To Change The World – My Years in Cuba

By Margaret Randall

2009

Rutgers University Press

A review

Margaret Randall has written a unique book about the eleven years she lived in Cuba. She wrote this book from the perspective of a feminist, a mother of four children, someone who is critical of the capitalist system in the United States, as well as someone who was given political asylum in Cuba. While Randall has many good things to say about Cuba, her overall perspective has a few problems.

Randall, who today lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico was raised in the Southwest and lived in New York City before she moved to Mexico. In 1968 there were uprisings in Mexico protesting the government’s funding for the Olympics of that year. These demonstrations objected to this funding rather than the dire needs of the people.

The government responded by murdering hundreds of demonstrators. Margaret Randall protested this repression and the government responded by confiscating her passport. She lived in hiding for a while, expecting further government repression.

Cuba offered Randall, her husband, and four children asylum. However, without a passport Randall needed to surreptitiously travel to Czechoslovakia, and then to Cuba. In Cuba her family was waiting for her, but she was in poor health and needed an operation to remove her kidney.

Randall eventually obtained a job as a writer, as well as an apartment. Her children all had a public school education in Cuba.

Randall credits Cuba for transforming her attitudes about politics. She is proud of her children and appreciated the education as well as the care they received in Cuba. Randall also makes several criticisms of Cuba. I believe that the core of these criticisms is that she argues that the revolutionary process in Cuba hasn’t gone far enough.

Randall is also the author of two books of interviews with women in Cuba and Nicaragua, as well as a biography of Haydee Santamaria who was a leader of the Cuban Revolution. She is also an accomplished poet.

In order to gain a perspective to this book I think we need to look at a bit of Cuban history.

Cuba before the 1959 revolution

The revolution that created the United States in the 1780s had a profound impact throughout the Americas. By 1804 there was a revolution in Haiti that declared independence from France and abolished slavery. Haiti is the closest neighbor to Cuba and many French slave owners brought their slaves to the eastern part of Cuba in order to escape the revolution. The eastern part of Cuba was where the revolution began and also has the highest percentage of Afro-Cubans on the island.

Then, in the late 1800s a revolution broke out in Cuba demanding independence as well as an end to slavery. Antonio Maceo, who was Black became one of the central leaders of this revolution. The many Black soldiers who joined the ranks of the revolutionaries called themselves by the African name mambises. Thousands of Chinese Cubans also made up a strong contingent of the revolutionary army.

After about thirty years the revolution was on the verge of victory. At this point the United States invaded the country and accepted Spain’s surrender of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. In the Philippines, the United States then went to war against those who demanded independence of their homeland.

The United States then demanded that Cuba adopt the Platt Amendment into their constitution. This Amendment gave the U.S. government veto power against any decision made my Cuba. These actions led to a series of oppressive dictatorships on the island.

It is difficult to imagine what these dictatorships meant to the Cuban people. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans worked producing sugar cane. This backbreaking work under the hot sun lasted about three months per year. For the rest of the year Cubans needed to find a way of supporting themselves. They did this without any meaningful access to education or health care. While many activists in this country protest police brutality, the rural so-called guards in Cuba felt free to do whatever they wanted knowing they would never be prosecuted.

In this atmosphere, the U.S. Mafia owned several luxury hotels in the Cuban capital of Havana. In order to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside, many women became prostitutes. So, before the revolution Cuba looked like many nations in the world. Abject poverty existed side by side with obscene opulence.

I experienced this level of poverty in 1987 when I was a member of a construction brigade in Nicaragua. The people didn’t have any meaningful access to health care and three children died of easily preventable diseases in three weeks that I was there. About 30,000 children die of preventable diseases in the world every day.

Before the Nicaraguan revolution in that country the people didn’t have access to education or electricity. Wood needed to be collected every day just to make a fire to cook food. There were no bathrooms and we used outhouses that needed to be cleaned every week.

Issues facing Cuba today

Understanding this reality, we might begin to appreciate what the Cuban Revolution meant to the people of that island. A short time after the revolution, there was a mobilization to teach everyone on the island how to read. Then, women and men who never had any chance of advancement were encouraged to study and gain a profession. Many travelled to the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe for that education. In an underdeveloped nation the lines for bookstores were longer than the lines to buy bread.

Margaret Randall explained one of the big differences in the Cuban educational system from the system of education in capitalist societies. Under capitalism competition is the rule and in Cuba a system of emulation is encouraged. This is how she described the difference:

“Emulation—which not only functioned in schools but in factories, offices, and even military units—meant that those involved decided collectively on their goals and then helped one another to achieve them. Thus, in the school setting, collective analysis was encouraged. A child good in math was expected to help one who had trouble in that subject but excelled in history, and she in turn would offer help in her area of expertise. This way everyone succeeded. Competition, it was felt, created individuals who tried to get ahead at the expense of others. Emulation produced mutual encouragement, collectivity, and social harmony.”       

As a result of this transformation, Cuba now has more doctors per-capita than any other nation in the world. Cuba’s infant mortality rate as well as their percentage of people who have AIDS is lower that those same percentages in the United States. Cuba has also sent thousands of its professionals to aid some of the poorest nations of the world.       

Given this history we might ask: Why has Margaret Randall made so many criticisms of Cuba? We can begin by answering this question by making two points.

1)   Karl Marx and Frederick Engels imagined that socialism would first advance in developed nations like the United States. In these nations, workers would be able to take control of the means of production and begin to transform the world.

Working people in this environment would be able to shorten the workweek, give more leisure time to women and men, and make education and work inspiring rather than alienating. They would be able to do this while eliminating poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, as well as war, and the destruction of the environment.

Cuba, for the most part, only had access to a one-crop economy of sugar, as well as the tourist business. These enterprises, in and of themselves did not give the Cuban workers the means of production that would allow Cubans to make many material gains in their lives.

For many years Cuba relied on the aid they received from the former Soviet Union. While this aid was appreciated, the Stalinist policies of the Soviet Union also had an adverse effect on Cuba.

It is difficult to summarize the effect that the United States embargo has had in Cuba. I will only say that while the U.S. government was attempting to murder Fidel Castro over 600 times, Cuba managed to carry out many of the goals of their revolution.

 

2)   There is a big difference between capitalism and true socialism. In capitalist societies all production is geared to enrich a tiny minority who own the largest corporations. Under a socialist government, control of all enterprises is transferred to the masses of workers who democratically control how and why goods and services are produced.

Thinking about this transformation, we can say that an extreme change in consciousness must take place on a whole range of issues. This change of consciousness will take some time and will evolve as workers begin to hold the reins of power. We can see how this change in consciousness in Cuba evolved over time after the revolution.

There are specific criticisms Randall makes of Cuba. She argued that when she first arrived in Cuba, government officials marginalized several artists. She argued that many people who were gay experienced some very difficult years. She argued that while women made many gains because of the revolution, there was government resistance against efforts aimed at giving women genuine liberation.

In order to present a view of how attitudes in Cuba were changing, I will quote at length from a Cuban who discussed this issue in a public meeting where ideas were presented on the 1974 Cuban Family Code:

“And consider what marriage means today? Certainly not the same as it meant in the old bourgeois order. That is, it means the same to some of us but not everyone. To many of us marriage is no longer a ritual through which we can try to save a girl’s honor—whatever that means. In the new society, where unmarried mothers have the same rights as married mothers, where children are recognized equally without regard to who their father is—the old bourgeois concept of illegitimacy is no longer valid—where women can work, where children are educated and cared for by the state, marriage can’t possibly have the same meaning as it once did.

“Marriage in the socialist state should be an equal partnership, entered into equally. Even if a young woman becomes pregnant she should be able to decide—based on what she believes is good for her child and for her own future—if she wants to marry her child’s father. To begin with she should be able to decide if she wants to have a child or not.”

In this passage we see an issue that was evolving in Cuba. We see how the attitudes towards marriage didn’t change the moment the revolutionary government took power. This was something that took time and today the Cuban Family Code views marriage as an equal partnership of men and women.

Mariela Castro is the daughter of Raul Castro who headed the Cuban government for several years. People in this country can view the HBO film: Mariela Castro’s March: Cuba’s LGBT Revolution. Clearly this film was approved by the Cuban government.

The film documents the fact that the Cuban government made many errors with respect to its treatment of gays. We also see how there continues to be some homophobic attitudes towards gays in Cuba today. However, this film also shows how Mariela Castro traveled throughout Cuba in an attempt to promote gay rights on the island. Her efforts are fully supported by the government. The film also interviewed someone who had a sex change operation paid for by the government.

As with the discussion on marriage, we see how the Cubans work to advance the revolution by initiating discussions with the people. Because we live in a capitalist environment in this country, we rarely if ever see these kinds of discussion taking place.

Martin Niemoller

One section of this book that had me scratching my head was Randall’s view of Martin Niemoller. Niemoller was a German pastor who was late to break with the Nazi doctrine while they held power. The Nazis sent him to two concentration camps where he narrowly escaped execution. His words, after he emerged from prison are known all over the world.

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me, and by this time there was no one left to speak up.”

Because the Cuban government gave Randall asylum, she was reluctant to criticize that government when artists were being marginalized. Then, she was fired from her job, but continued to receive her salary and maintained her apartment. During that time when she didn’t have work, she felt ostracized and isolated. So, we see why Randall found Niemoller’s quotation compelling.

Eventually the Cuban government apologized for her termination and she was rehired to her job.

The problem with this analogy is that a workers government is clearly different from a capitalist or fascist government. In a fascist state, anyone who objected to the government was executed immediately or sent to a concentration camp. In capitalism anyone who attempts or organize a union can find themselves fired. Although this is technically illegal, employers have found numerous ways to get around the law, and most workers understand this reality.

In Cuba, the government ministers who marginalized artists were replaced with new leaders who had the support of the artistic community. I happened to be on an art-centered tour of Cuba and viewed contemporary artists who appeared to use every style of art. Some of these artists have won international acclaim. They were all educated in the Cuban educational system. This is just one example of how the Cuban consciousness had evolved.

However, in the capitalist system we see a trend that is completely opposed to the Cuban reality. We see how chattel slavery was replaced by Jim Crow segregation. When Jim Crow was outlawed, we see it replaced with mass incarceration. We see how unions improved the standard of living in this country. Then, we see how employers moved their factories to nations where wages are between two and ten dollars per day. We see how women won the right to legal abortions. Today we see how the government is working to reverse that gain.

The right to abortion has never been threatened in Cuba. Black people have made momentous gains since the revolution. In Cuba a workers government holds power.

An experiment in social change?

Margaret Randall views the Cuban reality as a “great experiment in social change.” In other words, she views socialism in Cuba today as an “experiment” that might be looked at in view of its positive or negative effects. 

Fidel Castro had a different view of what the socialist movement means to the world. These are his words in 1988:

“Socialism is and will continue to be the hope, the only hope, the only road for the peoples, the oppressed, the exploited, the plundered. Socialism is the only alternative! And today, when our enemies want to question it, we must defend it more than ever.”

Why did Fidel Castro say these words?

The standard of living in the United States has been deteriorating for the past 40 years.

About 12% of the U.S. population doesn’t have enough food to eat in a nation that has the potential to feed the world.

The United States has a greater percentage of its population in prison than any other nation. Even China, a nation with a population about four times greater than the U.S. has fewer prisoners.

About half of the world lives on about two dollars per day or less. About 30,000 children die every day of preventable diseases.

Yet, the amount of money invested in derivatives is equivalent to almost $160,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Derivatives are merely bets on how well the stock market will perform.

All corporations depend on a continuous flow of oil for their profits. In about 50 years most of the oil in the world will be used up.

Capitalism has two fundamental priorities. One is to increase the sales of commodities. The other is to cut production costs. These two priorities explain why depressions unfold. Not because there is a shortage of goods, but because there are more goods on the market than are being sold. In other words, in the capitalist system overproduction creates crisis for workers.

As Fidel Castro explained, Cuba has made many mistakes. Unlike the reality of the Soviet Union and China, Cuba has done it’s best to correct those mistakes. Clearly this hasn’t been easy, but this process is unfolding.

My opinion is that while Margaret Randall gives us useful information about Cuba, she doesn’t fully appreciate this reality. With all of it’s problems, I attended the 2017 May Day demonstration in Havana, Cuba. Literally one-million people in that city participated. This was a mass demonstration in support of the government. One of the most popular slogans was “Yo soy Fidel” (I am Fidel Castro). This demonstration shows that with all of its problems, Cuba continues to have the mass support of the people.