Orientalism and Cuba
By Tim Anderson
Misunderstandings over Cuba run very deep, and not just amongst the enemies of socialism, or those who have had little contact with the country.
Naturally, people are influenced by the corporate media, which wages a ferocious and relentless propaganda campaign against the little independent island. As Salvador Allende told the Chilean Senate in 1960 "day by day and minute by minute .. they [the corporate media monopolies] misrepresent what is happening in Cuba".
However, we can also see elements of what Edward Said called "orientalism" a series of false assumptions about the country, conditioned by cultural prejudice.
For example, the constant moral pressures of the revolution are often misinterpreted as state "coercion," while a well coordinated and caring health system has been derided as "paternalistic" and denying "choice" in health care. These are the results of trying to understand Cuba through a set of individualistic, liberal assumptions.
Let's look at some recent misinterpretations.
The corporate media seized on Fidel Castro's comment to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that "The 'Cuban model' now doesn't work even for us" as an admission that Cuban socialism had failed and that Cuba would now have to take on US style capitalism. Julia Sweig, Goldberg's adviser on Cuba, said she took the comment to be an acknowledgment that "the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country." Goldberg excitedly interpreted the comment to mean that "Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long-demanded it adopt." Goldberg's article launched thousands of other stories.
Ahem. Neither writer had much sense of Cuban phraseology. Fidel clarified and Cuban television pointed out (by reference to an episode of The Simpsons, in which Fidel is shown as admitting the defeat of "communism") that the Cuban leader meant Cuba was constantly adapting, and that there had never been a rigid "Cuban model." What they have held onto are principles, not models.
Furthermore, and in response to Goldberg's specific question about 'exporting' a Cuban "model," Fidel was repeating an old theme "we don't export any model." Amongst the English language articles only a few, such as Steven Wilkinson's in The UK Guardian ("Cuba: from communist to co-operative?"), noted this point.
The misinterpretation of this simple phrase is a good example of the "orientalism" regarding Cuba, where a revolutionary country, constantly adapting, is portrayed by its enemies as representing a rigid model of the past. Any change or admission is seen as the fracture of a monolith; but what monolith?
A second example of this same process can be seen in stories on the restructuring of state enterprises in Cuba. The BBC reports ("Cuba to cut one million public sector jobs") that Cuba's peak trade union body the CTC says: "more than a million workers would lose their jobs .. [they] will be encouraged to become self-employed or join new private enterprises." Half a million will be laid off in the next six months. On the back of this a multitude of right and left commentators predict Cuba's reversion to capitalism.
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