Thoughts from the World Social Forum

Published on Thursday, January 29, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

The Seeds of Latin America's Rebirth Were Sown in Cuba

There was one region that saw the bankruptcy of neoliberalism - and now
the rest of the world is having to catch up

by Seumas Milne

On 9 October 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran,
ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared:
"Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man." The climax of Stephen
Soderbergh's two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic
defiance marked the defeat of multiple attempts to spread the Cuban
revolution to the rest of Latin America.

But 40 years later, the long-retired executioner, now a reviled old
man, had his sight restored by Cuban doctors, an operation paid for by
revolutionary Venezuela in the radicalised Bolivia of Evo Morales.
Teran was treated as part of a programme which has seen 1.4 million
free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across
Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It is an emblem both of the
humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara's legacy, but also of the
transformation of Latin America which has made such extraordinary
co-operation possible.

The 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution this month has already
been the occasion for a regurgitation of western media tropes about
pickled totalitarian misery, while next week's 10th anniversary of Hugo
Chávez's presidency in Venezuela will undoubtedly trigger a parallel
outburst of hostility, ridicule and unfounded accusations of
dictatorship. The fact that Chávez, still commanding close to 60%
popular support, is again trying to convince the Venezuelan people to
overturn the US-style two-term limit on his job will only intensify
such charges, even though the change would merely bring the country
into line with the rules in France and Britain.

But it is a response which also utterly fails to grasp the significance
of the wave of progressive change that has swept away the old elites
and brought a string of radical socialist and social-democratic
governments to power across the continent, from Ecuador to Brazil,
Paraguay to Argentina: challenging US domination and neoliberal
orthodoxy, breaking down social and racial inequality, building
regional integration and taking back strategic resources from corporate
control.

That is the process which this week saw Bolivians vote, in the land
where Guevara was hunted down, to adopt a sweeping new constitution
empowering the country's long-suppressed indigenous majority and
entrenching land reform and public control of natural resources - after
months of violent resistance sponsored by the traditional white ruling
class. It's also seen Cuba finally brought into the heart of regional
structures from which Washington has strained every nerve to exclude
it.

The seeds of this Latin American rebirth were sown half a century ago
in Cuba. But it is also more directly rooted in the region's disastrous
experience of neoliberalism, first implemented by the bloody Pinochet
regime in the 1970s - before being adopted with enthusiasm by Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and duly enforced across the world.

The wave of privatisation, deregulation and mass pauperisation it
unleashed in Latin America first led to mass unrest in Venezuela in
1989, savagely repressed in the Caracazo massacre of more than 1,000
barrio dwellers and protesters. The impact of the 1998 financial crisis
unleashed a far wider rejection of the new market order, the politics
of which are still being played out across the continent. And the
international significance of this first revolt against neoliberalism
on the periphery of the US empire now could not be clearer, as the
global meltdown has rapidly discredited the free-market model first
rejected in South America.

Hopes are naturally high that Barack Obama will recognise the powerful
national, social and ethnic roots of Latin America's reawakening - the
election of an Aymara president was as unthinkable in Bolivia as an
African American president - and start to build a new relationship of
mutual respect. The signs so far are mixed. The new US president has
made some positive noises about Cuba, promising to lift the Bush
administration's travel and remittances ban for US citizens - though
not to end the stifling 47-year-old trade embargo.

But on Venezuela it seemed to be business as usual earlier this month,
when Obama insisted that the Venezuelan president had been a "force
that has interrupted progress" and claimed Venezuela was "supporting
terrorist activities" in Colombia, apparently based on spurious
computer disc evidence produced by the Colombian military.

If this is intended as political cover for an opening to Cuba then
perhaps it shouldn't be taken too seriously. But if it is an attempt to
isolate Venezuela and divide and rule in America's backyard, it's
unlikely to work. Venezuela is a powerful regional player and while
Chávez may have lost five out of 22 states in November's regional
elections on the back of discontent over crime and corruption, his
supporters still won 54% of the popular vote to the opposition's 42%.

That is based on a decade of unprecedented mobilisation of oil revenues
to achieve impressive social gains, including the near halving of
poverty rates, the elimination of illiteracy and a massive expansion of
free health and education. The same and more is true of Cuba, famous
for first world health and education standards - with better infant
mortality rates than the US - in an economically blockaded developing
country.

Less well known is the country's success in diversifying its economy
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not just into tourism and
biotechnology, but the export of medical services and affordable
vaccines to the poorest parts of the world. Anyone who seriously cares
about social justice cannot but recognise the scale of these
achievements - just as the greatest contribution those genuinely
concerned about lack of freedom and democracy in Cuba can make is to
help get the US off the Cubans' backs.

None of that means the global crisis now engulfing Latin America isn't
potentially a threat to all its radical governments, with falling
commodity prices cutting revenues and credit markets drying up.
Revolutions can't stand still, and the deflation of the oil cushion
that allowed Chávez to leave the interests of the traditional
Venezuelan ruling elite untouched means pressure for more radical
solutions is likely to grow. Meanwhile, the common sense about the
bankruptcy of neoliberalism first recognised in Latin America has now
gone global. Whether it generates the same kind of radicalism elsewhere
remains to be seen.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/29-11