THE REALITY OF CUBA TODAY
-Jay Higginbotham

Cuba today - Is it really so bad as many Americans think? According to the Bush administration - in its "Commission for a Free Cuba" report - Cuba is more than a brutal communist dictatorship; it's a murderous police state that terrorizes its citizens and threatens U.S. security. Verifiably, Cuba has some serious problems: limitations on civil liberties, shortages of food, water, fuel, and electricity, a deteriorating transportation system, leaking roofs, crumbling houses and a drastic decline of basic services that certain U.S. groups hope will lead to frustration, desperation, and even counter-revolution.

In spite of the embargo, however, Cuba has survived, and despite the poverty the interdictions have inflicted, the government provides vital benefits for its people. Cuba is successfully confronting many of the basic problems all societies face. There is little crime, homelessness or racism, and its healthcare is among the best in the hemisphere (despite U.S. sanctions on medicines and medical equipment). The public schools are outstanding, and Cuba's literacy rate is much higher than our own. AIDS has been kept to a minimum and free care provided to the aged, the infirmed and the psychotic. The Psychiatric Hospital of Havana is one of the most advanced anywhere on earth. Such are the successes of the Castro administration. It's true thatcertain civil liberties are curbed. One of the most palpable is the right to engage in unconstrained enterprise, which however, many citizens fear would bring a return to pre-Revolution days when the great majority of people had no healthcare or education or any of the basic benefits it now enjoys. Another liberty restrained is freedom of assembly. This restriction has been duly noted in the recent arrests and jail sentences of some seventy-five dissenters. Before we criticize Cuba too harshly, however, let's not forget how we in the United States reacted during times when our country felt threatened: for example, the Red Scare of the 1920's, McCarthyism in the 1950's, etc. Any nation, when it feels threatened, will take whatever actions it deems necessary to protect itself. Can we wholly blame Cuba for limiting rights of assembly when for so long we have made every effort to incite unrest among her people?In reality, are most Cubans that concerned about the liberty to openly
criticize their government? Or the freedom to become millionaires? Given Cuba's straitened circumstances, what the majority of citizens today seem most to want are safe, pleasant lives, with adequate housing, food, employment, healthcare, education and culture. Which is exactly what the present government is trying to give them. Even in privation, Cuba is one of the safest, healthiest, and most literate countries in the New World. And the Cuban government puts more of its national resources back into helping its people than most any government on earth. Today's reality then is that Cuba is a nation of tremendous potential with some serious problems. What Americans must now decide is whether we shall keep up the pressure and exacerbate the Cubans' suffering, or whether by openly and fairly engaging them reap newfound and unimagined benefits for both our peoples.