hasta la revolucion siempre!

Cuba and its revolution have always had a special place of respect in my family.

The country is amazing: the people are incredibly friendly, well-educated and well-informed. The climate is ideal. The hospitals (as I know from first hand experience) are excellent. Two things are clear:

1. Cuba is by far the most advanced, safe and developed Caribbean nation.
2. I would certainly rather be a poor person in Cuba than in Mexico, the United States, or…well, any country in the Americas with the exception of Canada. Nobody starves in Cuba, and no one is homeless. There are no large barrios without running water or electricity as there are in Mexico.

Yet it is a poor country. Although its emergency services are amazing, hurricanes often wipe out crops and housing, causing economic woes for the whole island. And as everyone knows, the place is paralysed by time, trapped somewhere back pursuing a 60s dream and ideal the rest of the world has lost interest in. Tariq Ali has argued that the existence of Cuba serves as a reproach to many one-time left wingers, who are now enjoying the bourgeois comforts of the successful careers they ditched their ideals for. This is probably true. I cant blame such types for…well moving on. Cuba needs to as well. Fidel, to his credit, had the brains to turn over power already to his brother. It would be great to see Raul acting independently of family control and opening the economy more. It is inevitable, it has to happen, and I would rather it happened on Raul's watch than enforced by some Miami-based onslaught.

But what the revolution has become should not undermine the memory of its origins and accomplishments.

New Year's day marked the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. While the legacy might be mixed, the early glory of the time can be seen in Che, the excellent new film by Steven Soderbergh. Typically, the film itself turned into an example of why the revolution has lasted as long as it has: the United States policy towards it is, and has always been, idiotic. I experienced this personally on the Canadian-US border a decade ago when US border guards found a book (required reading for a course on Hispanic literature at my university!), and confiscated it as "contra-band." It was a 19^th century love story (Diario de Amor by Gertudis Gomez de Avellaneda), and if there was a single revolutionary sentiment in it, I certainly missed it. The policy has not changed: Soderbergh had to make his film abroad, with French and Spanish funding, due to the US's hysteria. When the director tried to have a one-off showing in Miami, the city's mayor, Matti Herrera Bower, got involved, claiming the viewing mustn't be allowed. So much for freedom of expression. The US embargo and the Helms- Burton act are immoral, illegal, and utterly useless. They have done nothing to promote change on the island, and clearly support the Castro brothers' ongoing argument that they are David facing down Goliath. Nine US presidents have given them this argument on a silver platter.