BY HARVEY McARTHUR
CHICAGO - Debate on the Cuban revolution and U.S.
aggression against Cuba featured prominently in the
international convention of the Latin American Studies
Association held here September 24-26. The congress drew about
4,000 academics and researchers, most from the United States,
with a substantial number from different Latin American
countries and a few from Europe and Japan.
Organizers of the LASA gathering had invited more than 80 Cuban scholars to participate, the largest Cuban delegation ever. The Cubans, some of them LASA members who had participated in previous conventions, were scheduled to speak in more than 40 of the 500 panel discussions there.
The U.S. State Department, however stalled in authorizing entry visas for the Cuban guests. Officials of LASA and other members protested the delay to the State Department and eventually won visas for 65 of the Cubans. Some of those who received visas at the last minute were further delayed by Hurricane Georges and arrived late or were unable to attend.
Cuban scholars made presentations on topics ranging from the role of women in Cuba to recent economic developments, agrarian reform and the transformation of the Cuban countryside, developments in the Cuban-American population, and the status of youth and Afro-Cubans.
Washington's hostility to Cuba
Five panel discussions focused on U.S.-Cuba relations. One
featured University of Havana professor Esteban Morales, who
took up Washington's attempts to undermine the revolution,
especially the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity
Act, also known as the Helms-Burton law, which tightens the
U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. Morales noted that these
measures came in the mid-1990s as Cuba began to recover from
the worst of the economic crisis precipitated by the loss of
favorable trade relations with the Soviet Union at the
beginning of the decade and as it became clear in Washington
that the revolution would not collapse on its own.
On that panel, Richard Nuccio, a former head of the U.S. State Department's "Cuba Desk" who later resigned out of disagreement with aspects of the Helms-Burton law, spoke at length defending U.S. efforts to pressure Cuba in the early 1990s. While distancing himself from the harshest measures imposed in recent years, Nuccio claimed that Washington had every right to "promote a peaceful, democratic transition in Cuba," and blamed the continuing U.S. aggression on the refusal of the Cuban government to change to meet Washington's demands.
Nuccio was answered from the floor by Soraya Castro Mariño from the University of Havana. She quoted from a press interview with Nuccio when he was Washington's point man on Cuba in which he articulated the U.S. government's goal of undermining and eventually overthrowing the Cuban government. Castro Mariño also cited the U.S. war in the Persian Gulf as further proof that Washington was not interested in democracy anywhere.
Debate on Che Guevara
More than 150 people attended a panel discussion on the
book Compañero, the Life and Death of Che Guevara, by Jorge
Castañeda, a prominent liberal academic and commentator who is
a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM) and New York University. Ernesto Che Guevara was a
central leader of the 1959 Cuban revolution and shouldered key
responsibilities in the revolutionary government in the first
half of the 1960s.
Castañeda presents a liberal anticommunist argument against Che and the Cuban revolution, labeling them a failure that no one wants to emulate today. "No one is a Guevarista today," he told the audience, "and no one is much interested in socialism either."
Castañeda claims Guevara and Cuban president Fidel Castro developed sharp differences in the mid-1960s over economic policies and Cuba's growing ties with the Soviet Union, and that Castro finally sent Guevara off on a hopeless mission to Bolivia where he would be killed.
The LASA panel included three prominent professors from U.S. universities and Juan Jorge Valdés Paz of the Instituto de Historia in Havana.
Harvard professor John Coatsworth applauded "Castañeda's wonderful book." Guevara "failed to build a solid economy and failed to spread the revolution," he argued, but still remains "an important symbol of struggle against inhumanity."
Another Harvard Cubanologist, Jorge Domínguez, also covered Castañeda's book with praise. Echoing the prevalent theme at the panel, the academic declared that Che "failed as a guerrilla," adding that he "led to death a great many others, and eventually to his own death" in heading a nucleus of revolutionary combatants in Bolivia in 1966-67. Guevara was murdered in 1967 by the Bolivian military dictatorship in close consultation with Washington.
Domínguez repeated the charge that the political and economic policies advocated by Guevara as Cuban working people reorganized the country's economy and society on proletarian foundations "were catastrophic." He blamed Che for making public statements that "contributed to confrontations with the United States and the USSR and made more vulnerable [the Cuban] government."
Answering the other speakers, University of New Mexico professor Nelson Valdés reminded the audience that in just 11 years, between 1956 and 1967, Che had been a guerrilla commander, head of the National Bank, Minister of Industry, international representative of the Cuban revolution, and a leader of guerrilla fighters in Africa and Latin America. "Ask yourself," he concluded, "if you were to die today, what have you done in the past 11 years of your life that compares with those 11 years of Che's?"
Juan Jorge Valdés Paz of the Cuban Institute of History opened his remarks by "disagreeing with the most fundamental points of Castañeda's book," including his focus on psychology rather than the social conditions and struggles in Latin America in attempting to explain Guevara's actions. Valdés disputed Castañeda's "selective use of sources," and reliance for information on individuals who are opposed to the Cuban revolution. Che's will was a product of his development through the struggles of the Cuban revolution, he said.
Valdés took on Castañeda's claim that Che had major political differences with Fidel. "Che and Fidel maintained close, fraternal relations. Their views were the closest of any two leaders of the revolution," he said.
Nor did Guevara act in an ultraleft manner when speaking as a representative of the Cuban government as Castañeda charged. "He always acted with the greatest discipline in carrying out his responsibilities," Valdés said.
Guevara's leadership of guerrilla struggles in the Congo and Bolivia were vindicated by subsequent revolutionary developments in Latin America and Africa, Valdés explained, noting the popular upsurge in Bolivia in the late 1960s and the independence movements in southern Africa the mid-1970s. The initiatives for these expeditions came from Che, he added, but they were supported by the rest of the Cuban leadership and flowed from the general internationalist course carried by the revolution.
Che's ideas are a rich legacy for today, he stressed. "For me and the Cubans, this includes his criticisms of existing socialism." Guevara's example includes the determination that "it is necessary to make a revolution to be able to carry out social reforms. Today, Valdés stated, when the "capitalist euphoria has come to an end," Che is an "example of struggle, of the fight for a better world and of human solidarity."