by James E. Knight
Cuba on the Cross
More than six decades after Cuba liberated itself from the dictates of US hegemony, it is still being punished severely for being so defiant, right under Uncle Sam’s nose.
Just imagine, the Cuban leadership embarked on a revolutionary socio-economic experiment with the aim of eliminating social injustice. Worse yet, the Cubans have remained strong, and can boast of accomplishments in human development and welfare, second to none elsewhere in the Americas, and many other parts of the world.
Then, not only has the Cuban revolutionary leadership been satisfied with the opportunity it has created for its people to realize their full human potential in an egalitarian society, but in an extraordinary internationalist spirit, has reached out to assist oppressed people around the world, in spite of the domestic difficulties resulting from the criminal US – led blockade.
The Cubans, from their little and blockaded island in the Caribbean, have given their humanitarian service, have shared their limited resources, and have even shed their blood, in the international struggle for human liberation and elevation.
THE ARGUMENTS
First of all, it must be noted that in recent decades, more and more member countries of the United Nations have voted for the lifting of the embargo on Cuba. Most recently, the USA and Apartheid Israel were joined by their supplicant Ukraine and few other members of their right-wing club, in voting to maintain the cruelty toward Cuba. In 2024, the vote was 187 against the blockade and the USA and Israel the only two for maintaining it. There was only one abstention.
So what are the arguments that persist against Cuba? The reasons stated for the continuation of the political contempt, the economic and financial sabotage and the diplomatic hostility, are stale, outdated and utterly senseless.
High on the list is pandering to influential Miami Cubans, who represent a bitter constituency, mainly of descendants of persons who fled from the island, after finding themselves on the wrong side of the people’s effort to liberate themselves from the oppressive Batista regime.
The first Cubans to flee to Miami following the triumph of the revolution, not surprisingly, had been the most wealthy and most powerful members of the old Batista regime, along with the American mobsters who’d made Havana their own. They were soon followed by the country’s business elite, many of whom already did business with the United States, or who whose companies were owned by Americans.
Some were military who escaped execution for murdering people who they suspected of supporting the rebel army led by Fidel Castro. The revolutionary government did not execute innocent people.
Next is the argument that Cuba refuses to pay many millions of dollars to people in the USA for properties nationalized by the revolutionary government. But how was Cuba to pay? With what currency? Her next-door neighbor, main trading partner, most influential power and most powerful economy in the world, has led a blockade against her for six decades. Companies and countries have been punished by the USA for doing business with Cuba.
Then, there’s “dictatorship”. They complain that there is “no freedom”; that there should be freedom of the press and the right to form political parties. They mock about the shortage of most things and the existence of rationing.
Now, the Cubans don’t pretend that there are not some things that they could have done differently. After all, some young enthusiastic revolutionaries leading a socio-economic experiment, with the noblest intentions in the world, were more than likely to make some mistakes.
But let’s not confuse the negative effects of years of terrorist plots hatched in the USA, the economic and financial blockade and the hostile propaganda, with the mistakes or weaknesses of the revolutionary process itself. One can seek to correct one’s weaknesses, but the circumstances created by forces over which one has no control can make matters very complex.
Then comes the ridiculous accusation of Cuba being a state sponsor of terrorism. That coming from the state that whole-heartedly supports terrorist Israel in the hundreds of billions of dollars, enabling it not just to terrorize the Palestinians for decades, but to carry out a full, horrific genocidal slaughter.
When in the early nineteen seventies there were frequent plane hijackings from Miami to Havana, those were said to be Cuba’s fault. When Cubana flight 455 was bombed in October 1976, as it took of from Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, the USA was least concerned.
At the United Nations, when Cuba raised the issue of the first terrorist attack on civilian aviation in the Americas, the USA responded by saying that Cuba was simply suffering because of its ‘communist dictatorship’, and that there was no real terrorist threat to anyone else. Of course, the perpetrators of that mass murder, that dastardly act of terrorism, lived happily and protected, though not openly celebrated, for the rest of their lives in the USA. The upholder is a sponsor.
So when we combine the scarcity of almost every commodity, caused by the blockade, with the constant efforts to subvert, and the terrorist threats and acts orchestrated by powerful external forces, how difficult should it be for us to understand the need for the undesirable rationing of everything from onions to –unfortunately- opinions? Cuba has spent all these decades on high alert. The severe hostility of the next-door USA, and its capacity to infiltrate and create disruption and disorder cannot be underestimated. National security is overarching concern.
Yet, in Cuba, unlike in the USA, there has been no history of people gone missing by actions of the state; no history of torture; no history indefinite incarceration; no history of religious profiling, or any of the other reprehensible phenomena that became such common practice in the so-called free world, after a single day of terror, on September 11th, 2001.
In her book, Rogue Justice, distinguished USA law professor, Karen J. Greenburg, drawing on interviews with key figures in the Bush and Obama administrations, details just how following the September 11th terrorist attacks in the USA, human rights were wiped out in that country, during a decade-long assault on the rule of law, in the name of national security.
Greenburg wrote: “ The expansion of governmental power would last as long as there was reason to think that someone somewhere might be plotting a terrorist act. To the advocates of executive power, like Addington and Cheney and Yoo, this was the silver lining around the cloud of dust that still rose from the remains of the World Centre. Soon enough, this rogue operation would spread into the courts, beyond merely surveilling American citizens, and toward detaining, torturing, and eventually killing them”. That is not Cuba.
BAD EXAMPLE
What then is the real reason for the hostility towards Cuba? It’s very simple. Cuba’s revolutionary effort to create an egalitarian society, right next to the centre of international corporate capitalism. It is a bad example. Corporate America is terrified. They and the outdated anti-Castro fanatics in Miami are now supporting what they hope will be the final suffocating squeeze on Cuba, in their effort to instruct the rest of the Americas, that no socialist project can work. The revolutionary socio-economic experiment must never be afforded the circumstances that would allow it to evolve healthily, according to the will of the Cuban people. They just want to be able to say that it failed.
So if Cuba is being ‘crucified’ for sharing the bread and fish equitably, for healing the sick, for reaching out across the waters and assisting the meek and downtrodden of the earth, for fostering true fellowship and bringing light to humanity, then those Christians seeking to execute her would have to be the anti-Christ, to use their own word.
Long live the Cuban revolution!
(Second edition, 26/02/26)
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