, responding to criticism, some of it mere slander, by Vidal-Naquet and Arno Mayer...
...Democratic socialists, though presumably concerned with the struggle for economic rights, have tended to acquiesce in Washington's disregard of them as an aspect of human rights in Third World countries...
...Everyone...
...Cuba had one for every 650...
...But when Padilla "won" his freedom only with a Stalin-type confession, which included urging his wife to adopt "proper" viewpoints in her writing, friends of the Castro regime the world over began to see the deadly similarities with other Communist societies...
...Cuba's was far the most equitable...
...For my friend and former Daily Worker colleague Max Gordon, the Soviet and Chinese utopias dissolved, the former with Khrushchev's secret report and the Gulag Archipelago, the latter with the madness and murders of "the great proletarian cultural revolution...
...I will not review Fresco's effort to distort my statement that "we don't want people to have religious or dogmatic beliefs about the Holocaust...
...One of the true achievements of the Cuban regime is the near elimination of illiteracy...
...Amalia, a slum-dweller, is quoted in Halperin's book: "I won't say that I ate any better before the Revolution, but I didn't eat badly in those days...
...there were many young people, others middle-aged and older—all in all a fair cross section of people who grew up in 21 years of the regime...
...According to Schori, Castro is arguably "a factor of moderation" in Central America...
...But that Soviet leader also disclosed something about Soviet economic "achievements...
...Health care progress is perhaps "the greatest source of pride among Cubans . . . clinics dot the country...
Vol. 29 • April 1982 • No. 2
