Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work

[Bacchus39]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_fidel_castro

HAVANA – Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.

The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account.

Since stepping down from power in 2006, the ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about Cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he is stepping on his brother's toes.

Goldberg, who traveled to Cuba at Castro's invitation last week to discuss a recent Atlantic article he wrote about Iran's nuclear program, also reported on Tuesday that Castro questioned his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, including his recommendation to Soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the United States.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba has clung to its communist system.

The state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen's food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.

President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government. But the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from Cuba's socialist system or embrace capitalism.

Fidel Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006 due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.

He resigned permanently two years later, but remains head of the Communist Party. After staying almost entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in July and now speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks of the threat of a nuclear war over Iran.

Castro's interview with Goldberg is the only one he has given to an American journalist since he left office.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Naughty, Naughty, Bacchus!

Naughty, naughty, Bacchus for daring to offend the true believers on DU by quoting Fidel Castro!

:spank:

Part of a national leader's job is to ensure prosperity for the commonwealth, not just for a clutch of kleptocrats and their supporters at the very top. Fidel Castro may have removed Cuba's kleptocrats, but he certainly failed at ensuring prosperity for the general Cuban population.

There has GOT to be a better way of ensuring employment, prosperity, public health and general education than the traditional Latin American model or the Coolidge/Harding economic model the Republicans want to foist on us here in the USA on the one hand and the failed Cuban model on the other.

[Bacchus39]

2. as you alluded to, Castro's model has worked for a few

including El Commandante. however, undoubtedly he wasn't talking about the advantages he enjoys under his system, rather it hasn't been very functional for the Cuban people.

[Phil The Cat]

3. Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg is a lying sack of sewage who helped encourage the Iraq war!

It would not suprise me in the least that he is lying about this as well!

[naaman fletcher]

4. but of course..

everyone believed him when he had nice things to say about Castro on the other thread.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. It Doesn't Surprise Me That The Evidence Is Stacked Against The Cuban Model

It doesn't surprise me that the objective evidence is stacked against the "Cuban model" of centralized state socialism. Cuba is an impoverished country with a visibly run-down infrastructure that is lagging behind even those of many of many of its neighbors where the old kleptocracies are still firmly in place. I've been to Cuba. I've seen it with my own eyes. Whatever great gains the Castro revolution may have made in terms of social equality, health, and education, I was not impressed with what I saw of the local economy.

I DON'T believe that the US trade sanctions caused it to be so run-down. Whatever the current state of US military pre-eminence even during the last decade of the Cold War, the world has been a multi-polar place in economic terms even while Ronnie Ray-gun was in the White House. That represents over twenty years of missed opportunities for genuine economic growth LOST. The Havana government had PLENTY of alternative sources for capital and trade. The Havana government could have liberalized its economy DECADES AGO, and if it might not have become as prosperous as southern Europe was in the 1980's, it could have become at least as prosperous as Syria or Turkey.

The embargo was and remains the excuse still grasped by Castro-nomics' remaining fans.

Remaining fans of the Castro revolution should go look at Batista-era and early Revolutionary-period photos of Cuban buildings and infrastructure, then compare them to contemporary photos of the same buildings and scenes. The evidence is right there for those willing to look at unpleasant facts.

And another thing. It is by the grace of Divine Providence that Cuba has such an agreeable climate. If they had a climate as cold as North Korea's or drought-prone as Zimbabwe's, they'd probably suffering massive starvation.