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 ecretary
of State Colin Powell said something remarkable today. Questioned
by New York congressman
Jose Serrano,
a leftist and friend of Castro's Cuba, he said, "He's done
some good things for his people." The "he," of course,
was the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. I find the secretary's words
alarming and repugnant, but they did provoke a memory.
The year was
1986 (or thereabouts), and the place was Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government. The speaker, at a student forum, was Armando Valladares,
the great Cuban dissident. He wrote a memoir called Against
All Hope. Everything that is important to know — vital to
know — about Castro's rule on Cuba is in that book. Not for nothing
is the author known as "the Cuban Solzhenitsyn."
After Valladares's
speech, the students came after him: Hadn't Castro "done some
good things for his people"? Hadn't he delivered universal
health care? Hadn't he brought about universal literacy? They echoed
the standard propaganda line, learned from their teachers, the New
York Times, and so on.
Valladares
gave an answer I will never forget. He said it gently, earnestly,
yearning for the students to understand. I will paraphrase it: Say
all those things are true. They're not, but just say they are. Can't
you have those things without torturing people? Can't you have them
without wrongly imprisoning them? Can't you have them without killing
them? Without denying them rights? Without forbidding them to speak
freely, without forbidding them to worship, without forbidding them
to vote and have a normal political life and pursue their own destinies,
and so on? Why is material well-being — not that Cuba has it, or
anything remotely like it — but why is material well-being incompatible
with freedom? Or not even with freedom: with the absence of a stifling,
horrid dictatorship? Why?
I doubt that
Valladares moved very many of those people. But every time I hear
the phrase "Castro has done some good things for his people,"
I wince. Sure, Powell doesn't embrace and adore Castro, as Congressman
Serrano does, as Congressman Charlie Rangel does, as Congresswoman
Maxine Waters does, along with many others. But he should realize
what he gives away when he repeats those words.
I am haunted
by something another congressman — Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida
— said last year, or the year before. It came to me strongly the
other day, when the movie star Kevin Costner had a love session
with Castro, down in Havana. Diaz-Balart said, "For the life
of me, I just don't know how Castro can seem cute after forty years
of torturing people."
I just don't
know how. Fidel Castro has done nothing for "his people"
but immiserate, propagandize, exile, imprison, or kill them.
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