by Rick Lowe
You might say this post is a rebuttal to Dr. Nicolette Bethel over at Blogworld.
In this post, she talks about being sceptical of people like me that denigrate Castro's Cuba.
She claims that those of us in The Bahamas that do, "…In most cases the arguments offered to display the inferiority of the Cuban revolution are not arguments at all, but knee-jerk condemnations that ignore the success of the revolution. They usually refer to material goods, or else they assume that the only possible way that Castro should have retained power for half a century is through the total subjugation of the Cuban people."
Of course I did my best in the comments section of her original post to defend my honour, and even if I say so myself, I think I did a reasonable job.
But, Libertad Desarrollo does a much better job of making the point that Castro's revolution was a failure.
Here's a little snippet for you:
Hope you can read their study in this link to a pdf document in their web site.
Defending what Castro has done to his people, when the facts on the ground show so many signs of decay is, well, discouraging.
One only has to travel about Cuba to appreciate the effort that went into this socialist experiment, though, which for better or worse took an aggressive alternative approach to the concept of community and individual responsibility that has been far more successfully espoused by capitalism. Neither economic system is perfect, and ironically enough both the U.S. and Bahamas are “becoming poorer and poorer, more dependent on foreign aid and less free.” If anything, perhaps we can learn from the Cuban difficulties to better improve our own social networks … sticking our collective heads in the sand as to the physical, educational, financial state of this country for residents hasn’t been fruitful either.
Such bold thinking in Cuba would only get Kimberly in jail…Free expression does not exists in a police state.