Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 172 (talk | contribs) at 16:52, 31 January 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is blatant propaganda. US-friendly countries in Misplaced Pages with appalling human rights -- I'm talking tens of thousands murdered, not thousands of prisoners -- get whitewashed, while Castro gets alomst nothing but invective for human rights abuses many times more minor.

I'm not disputing that Castro's an autocrat and puts people in jail for criticizing him. But where's the mention of Cuba's incredibly generous aid work program, which sends twice as many foreign aid workers to poor countries as does the United States, a country incomparably more rich and ten times larger? Where's the acknowledgement of the obvious American role in encouraging human rights abuses by Castro's regime? Cuba's been subjected to an American terror campaign out of Miami for decades now -- real brutal stuff, dropping germs on cattle, blowing up an ammunition ship in Havana harbour slaughtering scores of civillians, burning down a department store with a thermite-stuffed doll killing scores more, blowing up a factory right at the height of the missile crisis and killing hundreds, bombing foreign tourists who dare to visit Cuba, I could go on and on. And that's without even discussing an embargo specifically aimed at preventing food and medicine from getting to Cuba in violation of every international law and WTO rule you can think of.

When America was subjected to the deaths of many citizens, but nothing even approaching the loss of American independence or the fall of its government, it clamped down significantly on civil liberties. If some incomprehensibly powerful country was terrorizing and starving America, do you think they'd fail to imprison people who advocate overthrowing their government?

The attackers at the Bay of Pigs were not "slaughtered". They were defeated, surrendered, and were eventually released (with the exception of some leaders, who were executed). If Cubans tried that on Miami, do you think a single one wouldn't be executed?

"Soviet subsidies" were far less than the economic damage done by the American embargo and did not "finance Cuba's social conditions". Cuba's citizens are still better off than many Latin Americans living under "capitalist democracy" despite forty years of murderous blockade. America preaches about the abused Cubans but struggles fiercly to prevent them actually leaving Cuba.

America's internal documents show they decided to overthrow Castro before he was a communist and before he had nationalized anything other than phone companies and similar obvious public utilities.

This whole article reads like a Cato Institute briefing or something. I don't know where to begin to fix it.--Anon

Copyedited for NPOV. Factualy statements kept in and reduced the number of unneeded adjectives. --mav

172.161.185.97, may I offer you a few tips?

• Register yourself with a screen name so that people know who you are. (It's free, takes one minute, and need not disclose your real name or email address if you don't want it to.) People will take you more seriously if you are not just an anonymous number.
• Make small changes, a bit at a time, taking care to make sure that they are verifiable and expressed dispasionatley.
• The net effect of putting in an adulatory para like the one you added to this article is that someone will delete it, and the useful information that it contains will be lost. Tone down your language, take out as much emotive stuff as you can, and let the facts speak for themselves.

If you can do these things successfully, then you can make a real contribution to this page, and to the other pages you have been editing. Tannin

The version of Jan. 3, 2003 is heavily pro-Castro.

• It makes no mention of Castro's forcible suppression of opposition, calling him the "unchallenged leader" and claiming that the masses "rallied behind him."
• It fails to mention Castro's policy of forbidding emigration (I've read reports in newspapers of Castro's navy sinking boats carrying people trying to escape.)
• It ought to mention the lack of press freedom, too.

--Uncle Ed

Why is Cuba's infant mortality rate only "technically" lower than the US's? If it's lower, it's lower. Mswake 10:19 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

The way to deal with this is to find the figures from a reputable source, such as an appropriate international agency, and shoe the actual figures. "Technically lower" in my mind means "not statistically significant". Eclecticology 17:49 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll do some research. However "technically lower" still reads to me a bit like sour grapes, as if the lower figure is somehow not "real". Mswake 09:43 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

OK, figures are from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2002/02hus026.pdf. You're right that the rates are close (7.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births for Cuba versus 7.2 for the USA), but still I don't see the point of the "technically". "Slightly" I think would do the job and that's what I'm going to change it to. Mswake 09:57 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

Castro's not the only name on the ballot. He's not on the ballot. Cuban citizens don?t vote in presidental elections. He?s elected by the state council.

172

This anonomyous user has revised the comment regarding voting. It is now factual and accurate.

172

Does the state council vote for anyone other than Castro?

Do you have any voting results for all of the times Castro was reelected/reconfirmed by the state council?

Don't you think that I know this? I don't know anyone, including grade-schoolers, who doesn't know that.

172

Leaving aside the POV issues for the moment, one issue that strikes me is the amount of overlap between this article and the one on History of Cuba. Under the circumstances of a 44 year reign it can be difficult to separate the man from the history of his country. My inclination would be to use the present article to deal with what the man personally did, while the actions of his government properly belong with the other article. ☮ Eclecticology 20:33 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)

I removed this:

"Supporters of Castro also point out that Cuba's human rights record is significantly better than many other countries in the Carribean/Latin America region."

By what measure? Health care? Education? Access to the essentials for survival? But this certainly isn’t the case for the issues that most Westerners associate with “human rights”. The above sentence shouldn’t be placed back into the article until it’s clarified.

172

I'm inclined to put it back in (but a little further up in the article to immediately follow and be in the same paragraph as the criticism of Cuban human rights). The existing criticism of Cuban human rights is just as vaguely worded. ☮ Eclecticology 00:53 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

In this context, human rights is a loaded slogan. If you’re going to put it back in the article, make it point out something factual. You could make it point out, for instance, better health care, education, access to the essentials, and so forth. But most contributors, beining Westerners, will associate “human rights” with political rights. And it’s a fact that this is a weak area for Cuba.

172

I agree that "human rights" can be a loaded term, and that Westerners will tend to associate it with political rights. That being said, criticism of Cuban human rights was already there. Are you therefore suggesting that the references to the term should be removed from both perspectives on the matter? ☮ Eclecticology

"Supporters of Castro also point out that Cuba's human rights record is significantly better than many other countries in the Carribean/Latin America region."

The way this is worded makes it seem as if supporters are pointing out an incontrovertible fact. Misplaced Pages does not need to claim that Cuba's human rights record is better than those of other Latin American countries.

Since no opposition NGOs and parties are allowed to organize and challenge the government in competitive elections, most readers are going to dismiss the article offhand because of this sentence. Right now, there’s a crackdown on dissent in Cuba. I have to admire Castro’s good timing, doing this while everyone’s paying attention to Iraq.

Instead, you could point out low levels of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment and near-universal access to good medical and educational facilities. Let’s keep this on a more concrete level.

172

"Point out" IMHO is just another way of saying "claim" or "say" while avoiding the monotony of using the same expression all the time. There is no suggestion of incontrovertibility in that phrasing. In any case please note that when I first restored the comment I changed the word to "reply", Extensive details about other countries' human rights abuses would not be warranted, but a few links would probably be OK. We can't view this matter in Cuba in complete isolation from the rest of the region and its history. In comparison to the Spanish administration and the presidencies of Machado and Batista, Castro's abuses have been quite mild.

I don't share your fears that readers will dismiss the entire article because of the comment, but either POV about that is speculative. Yes, some dissenters have just been sentenced to long prison terms, but I seriously doubt that Castro was concerned about the timing; he's never shown much concern for US public opinion on this in the past. Why should he start now? The biggest concentration of political prisoners with violated human rights on Cuban territory now happens to be at Guantanamo. ☮ Eclecticology 03:38 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Eclecticology:

I agree with you completely.

I'm a historian and I too tend to look at dictators within a historical context. I've long been accused of being an apologist, for among others Castro, on this site for doing so.

But that doesn't matter. The sentence needs rewording.

Maybe you can state, “supporters claim that Cuba’s human rights record…”, and then explain how they justify this viewpoint.

Or this can go in the article: "in comparison to the Spanish administration and the presidencies of Machado and Batista, Castro's abuses have been quite mild." This is a valid point.

I'm just contesting the use of the term "human rights" in this context since it is a very loaded, vague concept.

172

Can someone move the photo of young Fidel to the left side of the page? I think it would look better there. - user:J.J.

I moved it (and noted the pixel width) as the earlier version was under the text in some browsers. -- Infrogmation 01:37 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

What does the picture of the hug grant us? All we get is Fidel's back. Doesn't a discussion of the national relationship in words give us far more? -- Zoe

Yeah. But there's a caption under the photo. This combination makes the article more visual, presentable, and attractive.

172

In a show of improving relations between the two Communist allies once hurt by the Sino-Soviet Split (Castro was stauncy pro-Soviet), -- I've removed all this from the picture caption. Commentary belongs in the text, and not in a caption. It is sufficient for the caption to identify the people, and just what they are doing. ☮ Eclecticology 23:30 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. If the picture can't explain itself, it shouldn't be in the article. -- Zoe

There are many other articles with similar captions describing what's going on in the picture. Many books, textbooks, and encyclopedias do the same.

Before I restore the caption to the original version, let's see what others think.

172

Then maybe we should be changing captions in the other articles. I'll do that when I find them, but I won't go looking for them. In this case the picture covered about half the width of the page, but the size-reduced caption went all the way across the page, and still had enough to wrap. That's ugly! ☮ Eclecticology

Okay, that settles it. Does anyone want to add a sentence explaining Sino-Cuban relations within the article?

172

When all the articles for countries were set a pattern was established. IMHO that would belong on Foreign relations of Cuba rather than in a more or less biographical article about its president. ☮ Eclecticology 05:28 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Some critiques on the article:

• Can anyone seriously say there is no cult of personality around Fidel Castro? I reversed this statement. I have not been to Cuba and hence left in a statement saying that he seems to discourage it, but other sources say that his image is displayed ubiquitously in Cuba by the government or the Party. See Talk:Che Guevara.

• The hug photo is indeed a pretty bad photo of both men and adds little if anything to the article.

• I agree with the comment that many paragraphs in this article are about Cuban history and not about Castro. In the section about the Bay of Pigs or about the Cuban Missile Crisis, notes about Castro's role would be preferable to the broad notes about the history.

Tempshill 02:29, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I've removed the addition that said that Cuba had the worst human rights record on the planet as it's blatently POV. It looked like it had been submitted by a miami lobby group. Secretlondon 16:53, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)

Image:Castroportrait.jpg

What the heck is wrong with this photo? File:Castroportrait.jpg

--mav 02:07, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Don't play dumb. It's horrible (deliberately there to provoke an emotional response) and that's why J.J. chose it as a replacement. Shrink the old one. I don't know how, but I'm sure that you do. 172 02:18, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm not playing dumb. I honestly do not see what is wrong with that photo. It's not like he was in the middle of saying a word and had an odd facial expression. Is that not Fidel Castro? --mav

I'm removing the summary box for now. It misrepresents the dynamic of response and counter-response between Castro and the United States between 1959 and 1962, particularly the context in which Castro proclaimed himself a Communist and sought Soviet support. Frankly, so does the article. If this is unclear to anyone, Latin Americanists Thomas Skidmore, Peter Smith, and Benjamin Keen are good sources. Their survey texts are good, quick reads on the subject.

If you think that this is a story of simply Communism versus anti-Communism, you're living in a world of ferry tales and make-believe. I'll briefly explain.

After the 1954 CIA-led coup that overthrew liberal reformer Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala, future Latin American revolutionaries would learn the appropriate lesson. Arbenz fell when his military deserted him. Since then, Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua would make the army and governments parts of a single unit. Overthrowing such regimes would require a war, not simply a CIA operation, or even landing marines or a cruder invasion scheme (i.e. the the Bay of Pigs). Please note that the US landed marines three times in Cuba after the ratification of the Platt Amendment in 1902 in efforts to secure US interests. In the 1950s, US interests owned four fifths of the stakes in Cuba's utilities, nearly half of its sugar, and nearly all of its mining industries. The Cuban economy could be manipulated at a whim by merely tinkering with the island's financial services or tinkering with US quotas and tariffs on sugar - the country's staple export commodity.

As in much of Latin America, extremely reactionary oligarchs ruled through their alliances with the military elite and United States, which has always served as a barrier to social revolutions in Latin America throughout the 20th century. By the mid-20th century, however, much of the region passed through a higher state of economic development, which bolstered the power and ranks of the lower classes, and left calls for social change and political inclusion more pronounced. However, this social system - manifested in regimes like Batista's - could not be as easily removed from power as much of Africa and Asia broke away from European colonialism. It is no coincidence that Latin America has given scant rise to the kinds of democratic reforms that allowed lower classes to have a say in political processes in the advanced, industrialized countries such as France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and the rich English-speaking democracies. This region has been a far tougher environment for the application of social reforms through the framework of existing institutions or democratic tactics and procedures. Perhaps Costa Rica and Uruguay, which had a tradition of small-scale commercial agriculture (giving rise to a stronger middle class), stand out as the strongest exceptions.

As an aside, anyone with the slightest interest in Latin America will be fascinated by doing a little research on Jose Batlle, the little-known but legendary long-time Uruguayan president in the early 20th century. Batlle led the world with some of the most advanced programs of social reform and welfare ever seen anywhere at the time.

Cuban relations with the US started to deteriorate when Castro announced a program of agrarian reform in 1959, which met stiff US resistance. After this point, Castro started moving closer to the communists in his July 26th movement in search of organized political support to carry out socioeconomic changes. The expropriation of US assets also allowed him to finance new spending on social welfare. Castro simply had very little to maneuver if his regime wanted to enact even limited land and labor reforms or finance desperately needed social welfare programs and internal improvements while maintaining good relations with the United States.

With the US whipping up schemes to invade his country, destabilize his government, and assassinate him, Castro would sign a trade agreement in February 1960 with the Soviet Union, a market for Cuba's agricultural commodities (and a new source for machinery, heavy industrial equipment, and technicians) that could replace the country's traditional patron - the United states. He turned to the USSR since it was far less of a constraint on his objectives and consolidation of power in Cuba. However, to placate his new patron he would certainly have to solidify his place in the Soviet orbit and finally proclaim himself a Marxist-Leninist. And, as we can see today given the island's stagnation and isolation, the alternative to subordination to the US came with significant costs in terms of social and economic development of its own.

So, in short, that's why I removed the twisted, distorted account in the series box. 172 15:09, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)