Doug Morris: Sure, the song is John Lennon’s “Power to the People.” In Cuba, the popular form of democracy is called “People’s Power.” Under harsh circumstances, filled with many conflicts and contradictions, some successes and some failures, and in no way static, it could be argued that they are attempting to create a form of people’s power in which the population can participate in meaningful and effective ways in shaping the decisions and managing the organization of how people live together with one another in society in order to satisfy needs and fully develop human abilities.

RS: So, they are really trying to be the antithesis of America; instead of us being the “me” society, they are really trying to be the “we” society.”

DM: They are definitely the antithesis of the neoliberal model that has been imposed on the world. One of the serious struggles for Cuba is that Cuba is a tiny island attempting a people-first experiment in politics and economics and it is trying to exist in a rising sea of global neoliberal capitalism whose values are in opposition to the values that Cuba is trying to implement. The Cuban values they are trying to implement, not always successfully, Cuba is not “Utopia,” and in fact, Cuba is not interested in utopia, they are interested, in mobilizing people to create a people-first social order around the values of social justice, critical inquiry, respect for others, a rising standard of living measured not in the accumulation of commodities but in the flourishing of human well-being, full and meaningful employment, substantive forms of equality and freedom, freedom of the sort where people have the knowledge and ability to make meaningful choices that impact their lives, sustainability and ecological rationality, around notions of civic courage and a deep concern for the collective good because they understand that the free and creative development of each is conditioned on and nurtured by the free and creative development of all and the free and creative development of all is conditioned on and nourished by the free and creative development of each.

That is in opposition to the neoliberal values that are rooted in self-interest, profiteering, privatization, hyper-individualism, ruthless competition and rapacious greed. All of this gets back to a comment made earlier in your show about people falling through the cracks in the United States. If you operate a society on those neoliberal values you are going to have large and growing numbers of people sinking through the cracks because there is little sense of the common good and little sense of mutual responsibility.

So, getting back to notions of democracy, a substantive democracy cannot stop at the level of formal electoral procedures, it must develop projects and processes dedicated to the ongoing creation of a good and decent society grounded in promoting inclusive, informed, involved and energized citizens. It must be a society that recognizes and understands the crucial and reciprocal links between social conditions and individual fulfillment. I don’t want to suggest that Cuba has succeeded in all of these domains, and I don’t want to suggest that Cuba is without serious struggles, mistakes and contradictions politically, economically and socially, but as I understand the struggle in Cuba, the development of more substantive forms of democracy, economically, politically and socially, is central to the Cuban project of empowering the citizens.

Integral to such projects and processes is economic democracy. That, arguably, is the most advanced form of democratic unfolding, and it is virtually entirely lacking in the US because the economy is under the control of tyrannical institutions called corporations, institutions over which the public has very little control, especially since the introduction of neoliberalism’s agenda of deregulation, i.e., eliminating the capacity for the public to regulate what corporations do, and privatization, i.e., policies that hand over all public spaces to corporate exploitation, including the space of the public mind. For a compelling discussion of substantive democracy, I would recommend a fairly recent piece by Atilio Boron, called “The Truth About Capitalist Democracy.” It is published in a wonderful Monthly Review Press book titled Telling the Truth, edited by Leo Panitch & Colin Keys. It is part of the ongoing Socialist Register series, always worth reading.

So, in the end, I think one can say that because the Cuban experiment provides a deeper and more expansive notion of democracy through which Cuban citizens can participate more broadly in running and managing their society, the Cuban population is more empowered than the US population.

RS: One thing I find most interesting is that one of Cuba’s largest exports is the export of doctors. They export doctors to Venezuela, for instance, in exchange for oil. What is amazing to me is that this is a country that has not surrendered to neoliberal, IMF, WTO plans. They have not been pried open as an export model. They have remained their own entity and have found ways to exist despite all the pressures against them. On the one hand you say it is an amazing story, but on another hand you say aren’t a lot of their people suffering in poverty and starvation. We see this in the media when they talk about Cuba; they never say anything good. I’m excited to hear about what you are saying, but is the other side true as well.

DM: It depends how you measure poverty. Cuba is a poor country, no doubt. But if understanding poverty is linked to access to basic human needs such as food, health care, education, housing, child care, recreation, and we look at Cuba’s infant mortality rate, life expectancy and measures of sustainable development, all areas in which Cuba has equaled or surpassed the US, and then also note that in Cuba there is not really the ability to profit off the suffering and exploitation of others because it is a non-profit based society, and add the more egalitarian distributions in Cuba, then the poverty in Cuba is of a much different sort than one finds in most other countries of what is sometimes called the “developing” world.

Furthermore, Cuba, a poor country, exports more doctors than any country in the world, as far as I know, and those doctors work with the poor. It is one of the Cuban examples of working to address the horrors of poverty on an international scale. The others include the literacy workers and the agricultural workers Cuba sends to other countries to assist in addressing issues of poverty. So, an important question would also be “how is it that Cuba accomplishes so much, given so little?” And answering that question would lead us to start examining the benefits of alternative ways of organizing society; that is, ways of organizing built around social, political and economic democracy.

The poverty at the height of the Special Period when Cuba lost about 85% of its trade virtually overnight, when the GDP was down roughly 40%, and caloric intake was at the level of Haiti, that was very serious poverty, but Cuba survived, and that survival points to the resilience of the Cuban revolution. One might say that during this harsh period Cuba attempted to equalize the suffering and also ensure that those who needed assistance most were given assistance first.

As of 2005, the Cuban economy basically had recovered to where it was back in 1989 before the onset of the Special Period. In 2005, the GDP was up 12.5%; in 2006, it was up 12%; and in 2007 it was up about 7%. This is compared to an average in Latin America between 4 and 5%. Around the world one in five people live in abject poverty. In Latin America, about 60% of the people live in poverty and a good portion of those people live in abject poverty. Latin America, outside of Cuba, has the most acute inequality in the world. One would be hard pressed to find many people in Cuba living in abject poverty, in part because of the social programs in Cuba that provide access to food, health care, education, etc., and Cuba has the lowest rate of inequality in Latin America.

Around the world there are about 100 million street children. In Cuba, one sees no street children. Half of the world’s more than a billion people living in severe poverty are children. In Cuba, there is a major investment in children; so again, one would be hard pressed to find any Cuban children suffering under conditions of extreme poverty. 90 million children in Latin America live in poverty. 200 million children around the world lack access to basic health care. Cuban children have access to health care. There are about 115 million children around the world of primary school age who are not in school, and who will probably remain illiterate. Cuba has a 100% literacy rate, and virtually all Cuban children attend schools that produce what some consider the best education in the hemisphere at the elementary level.

So, you don’t see Cuban children going hungry the way you do in other developing countries. You don’t see elderly people eating cat food to survive. In the United States, 13 million children live in poverty. About 10 million children lack health care coverage. Millions of US children attend schools that provide at best a very poor education in schools that are deteriorating. 50% of the children in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. live in poverty.

People here often talk about a lack of freedom in Cuba, and there are some freedoms lacking. For example, Cubans are not free to live in a society that does not provide health care for all of its citizens. Cubans are not free to live in a society that does not provide a great elementary education for its children. Cubans are not free to live in a society dedicated to international relations grounded in domination and military aggression. Cubans live in a society that is dedicated to carrying out international relations founded in solidarity and that gets back to your point about the export of doctors, the export of literacy workers, and the export of agricultural workers, both scientists and farmers. The latter export is crucial because Cuba is carrying out an experiment in sustainable agriculture that is very successful and that is one reason why Cuba is considered the one country in the world that has achieved a point of sustainable development.

So, Cuba is engaged in an internal struggle for a people first society, while at the same time they always have a foot in international solidarity. The international relations with countries like Venezuela help to ensure that the social project in Cuba based in human dignity, social security and meeting human needs continues in the context of being a poor society that has been living for 50 years now under the threat of US military violence, under US terrorism and US propaganda against Cuba, the economic blockade.

So, yes, Cuba has poverty, for sure, but it is not the kind of poverty one sees in every other Latin American country.

RS: During the break we were talking about another freedom in Cuba. We have family medical leave in the US, but it is unpaid, in Cuba apparently it is paid medical leave. When you think about it, that is an important family value.

DM: Absolutely, that is a deep family value. For example, maternity leave in Cuba, which has also been extended to fathers, provides mothers 18 weeks of leave, 6 before birth and 12 after birth at full pay, and an additional 40 weeks at 60% pay, and they keep their job. There is a national subsidized day-care for children starting at one year of age. In 2003, the leave-option was extended to fathers for 60% pay for 40 weeks. So, families can now decide if the father or mother stays home with the children during those 40 weeks. Labor laws have also been passed to protect women from work-related activities that may be harmful during pregnancy. Women have six paid days of leave during pregnancy to attend prenatal care sessions and examinations. Creating social programs that support families are deep investments in family values.

Cuba has a social contract that grows out of something very, very important. Any serious social contract should grow out of a very serious commitment to the well-being of young people and Cuba ensures that every child is well-fed, has access to great education, access to health care, and Cuba sees children as a vital investment in the future. Furthermore, providing access to employment, and now a project directed toward meaningful employment, social security, health services and primary care along with preventive medicine, multiple forms of education including a new “univeralization of university education” program through which Cuba wants to work to ensure that every Cuban receives a university education, literacy projects, social assistance for the sick, etc. are all social commitments linked to family values, because the values families bring to the table are not disconnected from the values encouraged in the society in which the family is living and growing.

RS: OK, now the BIG question… considering that we seem to revel in the fact that we have 1,300 billionaires. How many billionaires do they have in Cuba?

DM: ZERO!

RS: Ah, there the problem…

DM: Cubans live in a non-profit based society. That is a key value difference in Cuba. That is why, arguably, people develop a different sense of having a link in a chain of human activity and why one could argue that there is a different set of “family values” in Cuba. In the United States we often lack an understanding of our links through this chain of human activity because our relationships are mostly driven through commodities and we thus develop a relationship with the next commodity we are driven to purchase. That is not so true in Cuba because it is a non-profit society, so you don’t have people promoting commodities through 24/7 advertisements and commercials. In fact, in Cuba you don’t see billboards advertising commodities, you only see billboards celebrating the accomplishments of the revolution, or reminding people of the plight of the Cuban Five where the billboard announces accurately “In prison in the US for fighting terrorism.” The Cuban Five have been in US prisons now for ten years because they were engaged in a fight AGAINST terrorism.

So, in Cuba, rather than developing relationships with commodities, people have greater opportunities to develop a concept of what it means to develop meaningful and supportive relationships with fellow human beings. Again, I do not want to paint a utopian picture. Cuba does definitely have serious problems, but miraculously there is a lot of resilience in the Cuban struggle and they have found ways to continue this project under harsh conditions.

Phone question: I was wondering what it might take to become a citizen of Cuba, and I was wondering if Dr. Morris was going to become a citizen of Cuba or if he is going to remain a US citizen?

DM: The first part of the question I cannot answer, what it would require to become a Cuban citizen. As to the second part, it is easy: I am going to remain a US citizen.

RS: OK, so you have laid out a very utopian view of Cuba, one that most people have never heard, including me. It seems like a great place, so why do we see people leaving? Why would anyone leave?

DM: People regularly leave any area of the world to go to other areas. I am sure that plenty of people leave Pennsylvania every day to go to other areas of the US. These moves are typically driven by economic reasons. Historically, when poor countries exist next to rich countries, some people in the poor country will make the choice to try to go to the rich country in an attempt to improve their economic situation. It is not an entirely irrational decision under the circumstances. Cuba is a poor country, and it is located next to the richest country in human history, the United States. So, it makes sense that some Cubans would be leaving in order to try to get to the US.

In the US media there is often a flood of coverage when Cubans leave Cuba and it is presented from a perspective that suggests that Cubans are leaving because of political persecution.

But even the US Interest Section in Havana states that they are hard pressed to find real cases of political persecution in the processing of visa applications. In the 1990s, they wrote that most people were applying in order to escape deteriorating economic conditions. They noted that human rights cases are the least solid category of the refugee program and they are the most susceptible to fraudulent claims. So, Cuban emigration does not exist in a historical vacuum. We rarely hear that roughly 600,000 Colombians fled in the years 1999 to 2002, or of the more than 500,000 who left Ecuador in the same period.

Compared to the rest of Latin America the number of Cubans leaving, legally or illegally is almost surely both relatively and absolutely lower. Still, the number of Cubans who leave is overplayed in the public mind because of the overblown coverage Cubans receive. So, we hear about Cubans but we do not hear about Salvadorans, Haitians, Peruvians, etc. who leave. In addition, there is a long-term US policy of encouraging Cuban emigration, something that is not done with other countries. Radio Marti, a US propaganda station that encourages Cubans to leave, broadcasts regularly into Cuba. During the Special Period the US intensified the blockade by passing the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill, both designed to make the Cuban economy scream, with the concomitant impact of encouraging Cubans to leave for economic reasons.

Cuba and the US signed an immigration agreement in 1994 calling for the issuing of a minimum 20,000 visas by the US per year. The number of visas offered by the US typically falls far below that number. Cuban law is clear regarding immigration. People can leave Cuba after they have received the proper documentation and authorization to do so from the country to which they wish to migrate. Then there is the Cuban Adjustment Act. Because of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans receive preferential treatment compared to other immigrants.

Cubans are welcomed by the US far more than any other migrants from Latin America and with special conditions attached for Cubans. Cubans get a greased path to work-permits, a social security number, and permanent residence status in the US. While others are generally seen as economic refugees, Cubans often fall into the category of political refugees from the US perspective and are given what amounts to political asylum. That designation is essentially US propaganda. A political refugee must clearly demonstrate a well-grounded fear of persecution to be granted asylum in the US, but persecution has little to do with US judgment in the case of Cuba.

Persecution in Cuba compared to persecution in many other Latin American countries over the years is virtually invisible. When Haitians fled the vicious and murderous US backed military dictatorship in the early 90s they were clearly escaping from very harsh political repression and persecution. The standard US response was to send them back to Haiti, sometimes to be killed. The same was true of Guatemalans in the 1980s, etc., etc. There are many such cases.

While Cuban immigrants are granted political asylum virtually 100% of the time, those from other countries are only granted asylum in a minority of cases, well-under 50%. Unlike others, Cubans have no stringent requirements. Cubans who make it to US soil are typically granted financial assistance for basic necessities, for education, a fast track to employment, access to welfare and unemployment, etc.

We could ask some other questions: “Why do so many Mexicans leave?” “Why is there not a Mexican Adjustment Act, or a Haitian Adjustment Act?” If there were such acts, how many Mexicans and Haitians, not to mention people from every other country in Latin America, would go to the US? Clearly, there would be millions of people rushing across borders.

So, given all that is done to encourage Cubans to leave, and to grease the path to the US, one might ask a different question, “Why do so few Cubans leave Cuba?” I think it was at the 1994 Pan American games where the US put on a major propaganda effort to entice Cuban athletes to defect. Huge sports contracts were offered, there were billboards put up to make the offers very visible and very attractive. Of the many hundreds of Cubans who participated in the games, only a few decided to defect. We should note that 1994 was the height of the Special Period when Cubans were suffering most. Athletes from other countries told the Cubans that if the US offered them the same things they were offering the Cubans, virtually 100% of the people would take the offer.

If we want to understand some of the darkness behind US foreign policy imperatives, we might reflect on why the US has over the years typically returned people to hellish conditions of repression, back to countries with the worst human rights records, where people suffer poor health, malnutrition, possible death squad terror, homelessness, high infant mortality, poor education, etc., but when it comes to Cuba, a country with perhaps the best health care and education in Latin America, the best reforestation project, the most serious commitment to sustainable agriculture on the planet, an infant mortality and life expectancy rate soon to surpass those of the US, some of the best scientific research in all of the Americas, the US is working overtime to encourage people to leave? Again, at the core, I would argue, is US power’s opposition to the Cuban “people-first” rather than “profits-first” project.

RS: The more I learn about Cuba the more I am amazed that in this country we are not following best practices. We are not attempting to do things differently to make our lives better. We seem to be plodding along the same path and it is leading down the same failed road we have been in the past.

DM: Can I mention one last thing related to that where Cuba is offering an alternative that I think the rest of the world should study very carefully? There is a growing global food crisis. Last year alone 100 million more people were put into conditions of chronic hunger, beyond the 800 million who already live in conditions of chronic hunger. Cuba is carrying out an agricultural experiment in sustainability that is unlike any experiment, as far as I know, being carried out in any other country.

The Cuban experiment, part of the larger decentralization and expansion of democracy experiment in Cuba, is rooted in an ecological rationality that involves: bio-control of pests and the use of organic fertilizers, along with animal traction in place of tractors that use fuel and despoil conditions (farmers also discovered they can develop a relationship between an animal and the interactions with local environmental conditions and of course no relationship can be established with a tractor); soil conservation; a decentralization of control and decision making that has encouraged more popular participation; a diversification of crop production and crop adjustments even at the very local level of a single farm; a redistribution of land to farmers; a commitment to small farms that inspires more worker participation, production, enthusiasm, and a sense of belonging; fair prices for farmers (contrary to the neoliberal model that is undermining small farmers across the globe) without increases in food prices at the market; increased community participation which includes a tapping into local knowledge; the creation of energetically and democratically organized cooperatives called Basic Units of Cooperative Production; environmental education programs in rural communities; and an inversion of the standard pattern of rural to urban migration.

In Cuba there is an urban to rural migration. All of this is carried out within Cuba’s continuing commitment to the larger humanist social project. Whereas in the not too distant past more than 80% of farms were under State control, that has been reduced to under 15% as part of the decentralization plan and the commitment to small, organic farms that link the land to the people and the people to the land and that encourage the democratization of production, distribution and consumption.

So, this Cuban revolution in sustainable agriculture is a possible model that could raise people’s ecological consciousness across the world, transform the way we think about the relationship between people and the environment and between people and people, and perhaps, from that, we can also develop a consciousness around alternative forms of economic and political organization grounded in forms of substantive democracy.

Istvan Meszaros, in The Power of Ideology, reminds us that at this point in human history anything other than global solutions to the crises and challenges we now confront is really unacceptable because our problems on a global scale are so immense and multiple that the elementary conditions for human survival on the planet are seriously in peril. Perhaps the Cuban example, even with all of its conflicts and contradictions, can inspire us so that we can develop a consciousness on a global scale in order for people to better understand Jose Marti’s point of how our “homeland is humanity,” and start to build relations evolving from another of Marti’s maxims: “from the good of all; for the good of all.” Viva la revolucion!

Rick Smith: One of the things I love hearing about is what is happening in other countries. I like to hear from the inside and I like to hear different opinions. This is why we have our next guest, Dr. Doug Morris, from Eastern New Mexico University. He just returned recently from Cuba, and I am always interested and fascinated to find out what goes on in the closed-arena there. Why did you go? I can’t go, as far as I know… how did you get there?

Doug Morris: I went as part of the “Research Network in Cuba Group,” sponsored by the US based “Radical Philosophers Association.” The group does research in Cuba and participates in a yearly conference at the University of Havana as part of that research, and shares that work back here in the US in various academic and public settings. A number of the participants travel back and forth to Cuba numerous times over the year to carry out research and to keep open lines of communication, for example around socialist economics and agriculture. The group travels legally on an academic research general license provided by the US State Department. There are different categories for research and legal travel to Cuba, including journalistic research, so one would guess that you would be able to obtain a license to do “legal” journalistic work and research in Cuba. We should add that it is not Cuba that is trying to keep US citizens out of Cuba; rather, it is the US government that is violating our Constitutional right to travel.

I should also say that the reasons for going to Cuba are many and also share that I am not an expert on Cuba. Cuba is not my primary area of academic interest but more peripheral. Cuba remains a source of interest and inspiration mostly because Cuba is attempting to carry out a social project outside of the global neoliberal model, a neoliberal model that places profits first and is a source of many global calamities and much human suffering. Cuba’s project, filled with contradictions and struggles, is working to ensure that people come first. Cuba remains an inspiration because they have accomplished so much under very trying conditions and circumstances, not least of which is the presence of the hostile global behemoth just to the North.

Cuba, as one Cuban scholar pointed out, always “walks on a razor’s edge, and does so in a world that stands on the edge of a precipice.” In other words, Cuba, always struggling to survive, is often forced to pursue policies against their basic commitments, but they must survive, and they are trying to survive as a socialist island in a rising sea of neoliberal abominations. There is no rule book available for revolutionaries so they can simply open to page 155 to find the answer to the latest dilemma. Cuba, though it walks on a razor’s edge, is an inspiring source of alternative political, economic, agricultural and pedagogical knowledge that we, standing on the precipice, so desperately need as we now face ever-growing global threats through climate change, ecological catastrophes, growing poverty and inequality, food and hunger crises, water shortages, political authoritarianism, corporate tyranny, and an increasingly militarized globe. So, Cuba has been designated the only sustainable society in the world by the World Wildlife Fund, and that is of great importance at a time when a sustainable human future is in serious question.

As to Cuba being a “closed-arena” one must be careful on how that gets interpreted because people in the US will use that to intimate that Cuba is some kind of Stalinist society in which people lack all freedoms, where everyone lives under constant surveillance and fear, where people are abducted from the streets in the middle of the night if they disagree with State opinion, where people are sent off to torture camps, etc. But that is not the case in Cuba, although one might draw links between what was just described and the US base at Guantanamo, a real core of human rights abuse on land that belongs to Cuba but is occupied by a US Naval base. The “closed-arena” in Cuba is partially a myth created by US propaganda in order to keep the US population distanced from understanding what really happens in Cuba, and partially a consequence of Cuba living constantly under the threat of US aggression, a situation that compels certain forms of centralized control and suspicions that may occasionally result in forms of repression beyond that which one could support.

One might ask why US power is interested in keeping US citizens from understanding what is happening inside Cuba, and I would argue that the primary reason is that Cuba is working to carry out an experiment in economics and politics that puts human interests and well-being first, is committed to ecological rationality and sustainable agriculture, and assumes that there are sets of human rights that should be honored, for example, the rights to food, health care, education, housing, employment, access to culture, sports, participation, etc. Cuba sees these rights as basic to human needs, and they should not therefore be available only to those who can afford them in the market. The problem with Cuba from the perspective of US power, I would say, is that if Cuba succeeds in carrying out this people-first experiment in politics and economics, it will demonstrate the legitimacy of what in Cuba is called “people’s power.” The Cuban revolution violated 150 years of US policy and belief as expressed in the Monroe Doctrine, i.e., US power owns the hemisphere and US power will determine who does what and in whose interests, etc.

Soon after the Cuban revolution the Kennedy Administration made it clear what the problem was. The Cuban model, they suggested, was providing a source of inspiration for people across the hemisphere who had been robbed and exploited for hundreds of years, people who now might want to follow the Cuban example and take matters into their own hands to advance their own interests and live lives outside of misery, poverty and despair. Of course, if that interferes with profits and power concerns, that is intolerable from the perspective of US power. So, one of the central problems with Cuba from the view and interests of US power is that Cuba can show that a society can be run by the people through various interactions between formal and informal democracy, between participatory and representative forms of democracy, and, crucially, Cuba can demonstrate that a society can be run in the interest of people without resorting to a profit-based and tyrannical economic system.

And, secondly, the threat of US aggression is very real as history has demonstrated quite clearly. More than 200 years ago, John Adams argued that Cuba is a “natural extension of the US,” and that Cuba should be annexed by the US. Jefferson wrote that “Cuba [is] the most interesting addition that can be made to our system of states,” and John Quincy Adams referred to “the inevitability of the annexation of Cuba,” suggesting that it would eventually fall into US hands by the laws of political gravity, like “a ripe fruit.” In the 1850s, the US Ostend Manifesto warned against Cuba becoming “Africanized [like Haiti]… with all the attendant horror for the white race.” In addition, of course, were commercial interests, and by the 1880s Cuba was a key US commercial “partner,” especially around sugar. The US provided 70% of the Cuban market. Prior to the US intervention in Cuba’s second war of independence, the US undersecretary of war, J. Breckenridge wrote that Cubans were incapable of managing their own society, that they had only “a vague notion of what is right and wrong,” and therefore the US should “destroy everything within our cannon’s range of fire, impose a harsh blockade so that hunger runs rampant, undermine the peaceful population, and decimate the Cuban army.”

In 1901, the US forced the Cubans to accept the Platt Amendment, still used to “justify” the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. It also gave the US the “right” to intervene in Cuban affairs anytime to “preserve Cuban independence” (but not independence from US intervention, of course), and to protect life, liberty, and crucially property. The US acted on the amendment in 1906 and militarily occupied Cuba until 1909. From 1901 until 1959 and the triumph of the revolution that overthrew the US backed Batista dictatorship, Cuba, in Robert Scheer’s words “was more of an appendage of the US than a sovereign nation.” Most of the land and resources was under various forms of US control.

The US has, for close to fifty years now, been hostile to the Cuban revolution, has wanted to reestablish US domination over Cuba, and has engaged in outright military aggression, economic strangulation of multiple sorts, endless forms of terrorism, biological and chemical warfare attacks, diplomatic maneuvers to isolate Cuba, introduced legislation such as the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill to punish Cuba and other countries that deal with Cuba at a time when Cuba was in dire straits and in need of serious assistance not further punishment, sponsored people who carried out bombing attacks in Cuba or blew-up a Cuban airplane (killing all on board), planned dozens of assassination attempts against Cuban leaders, engaged in widespread propaganda attacks around the world against the Cuban experiment (a good portion of it through US embassies), funded anti-Cuban think tanks, etc.

We should also keep in mind, that if we consider the definition of terrorism to be “the use of force and violence, or the THREAT of force and violence, to intimate, coerce or control, in order to advance ideological, political, religious or economic interests,” a close paraphrase of the official US definition, then the US is engaged in terrorism 100% of the time because the announced policy of its willingness to not only attack anyone, anywhere, anytime for any reason, made formal in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, and demonstrated in the illegal US attack against Iraq, but the US also reserves the “right” to use nuclear weapons in a first strike. That means the US is always engaged in the THREAT to use force and violence around the world, i.e., always engaged in terror. Cubans are well aware of this, and we should be too.

The continuing hostility against the Cuban revolution is grounded, arguably, in three main considerations. The first is the commercial and financial losses for US business interests in Cuba. The Wall Street Journal referred to the revolution as a “watermelon.” The more you slice it “the redder it gets.” For example, Cuba nationalized the oil refineries. Cuba had signed a trade deal with the Soviet Union in early 1960, and it included Soviet crude. At the command of the US government Texaco and Standard Oil refused to refine the crude, thus forcing Cuba to nationalize the refineries. Nationalizations were carried out with offers of compensation based on the reported assets and earnings provided by the companies in their official record. These assets and earnings were typically underreported in order to save on taxes.

The second is Cuba’s commitment to pursue a course of economic, political and social development that is independent of US hegemony, and the concomitant threat that the Cuban revolution could provide inspiration for others in the region to challenge US domination.

Advisor to JFK, Arthur Schlesinger stated that the problem with the Castro regime, i.e., the Cuban revolution, was that it represented a successful resistance to US hegemony, and that defiance undermined 50 years of US policy in the region. In other words, the Cuban revolution was providing an emancipatory opening for people to move beyond subservience and subjugation. In short, as the Administration said, “the poor and underprivileged [i.e., exploited] might demand opportunities for a decent living,” and that is simply unacceptable. The Kennedy Administration responded to this “threat” by implementing the “Alliance for Progress.” Interestingly, about ten years after the Alliance began, a major US study demonstrated that Cuba, the one country excluded from the Alliance, was the only country that had achieved what the Alliance purported to be carrying out, for example, advances in public health, education, transportation, as well as the integration of rural and urban sectors.

And, the third is Cuba’s commitment to international solidarity, revealed in Cuba’s international projects in medicine, literacy, and agriculture, as well as “Operation Miracle,” through which more than one million people have been treated to restore their vision. Cuba demonstrates that international relations can be built on solidarity rather then exploitation, domination and aggression. And then there is the matter of people’s power, i.e. people taking matters into their own hands.

RS: What was the purpose of the conference in Cuba?

DM: The purpose of the conference includes efforts to build bridges of solidarity and understanding between Cuban and US academics and Cuban and US citizens. The conference itself revolves around different areas of research including research in economic matters, philosophical issues, education, agriculture, various forms of social organization, history, projections about what kind of future we should struggle for, the role that civil society plays in creating popular empowerment in Cuba and the role that civil society could play in producing citizen empowerment in the United States, etc.

RS: Would you say we are not politically empowered in the United States?

DM: I would argue that the Cuban population is much more politically empowered than the population in the United States for a fairly simple reason, one that is surely considered a controversial perspective by many people in the US. Cuba has a much different, more wide-ranging and stronger concept of democracy than we have in the United States.

In the United States the notion of democracy basically stops at the most elementary, rudimentary and least developed form of democracy, electoral democracy. Every two or four years, people are permitted to vote for a set of candidates who are essentially pre-selected by the owners of society, the business class. Anyone who challenges the interests of the owners is essentially marginalized or excluded from serious consideration. The case of Dennis Kucinich demonstrates this rather clearly. We vote for one or another of the corporate-sponsored candidates and very little changes in terms of the public interest being advanced, in terms of public well-being improving, in terms of pursuing the overall public good, in terms of the public developing capacities, resources and knowledge to meaningfully and effectively shape politics in ways that represent real public concerns, such as universal health care, environmental protection, a political system that responds to public concerns, better education, less militarism, infrastructure repair and development, a fairer economic system, etc.

Electoral democracy in the US generally produces a form of competition limited to major parties funded by wealthy elites and the corporate sector, and while public interest and enthusiasm, in some sectors, can be temporarily elevated by the hyper-spectacles that are regularly presented during campaign season, the barrage of PR materials, or by the constant repetition of largely empty slogans around “hope” and “change,” the final result is that very little of substance changes in regards to policies that promote, represent or fulfill public interests, needs and concerns, or stimulate public empowerment.

The public is largely aware of this sham, and that is surely one reason why participation in electoral democracy is so low in the US. In electoral democracies, voters vote every two or four years, with virtually zero input into policies and programs, but as George Soros makes clear, “markets vote every day,” suggesting that without meaningful forms of democratic participation in the economy and in social arrangements, democracy remains a largely empty and formal vessel, a shadow that hides the substance of power and decision making which lives and works largely at the corporate level.

In Cuba, I would suggest, they have extended the idea of democracy beyond electoral democracy (they do have elections in Cuba, contrary to what we have been taught in the US), to include political democracy, which is the beginning of more participatory forms of democracy, as well as social democracy and economic democracy. So, elections in Cuba are not funded and controlled by elites but organized by the people.

RS: Wait a second, how it that possible? Castro has been the leader their for a long time; is he being elected? What I keep hearing is that he is a communist dictator.

DM: Cuba, as I understand it, is carrying out an experiment, and this has to be emphasized, what is happening in Cuba is an experiment being carried out under extremely harsh conditions not of their own choosing. Still, it must be said that Cuba exhibits none of the chronic human abominations one witnesses in most other countries of the region: there are not droves of homeless people rotting in gutters, no children starving, no mass illiteracy, no high levels of infant mortality or unemployment, no death squads roaming the countryside, no monstrous inequalities, no high levels of political and social instability, etc. There is a housing crisis, but there are programs underway to address the housing crisis. For example, in 2006 Cuba constructed roughly 110,000 new houses, and in 2007 roughly 67,000 new houses. They project that if they can average 50,000 new houses per year for ten years, they will have addressed the main issues of the housing crisis, and they are on target to meet those expectations.

What they are attempting to do in Cuba is mobilize the collective intelligence and imagination of a population of people to manage and run the society and they are doing it through a combination of participatory and representative democracy organized through local and national political organizations such as the Youth Communist League with roughly 800,000 members of young people between the ages of 14 and 30, the Communist Party of Cuba with roughly 1.5 million members (it should be noted that the Party is not an electoral party, that is, the Party does not participate in the nomination or election of political candidates at the local, provincial or national levels of assembly elections, nor can the party propose legislation in the representative political bodies; this is not to say that the Party lacks influence in Cuban politics, it is clearly very influential across Cuban society in its role as sort of protector and stimulator of socialist consciousness and in encouraging people to, as they say, “Be like Ché,” which essentially calls for developing a concern for and a commitment to the collective good and a willingness to make sacrifices for the collective good).

Then there are the mass organizations that include the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Women’s Federation, the Worker’s Unions, Student Federations at the University, Secondary and Elementary school levels, professional organizations and the organs of the state which include judicial bodies, the armed forces, the Organ’s of People’s Power that include the National, Provincial and Municipal Assemblies, and the Popular Councils that serve as a bridge between neighborhoods and Municipal Assemblies, the Council of State, and the Working Commissions of the National Assembly of People’s Power. The National Assembly has legislative authority and the delegates to the assembly are elected by the Cuban electorate. The National Assembly chooses from among the members of the Assembly the Council of State. The Council of State is then responsible for selecting the Council of Ministers.

As I understand it, the Council of State selects a president, but the president must first be nominated at the level of his local municipality in order to achieve the status of National Assembly representative who then moves into the Council of State, etc. Furthermore, as I understand it, the status of President does not accord any dictatorial powers, but it does provide the opportunity for the President to present arguments for or against any piece of legislation. There are numerous cases over the years in which Fidel argued one way and others argued the other, and Fidel’s position did not carry the day. Legislation and decrees must be ratified by the National Assembly. Fidel’s status, or now Raul’s status, provides a symbolic and influential power in Cuba that others may not have by virtue of their participation in the Cuban revolutionary struggle since the early 1950s, in particular since the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, 55 years ago this July 26th.

At the same time, one should note that there has been a significant turnover in the Cuban political system over the last decade or so, and many of those running the system are in their 30s and 40s. The creation of the Popular Councils in the early 90s, in the early years of the Special Economic Period (after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost roughly 85% of its trade overnight), was carried out as a bulwark against centralization and bureaucracy and as a way to enhance local government power and popular participation. Candidacy Commissions, made up of people from the mass and popular organizations and presided over by members of the worker unions were established to organize the provincial and national assembly elections. Their primary purpose is to ensure a fairer representation from across the populace. In other words, the citizenry is involved in both nominating and electing its representatives. Provincial and national elections are held every five years, and municipal elections every 2½ years.

Roughly half the representatives in the National Assembly are from the Municipal Assemblies and the other half are comprised of national figures who are politicians, scientists, intellectuals, artists, athletes, workers, etc. Of particular interest to the audience for this program in the US, “where working people come to talk,” is the role of unions in Cuba and the worker assemblies. Isaac Saney, in his book, A Revolution in Motion, describes how Cubans are involved in an intense political learning process and how “the system responds to popular demands for adjustment.”

In 1993, during some of the worst times of the Special Economic Period when the Cuban economy was in the gutter, and Cubans were suffering, the National Assembly wanted to introduce a tax on wages. Union representative opposed this proposal on the grounds that the workers had not had an opportunity to discuss and debate the measures. The National Assembly thus delayed any action until the worker’s parliaments could meet. There were three months of meetings, over 80,000 meetings, involving over 3 million workers where these matters were discussed and debated, and new proposals were offered. National policy reflected worker views. When the new tax law was finally passed the taxes were primarily on the self-employed rather than on wage workers. This is one example that demonstrates how mass consultations and input from citizens distinguish the Cuban experiment from other countries.

All Cuban citizens can vote upon turning 16, and they can be nominated by fellow citizens in local popular assemblies at the age of 18. So, people are nominated in neighborhood mass assemblies at the local level to serve in Municipal Assemblies. It is a process of consultations and dialogues within popular and community organizations. We should also note that

Cubans possess the capacity to recall the representatives they elect if it is determined that the performance of the representative is unsatisfactory. This Cuban right is carried forth in periodic meetings, sort of accountability sessions with constituents, where representatives report on their work.

Let me return to the point of moving from electoral democracy to political democracy, and then from there into social and economic democracy. Democracy becomes more engaging politically when forms of effective and more participatory political representation are permitted and encouraged. In short, where there is established public controls on the financing of elections, not private control by those who own the society; where access to vital information is available and accessible rather than the kinds of limited access we experience in the US through the dominant corporate media where we very seldom learn what public opinion really is and only see it refracted through corporate interests; where the role of lobbies is constrained (so in the US the oil lobby spent roughly $83 million last year and will probably surpass that figure this year in attempts to direct legislation and voting their way…the pharmaceutical industry, the Chamber of Commerce, Phillip Morris and General Electric are near the top of lobbyists working to ensure that policies are endorsed and legislation passed to protect and promote private power, corporate profits and wealth for the privileged…), so lobbying would be constrained except to the extent that lobbying is carried forth in the public interest not to promote private power and wealth.

Political democracy also would be a form in which legislative bodies are empowered to carry out the will of the people, by the people and for the people; with the people having opportunities to recall candidates who are not serving the interests of the public; where there are instruments through which the public can express its interest and concerns through forms of collective consultation, dialogue, discussion and referenda; and where there are more equitable and responsible distributions of power. To some folks in the US this “of, by and for the people” notion of democracy would sound crazy, but it does reflect a rather Lincolnesque notion of democracy and that is as American as apple-pie, yes?

Democracy becomes more meaningful when politically engaging forms are combined with electoral forms in the context of social forms that recognize citizenship as a component of a social contract in which rising standards of living are measured through how well the society provides access to basic services and needs around food, recreation, education, social security, health, housing, arts, and transportation. In short, effective citizenship is rooted in social justice, a de-commodification of society, as well as equality of rights and conditions because people are fundamentally citizens in a participatory democracy rather than consumers in a profit based and undemocratic and dehumanizing market system.

Basically, in a social democracy needs are not satisfied through the ability to purchase commodities but are seen as a social right and duty. This form of social democracy eliminates the rampant exclusionary prejudice present in commodified markets where goods, needs and services are available only to those who have enough money and power for purchase rather than being available to all by virtue of their condition as citizens and human beings living under a mutually fulfilling and responsible social contract. This is the de-commodification mentioned above. In the United States, all of the goods and services mentioned above, from food, to health, to education, to sports, etc. are not available to people as a human right, but are seen as a privilege and available only to those who can purchase them on the market. I would suggest that is very anti-democratic and it has the consequence of dehumanizing people and social relations because too many people lack the ability to have their needs satisfied and they don’t live in a culture dedicated to fully developing their capacities.

Rick Smith: What is your sense of the understanding of Cuba in the US population?

Doug Morris: As you know, there has been nearly fifty years of anti-Cuba indoctrination and propaganda in the US. If Cubans could walk on water the US dominant media would say they were too weak to swim. It is very difficult to get information on Cuba that does not in some way denigrate the socialist experiment. Even the phrase “Castro’s Cuba” gives the impression that Cuba is Castro and nothing else, as though one person carries out a revolution and continues the struggle. Reviews of SiCKO, while generally positive, often found a way to say something negative about Cuba, typically a line such as “but Moore failed to mention Cuba’s human rights violations.” Richard Levins points out how Cuba’s successful programs to address Hurricane damage and prevent the loss of human life is often attributed to “the Communist state,” as opposed to people in the US, for example, who have the ability to exercise their “democratic” right to drown.

While it is important for US citizens to understand Cuba because there is much we can learn from the Cuban experiment, more important, it is crucial for us to understand that much of the most critical and urgent work must be accomplished here in the US to change the US commitments to aggression, violence, torture, sabotage, blockades, profits, power, militarism and destruction, not to mention work toward creating a more substantive democratic culture and politics in the US. Given US power in the world and the threats arising from that power, it means understanding that our options are intimately and increasingly linked to the ways in which our projects critically engage matters of war and peace, authoritarianism and substantive democracy, environmental destruction and environmental sustainability, economic inequality and instability and economic equality and stability where the latter requires a much more equitable distribution of wealth, income and resources along with meaningful employment, disease and health with an understanding that non-profit based health care along with an organization of society that promotes health and well-being is both possible and necessary, hunger and nutrition, etc.

In these domains, new and urgent projects in formal and informal education, inside and outside classrooms, which acknowledge the political nature of pedagogy and the pedagogical nature of politics, in the US are vital because a new and better world is not only possible, but NECESSARY, sooner rather than later! “Our choices,” Gabriel Kolko warns, “are increasingly a matter of their implications for human survival.” We must work to ensure that we make the right choices!

Rick Smith: As a result of Michael Moore’s film SiCKO Cuba’s healthcare system has received much publicity in the US. Is Moore’s depiction accurate?

Doug Morris: In Cuba healthcare is a right, not a commodity or a privilege. On this matter, and a number of others, Cuba, unlike the US, endorses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There is a question we might ponder: How has Cuba done so much given they have so little? And, we might consider a related question: How has the US done so little in comparison given that it has so much? For example, Cuba has more doctors per capita, 1 per 170 people, than the US, 1 per 188. In addition to its current 70,000 doctors, 65,000 new students have enrolled in Cuban medical schools since 2004. If Cuba does not already, they will soon lead the world in doctors per capita, meeting their accomplishment in teachers. Most doctors in Cuba are women, as are most philosophers. Cuba also exports more doctors and health professionals to the third world — to 68 countries — than any other country, including roughly 15,000 doctors and dentists to Venezuela in exchange for much needed oil. The paradox is partly resolved in Fidel’s comment “Human capital is worth far more than financial capital.”

Total per capita expenditure on health care is under $300 in Cuba and over $7,000 in the United States. Furthermore, Cuba is dedicated to health as well as healthcare and they see the two as dialectically linked. Cuban notions of social responsibility and solidarity promote a sense of “we are all in this together,” and that opens up larger discussions around how different aspects of social life, work life, cultural life, family life, nutrition, leisure, etc. are linked to individual and community health. In a profit-based medical system as exists in the US there are obvious advantages to having lots of sickness around, i.e., more profits. In the US it is virtually impossible to have rational discussions about health because there is not a common “people-first” agenda as there is in Cuba. In Cuba, the question is “how do we organize ourselves in society to promote the best health and healthcare for the people?” We should understand that these questions are taken up under siege conditions, and that often creates difficulties and contradictions. In the US, another question always intercedes to undermine reasonable thought and discussion: “But how will that impact profits?”

The difference can be attributed to Cuba’s people not profits system of healthcare and social organization in which there is a commitment to community collaboration on health matters, universal access to primary care, clearly defined and exercised “mission-based goals and objectives,” a national emphasis on health education and preventative healthcare, a social responsibility to provide decent nutrition, minimal administrative costs, and a commitment to research and development that is relevant to people’s needs. The latter point partially explains why Cuba can do important research around malaria and other diseases that are low-priority in the US because they are diseases of the poor.

The first-world level accomplishments in health are linked to a three-tiered Cuban model: (1) Health guardians, that include neighborhood-based teams of physicians and nurses, who interact regularly with citizens in their community. This “army of white coats” provides childhood immunization against 13 preventable diseases. That, along with guaranteed nutrition and a real sense of belonging to a community, is a key component in Cuba’s low infant mortality rate that is lower than that of the US. Doctors perform regular home visits, even visiting those in good health. The regular visits are carried out to consider not only physical health, but also to examine issues of lifestyle, work life, environment, nutrition, etc. Community and public health health concerns are addressed through community interventions; (2) a network of healthcare polyclinics (over 470) dedicated to integrating multi-medical-specialties (e.g. pediatric medicine, heart treatment, ophthalmology, optometry, x-rays, rehabilitation, 24 hour dentistry, minor surgery, ultrasound diagnostics, etc.). A billing department or business office will not be found because of the universal free health care system. That alone minimizes stress related to health problems; (3) Hospitals: acute care facilities spread across the island. One of these larger Cuban hospitals was featured in SiCKO, and there was evidence of the neighborhood clinics and doctors, not to mention the low-cost medicine.

Officials in the Cuban Ministry of Health note that Cuba’s roughly $2 billion tourism industry may soon be surpassed by joint ventures in biotechnology, vaccine exports and the supplying of health provisions to other countries as the primary provider of foreign exchange earnings. Less reliance on tourism and the values and attitudes tourism brings to the island will assist in addressing the “battle of ideas.”

As mentioned, in response to Hurricane Katrina, Cuba assembled over 1,500 humanitarian doctors and offered to assist the people of the Gulf Coast. The offer was declined by the US, and on September 19, 2005 the Cubans created the Henry Reeves International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disasters and Serious Epidemics to carry out relief work around the globe during emergencies. It is another example of Cuban international solidarity.

SiCKO is an important film. What is happening in Cuba is too complex to be captured in a short segment in a film, but Moore’s film has opened up some discussion and curiosities about what is happening in Cuba and that can help. Additionally, SiCKO asks us to consider a very simple question: do we want to dedicate our system of health and healthcare to improving human well-being and happiness or to maximizing profits for insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants? In short, are we more interested in the well-being of flesh and blood human beings, or the “well-being” of abstract entities called corporations? The majority in the US supports the former, corporate power supports the latter. That is a political battleground.

Rick Smith: What is the current US position on Cuba?

Doug Morris: In general it is still hostile and committed to overthrowing the revolution. Cuba is still confronted by US threats and intimidations; this is very evident in the more than 400-page US document from 2004 called “A Plan for Assistance to a Free Cuba,” which of course is a euphemism for “A Plan for the Complete Subjugation of Cuba and the Destruction of Cuba’s Achievements under the Revolution.”

The document’s arrogance and stupidity are appalling. It claims the US will apply to Cuba the lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq (Fallujah, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, for example?) It says it will bring literacy and vaccines to Cuban children, not knowing that Cuba has a 100% literacy rate, and among the best vaccination programs for children in the hemisphere. Under a US regime, Cuban social security will be eliminated and old people will be put to work (60 is the current retirement age in Cuba — far too soon for US planners who assume that all human worth is linked to producing profits for the ownership class). The document proclaims that the US will abolish all Cuban social programs (schools, health care, sustainable farms, etc.) and privatize them…neoliberalism strikes again. The document admits that such subjugation will not be easy, and that is correct. In Cuba, they say “even the arms of the dead will rise up and fight the imperialists, and fight onward to victory!”

Rick Smith: People will often say “If Cuba is such a great place why do so many people leave?”

Doug Morris: The number of Cubans who leave is often exaggerated in the public mind because of the overblown coverage Cubans receive. Cubans who leave have received an inordinate amount of publicity compared to say Haitians who leave, or Salvadorans who leave, or Peruvians who leave, etc. One must also place this in the context of a small poor country existing next to a large very rich country and also in the history of relations between the US and Cuba especially after the triumph of the revolution. Furthermore, it is not historically unusual for people from poor countries to find their way to nearby rich countries and Cuba is poor while the US is super-wealthy.

But it is more than that. Cubans are welcomed by the US far more than any other migrants from Latin America and with special conditions attached for Cubans. While others are generally seen as economic refugees Cubans often fall into the category of political refugees, from the US perspective, and are given what amounts to political asylum. That designation is essentially US propaganda. A political refugee must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution to be granted asylum in the US, but persecution has little to do with US judgment. Haitians fleeing a brutal and murderous US backed military dictatorship were clearly fleeing political repression in the early 1990s, but the US typically sent them back… sometimes to be murdered. The same was true of Guatemalans in the 1980s, etc., etc. There are many such cases.

Non-Cubans applying for political asylum are accepted between fifteen and thirty percent of the time with very stringent requirements for demonstrating persecution. Cubans are accepted essentially 100% of the time. Cubans have no stringent requirements. They are not required to demonstrate they are refugees or apply for political asylum. Cubans who make it to US soil are provided a virtual guarantee to permanent resident status. Such laws encourage Cubans to leave Cuba, and increase the number of Cubans who enter the US. There has been a slight modification in the policy: after 1995, Cubans who are intercepted by the US Coast Guard at sea at typically sent back to Cuba.

One must note the Cuban Adjustment Act, adopted in 1966 under the Johnson Administration. The Act altered the legal status of Cuban immigrants and must be seen in the context of long-term US attempts to undermine the Cuban revolution. One US goal was “brain drain” from Cuba. Cubans are given preferential treatment. As a result of the Act, Cubans were given not only political asylum but other privileges awarded to no other group, including permanent resident status, a fast-track to US citizenship, opportunities to work legally, as well as access to other benefits such as welfare and unemployment benefits.

People rarely ask the question, “Why do so many Mexicans leave?” Suppose there was a Mexican Adjustment Act, or a Haitian Adjustment Act, how many Mexicans and Haitians, not to mention people from every other country in Latin America, would try to take advantage of such an enticing opportunity to leave a poor country and go to the US with basically no questions asked and plenty of entitlements? The numbers would be enormous. Mexico estimates that immigration to the US will include up to 5 million Mexicans per decade over the next twenty years.

In reality, Cubans, especially over the years of “the Special Period” have left for economic reasons. Cuba lost roughly 80% of its trade overnight and the US intensified the blockade in order to further undermine the Cuban economy. Given all of that one might ask a different question, “Why do so few Cubans leave Cuba?”

We might consider one final point on this matter. Why is it that the US encourages people to leave the country with the best health care, best education, best reforestation, best sustainable agriculture, lowest infant mortality rate, nearly the highest life expectancy, some of the best scientific research in all of the Americas, lowest homeless rate, etc.? Coupled with that why is it that the US has regularly returned people to countries with the worst human rights violations where the victims will also suffer poverty, malnutrition, poor education, poor health and little access to health care, etc.? Working through that explains much about the priorities of US power.

Rick Smith: The US State Department suggests that Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. Is there any truth to these accusations?

Doug Morris: Is that like a sledgehammer accusing a feather of breaking bricks? Wayne Smith, former Chief of the US Interest Section in Havana, who resigned in protest over US Cuba policy, has a good recent piece on this at The National Interest website. Cuba is on the US State Department list of states that sponsor terrorism and has been since 1982 under Reagan, though there is no evidence that Cuba supports, endorses and perpetrates terrorism. There is plenty of evidence that Cuba opposes terrorism, especially the kind launched against it from the US. We might then ask why the US continues to place Cuba on the list. It could be inertia, it could be bureaucratic obedience, but more likely it is simply part of the continuing process of demonizing and alienating Cuba. Accusing Cuba of supporting terror carries extra weight after 9/11.

Originally, it is speculated, Cuba was placed on the terror list because the US accused them of providing support for the guerrilla forces in El Salvador and Guatemala who were attempting to overthrow murderous US backed dictatorships. If providing supplies to groups attempting to overthrow governments renders a state “terrorist” then clearly the US should have been much higher up on the list at the time for arming, training and supporting the murderous Contras. Furthermore, the US was supporting and supplying the Guatemalan government, surely among the worst terror states in the world at the time as they were in the process of killing tens of thousands of Mayans.

Strangely, right around the time the US placed Cuba on the terror list for the above mentioned reasons, the US admitted they had no hard evidence linking Cuba to arms supplies to Central America. Recently the US accused Cuba of not tracking or seizing terrorist assets. The problem is there are no assets to be seized. Al Qaeda is not keeping its assets in Cuban banks and of course the US knows that. The US accuses Cuba of harboring members of the Basque group ETA and the Colombian guerrilla group FARC, but those people are in Cuba legally and there is no evidence that they are currently linked to terrorism anywhere. The US accuses Cuba of refusing to extradite people in Cuba who committed crimes in the US and that has become a ground for placing them on the terror list. Committing a crime in the US does not make one a terrorist, or does living in Cuba. Since 1959 the US has refused countless requests for extradition, not the least of which is Posada-Carriles who clearly committed acts of international terror.

Unlike Cuba, the US is known to be harboring numerous terrorists, including many who have carried out terror against Cuba. There are plenty of state terrorists to be found in the Washington, D.C. area! If terrorism, as the US Department of Defense defines it, is the “calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological,” and we should add “economic,” we can look much closer to home to find a state whose actions merit inclusion at the top of the list of terror states. Cuba does not belong on the list.

Rick Smith: Any closing thoughts?

Doug Morris: We should mention the Cuban Five. There was an important appeals hearing on August 20th in Atlanta. People can rally to their support, it is desperately needed. There are international days of solidarity with the Cuban Five from September 12th through October 8th.

In brief, they are five Cubans who were in the United States monitoring the activities of and infiltrating groups, such as Brothers to the Rescue, who have a long history of committing terrorist acts against Cuba. It should be noted that these terror groups operate with the knowledge and sometimes the support of the CIA and FBI. The goal of “the Five” was to prevent terrorism. In short, they were participating in the war against terrorism by working to prevent acts of terror inside a country that was harboring terrorists. The US accused them of conspiracy to commit espionage, but they were not spying on US government facilities, they did not carry out violence, they merely collected information in order to combat terrorism against Cuba.

Information gathered by “the Five,” demonstrating terrorist activities planned and organized on US soil, was shared by the Cuban government with the FBI. The FBI responded, but not quite as one might hope. They arrested NOT the terrorists but the five who were fighting against terrorism. The five were held for long periods in solitary confinement, visits from family were prohibited, and they were placed on trial in, of all places, Miami. Of course, they were convicted. Sentences ranged from 15 years to double-life. In 2005, after seven years of confinement, the convictions were overturned by a Court of Appeals and a new trial was ordered…NOT in Miami. One year later, that decision was overturned by a Circuit Court under apparent pressure from the Bush Administration. The case is a grave injustice. The August 20th appeal hearing was very important. A decision will be handed down in the coming months. Public support is crucial. [To support the Cuban Five]

In general, there is much more to share about and reflect upon, both with critique and admiration, revolutionary Cuba. Cuba is a country of multiple contradictions where many dreams have become reality (against enormous odds) but where many hoped for realities still remain dreams (but, they have not given up!). Cuba is too often a country condemned for not accomplishing the impossible, i.e. some utopian alternative, rather than being recognized and appreciated for accomplishing many dreams under conditions that made the reality of those dreams appear unachievable. Cubans are not seeking utopia but seeking ways to mobilize the collective intelligence and imagination, courage and commitment, and energy and enthusiasm of a population of people in order to maximize the potential for meeting human needs and maximizing human well-being under always changing, challenging and difficult material historical realities. For example, we should note, Cuba, a resource poor but human rich society, is the only country on the planet to meet the minimum requirements for sustainable development.

We could ask, “What can we learn from Cuba and how can we adapt similar health, education, sustainability and environmental programs to the rest of the world?” Cuba’s WMDs are not Weapons of Mass Destruction as in the US, but Weapons of Mass Development in education, culture, health, agriculture, science, solidarity, etc

In terms of our own positions on Cuba, we might want to follow the advice of Harvard School of Public Health professor Richard Levins who says, and I paraphrase, “We should reserve the right to be critical of any particular decision within the Cuban revolution while still maintaining 100% support for the Cuban revolution.”

Forty-five years of an official US “blockade,” forty-seven years of US terrorism of various sorts, state and non-state, a bevy of US laws to punish Cuba, absurd legislation that restricts travel (this includes forcing Harvard to demonstrate it is an accredited educational institution before a travel license to Cuba would be issued), dozens of attempts, if not more, on the life of Cuban president Fidel Castro, etc., and Cuba still miraculously persists in its experiment in people-first politics and economics. Cuba, arguably, stands as a beacon for Latin America, and perhaps for the rest of the world, because Cubans have demonstrated repeatedly it is possible to achieve what seems impossible. The lesson is a simple one, but difficult: we should never allow the threat or fear of failure to impede or undermine our work in trying to achieve what appears to be impossible or unattainable.

For example, Cubans have refuted the notion that the US can dominate and destroy anyone in the hemisphere it pleases. They have shown that it is possible to create something from virtually nothing (twice: 1959 and 1991). They have survived “US sanctions [that] are the harshest in the world,” as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, in addition to surviving debilitating economic conditions under which others would have been buried long ago. As noted, the world overwhelmingly opposes the illegal US embargo. Rather than blockades Cubans need support and solidarity from us.

For years Cuba was called a “satellite of the Soviet Union,” but Cuba has demonstrated, after the Soviet “star” fizzled into darkness, that it is no satellite to anyone, but “its own star,” as shared with us by Cuban historian Oscar Guzman. Cubans, in the midst of building socialism in a hostile world, have maintained their humanity because they are inveterate dreamers deeply rooted in reality. Cubans, following Eduardo Galeano’s “rule” for education, work to learn from history so they can change the present in order to imagine and construct a better future. Reality without dreams, they recognize, is not a human reality but a barbarian nightmare.

The Cuban’s have shown that dreams, rooted in concepts of solidarity and mutual aid, can alter the harshest realities. If humans lose their capacity to dream they lose both reality and their humanity. Cubans have maintained reality and their humanity by not losing their capacity to dream. It is essential that we too do not lose our hopes and struggles for producing an inclusive, involved, informed and empowered democracy and remain, like the Cubans, inveterate dreamers.

Viva Cuba! Viva el socialismo!

Rick Smith: First, can you tell us why you were in Cuba?

Doug Morris: I should first say that I am not an expert on Cuba but I do have research interests in progressive forms of pedagogy and a hope and belief that we can organize ourselves differently in society, more justly, more equitably, and more democratically. Cuba has had great pedagogical successes in formal and informal education and they are carrying out an experiment in alternative politics and economics that places people above profits.

I was in Cuba as part of the 19th “Research Network in Cuba Conference” organized by the University of Havana and the US based “Radical Philosophers Association. I had not visited Cuba since 2002 and there are clear signs of improvement in Cuba. “The Research Network” includes a yearly gathering of philosophers, educators, cultural workers and students from Cuba and the United States who share research interests, theories and practices, visions, goals, plans, etc.

As part of the research we were able to visit and interact with researchers, scholars, and workers at the Latin American School of Medicine that is working to graduate 100,000 doctors from Latin America, Africa and the US over the next ten years dedicated to helping the poor in their home countries, the Pedagogical Institute which is home to the “Yes I Can” literacy program now operating in 19 countries, the Ophthamology Institute home of “Operation Miracle” that has now performed over 600,000 free eye operations to restore sight (the goal is six million operations), neighborhood health clinics, schools, etc.

One thing in common about all of these places is a deep sense of solidarity, social responsibility, compassion, and internationalism (captured in the oft-seen slogan “Homeland is Humanity”) in the pedagogical process. The head of the School of Medicine noted that “people here are trained both in the science of Medicine and the science of political consciousness. They learn that health is not only a matter of biology but also a matter of society. A healthful people require a healthful society.” This key dialectic between humans as both biological and social beings is a crucial component of Cuban pedagogy.

Another reason for visiting Cuba is to renew one’s inspiration and hope in human possibility.

Rick Smith: Are there some general impressions of Cuba you could share?

Doug Morris: One thing is the striking billboards in Cuba. One sees no advertisements for cars, or beer, or diamonds, but one does see much about the accomplishments of the revolution, international solidarity, denunciation of US imperialism, the Cuban Five, the terrorist recently freed by the US, Luis Posada-Carriles, etc. One could do an interesting comparative study about the use of public space for sharing information in Cuba and the US. In Cuba, in general, public space remains public while in the US it is increasingly privatized. In the US over-consumption is emphasized, in Cuba solidarity and education is emphasized. In the US aggression is celebrated, in Cuba it is denounced. In Cuba health for all is celebrated, in the US the question is “how can we make money from your ill-health?” In Cuba they are trying to produce a healthful society for all, including free health-care, in the US we have produced a society that makes people sick and then we spend enormous amounts repairing the damage.

And, of course, one sees Ché’s image at multiple sites.

For example, regarding billboards, imagine a perplexed Statue of Liberty screaming “What barbarians! They have freed the terrorist!” To whom might this admonishment be directed? In this case, Lady Liberty’s image adorns a large and colorful billboard along the ocean-side Malecon in Havana, just across from, and facing, CIA headquarters in Cuba, a.k.a. “The US Interest Section.” The admonition refers not to al Qaeda terrorists, but to the long-time US backed thug and killer Luis Posada-Carrilles, who now walks freely on the streets of Miami. The Bush Administration is responsible for “freeing the terrorist” and the Cubans are rightly angry.

Freeing “the terrorist” is really a scandalous violation of international treaty agreements. The US refuses to extradite the man who publicly and proudly admits (along with co-terrorist Orlando Bosch) to carrying out years of terrorist attacks against Cuba, and he has been implicated in the infamous exploding of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed everyone on board, along with admitting to a series of 1997 bombing attacks on Havana hotels and restaurants in an attempt to undermine tourism during a period when Cuba relied on tourism to boost the economy.

In the US, since 1959 and the triumph of the Cuban revolution, terrorism of multiple sorts carried out against Cuba is not only permitted but encouraged, and, on the billboard, Lady Liberty is, like the rest of us should be, aghast at the horror of this vindictive and vicious US policy.

We might recall that after 9/11, George W. Bush “put the world on notice that we will hold any person or regime that harbors or supports terrorists as guilty of terrorism as the terrorists themselves.” We still await legal actions against those “guilty of terrorism” in the current US administration responsible for harboring terrorist Luis Posada-Carrilles, among others (not to mention the Administration’s other, and more heinous, crimes).

Much of old Havana is in a state of disrepair, but at the same time one sees much restoration under way, another sign of an improving economy. There are parts of Havana that remind one that Cuba is a poor country, but there are other parts that remind one that Cuba has achieved much with very little. Cuba is not a tropical paradise, but it is also not an infernal hell like Haiti right next door. There seemed to be more food on the table and more cars in the streets, both indications that the economy is improving (though not necessarily the air quality in Havana).

Rick Smith: What is the primary struggle in Cuba these days?

Doug Morris: Though we met with many Cubans from different walks of life, but mainly academics, the visit to Cuba was short, two weeks, so one must be careful not to generalize. In my view, arguably the primary battle in Cuba now continues to be what they call “the battle of ideas,” i.e. how to maintain socialist consciousness and socialist commitment during this challenging historical period when Cuba is forced to interface more and more with global capitalism/neoliberalism in order to survive. In other words, how does a country carrying out a socialist experiment maintain and develop notions of and commitments to solidarity, mutual responsibility and collective work within a context of relative scarcity while at the same time global forces are increasingly present that promote a rapacious individualism and exacerbated consumption of frequently unnecessary, but tantalizing, products? In addition, there is the constant threat of US military force and that has material, as well as psychological and emotional, impacts on an entire population of people.

At the same time that there exists a US military threat and neoliberalism is attempting to claw its way into Cuba, the growing tide of leftism in Latin America (most evident in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, but growing in most other countries, including Mexico), along with US distractions elsewhere, a weakened US economy, and the newly constructed ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America), rooted in the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, provide a form of protection and support for Cuba as well as emerging hopes that the sails of socialist possibilities will gain new and stronger winds in the coming years.

Additionally, Cuba’s revolutionary commitment to national dignity and sovereignty along with their revolutionary commitment to international solidarity is beginning to spread across Latin America and the world and that provides and earns them increasing levels of international respect, interest, acknowledgement, appreciativeness and support. All of that makes it more difficult for the US to overturn the revolution. We might also recall that the Cubans mobilized more than 1,500 doctors and aid workers experienced in hurricane relief to come to the US immediately after Katrina, but the Bush Administration stupidly and arrogantly refused their assistance.

Rick Smith: One often hears of human rights violations in Cuba. How does one respond?

Doug Morris: First, we do not want to ignore human rights violations anywhere, especially human rights violations for which we are responsible. The US blockade against Cuba, now in its 47th year (official blockade 45th), is illegal. The latest vote on the US embargo in the United Nations was 184-4, essentially the whole world calling for an immediate end to the illegal US embargo. The US embargo is a major human rights and international law violation, and the US, voting essentially alone, voted to keep the illegal embargo. This vote, where basically the entire world says “end the embargo” and the US, against the world, says “what we say goes,” demonstrates how little the US is interested in democracy internationally. People around the world know these things. Sadly, internally many people in the US are unaware.

Cuba, since 1959, has been victimized by more terrorism than any other country (not in terms of victims but in terms of attacks), and virtually all of it comes from the US, either as officially sponsored state terror, for example, “Operation Mongoose” started under the Kennedy Administration after the failed US attack at the Bay of Pigs, or a sort of “we will look the other way” non-state terror organized by anti-Cuban revolution folks in Miami. Many of the people involved in that terror have links to the CIA. The US has carried out biological warfare against Cuba, for example, releasing dengue fever that killed several hundred people, mostly children, etc. There is a long list, much of it is covered in a book by William Blum “Killing Hope” that is highly recommended.

But, I suspect the question is pointing to the oft-noted, in the US, human rights violations perpetrated by the Cuban government, yes?

Rick Smith: Yes, of course, this is what we are constantly told. There is the impression that Cuba is a police state that governs through force, intimidation and coercion.

Doug Morris: Well, yes, in the United States one hears much about Cuban human rights violations, but it is difficult to believe that the US has any real or principled concern for human rights anywhere, other than the “right” to maximize profits and power for the select few. For example, a report came out recently noting that more than one million people have now been killed in Iraq as a consequence of the US aggression and occupation. That figure does not take into account those who were killed by the 12 years of US sanctions and bombings in the years 1991-2003. Estimates of people killed during that period run as high as a million people, with roughly 500,000 of them young children. It is about that figure that US Secretary of State Madeline Albright said “the price [of killing 500,000 children] is worth it.” In addition, a significant portion of the Iraqi population is without adequate food or drinkable water or employment. Children in Iraq are among the most traumatized in the world. There are roughly 2 million internally displaced people and two million who have been forced to flee the country. Hospitals are barely working and are undersupplied. Electricity is hard to find on a regular basis. There is rampant killing, torture, kidnapping, abuse, bombing, etc. How is the US demonstrating its concerns for these major human rights violations? The US continues to participate in carrying out the violations. I mention all of this to suggest that US concerns for human rights are at best incidental and US condemnations of Cuba for human rights violations must be looked on with suspicion.

As to Cuba, under the revolution, Cuba has no history of death squads or torture squads, no mass imprisonment, mass kidnapping, and no mass repression. Some people who are referred to in the US as “dissidents” and imprisoned in Cuba would be called “terrorists” if they were operating in the US or in a US client state. In general, those “terrorists” are people who work for the US, are funded through the US Interest Section in Havana (basically CIA headquarters in Cuba), or they are funded by anti-revolution groups in Miami that often have connections to the CIA and thus carry out policies supported by US power. Those people are trying to destroy the Cuban socialist experiment and they are backed by real power, i.e. US power.

There are no fair analogies in the real world regarding power relationships so one must invent them that match the US/Cuba power relationship. For example, suppose there was a SUPERPOWER in the world, call it “SUPERPOWER X” that had the same degree of power over the US that the US has over Cuba, and that SUPERPOWER X was hostile to the US, had carried out invasions, regular terror operations and maintained an illegal blockade against the US, was constantly propagandizing inside the US over radio and television all in attempts to destroy the US (and here we would also have to imagine that the US was attempting to carry out an experiment in people-first politics and economics), and then imagine there were people inside the US, working for, trained and funded by SUPERPOWER X in repeated attempts to destroy the (hypothetical in this case) US experiment in socialism? We would not call them “dissidents” we would call them “terrorists,” and one can imagine they would not be treated nicely, in fact, they would probably be executed for treason, or sent off to some Guantanamo-style gulag to be tortured. The US, I would suggest, despises Cuba not because of human rights violations in Cuba but because in Cuba they respect human rights the US does not consider as valid rights: health care, food, education, cultural expression, work, housing, sustainability of the environment, etc.

Rick Smith: And what about freedom of speech? We are told there is no freedom of speech in Cuba; we are told that people are cowering in corners afraid to say anything lest they be hauled off to prison?

Doug Morris: That is surely a caricature. We had plenty of conversations with people in various settings and they seemed perfectly willing and free to be critical. One senses, however, a certain pride in the revolution that could make people somewhat reluctant to be overly critically in the face of people from the US. Remember, the US is trying to destroy the revolution. Furthermore, that pride, I think, is linked to a sense of responsibility not just to the revolution inside Cuba but for the example that Cuba might provide for the rest of the world, i.e., Cuba offers a working example that demonstrates how people can organize society differently and direct it toward a people-first mobilization that does not place profits above human well-being. This is linked to the strong sense of international solidarity one witnesses in Cuba’s internationalized literacy and medical programs that really are unmatched and unprecedented.

There were some arguments in Cuba among some on the US delegation around freedom of speech in Cuba, and of course one would want to support more freedom of speech everywhere, including Cuba. But, as one of the Cuban philosophers told us, “we are not carrying out a socialist experiment on the moon!” A few from the US intimated “the US has a free press as evidenced by the Bill Moyers program and NOW on PBS, Air America radio, The Nation magazine, etc.” I think they are missing a crucial point. While it is true those somewhat oppositional forms exist in the US, they are not a threat to power because they are not backed by any significant power that is a threat to real power in the US, i.e. corporate power. If any of these programs became a real threat to power one suspects they would quickly disappear.

In Cuba the situation is different. So called “oppositional literature” or “oppositional speech” in Cuba IS frequently backed by significant power, in fact, it is backed by the most powerful force in history, a combination of US military, economic and political power, and it is well known that the US is virulently hostile to Cuba. Because of that Cuba must, I think, operate with a greater degree of care and suspicion in determining what should and what should not be disseminated or permitted. This is not an attempt to justify repression of speech, but an attempt to explain it in the current circumstances. There is Fidel’s statement “Criticism within the revolution, yes; criticism against the revolution, no.” Cuba does not want to return to the virtual slave-state existence it had before the 1959 triumph of the revolution.

That Cuba has survived is a bit of a miracle, and they continue their struggle, under difficult conditions. They appear to be committed to extending what is already a fairly substantial degree of participatory democracy, both formally through the State and informally through participation in popular organizations and federations.

Because of the US blockade and the collapse of the Soviet trading block the Cuban economy is still operating within what they call “The Special Economic Period,” a period of deprivation, severe at times, but they expect to achieve productive levels similar to “the good ol’ days” of 1989 (before the collapse of the Soviet bloc that supported the Cuban economy) sometime within the next two years. At the height of the Special Period the economy was down as much as 40% and caloric intake was down as much as 60% according to some reports. They survived by sharing the deprivation and mobilizing the collective will and intelligence to find ways to survive.

So, in spite of its many problems, some internal, many external, I think the world owes Cuba and the Cuban people a great debt of gratitude for not surrendering their struggle because in a world edging toward multiple catastrophes, both human and social, rooted in capitalism and militarism, Cuba offers a different model that provides both some hope and possibility that alternatives do exist and we can organize society in ways that place people above profits, cooperation above selfishness, and international solidarity above international aggression.

Rick Smith: What about Cuban nationalism? We often see photographs of tens of thousands of people at demonstrations?

Doug Morris: Tens of thousands is probably an underestimate. Hundreds of thousands is more accurate. Nationalism is surely promoted. A strong sense of national defense is essential while living “beneath” the behemoth to the North.

Here I will speculate. In Cuba one hears or sees the slogan “Patria o Muerte,” (“Homeland or Death”). Some people in the US will say “Castro has trained a country of robots willing to die to protect his power.” One suspects that has very little to do with the slogan, and that is not to say Fidel is not respected for his contributions to the revolution, he is. When Cubans say “Patria o Muerte” (”Homeland or Death”) it carries with it, I think, a number of meanings, and relevance beyond Cuba: (1) it suggests they will struggle to the death to protect the socialist experiment and national identity, their self-determination and their right to live free from colonial or imperial control, exploitation and domination; (2) if they lose the homeland it is not only a physical death but a cultural death along with the death of the experiment in socialism and a “people first” society, and thus a “spiritual” death, a crushing of hope, and the elimination of dreams; (3) (a bit more subtle, but perhaps even more important), there is a sense one gets from a number of Cubans, young and old, that the Cuban experiment may provide a model, both material and inspirational, theoretical and practical, ideological and pedagogical, of sorts for the very survival of Latin America in the face of US hegemony, and also for the survival of the rest of the world in the face of neoliberalism and militarism. This is not rooted in any sense of Cuban arrogance (just the opposite), but out of an understanding that the rapacious, brutal and destructive nature of a “produce and expand in order to profit and survive” economy accompanied by a commitment to military aggression portends ultimate doom for humanity, preceded by all too much suffering, despair and misery. So yes, there is a strong sense of being part of something larger than the self in Cuba, it is both nationalist and internationalist, both local and global.

One might sum it up by saying that if the values on which socialism is based, i.e. solidarity, love, respect, humanitarianism, equality, reason, freedom, substantive democracy, and peace, are crushed; then, there is a sense of spiritual death, followed soon by physical annihilation. So, in a phrase, “homeland or death,” i.e., “patria o muerte,” also carries with it the notion “socialismo o muerte!”

END PART I