Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 67, praised Cuba for its “example of resistance,” asking the U.N. to declare Cuba a World Heritage site. World Heritage sites are usually designated for artifacts of the past, civilizations that were once thriving but went extinct due to many different reason, including an inability to deal with technological advances, politics, wars or natural disasters. Why Obrador wants Cuba designated as a World Heritage Site is anyone’s guess. Most likely it’s a veiled reference to the now obsolete 1959 Cuban communist Revolution. Obrador got confused celebrating 238th birthday of Simon Bolivar, the revolutionary leader who helped expel Spain and other colonial powers from Latin America. Obrador shows he’s completely confused of why Cuba is a failed state, blaming the United States, as most Latin American countries do, for their wretched economies
Obrador and Cuba have much common history seeing the U.S. as an imperialistic state, pillaging-and-plundering poor Latin Amreica for its valuable resources. But when you consider how U.S. multinational companies have created real jobs in poor societies, they’ve done more than indigenous peoples inhabiting lands prior to the arrival of European colonialists or, more recently, U.S. economic development to Mexico, Central and South America. Yet the drumbeat goes on about communist revolution that swept over Latin America, all because the now defunct Soviet Union promised impoverished nations egalitarian society if they embraced Marist-Leninism. Simon Bolivar was not a communist revolutionary but an enemy of colonialism at a time when Latin America was ready to govern itself, providing for its citizens in responsible ways needed to escape the bonds of starvation and mass poverty.
Obrador, like Cuba’s 61-year-old new communist leader Miguel Diaz-Canel, they both envy the order, prosperity and success of the United States, thinking the mighty U.S. economy should somehow salvage failed political systems, especially in Cuba and other communist dictatorships where the system of government has failed. Before Fidel Castro’s band of communist revolutionaries ousted U.S.ally Fulgencio Batista Jan. 1, 1959, Cuba had many problems but they at least had open trade with the United States. That wasn’t good enough for the Castro brothers who decided to establish and Soviet-style communist state only 90 miles from Key West, Florida. Whatever one says about the United States, with all its racial and social unrest, most red-blooded Americans of all ethnic, racial and religious groups, place the highest value on the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of liberty.
Unlike Cuba, Mexico didn’t go the communist totalitarian route, continuing to maintain open trade with the United States. No sovereign state can be expected to have the same relations with governments onerous to its founding principles. Castro’s revolution accomplished total control of Cuban society but didn’t lift the Cuban peoples’ standard of living by building a robust economy from the ground up. Castro copied the moribund Soviet model, now promoted by 68-year-old Russian Federation’s President Vladimir Putin largely to maintain power over the Russian people. Gone are the days when Lenin, Stalin or the Castro brothers promised a better way of life, in contrast to the capitalistic system seen in the U.S. and Europe. Now Obrador and Diaz-Canel can only complain that the mighty U.S. government doesn’t do more to rescue Latin Amreica’s failed states.
Orador urged Latin America to cast off the U.S.-backed Organization of American States [OAS], replaced “by a body that is truly autonomous, not anybody’s lackey.” What a cynical example of the kind of claptrap that goes on in Latin America. Maybe Orador, who suffers from drug cartels and gangs controlling much of Mexican society, wants a new communist organization to tie Latin America in its endless cycle of poverty and misery. Mexico, like other Latin American countries, suffers from the global Covid pandemic that’s decimated the economy and much of Central and South America. Yet the U.S.-bashing continues, talking on the one hand about “autonomy” while, on the other, blaming the United States for its embargo against Cuba. All Latin American countries seek U.S. foreign aid to help lift their failed states and struggling economies out of perpetual recession.
Obrador mentions nothing about Cuba’s brutal crackdown on anti-communist street demonstrations, with mass arrests and liquidations, saving the Castro revolution at the expense of the Cuban people. U.S. officials don’t want to dictate Cuba’s form of government but there are limit what the U.S. can do with trade and foreign aid when the host government spews vitriol at the U.S. Constitution, the one document bestows civil rights and protects its citizens. Foreign leaders, especially in totalitarian regimes, like to talk about U.S. social and racial problems but there’s a practical reason why most Latin Americans aspire to immigrate to the United States. With all the U.S. problems, it pales in comparison to the problems seen in communist states and failed authoritarian regimes in Latin America and around the planet. Obrador should get over his envy of the U.S. and explain to Canel-Diaz what must change in Cuba.
