The Pearl of the Antilles: Bernie’s Cuban Fantasy

The Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Photo by Andy Leung.

“Florida's Cuban, Venezuelan voters alarmed by socialist Bernie Sanders' rise”

“Sanders praised Cuba's literacy programs. Cubans respond”

These headlines are from Fox News and CNN respectively, reporting on Bernie Sanders and his comments praising Fidel Castro’s literacy brigade. My friends frantically sent me these links, all of us torn. Were these really a preeminent Democratic nominee’s words? Views like Bernie’s arouse deep distress in the refugees who fled the very same Cuba that outsiders idealize.

An examination of Bernie’s inflammatory comments can provide an explanation for why people hold this perception toward Cuba: "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad," Sanders said last month. "When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?"

After Castro took over, about a quarter of a million teachers did, in fact, reach over 700,000 people, driving the illiteracy rate of 23.6% in 1959 down to 3.9% in 1961. Castro’s Sierra Maestra Manifesto of 1957 invested in this exact aim, calling for the  "immediate initiation of an intensive campaign against illiteracy, and civic education emphasizing the duties and rights of each citizen to his society and fatherland." 

Yes, Sanders is right that the literacy campaign did succeed in reducing the illiteracy rate, but increasing literacy rates were not unique to Cuba at this time.

Literacy trends in Latin America during the 20th century through to 2011, when Fidel Castro stepped down from power in Cuba. Compiled by Our World in Data.

If there are other Spanish-speaking countries with very similar literary rates, why does Sanders have to focus on the preeminent Communist leader of this hemisphere? Should we really applaud Castro for having done the very basic task of teaching the Cuban people how to read and write? 

Also, what does Sanders mean by “Castro came into office”? I almost missed it, the phrase being deeply embedded in our modern vocabulary. To be clear, Castro led a militaristic guerrilla takeover. In a country without direct or representative democracy, there was no “office” to “come into.” This slip reveals Sanders’ deep bias in favor of the Castro regime. Sanders may not believe Cuba is authoritarian. 

Bernie insists he is very “opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba” but the literacy campaign he so reveres was authoritarian. The Cuban people may have learned to read and write, but the curriculum was exclusively propaganda. The education was free, but was it freeing? 

My family—who did live under Castro’s regime—tells me about how they received everything, technically for free, but there was never enough of anything. They had very strict food rations, and only people in favor of the government received enough food not to starve. The regime held lotteries for Christmas presents, and usually, only the children of government officials received the best gifts. My mom, instead, got a pair of socks. 

Free, in a communist country, comes with major caveats. Books are free but only if they are not counterrevolutionary. The doctors are well-prepared but the hospitals are severely impoverished with very few medical instruments. 

Though Cuban doctors suffer domestically, their help has been tremendous in the international fight against COVID-19 and Ebola. Sanders has voiced his approval for Cuba’s international humanitarian role. But what actually happens when those doctors are sent to other countries? While Cuban doctors are the island’s largest export, the government confiscates the vast majority of their wages and imposes strict controls on them from afar; many of the doctors, in turn, have attempted to defect while abroad, comparing the arrangement to a forced labor scheme. 

Sanders’ focus on Castro’s Cuba alarms people intimately familiar with the island’s history. American romanticism of the island ignores the trauma of people who have lived inside of that “fantasy.” Often, outsiders like Sanders spend a few weeks in Cuba and fall in love with the place. My friends who have studied abroad there have too. 

For the Miami Cuban-American enclave, these comments matter. These lax attitudes toward dictatorial rule also deeply affect refugees of other authoritarian regimes, whose families have been stripped of their basic liberties. Any apparent “progressive strides” that these countries have made are ultimately vehicles in continuing their authoritarianism. 

That’s not to say America doesn’t also have a long history of censorship, or that Sanders’ idea of increasing social welfare and making education more accessible is at all communist. But for people fleeing Communist regimes, his comments praising an aspect of the country that oppressed them makes this connection almost too easy to make. 

It’s time to leave the romanticism of Cuba—on all fronts—behind.