Castro: A significant but ambiguous legacy

THE death, last Friday, of Cuba’s statesman and ruler for over five decades, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, closed the curtain on the life and times of one of the most significant leaders of the 20th Century. Reading the harshly dismissive obituaries in much of the western media, one can be forgiven for supposing that the Cold War has suddenly resurrected. A Sampler: Fidel Castro’s Terrible Legacy (Washington Post); Fidel Castro’s Dark Legacy: Abuses and Draconian Rule and Ruthless Suppression (The Guardian, London); and George Will, influential columnist of The Post wrote about ‘Fidel Castro and Dead Utopianism’.

These commentaries, which focused obsessively on the excesses and human suffering of despotic rule are not wrong, only that they do not tell the whole truth about the extraordinary advent of a seminal nation-builder and liberation icon who placed a country of about 11 million people on the world map. Examples of these later involvements include Cuba’s medical internationalism, most recently displayed during the 2014 Ebola Crisis which saw Cuba send over 200 health workers to West Africa, at a time when many Western countries were eager to protect their borders from contagion. Along the same lines were Castro’s heroic assistance to Africa with reference to the anti-apartheid struggle and in such war theaters as Angola, Mozambique and Namibia, where Cuban soldiers accelerated the liberation of Africa from colonial rule.

Nelson Mandela never failed to pay fulsome tribute to Castro and reportedly went on record once as saying that the success of Cuban soldiers in Angola served as a great morale booster for him, to the extent that it illustrated by symbolism that non-white soldiers could one day overcome their racial oppressors. Mandela held nothing but scorn for those who emphasized the negative and dark aspects of Castro’s rule while underplaying the positive, game changing aspects. In the course of a visit to Havana in the early 1990s, Mandela was quoted to have said: “We are being advised about Cuba by people who supported the apartheid regime these last forty years. No honourable man or woman could accept advice from people who never cared for us at the most difficult times”. In other words, a balanced assessment of Castro, sadly missing in several recent obituaries must place side by side the regrettable and drastic debits of repressive rule with the solid achievements on the global front, especially as they relate to the struggle against apartheid and colonial rule.

In doing this, we do not minimize the terrors to which Cubans several of who fled the country were subjected to, as a result of Castro’s totalitarian rule. You cannot read Armando Valladare’s prison memoirs without coming away with the depths of deprivation and degradation to which opponents of the regime were reduced. But even that must be put in the context of Latin America’s record of brutalities by both left-wing and right-wing dictators, as well as the sense of siege created by consistent United States’ opposition and sanctions; taking into account that Castro reportedly survived 638 assassination attempts between 1958 and 2000.

We must reckon too that Castro’s communist regime emerged in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, under which the western hemisphere was considered America’s natural sphere of influence. This meant that Castro’s rebellion could not be tolerated by the United States and as known, the resulting collision of wills brought the world to the very edge of nuclear conflagration in the 1960s.  The argument here is that the human rights abuses and dark repression of the regime should be contextualized within the exigencies and paranoia of an illiberal society whose leaders operated constantly in the shadow of death.

These of course do not justify them, and it is interesting that when socialism emerged in Latin America through free elections, Castro’s government became an anachronism, in an age where democratization and respect for human rights have become normative. Although the pink tide of socialist democracies in Latin America has ebbed, socialism remains very much on the agenda in a region where harsh inequality and the desperate poverty of the majority remain notable features. It is for this reason that Castro’s legacy in the area of economic and social rights will remain relevant for a long time to come. For example, his achievements in the important areas of health-care, education and infrastructure are indelible. Some of these include, mass literacy and free education under a work study arrangement where half of the time was spent in factories and the other half in the classroom. This ambitious social programme also included the establishment of rural health centers, polyclinics, and universal vaccination under a free health policy which dramatically reduced infant mortality and noticeably increased life expectancy.

Related to this, is an expansive and extensive project of infrastructure revolution which included road expansion on a massive scale, drastic reduction of homelessness through social housing as well as the opening of special centers for the aged and the disabled. This imaginative social scheme, focused on elevating the lifestyle of the majority as well as additional emphasis on the sustainable deployment of natural resources, are at the core of Castro’s legacy. As an instance, a decade or so ago, Cuba was the only country in the world which satisfied the United Nations Development Programme’s bench marks on sustainable development.

Important, also, is Castro’s role as a campaigner and facilitator of Caribbean integration and by implication African integration. Through several decades, Castro was an active voice in the Non-aligned Movement of the 1970s and subsequently Cuba, along with Venezuela initiated what has been called the Bolivarian Alternatives for The Americas. That alternative which for now has fallen on hard times, centered on opposition of member countries to neo-liberal policies such as privatization, the redistribution of wealth in order to close the social gap as well as the protection of the agricultural sector.

Considering Castro’s epic achievements on both the domestic and international fronts, no one would suspect that Cuba is an island of less than 12 million people, bereft of the abundant natural resources that you find in a country like Nigeria. Clearly then, in evaluating Fidel Castro, who stepped down and retired from office principally due to ill-health in 2006, we are dealing with one of the great men of history who in several respects can be seen, his brutal excesses notwithstanding, as a significant achiever in key areas of governance.

It is possible to jettison the bath water of his brutal and repressive methods, without throwing away the baby of his innovative and ambitious social projects as well as his enduring role as a liberation icon. The challenge as we contemplate Castro’s place in history, is to preserve that which is edifying about him and to avoid his deplorable aspects; rather than one-sidedly consign him to the place of visionless evil leaders.

• Professor Olukotun writes from Lagos.