Usa Forum - Cuba: Ricardo Alarcon Thinks Out Loud (Hayden

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9/1/2006 12:04:00 AM

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Cuba: Ricardo Alarcon Thinks Out Loud (Hayden)

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

["What is interesting about these words of a top Cuban leader, spoken
freely and without reserve, is how far they diverge from the
stereotypes of Cuba as a gray, thought-controlled Marxist dictatorship,"
says Hayden.

This isn't news for those who study Cuba and who are familiar with the
thinking of its leadership, including Ricardo Alarcon, a brilliant analyst
whose insights on political psychology and the Americas are particularly
valuable right now. A great interview. -NY Transfer]

TruthDig - Aug 29, 2006
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060829_tom_hayde...

A Top Cuban Leader Thinks Out Loud

Tom Hayden interviews Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba's Parliament

"Let's try to imagine what Karl Marx would be doing today."

It was Sunday, May 21st, and my host posing the question was Ricardo
Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly. It was Alarcon's 69th
birthday, and I was having difficulty understanding why he had pressed me to
fly down for a visit. The purpose was nothing more than "two old guys
talking," according to his daughter Maggie, a thirty-something single mom
and formidable interpreter of Cuba to many North Americans.

Looking back today, I don't know whether or not Alarcon already knew that
his longtime comrade Fidel was diagnosed as needing serious surgery. The
question would become a "state secret," at Castro's wish. Alarcon is third
in line to succeed Fidel after Raul Castro, although it is more likely
Alarcon will blend into a collective transitional team.

[NY Transfer Editor's Note: Hayden neglects to answer the obvious question
here. The other most senior members of Cuba's government are Vice President
Carlos Lage Dávila and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. In addition,
Fidel's message on July 31, 2006 mentions the responsibilities of other
specific departments and their ministers, including public health (José
Ramón Balaguer Cabrera) and education (José Ramón Machado Ventura and
Esteban Lazo Hernández).

See the english translation of Fidel's July 31, 2006 proclamation here:
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/piper...Week-of-Mon-20060731/0...
- -NYTr]

The prospect of three days conversation with Ricardo Alarcon reflecting on
his long revolutionary experience was too important to put off, and our
interviews may be of greater value during the current rampant and reckless
speculation over Fidels status. Few individuals alive have the range of
Alarcon's experience, from being a Havana student leader during the Cuban
Revolution to Cuba's United Nations ambassador (1965-78 and 1990-92) to
foreign minister (1992-93) and National Assembly president since 1993. And
so we sat at a seaside restaurant on his birthday with daughter Maggie and
his advisor, Miguel Alvarez. A Venezuelan cargo ship passed just offshore.

"I think Marx would be asking what are we doing about all the millions today
who are protesting for peace and justice," said Alarcon in answer to his
question. In a recent essay on "Marx After Marxism" he argued that Marxists
should begin to see the world anew. Scoffing at neoconservatives who embrace
the end of Marxism (and the end of history itself), Alarcon also emphasizes
the need for "self-critical reflection on our side as well." In effect, he
is proposing a return to the original spirit of Marx before the 20th-century
revolutions in his name. That original Marx organized an early transnational
labor movement, with the central demand the eight-hour day, and wrote more
theoretical works on 19th-century capitalism. According to Alarcon, that
earlier Marx never meant a science-based, inevitable march to socialism
based on some objective truth revealed through communist parties. That Marx
was a practical revolutionary who himself famously declared "with all
naturalness," Alarcon points out, "I am not a Marxist."

For Alarcon and the Cubans, history always has been contingent, subject to
human will and unexpected developments, rather than an unfolding of the
inevitable. After Cuba's decades of dependency on the Soviet Union during
the Cold War, which caused a degree of "subordination" to Soviet interests
and "reinforced dogmatism," Alarcon calls for active exploration of new
trends in global capitalism and its oppositional movements. "Old dogmatists
are incapable of appreciating new possibilities in the revolutionary
movement," he says.

All the talk of the United States becoming a sole superpower falls to pieces
with its bogging down in Iraq and the derailment of its neo-liberal agenda
for Latin America, Alarcon believes.

He identifies new obstacles facing capitalist growth. Every 25 years a
population equivalent to the whole planets numbers in Marx's time is born.
Alarcon believes climate changes are irreversible, forests are being
transformed into deserts, cities becoming uninhabitable and, as a result, an
environmental challenge to capitalism has arisen which requires rethinking
of Marxist political economy.

Alarcon revises the Marxist (and Leninist) conceptions of the 19th-century
proletariat accordingly. "Today there are growing numbers of those from
different stations of life who do not conform, are unsatisfied and rebel."
"For the first time, anti-capitalist malaise is manifested, simultaneously
and everywhere, in advanced countries and those left behind, and is not
limited to the proletariat and other exploited sectors." And so "a diverse
group, multicolored, in which there is no shortage of contradictions and
paradoxes, grows in front of the dominant system."

"It is not yet the rainbow that announces the end of the storm," Alarcon
says, warning that the diverse movements lack a common theory, are marked by
spontaneity more often than organization, and need to develop further
without either sectarian factionalism or becoming carried away.

He pauses, points an index finger for emphasis, and tells me the "most
important task for the Latin American left" is to reelect President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Having met with leftists highly critical of
fiscal moderation in power, Alarcon says that "notwithstanding his faults,
if Lula is defeated, all of Latin America will be worse off." This advice
may not sit well with some radical advocates of Latin American revolution,
but Alarcon takes a longer view. The recent nationalist electoral wave in
Latin America--Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Chile, and a
near-success in Mexico--inevitably brings dilemmas of governance to the
forefront. But for Alarcon and Cuba, the overall changes in Latin America
further a benign result, the full integration of Cuba into Latin America
after decades of Cold War antagonisms. The permanent embargo by the United
States makes the Cubans especially wary of any reversals in the continental
process, as the defeat of Lula in the Oct. 1 election would represent.

Alarcon is pragmatic. He believes in the Cuban philosophy that "the duty of
the revolutionary is to make the revolution," that it must be a "heroic
creation." But he is aware, perhaps painfully, that revolutions cannot be
"imprinted or copied" and that the "mandates" of mass movements like those
that have elected Lula must be respected. "There is no alternative in
Brazil. The guys who were mad at me for saying this went to meet with the
landless movement representatives in Brazil, and they told them the same
thing."

Continuing at a dinner conversation, Alarcon opined that there should be
"many forms of socialism," depending on the needs of different countries and
movements. Even the social-democratic parties, the historical rivals of the
European communist parties, have an important role to play today, he said.
"I hope they go through the same sort of introspection we have," Alarcon
said, referring to the tendency of the moderate socialist parties to cut
social programs and "tail" after U.S. military and economic policies. "I
would go further," he said. "I don't believe that capitalism cannot be
reformed. The Great Society in your country is an example."

Alarcon seems to be hinting at a role for revolutionaries in shaping a clear
alternative to global neo-liberalism, one pushed in the streets by social
movements and eventually resulting in a reform of capitalism like the New
Deal on a global basis. Differing with some earlier views of Third World
liberation, he sees a crucial role for activists and movements inside the
North American colossus itself. Whereas earlier Marxists argued that
unionized workers were a "privileged aristocracy" benefiting from the
exploitation of the Third World, he says, "they are not any longer an
aristocracy. If you go to North American workers and tell them they are an
aristocracy, they will say you are crazy." He points to the 1999 Seattle
protests against the World Trade Organization, in which labor called for
"workers of the world to unite." Marx, he says, would be "very interested in
North American workers losing jobs to India" and what that means for
workers' movements.

His point is that "the Third World [now] penetrates the First, as
dramatically illustrated by the current immigration controversies, rooted as
they are in the historic patterns of capitalism needing cheap labor and
resources and impoverished workers needing jobs. The Empire harvests its own
internal opposition from the May Day 2006 immigrant marches inside the U.S.
to the growth of Islamic rage inside the ghettos of east London or housing
projects on the edge of Paris.

"To free the immigrants from their exploitation becomes essential to the
emancipation of the workers in the developed countries," those who are
undermined by cheap immigrant labor. "One must help these two [groups of
workers] to converge," both to avoid an upsurge of racism and forge the
basis of majority coalitions favoring reforms like a global living wage as
the alternative to neo-liberalism's notorious "race to the bottom."

What is interesting about these words of a top Cuban leader, spoken freely
and without reserve, is how far they diverge from the stereotypes of Cuba as
a gray, thought-controlled Marxist dictatorship. Cuba is not a free society
by measurements like multiple parties, but Cuba's people, from Alarcon to
the neighborhoods, are more conversant about trends in the United States
than Americans are about Cuba. The ever-tightening U.S. embargo has
boomeranged into a dangerous narrowing of American thinking, demonstrated in
recent weeks by one hallucination after another. For example, Sen. Mel
Martinez, a Florida Republican, was seen on television several weeks ago
opining that Fidel was already dead. The streets of Miami filled with
cheering Cuban exiles with no way to influence the island. According to the
Los Angeles Times, the "most obvious interest [in Castro's passing] comes
from the gambling and tourist industries," which were run off the island in
1960 [July 6, 2006]. One Florida-based developer's master plan envisions
"moving out all Cubans currently living in Havana" and replacing them with
Miami exiles. The U.S. government is constantly updating its official
"transition plan" to restore both free markets and the Miami exiles, with
the emphasis on "disruption of an orderly succession strategy," according to
the Congressional Research Service [Aug. 23, 2005]. Eighty million U.S.
dollars was recently budgeted to support Cuba's opposition groups. "There
are no plans to reach out," declared White House spokesman Tony Snow after
Fidel was hospitalized [Miami Herald, Aug. 2, 2006].

The notion of opening a dialogue with an accomplished diplomat like Ricardo
Alarcon is completely out of the question. The Helms-Burton Act forbids any
negotiation or loosening of the embargo if Raul Castro remains in power
after Fidel.

Voices of realism like the head of the Organization of American States
(OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, say "there's no transition, and it's not your
country" to prepare a transition for [Reuters, May 23, 2006]. "It just
drives the Bush people crazy," says one former diplomat, referring to the
fact that Cuba hasn't collapsed in accord with neoconservative wishful
thinking.

The fact is that Cubans will not rise up to welcome a mass influx of mostly
white, revenge-oriented exiles from Miami backed by U.S. arms. The neocon
analogy with the so-called "captive nations" of Eastern Europe doesn't fit.
Despite all the Cuban people's legitimate criticisms of their government, it
remains their government and they will not trade it for a U.S.-installed
one. However they complain, Cubans have become more socialist in everyday
life than many of them realize, as seen in their common acts of solidarity,
their response to the Elian Gonzales showdown, their educational
achievements, their healthcare and their social safety nets. They hardly
lack for world support and, in Venezuela, have found a solid source of oil
and a continental opportunity for their legions of doctors and teachers.
["In the 60s, we only had a revolutionary ideology to export, but now we
have valuable human capital," one Cuban intellectual told me.]

A persistent interest of mine is why Cuba seems to be the only country in
the world without street gangs. There certainly is a black market in
contraband goods, but nothing like the pandilleras found everywhere else in
the Americas. Part of the reason is an extraordinary network of 28,000
social workers who persistently act on the belief that "some morality
remains in everyone," as opposed to the "super-predator" theories popular
among the neoconservatives.

It seems evident that the Cuban people want reform of their socialist state
if and when Fidel passes on, and obviously not the "regime change"
anticipated by the Miami Cubans and their Washington, D.C., patrons. They
want a peaceful process controlled by Cubans, not by foreign powers. Who
wouldn't? The question is whether the United States government has an
interest in normalizing relations with a better, more democratic, more open
but still socialist Cuba. Sadly, it is doubtful, because such a Cuba would
be a triumphant example to Latin America and the world. And so the United
States, along with Miami's Cubans--the armed and aggressive state within a
state on American soil--hold out against the 182 nations of the world who
condemn the embargo at the United Nations. In fact, our government is
holding out against the desires of many of its own capitalists who hunger to
invest in Cuba; even The Wall Street Journal has editorialized for repeal of
the 1996 Helms-Burton Act [WSJ, Aug. 2, 2006]. A walk through Old Havana
reveals some 20 new hotels and 65 restaurants, none with American investors.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Alarcon waits. He has negotiated with the United States
before, in secret, during the Clinton era. He managed the Elian Gonzales
crisis with aplomb. He is overseeing the case of the Cuban Five--men
imprisoned in the U.S. for surveilling Miami-based exiles trying to bomb and
sabotage Cuba. Alarcon is an experienced man of this world, one who could
facilitate a normalization deal with the United States if ever one was on
offer.

Instead, he sits for hours with the likes of me discussing the state of the
revolution which he helped start over 50 years ago. He takes care of an
invalid wife. He plays with his grandchild, Ricardito. He goes to dinner
with a never-ending stream of visitors. He patiently answers reporters. He
runs the domestic affairs of the National Assembly. He flies to
international conferences.

He even finds time to read "The Port Huron Statement" line for line in
English, with an updated foreword titled "The Way We Were" (in Spanish, he
says, "como eramos"). He also reads a book of mine on religion and the
environment, "The Lost Gospel of the Earth." He did so, apparently, to
prepare himself for a documentary interview for Cuba's historical archives.
When the morning of the interview arrives, he is perfectly ready to ask
questions comparing Vietnam with Iraq, Chicago 1968 versus Seattle 1999, or
issues of environmental spirituality, without stumbling once in English.
When the interview is complete, our several days together have ended as
well. "Sorry, but I have to go back to government business," he apologizes,
and with a hasta luego returns to his daily rounds. I miss him as he drives
off. Maybe he knew of Fidel's diagnosis that day, maybe not.

I flew back to Los Angeles that afternoon, carrying the strange feeling that
America has embargoed itself from a Cuba that it refuses to recognize. In
the weeks following Fidel's surgery, according to friends who spent 10 days
on the island, Cuba remains quiet, stable and alert. A transition definitely
seems underway, but U.S. officials may be the last to know of it.

Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion.
Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.

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Cuba: Ricardo Alarcon Thinks Out Loud (Hayden

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