To Cuba with Hate

Needless to say, the United States has not paid a penny of this.

One of the most common Yankee criticisms of the state of human rights in Cuba has been the arrest of dissidents (although the great majority are quickly released). But many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history.

During the Occupy Movement, which began in 2011, more than 7,000 people were arrested in about the first year, many were beaten by police and mistreated while in custody, their street displays and libraries smashed to pieces; (the Occupy movement continued until 2014; thus, the figure of 7,000 is an understatement.) [Huffington Post, May 3, 2012]

Moreover, it must be kept in mind that whatever restrictions on civil liberties there may be in Cuba exist within a particular context: The most powerful nation in the history of the world is just 90 miles away and is sworn -- vehemently and repeatedly sworn -- to overthrowing the Cuban government. If the United States was simply and sincerely concerned with making Cuba a less restrictive society, Washington's policy would be clear cut:

--Call off the wolves -- the CIA wolves, the AID wolves, the doctor-stealer wolves, the baseball-player-stealer wolves.

--Publicly and sincerely (if American leaders still remember what this word means) renounce their use of CBW and assassinations. And apologize.

--Cease the unceasing hypocritical propaganda -- about elections, for example. (Yes, it's true that Cuban elections never feature a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton, nor $10 billion, nor 24 hours of campaign ads, but is that any reason to write them off?)

--Pay compensation -- a lot of it.

--Sine qua non -- end the God-awful blockade.

Throughout the period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations -- systematic, routine torture; legions of "disappeared" people; government-supported death squads picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and other groups.

The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras. However, not even Cuba's worst enemies have made serious charges against the Havana government for any of such violations; and if one further considers education and health care, "both of which," said President Bill Clinton, "work better [in Cuba] than most other countries," [Miami Herald, October 17, 1997, p.22A], and both of which are guaranteed by the United Nations "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and the "European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms," then it would appear that during the more-than-half century of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.

But never good enough for American leaders to ever touch upon in any way; the Bill Clinton quote being a rare exception indeed. It's a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis. But Cuba needs to do it. Maybe they can civilize the Americans a bit, or at least remind them that for more than a century they have been the leading torturers of the world.