Ozzie Guillen and Cuba

The actions and public position taken by the Miami Marlins against manager Ozzie Guillen have a lot more to say about politics and the elite of this country than it does baseball. Guillen was suspended for five games for stating that he loved Fidel Castro and respected the fact that he stayed in power for so long without being killed.  What Guillen said must be understood in context, and here are some important dynamics to consider:

1. Latin America has been brutalized over the decades from the U.S. Our support of Rios Montt in Guatemala (responsible for 100,000+ Mayan deaths - all with material support from the Reagan administration) being just one example. Others include CIA orchestrated coups in Chile, Nicaragua (Contras), El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina. Support for atrocities in all of those countries, and multi-national corporation seizure of resources are just the beginnings of what we've done. People like Castro, Chavez in Venezuela (Guillen's home country) and Morales in Bolivia have nationalized North American business interests upon assuming power, which has sealed their demonization in American discourse. You won't hear the same negativity applied to past regimes such as Rios Montt from Guatemala, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, or the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua - all extremely oppressive. The national narrative around those individuals is simply non-existent or filled with misinformation as they were supporters of the United States.

2. Given this context, support for Castro's revolution was and is common if not widespread. He is a leader who has stood against all that the brutal U.S. tied Latin American regimes of the past half century have represented. He has trained more doctors in Latin America than anyone in the world, and has also spread his literacy programs across the Southern Hemisphere. U.S. foreign policy has not been so friendly nor even remotely interested in true development or resolving conflicts/promoting education throughout Latin America's history. Every country we've touched, the situation has become worse - not better for the poor and disenfranchised.

3. Human rights violations? Yes, freedoms have been curtailed, Cuba is far from perfect, but mass killings and torture? Hardly. If anyone has done mass human rights violations and murders in Latin America over the past century, it has almost all been done either directly or with the support of U.S. foreign policy. Look up United Fruit Company from sites outside the U.S. and see what you find in the history of Central America, look at the ruthless human rights violators who have been trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Research the coups in Central and South America, or read books by Latin American authors - even American authors who are willing to step outside the mainstream.

4. The Cuban-American community in Miami (especially its voice and lobby influence) has grown largely out of the elites who were sent into exile as Batista's supporters, beneficiaries and cronies. This community is still heavily influenced by the same imperialist ideology that Batista supported - all aligned with international business interests. They have a reason to hate Castro - he nationalized their businesses, which were stripping the country's finances and resources - and took their exploitation of the poor and turned it around. Cuban literacy is nearly 100%, life span and overall health is dramatically improved since before the revolution, and the peasant classes saw their first opportunities for self-sustainability (all this despite a stifling U.S. embargo that has greatly hampered access to resources and further development). As I said, Cuba also has many faults, the lack of a free press being one of them as well as the lack of opposing political parties or national elections.

I do not claim Socialism as my ideology nor do I support Castro, but I too have respect for him. I do not claim any political ideology exclusively. But I think it is a suppression of free speech to punish a man from Venezuela, a man who has seen the OTHER side of our foreign policy in Latin America for expressing a political opinion that has been overblown and ultimately irrelevant to his performance as a manager. Our media truly does control our thinking if we fail to see this situation and possible support of Castro from another perspective - that of the Southern Hemisphere, even if that support is not unconditional or universal (which it certainly isn't). Context is crucial, and our media does a very poor job of describing the dynamics surrounding Cuba from the viewpoint of those in Latin America and other places quite adversely affected by U.S. foreign policy, and does an even worse job of attempting to understand those who come from such places.

Consistency in American Foreign Policy

The fact that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer’s book is now 14 years old only serves to illustrate how accurate he was/is about US foreign policy in Latin America and elsewhere.  His details about long-standing US support for torture/terrorism were not surprising, but his information presents a couple of important perspectives that I haven’t heard in the discourse around our foreign policy concerning Latin America in particular, and the world at large generally.

The first is a bit of history on the origins of Liberation Theology, which has a negative connotation for many.  Nelson-Pallmeyer shows that Liberation Theology did not grow directly out of Marxism, but rather out of a concern on the part of the Catholic Church to get back to perhaps the most basic message of the New Testament Jesus:  Concern and love for the poor and dispossessed.  This kind of concern, in practice, always finds itself naturally opposed to oligarchs and the wealthy.  Reducing disparities in wealth is not good for business, and therefore not conducive to keeping a hold on power.  The School of the Americas served as a tool to make sure that this power of the elite was not lost to the "evil" Catholic priests and nuns who sought a better life for the poverty stricken in Latin America.  The fact that the beginnings of Liberation Theology coincided with increased interest in its secular counterpart, Marxism (seen exemplified in the Cuban Revolution) is no accident.  There was vast unrest throughout Latin America, much like we’re seeing today in the Arab world.  Liberation Theology and Capitalism don’t mix well, and the useful/timely association with Soviet influenced Communism created a convenient narrative, and a target for Latin America death squads, helped by the rhetoric of the establishment in the US (both political and religious as well as economic).  For US citizens who have paid attention, this should serve as a call to look at the ways the Western World will attempt to manipulate the economic/political outcomes of a restless Islamic Arab world freshly rejuvenated to take back control of their lives. 

The second perspective is that Western mind control often incorporates admitting to past atrocities or errors in foreign policy once the old practices are no longer useful.  In the case of The School of the Americas, Nelson-Pallmeyer showed several examples of major media outlet criticism of the horrific track record of its graduates.  His argument is that since America’s foreign policy uses for the School were becoming less important by the mid 1990’s, it fit into the American myth for the media to condemn past mistakes and illustrate the “changes” that were being made to ensure that these actions (i.e. the same foreign policy) didn’t occur again.  Never was it necessary to perhaps right those wrongs, but if it made Americans sleep better at night knowing that their government was correcting any wayward elements, then it was not only ok to print, but encouraged.  After all, our government couldn’t have a population too concerned about human rights.  Things could get out of hand.  Meanwhile, our foreign policy continues (with a slight face-lift) just as before.  Different look, maybe a different location, but the same old atrocities, and eventual "apologies" for those atrocities that "obviously came from a few misinterpretations".  

Throughout the book, Nelson-Pallmeyer calls the US to acknowledge its past in Latin America, and to not merely criticize events after the fact, but to work towards reparations and the reduction of blowback.   This sounds great, but is futile in our current system; one that is not transparent enough or even capable of being honest.  To tell the truth and attempt to make things right concerning American foreign policy would create more cognitive dissonance than what our national consciousness is capable of handling.