The big prison that is Cuba
I highly recommend Michael Totten’s excellent—and very sad—article on Cuba. Pay special attention to the story that Alfred Cuzé¡n (whose family fled when he was a child) tells about the early years of Castro’s regime and how the leader initially fooled people and then clamped down.
Also of great interest is the tale of Garland Grant, a Black Panther from the US who believed the leftist hype about Cuba, hijacked a flight there in 1971, and got the surprise of his life on arrival. He ended up saying things like “Believe me, I’m all for the United States now. I’d even wear a Nixon button.” And that was after Watergate.
Actually, the whole thing is of great interest. Just read it.
What struck me was his realization about the immobility of the people. He was viewing the pristine colonial city (the name of which escapes me) and the beautiful mountains, knowing that most Cubans would never see it because even so close, they cannot travel that far or that freely.
Cuba… a preview and microcosm of where the Marxist/Progressive Left wishes to take the whole world.
As a whole, Cubans have decided that they would rather live on their knees, than die on their feet and that is why they are enslaved.
“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mill
Evidently, all of Cuba’s ‘better men’ either died fighting, were imprisoned or emigrated. All that are left are those resigned to ‘existing’ on their knees.
@Geoffrey Britain
“As a whole, Cubans have decided that they would rather live on their knees, than die on their feet and that is why they are enslaved.”
Did you fight to the death for your life? Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to judge. These populations have been traumatized and would be fighting with nothing against a regime armed with tanks, machine guns and God knows what Soviet and Russian defense systems. Would you say the same about all the people who lived behind the Iron Curtain or other hellholes with no way out?
Dictatorships like Cuba can just starve populations into submission or extinction in a matter of weeks or months if they revolt.
Frankly, it’s a little shocking to read your post. It’s highly doubtful that JS Mill could have ever conceived of the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century. Read him with an eye firmly trained on his life and times.
“These populations have been traumatized and would be fighting with nothing against a regime armed with tanks, machine guns and God knows what…”
True, no argument with what you state; but there is a way to fight back if one is determined, patient, and believes there is a time and place where death is a bargain compared to the price of submission. It begins with the informers and petty bureaucrats of the regime.
You find out where they live, you scout out their routines, and you wait for a time and place where you can kill them quietly without detection and then burn down their homes, kill their women, children, and gradually everyone who benefits from their association with the oppressors. You work alone and never tell anyone what you are doing. Eventually others copy your methods. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 5, 5 becomes 20, 20 becomes 200, 200 becomes 1,000, 1,000 becomes 50,000, and eventually the regime stands alone without bureaucrats and foot soldiers because the remaining bureaucrats and foot soldiers have now decided that if they wish to live and want their families to live they are on the wrong side.
It takes time, it requires discipline, patience, determination, skill, relentlessness, and ruthlessness. I’ve thought about this for many years and I have taught my children well.
I sent that to a pinko friend of mine whose family are largely in Cuba. He’s been there and thinks it’s just brill…. He’s a black man, and from what I’ve heard, they’re treated as inferior by the Spanish-descent Cubans.
It’s amazing to me that Leftists defend these hellholes even as people risk death and permanent exile from their culture and families to ESCAPE.
“It’s amazing to me that Leftists defend these hellholes even as people risk death and permanent exile from their culture and families to ESCAPE.”
That is one of the most damning indictments of communism. Compare the numbers of people who have tried to get out of those countries to the number who have tried to get in. What is the ratio, 10,000 or 100,000 to 1? Or even more?
@parker
That’s some fantasy you’re living. As soon as 1 official was killed, 100 or 1,000 people would be lined up and shot. Perhaps another 1,000 people who casually knew him put in detention centers. Cuba, for God’s sake, is an island. There’s no place to run or hide and no one. What you’re saying is something akin to “the partisans in the forest could have taken down the Nazis given enough time.” That is just fantasy. It took the military might of the Americans and Russians and Brits to do that. Get real.
The Left is not what your friends think it is, some kind of political organization that can we freely and respectfully disagree with. The time for that ended in the early last century.
Regarding Totten’s piece: Bill Whittle wrote an excellent essay on this very topic, but more general, in his barely-existing site, “Eject! Eject! Eject!” — he is possibly the best political essayist currently around, but has moved towards video to be more approachable.
But his essays do exist, still, on the Wayback Machine:
RAFTS
If you like what you read, poke around there, there are links to many of his other essays — “Tribes”, “Seeing The Unseen”, and many more…
Irene, you are partly correct, there are substantial obstacles to winning.
But you still miss the entire point, which is that it’s better to fight and die than to live a slave without hope.
You may well choose the latter, but a good percentage of any population with sense will choose the former — for their children if for no one else.
Regarding this exchange between Bupkis and Irene, I’ve always thought that the need for pure brutality in maintaining a dictatorship eases after the first generation. Total control and indoctrination, along with the fact that a portion of the population benefits from the system, would do a great deal to lower resistance to the regime by the next generation. When Fidel dies there will no doubt be a great number who cry real tears over his demise, even those who suffered from his abuses. No accounting for the human mind.
What you’re saying is something akin to “the partisans in the forest could have taken down the Nazis given enough time.” That is just fantasy. It took the military might of the Americans and Russians and Brits to do that. Get real.
For a bunch of sheep and weaklings, it is fantasy.
For warriors, not so much.
All they have to do is get 10% of the kill ratio as these guys.
http://listverse.com/2009/11/13/top-10-snipers-in-history/
If everyone pulls their own weight, it wouldn’t be a problem. But because humans are a bunch of pig weighing down the trough, a bunch of crabs pulling back the best and brightest back into the pit of hell, that’s why single individuals had to pull that much weight on their own. If everyone did it, they wouldn’t need a years long war.
A person that has already given up, is already a slave, complete with mental shackles. They don’t matter. What matters are the warriors, the leaders, the logistics, and the killers. Everybody else is just along for the ride, free riding the band wagon of war.