International observers fail to understand Cuba, or Fidel Castro. They appear baffled by the economic policies which the Cuban government implements. They cannot understand repeated "mistakes," cannot grasp why plans are announced and implemented, but then, having barely started to produce results, cancelled and replaced by new ones. They do not understand how the Government, though a self-proclaimed socialist system, can limit, or even annul, the profits and incentives of peasants, workers, small industrialists and entrepreneurs. The Government invites entrepreneurship; but when it succeeds, they confiscate the profits and outlaw the activities.

The result? Reduced production of goods and services; disastrous consequences for the country's economy. We have witnessed this process repeatedly over the last 35 years. The catastrophe that Cubans face every day, and under which they suffer every day, is its result. Because of it, international observers, fixed in a Western way of thinking, doubt Fidel Castro's intelligence. They consider him a failure, an anachronism, a political dinosaur. But those observers and commentators are fundamentally mistaken. They fail to understand Castro's motivates—what makes Castro a success in his own mind.

There are men and women whose idea of success calls them to dedicate their lives to others. In doing so, they feel their own lives enriched. There are others whose idea of success is wholly self-serving. They pursue actions which may well impoverish other
people's lives, but in their mind, they enrich their own. All human history plays out between these two poles, for better or worse. And what differentiates and separates human beings is not the color of their skin, or the language they speak. It is which of these paths they follow.

To understand others, one must understand their motives. What are their goals, their ambitions? Then measure their success or failure against the benchmarks they set for themselves. We find that when one's success is to lift others, to raise them in their human condition, it is accompanied by greatness, When success is attained by the repression and debasement of others, it is murky, low, and sordid. Christ — the greatest revolutionary — died on the cross, but was successful, because He enabled others to live a better life. He endeavored to change the human heart; and accomplished this, introducing love where before there had been only obedience.

Peace and good will between men arose as a new ideal on the earth. Yet in His last hours of life, He was beaten, defiled, speared, and spat upon. The path to Golgotha, by which Christ carried the cross touched by blood and sacrifice under the derisive shouts of a fearful crowd, is remembered every year through religious ceremony in the four corners of the world; while His message "That ye love one another" lives and continues to change the earth. Buddha, the Compassionate, died poor in wordly possesions and rich in wisdom, bathed in the light he searched for and found. Through millennia He has lived in the thoughts and feelings of hundreds of millions of human beings. His teachings live today as real as when He imparted them under the shade of a fig tree, surrounded by disciples, in the immensity of India.

And in Cuba, do we need to talk of our own Marti? Or of Maceo, the eponymous, who gave his name to an era? Or of Agramonte, the aristocratic lawyer who made common cause with the humble — a romantic, adored in life, fallen at Jimaguayu in the middle of the Ten Years' War? Or Cespedes, the aristocrat who freed his slaves because where slavery exists freedom cannot? Or the one simply called "the Insane"? We don't even know his name, but he is immortalized in the bronze plaque at Cacahual because he was one of those who rescued Maceo's corpse. Or Maximo Gomez, The Generalissimo, born in the Dominican Republic but Cuban by constitutional mandate? He died in the Republic loved, adored, by a whole people. All succeeded. All had a purpose to which they dedicated their lives. And their time among us lifted us, gave us national dignity, a fatherland.

Fidel Castro has also set himself goals, and these he has achieved: to become master of a nation, to make a people submit, to own their wealth and control their lives. And of course, to reach world renown. Those who lack moral compass admire him, greet him, shake his hand. He has succeeded. But what has his success cost? It has diminished a people. It has provoked the exile of more than a million and a half Cubans, ruined the Republic and crippled the country with debt. Let us recognize the fruits of Castro's success — thousands of Cubans killed by other Cubans in firing squads; tens of thousands of Cubans imprisoned by other Cubans for years because of opposition to him; the sacrifice of thousands of Cubans in Africa so he could play military strategist. When he came to power, Castro declared that he had rescued the Republic from American imperialism. Today, he sells it at the lowest price to any foreigner willing to buy. He begs for a relationship with the United States, to gain dollars he will never repay. He encourages young Cuban girls to prostitute themselves to foreigners so he can collect dollars, dollars he has already thrown away by the billions.

All that has been achieved by Fidel Castro. That is the price the people have paid for his personal success. It is a zero-sum success game: he gains, the people lose. What he has, he has taken from others: power, wealth and well being. Those were his goals, his ambitions, and he has achieved them. Where some cast a strong light by their success, a tyrant casts a strong shadow by his.

That is why we understand current events as Fidel Castro promoting Fidel Castro. At a recent national gathering held in Cuba, and in subsequent press releases, Castro made known that forty thousand additional workers were needed to prepare the sugar cane harvest. The costly mobilizations for cane-cutting were criticized. It was said that the cane-sowing was in bad shape and that foreign companies had granted credits of one hundred million dollars to pay for the products needed for the next sugar cane harvest. We understand once again that this has nothing to do with Cuba's economic recovery; it will only aggravate the people's situation. These developments are moves by Fidel Castro to secure his permanence in power. That is his only measure of success. He is not a failure but quite the opposite, a winner, because he gets what he wants. He is no anachronism, but precisely the opposite: a specimen of all epochs, a type which springs up repeatedly in the course of history.

Castro must be recognized not as a political dinosaur, but as a symptomatic character, one that appears whenever it is forgotten that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The price of liberty was put forth many years ago in this United States, whose anthem
proclaims the country to be, with reason and pride, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Brave men we have always had, and still have, in Cuba. But in great numbers, they have slept through the times. They are starting to awake. When enough wake up, we will make Cuba free. Our great orator told us once, more than a century ago in this land: For Cuba that suffers, the first word. His preaching inspired the necessary miracle, that of uniting the Cubans. Let us remember all he said to us. As we are roused to action, so shall we know he lives among us still.

From Washington, spoken to you by Emilio-Adolfo Rivero.

.
New Cuba Coalition
P. O. Box 14077
Washington, D. C. 20044-4077
Dr. Emilio-Adolfo Rivero — President
Ernesto Díaz-Rodríguez — Vice President
e-mail: cuba@idt.net