Socialism, where poverty and slavery are business

By: Hugo Marcelo Balderrama - 01/12/2024

Guest columnist.
Share:     

In 1960, Fidel Castro seized assets from American oil companies and many private businesses owned by Cuban citizens. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order implementing the embargo in response to the actions of the Cuban dictatorship, which, in addition to stealing private property, had aligned itself with the Soviet Union.

At that time, Castro basically celebrated the actions of the United States government, since they "liberated" Cuba from the burden of American capitalism.

This rhetoric continued well into the 1980s. For example, press releases in Granma newspaper and speeches by Fidel Castro emphasized the reduction of the influence of the American economy in the world. Headlines such as: “The imperialist economy withdraws from Africa and Latin America” filled the pages of the official Cuban newspaper, not to mention the hours that this type of news occupied on the regime’s radio and television channels.

That is to say, as long as the Soviet subsidy lasted, the Castro dictatorship was happy not to negotiate with the United States. However, when Castro realized the imminent collapse of the Russian Bear, he began to use the blockade discourse. The central idea was to avoid responsibility for the poverty suffered by millions of Cubans and, at the same time, to extract money from the naive and gullible members of Western governments.

In all fairness, it went very well, because several European governments and business groups fell into the trap and became patrons of Havana. Thus, at the end of 1998, even after a tirade against Spain by Fidel, of the 650 foreign firms accredited in Cuba, 180 were Spanish and requests for investment increased daily, especially from hotel groups seeking the tourist offer of the almost virgin keys. Likewise, the hotels with Spanish investment became centres of social life in Havana, especially the Habana Libre and the Cohiba Meliá, and the beautiful beach of Varadero in the province of Matanzas. At the same time, more than twenty Spanish universities signed academic complementary agreements with Cuba.

Several groups of Cuban exiles in Florida and other parts of the world denounced something that later became clear: All this financial flow would not help ordinary Cubans, but rather the regime.

The way things worked was more or less like this: Hotel owners brought capital to the island. For his part, Fidel provided labor, which, especially compared to European labor, was very cheap for employers. However, the trick was that it was not the hotel employees who received the salaries, but the dictatorship, which then gave them 20%. That is, for every 10 dollars a Cuban earned working for Spanish hotel chains, Fidel took 8.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua, Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia, which placed their entire foreign and domestic policy at the service of Castroism, began to buy the services of Cuban doctors under the same pitiful conditions. In this regard, Hana Fischer, a Uruguayan political analyst, in her article: The business of the Latin American left with Cuban doctors, states the following:

Fidel turned Cuba into his private estate. Therefore, all the income and all the debts of that country, strictly speaking, are his. One of the most important sources of income is the indentured labor of the great majority of Cubans. He has received the support of friendly governments that "hire" certain professionals, especially those related to health. This can be verified, because "coincidentally" these rulers do not negotiate with these Cubans under a "free labor" regime, but always as part of an agreement between States. And Fidel - like the French king Louis XIV - could boast and say: "I am the State."

In conclusion, the Latin American left is very emphatic in denouncing the exploitation of man by capitalism, which is also non-existent, but it tends to remain very silent and even become complicit in the exploitation of man by the Socialist State.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».