Cuba's 50 Years
Of Defiance
By Noam Chomsky
and Bernie Dwyer
Counterpunch
06 November, 2003
Noam Chomsky was
in Cuba to participate in the 3rd Latin American and Caribbean Social
Sciences Conference (CLACSO) 27-31 October 2003, where he was interviewed
there by Bernie Dwyer. --AC/JSC
Bernie Dwyer:
It's really a pleasure to welcome you to Cuba on your first visit here.
What motivates you to continue to offer analysis, commentary and possible
solutions to world problems?
Noam Chomsky: It
seems to me the opposite question is the one that ought to be asked.
There is a moral truism about this that is as elementary as anything
can be: privilege confers responsibility and the people who are called
intellectuals, for no particularly good reason, happen to be privileged.
We have education,
training, resources, opportunities and in a country like the United
States, virtually no repression, it's an unusually free country by comparative
standards, so we just have that much more responsibility than people
who lack those opportunities, like most people in other countries including
those under the boot of the United States, and most people in our own
country. After that it's just a matter of choice. Do you observe moral
truisms or don't you?
If you do, these
are the kind of things that you naturally and automatically do and it
doesn't merit any credit or applause or anything else, it's just being
a human being and using the opportunities that you have.
BD: Do you see
popular movements taking the place of the organized Left in the major
task of building a new society, as was mentioned several times during
the conference, which commented that the Left is in disarray?
Noam Chomsky: Well,
I have never really thought that the Left was much in "array"
as far as political purposes were concerned. These are usually various
power systems, maybe good things, maybe bad things. I don't think that
these new popular movements are taking the place of anything, they're
really new. There never was anything like the World Social Forum before.
The goal of the
Left from its modern origins has been to create a real International.
The Left has never been anti-globalization, that's why every union is
called an International. You want to have international solidarity and
support and so on. It never succeeded. Now the Internationals were very
limited in their outreach and they fell apart, actually under internal
authoritarian reasons in each case.
Now this is different.
This is really international and it has participation from a vast range
of components from society: peasant, working people, environmentalists,
intellectuals, poets, all sorts of people. How far this will go, who
knows. There are a lot of disruptive forces inside and a lot of pressures
outside, a lot of difficulties, maybe this one will fail, but even if
it fails, it succeeds. It lays the basis for something that can come
next. You don't expect anything important to happen in a day--whether
it's the elimination of slavery or women's rights or whatever it may
be. These are things that take time.
One of the problems
of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend
to think--even the activists--that instant gratification is required.
You constantly hear: "Look I went to a demonstration and we didn't
stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?" But people who
live real lives know that that is not the way things work. If you want
to achieve something, you build the basis for it.
If you want to achieve
something like, say, an electoral victory that means something, you
have to spend decades organizing the basis of the groups so all local
communities can take part and so on and so forth. It's a lot easier
in countries where there are more opportunities and wealth and less
repression. It's still not going to happen in a few minutes, so the
World Social Forum is not really replacing left parties. Its place is
maybe establishing more authentic ones and I'm not even sure whether
political parties are what we are looking for. Maybe what we are looking
for are cooperatives and communities which interact and federate and
just build a new society.
BD: During these
times of US world domination, what role do you see Cuba playing?
Noam Chomsky: Well,
Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. Since 1959
Cuba has been under attack from the hemispheric superpower. It has been
invaded, subjected to more terror than maybe the rest of the world combined--certainly
any other country that I can think of--and it's under an economic stranglehold
that has been ruled completely illegal by every relevant international
body, It has been at the receiving end of terrorism, repression and
denunciation, but it survives.
If you look back
at the declassified record and the problems that Cuba was posing and
therefore had to be overthrown, one intelligence analyst said that "the
very existence of the Castro regime is successful defiance of US policies
that go back a hundred and fifty years". He's not talking about
the Russians. He is talking about the Monroe Doctrine, which says we
are the masters of the hemisphere. It goes on to say that this really
dangerous as it offers a model that others might want to follow. That's
what is called "communist aggression". You have a model that
somebody wants to follow. So you have to destroy the virus.
Kissinger, for example,
during the other 9/11--the one that happened in 1973--was concerned
that Allende, with his democratic victory and social programs would
spread contagion not only in Latin America, but even in Italy where
the United States at the very same time was carrying out large scale
subversive operations to try to undermine Italian democracy and even
supported fascist parties in Italy.
Yes, Cuba is the
symbol of successful defiance that accounts for the venomous hostility.
The very existence of the regime, independent of what it does, by not
subordinating itself to power is just an unacceptable defiance for the
rest of the world. It's a symbol of what can be done without using harsh
conditions. It's once again a case of those under the most severe conditions
are doing things that others can't do.
So, for example,
let's take Cuba's role in the liberation of Africa. It's an astonishing
achievement that has almost been totally suppressed. Now you can read
about it in scholarship, but the contribution that Cuba made to the
self-liberation of Africa is fantastic. And that was against the entire
concentrated power of the world. All the imperialist powers were trying
to block it. It finally worked and Cuba's contribution was unique. That's
another reason why Cuba is hated. Just the plain fact that black soldiers
from Cuba were able to beat back a South African invasion of Angola
sent shock waves throughout the continent. The black movements were
inspired by it. The white South Africans were psychologically crushed
by the fact that South African forces could be defeated by a black army.
The United States were infuriated. If you look at the next couple of
years, the terrorist attacks on Cuba got much worse.
But yes, it's a
symbol of successful defiance. One can have arguments about what society
is like and what it does, but that's for Cubans to decide. But for the
world its symbolic significance is not slight.
BD: You are aware
of the plight of the five Cuban political prisoners in the United States.
You are also very aware of flagrant abuses, not only judicial but also
of human and prisoner rights regarding the visits of two of the prisoners'
wives. Why do you think that the EU, the UN, and the other international
bodies that are supposed to be keeping an eye on democracy are allowing
this repression to continue?
Noam Chomsky: The
reason is embarrassingly simple. You don't challenge the chief Mafia
Don. It's dangerous. Everyone knows that. There's no higher authority,
there's just the Mafia. If the Don is doing something you don't like,
you can only object quietly. That's the main reason.
The secondary reason
is that the European elite share the interests of American power. They
may not like the US throwing its weight around that much--especially
when it interferes with them--but fundamentally they don't disagree.
They want to support the same programs of economic integration, so-called
neoliberal programs. They are not unhappy to see the US power in reserve
to crush people who stand up and get in the way.
The thing with the
Cuban Five is such a scandal, its hard to talk about it. Cuba was providing
the FBI with information about the terrorist actions taking place in
the United States, based in the United States--completely criminal.
So instead of arresting the terrorists, they arrested the people that
provided the information, which is so ridiculous I find it difficult
to talk about it. They put them under very hard conditions and it's
not recorded. You can't read about it. So one of the reasons it goes
on is because nobody knows about it. There were a few brief mentions,
but all it said was that these people were informing Cuba that an unarmed
plane was going .to fly over Havana. That's about the only story that
was reported. The actual facts of the matter are not secret but no one
knows.
Take the embargo,
which has been challenged by everyone. The European Union did bring
a challenge to it at the World Trade Organization and the US just told
them to get lost. In fact, what the Clinton administration said was
that Europe was challenging a policy, at that time, of thirty years.
These were US policies aimed at overthrowing the government in Cuba
without announcing that yes, "we are international criminals and
you are interfering with us and therefore you have no right to say anything"
and then the US just pulled out of the negotiations and what's anybody
going to do about that?
The US has vetoed
resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. It vetoed
the Security Council resolution affirming the World Court judgment which
condemned the US for pronounced international terrorism. No one mentions
this, nobody knows it, it's not part of anyone's consciousness. You
go into the faculty club or the editorial offices and people will never
have heard about it. That's what it means to have extreme power and
a very subservient intellectual class. It's out of history, it didn't
happen.