Raul Castro, comrade in despotism to brother Fidel, recently marked the one-year anniversary of his official rule over Cuba since longtime leader Fidel stepped aside. The many political dissidents of Cuba would decline to celebrate this anniversary because nothing has changed that would bring freedom to their communist nation.
There are numerous gifted Cuban intellectuals and artists who could give so much to their country if they only had the freedom to do so, and they deserve the support of our own intellectuals and artists. Those in the American scholarly and artistic communities who fail to support their Cuban brethren are derelict both intellectually and morally, and they should change their ways.
For decades, some members of America's intellectual circles have been seduced by the siren spell of Fidel Castro, thinking him to be a saintly philosopher-king building an ideal, utopian society. In reality, the Castro regime has impoverished Cuba and crushed the dreams of Cubans who hope for a better life. Political dissent is routinely suppressed, and the most talented among Cuba's educated are not free to work for change when they disagree with the communist government.
One would think that this would be a rallying point for all intellectuals outside Cuba, but it is not always so. For example, actor Sean Penn recently managed to embody the fascination of some artists with socialist dictators when he wrote of one of his visits to Latin America. For his journey, Mr. Penn arranged to meet both Raul Castro and Venezuela's strongman Hugo Chavez, a Castro imitator forging his own little kingdom out of half-baked socialism and one-party dominion. Writing of his experience in the Nation magazine in November, Mr. Penn did not try to conceal his wide-eyed awe of the despots who hosted him.
Heavily romanticizing Raul Castro, Mr. Penn claims that “Raulism is on the rise alongside a recent industrial and agricultural economic boom. Fidel’s legacy, like that of Chavez, will depend upon the sustainability of a flexible revolution, one that could survive its leader’s departure by death or resignation. Fidel has once again been underestimated by the North. In the selection of his brother Raul, he has put the day-to-day policy-making of his country into formidable hands.” (Does Mr. Penn think that “formidable” is a better description than, say, “threatening”?)
Disappointingly, Mr. Penn actually acknowledges Cuba’s lack of political freedom, but he doesn’t give it much attention or careful thought. He writes that he is “a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban leadership, I could be jailed…These things remain in question for the romantic heroes of Cuba and Venezuela.”
Mr. Penn seems to think that the nonexistence of free expression in the two countries is simply an unfortunate side problem for the “romantic” governments to work out over time. By simultaneously acknowledging and minimizing the human-rights issue, Mr. Penn shows that he is far too invested in the ideological governance of Mr. Castro and Mr. Chavez to think clearly about their actions.
In any case, Mr. Penn says, we shouldn’t let a few human-rights violations distract from the fact that Cuba and Venezuela are at least free from the colonial rule of the United States. Their choice, he says, is whether to be “imperfectly ours, or imperfectly their own.” Fine. So then what’s wrong with giving the people of Cuba and Venezuela the choice to be imperfectly free as opposed to imperfectly imprisoned?
Mr. Penn is just one example of bad thinking in the artistic world. It is embarrassing when certain artists and intellectuals of the Free World fail to stand up for the principles they claim to hold so dear and give unvarnished support to the intellectual dissident leaders in totalitarian prisons like Cuba. The artists and thinkers of Cuba wish to enjoy the same freedom of expression that artists of the Free World enjoy. It is enormously ironic that some artists in our country would choose to side with a totalitarian regime that crushes the artistic expression and ingenuity of its people. American intellectuals and artists often claim that their expressive freedom is fundamental to their creativity; they have a responsibility to say the same for their dissident brothers and sisters living under dictatorship.
Cuba is certainly capable of producing a vibrant community of artists and intellectuals if it allowed them freedom. We have seen many high-profile Cuban dissidents and refugees who display enormous talents for creative thought. Armando Valladares is one of the most famous, having been a political prisoner in Cuba before being released and moving to the United States. Mr. Valladares is renowned for his writings, including books of poetry and an autobiography of his life as a political prisoner, and for serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Oswaldo Paya, a prominent Catholic thinker and an engineer, is a leading political activist in Cuba for democratic change. So is Elizardo Sanchez, a university professor and longtime human-rights campaigner. Cuban-born artists like Jose Bernal, Juan T. Vazquez Martin and Carlos Rodriguez Cardenas show the flowering intellectual potential that the country has to offer.
At a time when many are pondering life in Cuba after the Castro regime is finally gone, American artists and intellectuals ought to be doing their best to lend moral support to the Cuban freedom movements. Many of the members of those movements are also intellectuals and artists who desire only to make a better, more beautiful world through their unique gifts. They have the right to do so, and their fellow thinkers in the Free World must pledge their fidelity to that cause.
-Jonathan Kelly is a copy editor at The Washington Times.
