nf5085: we have a plan for this somewhere i have a plan which i want to see if you agree with okay what i would like to do is to tackle head on what i think is the the big debate about the Cuban revolution i think as i said in the lecture the Cuban revolution is something which in the reading and in life as well is attracted very polarized and widely different sorts of responses as i said in the lecture the people think the Cuban revolution was the best thing that ever happened that it was the most wonderful achievement and triumph of social justice and liberty and nationalism and the people of Cuba terrible terrible horrible dictatorship that continues to blight the hemisphere and that question whether the Cuban revolution was good or bad whether it was a success or a failure or a failure whether it was a disaster or triumph is something that runs through all the reading i think we might as well just grapple with that head on so what i propose that we do is that we have a bit of a debate i think we should have a bit of a debate about whether the Cuban revolution was a success or a failure and we don't have to position this debate necessarily within the extreme polarities of the political debate that i talked about in the lecture between the people in Miami and the people in Havana you don't have to necessarily fit into that framework i think there's plenty of scope for us to look at the Cuban revolution in terms of both its successes and its failures without our necessarily having to take er sorry extreme political positions although you're certainly welcome to if you want to but that's what i'd like to do would that be how would would you be okay with that can you cope with that sm5086: yep nf5085: okay now we're going have to have two groups clearly we're going to have to have a group of four doing success and a group of four doing failure does anybody want to declare themselves for any particular group at this stage sm5087: i'll do for nf5085: you'll do sm5086: i'll be a pro-revolutionary as well nf5085: okay we've got two pro-revolutionaries does anybody else want to join the revolutionary sector sf5088: i'd rather do that nf5085: okay anybody else sm5089: why not nf5085: okay so the rest of you by a lack of expressing an opinion are now in the Cuban revolution was a failure group alright now i just want to check is there anybody who doesn't feel immediately misplaced no good because in the last seminar there was somebody who said he was perfectly happy to go into the failure group but then as soon as he was in the group actually said he felt the Cuban revolution was an incredible success and a triumph and he felt they had never done anything wrong and every time anybody else in the group suggested something that might be a failure he said no i think that's a success i don't see anything wrong with that and it kind of led to total anarchy and when the group was attempting to present their position he was in fact undermining it as they went along by sort of muttering in the background nothing wrong with that kind of thing so i don't want that to happen you all feel able to take on your your position with a reasonable level you've got totally different coloured hair su5090: show us the hair go on nf5085: it's just su5090: shocker nf5085: yes i just noticed okay well i think what we should do is we should we you should regroup so that you're sitting next to people who are of like-minded belief okay sm5086: so in fact namex and namex go and swap su5090: i should swap shouldn't i sf5088: yeah it might be an idea nf5085: i think it's quite appropriate for someone taking on a revolutionary position sf5088: yeah nf5085: abandon her cushy seat sf5088: i wasn't really that much into it but fair enough nf5085: okay now we have the two groups so what i want you to do is i want you to first of all try to think of what your what your argument is and then in due course i'm going to remind you think about other things like how you're going to communicate it to the wider world but start i want you to start out by having a bit of a discussion in each group about what the successes and the failures are and i will hover here in the background waiting to be asked questions should you have any okay nf5085: how are we doing i'm just wondering timewise how how much more time do you want sf5088: i think we're more or less sort of ready nf5085: you're more or less ready sm5087: yeah nf5085: how about you sm5087: yeah nf5085: but do you want if you want to start thinking about how you're going to be presenting what you're saying if you haven't already been doing that and then tell me when you're ready sm5087: yeah nf5085: did you want me to just say time's up sm5087: no just like organize it a little nf5085: okay fine nf5085: well a hush has fallen so does that mean are you ready su5090: yeah nf5085: yeah su5090: yeah nf5085: are you ready good okay well sf5092: i'm scared though nf5085: you can ways which seem the most appropriate represents your feelings okay well i think what we ought to do is i think we probably should hear from the success side first i think that would be a good way of starting sm5086: we should toss a coin to see who goes first nf5085: alright i think that would be fairer nf5085: does anybody have a coin sm5086: it's alright i've got one nf5085: you could toss a five oh you've got a coin okay sm5086: heads or tails su5090: tails sm5086: heads i think we all go first sf5091: so that means you go you get to go first sm5086: it's about choice su5090: choice yeah sm5086: you guys get to go first sf5092: what a shame great who wants to start sm5093: ladies first sf5094: you start we'll come in sf5092: do you want to make your point about the sm5093: the the sf5092: that's it still going on sm5093: yeah we all decided in one voice one feeling one soul we decided that we can't judge yet the the Cuban Revolution because er it hasn't finished yet it's still running Castro will wake up this morning he will have his cigar and everything so it hasn't finished that's the point so continue sf5092: okay so basically we decided that according to the initial aims that we thought the revolutionaries had when they first came into power in nineteen- fifty-nine er seems to have been a failure er one of the main aims they seem to have had was to restore democracy to restore the constitution of nineteen-forty nineteen-forty su5090: yeah sf5092: er and to restore democracy but that hasn't happened er you know elections weren't called er Batista was a dictator but Fidel Castro has ended up you know on similar lines there's been political repression censorship er what else oh to spread the revolution it's been a failure to spread the revolution in other Latin American countries er and also in Africa Angola er sm5089: so one of the reasons for the revolution was like nationalist er and they hoped to become more autonomous because they were too reliant on the U-S they wanted to combat the U-S influence in Cuba but in actual fact one of the outcomes of the revolution was that they became too dependent on Soviet aid instead er sf5092: with the fall of the U-S-S-R they became increasingly Communist bloc increasingly isolated increasing unemployment er also another one other do you want to do your comment sf5094: yeah they realized they were too dependent on sort of agrarian export the sugar trade they wanted to industrialize and modernize but the attempt to do this failed and they were still dependent on sugar as their main export and they tried to er improve this they set the target of ten million sugar was it which year was it tons sf5092: sixteen sf5094: sixteen and they only got to eight million and 'cause there'd been such a fuss about it about Castro sort of despondency afterwards they sort of thought the economy wasn't as strong as they'd like it to be and they were still dependent on the sugar trade when they had wanted to industrialize er they had the kind of what er Che Guevara talked about the new man they wanted an economy based on morals not materialism but it was sort of too idealistic and it failed really economic failure sm5093: and instead of Russia unifying the Cuban people we can see from nineteen-fifty-nine and on the great exodus of Cuban intellectuals and upper middle class people going away to mainly Florida Miami and er while other people were left behind the ones that had followed Castro's er and the guerrilla fighters' enthusiasm from the first from the first point and but we can still see how Cubans are still trying to to abandon and leave Cuba passing the strait between Florida and Cuba well most of them drowning themselves and er that's that was quite a blow in Cuban unity because it's still the the period when people are still divided we can even see that in very recent news with the incident of a little child Elian and he was shipwrecked in Florida there was a judicial fight between his family in Florida and his family in Cuba and er and the new man that was mentioned here er that Che Guevara was trying to convince the Cuban people that would evolve from the revolution and he said that they would create the man of the twenty-first century well there is no man of the twenty-first century according to what Che Guevara says the people not depending themselves on material values just moralize as the preachers the Spanish preachers were trying to proselytize the Indians when they first went to the New World in the fourteen-nineties and fifteen-hundreds trying to say that they would be revealed by relieved by relieved by the sins on the Old World but they weren't and we can also see how the living standards in Cuba they are very low at this point compared to the living standards in Cuba before nineteen-fifty-nine nf5085: prompted a burst of scribbling sf5092: that's our argument nf5085: good do you want to sort of summarize i mean it seemed to me there was er you raised a bunch of points that you then elaborate on do you say do you want do you want to come up with a sentence or two of summarizing su5090: well basically they didn't achieve their aims so that can be considered as a failure whereas they didn't er achieve national autonomy really er sm5093: actually it was a nervous revolution they didn't know what they wanted to do exactly they just had enthusiasm nothing else at that point and Castro would have to think what they would do later and he would try and pick out what kind of a regime would fit Cuba it would be social communism that's why America actually helped them at the first point which is quite surprising for somebody who doesn't know what happened in nineteen-fifty-nine because they just wanted to the Americans wanted the Cubans to overthrow the authoritarian regime they didn't expect a Marxist revolution to break out in Cuba nf5085: good well i think before without further ado i think we should move on to the success side and then i think we can have a bit of a cross discussion and see if we can come to any kind of synthesis at the end okay sm5087: to start with i had a bit of a preamble to start with er just to to it's important a) to sort of remember that we're all coming from a very much liberal democratic background i think that may influence our our judgements on Cuba they may not know that they are but sub-consciously they might be and also it's important to view the Cuba situation in the context of some very very trying circumstances now since nineteen-sixty it's not been able to trade with America at all one of its major trading partners the major trading partner before and you know lack of oil lack of spare parts especially now after the collapse of the U-S-S-R is a very very hard thing for them to cope with i think we have to view everything we say in the context of of that factor i think we're going to start by looking at the social improvements with education and health sm5086: i just want to say that you said er i think the first thing you said was one of the first things you said was that you can't judge the Cuban Revolution because it's still going on and then you went on to say but it's failed in its aims and that kind of seems to disagree with itself what i was thinking was if its aims were like it it hasn't met the aims that it set out to originally but i think its re-evaluating those aims continuously as the revolution is still going on and i think a good metaphor for that would be if it aimed to win by two goals to nil in the beginning and it still only wins by one goal to nil that's still a victory you know what i mean it's just not in the style they wanted to begin with sm5087: you got to look you got to look at outcomes as well not what they set out not what they actually said that's not what you've got to judge the revolution on you've got to judge the revolution on the impact it's had on the people not what the impact it's had on the original aims you can't i mean yeah that's a useful historical exercise but the important thing to look at is the success in terms of outcomes not aims sm5086: and those are sm5087: the outcomes are very useful link there er i think we're looking at you know healthcare to start with now er you know healthcare in Cuba is free at the point of delivery which is true in this country but it's not true in America far from being free at the point of delivery now that's a it's actually a very helpful very very progressive er system and we've also got it's a net exporter of doctors which is quite an impressive statistic for such of a sort of a sm5087: yes it's a net exporter of doctors and it's also a trainer of the rest of the Caribbean's doctors a lot of the other Caribbean countries don't have 'cause that's one of the strange things about Cuba it's Caribbean but Latin American at the same time and it actually takes medical students from other Caribbean countries and from some northern Latin American countries and trains them for those countries not asking for much in return you know maybe some trade sm5087: we've got er you know we've got an increasing biotechnology industry as well i know it doesn't sound very much but two-hundred-million pound dollars worth of exports in that field they've got some important vaccines coming out of Cuba which again it's got to be seen in the context of lack of capital into the country in to new investment in that area so in terms of healthcare you know it's okay i we would admit that it's suffering at the minute but that's partly due to lack of medicine namex was saying sm5086: yeah i think that any failure in healthcare isn't due to their own factors it's due to external factors you know the lack of the fact they can't get simple things simple medical help sm5087: but they they quickly established a very sound infrastructure for healthcare which is obviously a very very important thing to any sort of human beings sm5086: i think that leads us on to education the success of the education the scientific and technical success of the education system the literary success sm5087: yeah we've got twenty to twelve per cent was the change in that three years in literacy rates in Cuba sm5086: and now sm5087: phenomenal sm5086: i think i think there's ninety-five per cent nf5085: illiteracy sm5087: illiteracy rates sorry sm5086: i think there's ninety-five per cent or ninety per cent or ninety-nine per cent it's in the nineties er literacy rates which is quite impressive i think it's comparable to like you know most western states it might even be higher than America but i can't not sure whether that's true sm5087: i think also we'd have to say that very quickly that women were educated as well put into the education system but also you were criticizing Guevara's new man approach i personally find that a very refreshing approach in seemingly dominant capitalist system that we have that you know you know individual materialism is not the only thing that matters and the education system tries to engender a sense of collective responsibility communitarism helping others sm5086: egalitarianism as well i think it's quite i think it's quite i think the new man was in comparison to the Latin American kind of mythology of this kind of macho caudillo-type character and i think he was envisaging a kind of twenty-first century new man which i think you know they might have achieved sm5087: it may not be it may not be right in practice there may not be all that many Cuban new men but the idea and the aim is very refreshing in a world where i don't know individualism seems to be seems to be focused on to almost constantly that seems to be education sm5086: yeah the next thing's i think education leads to equality namex has mentioned sexual equality i think there is also very very strong racial equality which you know i think any analysis you've got to take has got to be like a comparative history analysis comparing both to the past and to other states at the same time i think that the racial equality in Cuba is er compares very well to both the past and to similar countries you know there's very strong racial ties er between different races that is moving on culture sm5087: well women's liberation the feminist movement in Cuba was not so much a separate distinct movement it was very much a sort of socialist feminist movement at first tried to go along with the aims of the revolution but then from that dynamic it evolved helping women's rights and er they just have formal equality in nineteen-sventy-six there was a piece of legislation passed to say that men had to take part in just as much domestic work as women okay that's not been fully implemented i don't think but it's definitely a progressive step which allows women to feel like they're participating in the country both economically and i think socially which i think is a very positive step sm5086: yep sm5087: immediately they were they were the growth of women in in participating in the economy was quite dramatic to start with and that was partly caused by education i think an increase in education for women which i think is very positive sm5086: culture sm5087: culture sm5086: culture i think's the big success this is my favourite success Cuban music Cuban sport ballet you name it they're really good at it er sf5088: film festival sm5086: yeah i think and i don't think the culture's just useful because it's nice i think it's socially important i think it's i think it gives cohesion sm5087: cohesion sm5086: same word at the same time it gives a cohesive social sense a sense of community er sm5087: identity as well cultural identity national identity which was one of the aims of the revolution sm5086: i think that Cuba is you know if you mention Cuba to the man in the street then he will be able to mention you know he will know more about Cuba than he would about other places and i think that's one of the strengths of the culture they've managed to export a lot of culture we don't really know about culture sm5087: let's talk about industrialization i think you were saying that the Cuban's er inability to diversify in the economy and i think to an extent that was true and it was very much limited what they could do without very much in capital investment there's much else they could do except sell sugar to the Russians they were very limited i think if you can't invest you can't industrialize i think that's changing now i think they sort of cash flows are changed and it's become quite flexible in that way that we've got tourism which is a big big industry now in Cuba which is being developed by the Cubans and that's you know they've taken on sugar the key export area and then we've got biotechnology as we said is improving greatly as well sm5086: and tobacco sm5087: yeah so i think you know diversification you know is taking place now it's not industrialization diversification because tourism isn't industrialization but it's still it's still diversification which is i think crucial to their development sm5086: er it's a more pragmatic approach sm5087: yeah exactly sm5086: to the economy i think taken in the light of the continued revolution er strong family ties i think there's very strong family ties and a very progressive view a progressive look on the family you know single mothers are tolerated much more than maybe they are in the rest of Latin America maybe more than they are here er skimming through sm5087: go to the church sm5086: church that's the biggie the lack of a church i think's really good i think it's really strong i think it means people aren't kind of morally indebted to some sort of pseudo-mythical character sm5087: God sm5086: the institution i think that's good really good sm5087: things like abortion and contraception abortion and contraception is allowed in Cuba sm5086: yeah sm5087: and i think Latin America is a place where contraception and abortion would be would be positive developments in some ways and i think often the Catholic church obviously doesn't allow that i think because Cuba's relationship with the church is so weak i think that enables them to have progressive sm5086: i think people in Cuba don't i think people in Cuba don't sum up how they're going to act because that's the way they think they should act because they're dictated to by a certain institution i think they act in a certain moral way because that's the way they feel is the most responsible and i think that's a good point and a good thing an important thing er sm5087: social responsibility sm5086: yeah exactly social responsibility's very rife in Cuba er then you've also got like i suppose the infrastructure of Cuba's quite strong you've got the only functioning railway in the Caribbean quite strong networks working throughout the Cuban main island political networks working throughout Cuba i think that's quite strong i think politically it's actually quite reformed it's got quite strong regional government er anything else sm5087: er i think we'll just have to sum it up by saying yeah we appreciate that Cuba's got a lot of problems but again if they are to stand up to some extent to America and survive under the pressure of a big dominant country like that sm5086: i've got a few things the exodus of the selfish is what i wrote down talking about the exodus that's one of the things i wrote down also the people who flee i think that's American propaganda i don't think that many people actually flee and then Constantine said living standards were higher before the revolution than afterwards sm5087: i put no for that sm5086: i gave three exclamation marks i think that's wrong it was true for it was true for maybe maybe that's true for like the top five per cent sm5087: what about the eight-five per cent su5090: yeah sm5087: those living in rural Cuba without running water sm5086: the peasants you know what i mean the peasants the rural peasants i think their living standard's much much sm5087: life under Batista wasn't rosy sm5086: yeah life expectancy's gone up health care's gone up er i think the living standards have are much much higher sm5087: other than that you're dead on sf5088: sm5086: Castro doesn't smoke anymore no he had to give up sf5088: he's still got a beard though sm5086: he does sf5092: can we respond nf5085: of course you can later just have have a bit of structure i think you should you've got a chance for response and then we can just have general commentary okay sf5092: okay er sf5091: go on then sf5092: first of all you talk about you have to look at circumstances that Cuba was and you talk about the hardships faced by the Cubans because of the embargo put on by the Americans but you have to remember that the embargo was put on by the Americans primarily you know after the revolution had begun you know it was Fidel Castro's move towards communism that continued to scare the Americans continued to worsen the relationship between them so that point you talk about the increasing involvement of women and you know different organizations and youth and all this kind of stuff but at the same time there's so much evidence to suggest that the trade unions were so many of the trade unions were governed or like were influenced by the government they had so much control over the trade unions over private institutions over you know so they weren't completely free to put their point across there was lots of central government interference er like the University of Havana it used to be like one of the main point main places where anti-dictatorship protest took place but under Castro that was all reduced and controlled er you talk about strong family ties which may have been you know kind of consolidated but then you if you think about the number of families who have split up and the people who believe they were forced to flee Cuba in order to maintain the lifestyle that they thought you know they needed to continue so families split up because of that er sm5093: the church changes sf5092: oh yes you can do that also one other thing oh yes evidence of exodus you can't just say i don't believe that's true i don't believe that many people fled you have no evidence to back that up sm5087: i suppose i suppose a Marxist would say those who fled were the oppressive bourgeois class but er sf5092: you said that they didn't flee sm5086: i don't think i think that it's quite a visible thing to see you know boats leaving for Florida i'm not sure how many people actually do flee Cuba each year sm5093: actually sf5092: give me evidence then sm5086: i can't it's conjecture but you can't give me any evidence to repudiate it sf5092: but i have evidence that like of evidence do you know what i mean in books i have read sorry but a hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand fled like you know sm5086: oh but a lot of those people who fled were were sent like as mentioned in the lecture were the people who fled Cuba but they were like the mentally retarded and the criminals who were allowed to leave like Castro onto the Americans sm5087: sf5092: how was that a success sm5086: that's not a success but it's not really like the fleeing of the sf5092: i think it's a failure of the of Castro's system that he's just making a mockery out of out of and you talk about health social health care and welfare all this kind of stuff it makes a mockery out of it sm5093: we can't be certain of that point because Cubans always had a tendency to flee Cuba because i read er i was reading because i was reading a book by Ernest Hemingway To Have and Have Not and he there was a guy over there who is flee who is putting Cubans in his boat and you know helps them escape from Cuba but that happens around the nineteen-thirties nineteen-forties sm5086: yeah i think Constantine's right as well sf5088: join our side sm5086: i can't remember what the figure was i think the number of people migrating from Cuba is no more than the number of people that migrate from your typical third world country sm5087: name one country where everyone's happy in the world sf5092: we're not suggesting that sm5087: the thing is you know of course not everyone's going to be happy we never said they were there are many people that leave but you know there's no point in exaggerating this we're not seeing five-million leaving Cuba every day sm5086: the place isn't empty you know what i mean sm5087: it's not it's not all sf5092: but that's not the point the fact that the place isn't empty sm5087: no but i'm saying you shouldn't exaggerate that the fact that oh yeah well not everyone's happy well not everyone's happy in this in this in this country sf5092: no but not people when embassies open in this country like thousands of people don't flee flock to their embassy to get out of this country sm5087: no sf5092: people come into this country sm5087: no i'm not saying it's not a problem i'm just saying it's a problem that probably shouldn't be exaggerated i mean i'm not saying it's some Utopian society that's perfect i'm just saying yeah of course there are problems sm5086: i'm not sure whether the defence of imperialist America's too great a stance to make as well with the kind of i can't remember you were saying you know Cuba's brought it on themselves because they've rubbed America up the wrong way sf5092: no i didn't say that sm5086: to begin with like sf5088: so it wasn't just sf5092: no but you your point was circumstances have to be taken into account and circumstances of the embargo and the hardships that the Cubans faced in order to you know so following on from different reforms that they made but the point is that the embargoes that they faced are a result of the revolution sm5086: no that's true but i don't think it's they're if you're going to lay blame at someone's door sf5092: i'm not i'm sm5087: can you justify the embargo sm5086: yeah i don't think you can justify the embargo sf5092: i'm not justifying it i'm just saying sm5087: so then it's not i mean if it's if it's sf5092: it's not sm5087: if it can't be justified this embargo say then then it is something you definitely have to bear in mind they've got some just embargo you could argue but there's still just sm5086: i think it's easier to find fault with American imperialism and cases of American imperialism where it's been just wrong than it is to find kind of fault with sf5092: like sm5086: with the Vietnam Panama you know what i mean sf5092: but in terms of the Cuban Revolution sm5086: in terms of the what sf5092: in terms of the Cuban Revolution sm5086: oh i don't i think the Cuban i think the American attitude to the Cuban Revolution has been pathetic it's been draconian it's just been like there was no grand threat going to come from Cuba i think kind of the delayed McCarthyism of like worry that the communists are going to invade our country is just some big hang up that the American population have that it's completely ridiculous do you know what i mean i just think it's so far gone sm5087: in fact if they really wanted if they really wanted to influence Cuba and and and shift it's it's politic to the right then they'd they'd start shifting cans and cans of Coca-cola out there you know they'd start they'd start trading with Cuba and that would be the best way they would have sm5086: an interesting thing i was watching a video yesterday and it was about Che Guevara and it was saying Che at when he was the economics minister you know in charge of the bank he had a meeting with Kennedy or one of Ken no one of Kennedy's advisers and he basically offered if they had a trade agreement then they'd democratize the country but they wouldn't you know change the kind of revolutionary outlook and like Kennedy and the advisers were like no no no no we don't want that we want all or nothing which is just you know typical American sm5087: sm5086: sorry nf5085: hold a British passport sm5087: i'm studying there for a year you got to be a bit careful sm5086: i'm not going to talk about that sf5088: sm5086: where am i going sf5092: colonial imperialist America sm5093: we haven't mentioned the nf5085: it's called being in the belly of the beast sm5087: yeah train them up sm5093: did we mention that nice little event called the Cuban missile crisis sf5092: not really sm5093: you know blew up the world sm5087: it didn't and that's sm5093: it didn't sm5087: that's the the absolute of nuclear deterrents sm5093: but you mustn't forget the Cold War background of course yeah yeah nf5085: feel free go ahead if you sm5093: feel free yeah well i guess you know about the Cuban missile crisis you freaked me out before when U-two spy airplanes they flew over Cuba and they detected that there were missile bases in Cuba and well Washington was quite you know entirely believing that those were missiles that aim to hit the United States or another country in the Americas and so then Cuba and Russia Russia actually advocated that they were there for defence of course defence for which country sm5087: i mean if you flew over Germany you'd find lots of missiles pointed at Russia sm5093: i'm just mentioning the sm5086: the strange to that is the strange to that is there's still a little corner of Cuba Cuba is still inhabited by the American military sm5093: don't shoot the messenger please don't shoot the messenger sm5086: that's i've that's always interesting like the fact that you have the Cuban missile crisis but you also have this little corner of Cuba which us like forever America and it's got like sixteen golf courses or something ridiculous sf5088: has it got McDonalds sm5086: yeah it's got everything American in it it's just like a little corner of America but in Cuba and they just sit there yeah and they've got a ninety- nine year lease and like the Cubans are just sitting back waiting for that to run out sm5093: just don't shoot me i'm trying to create here i mean it's natural in a Cuban you know seminar to talk about the Cuban missile crisis er well why should i explain it you know the facts you know everything let's just talk about it nf5085: we've had a bit of a rebuttal from you but also do you want do you feel there are things that sm5093: the church the church nf5085: yes sm5093: we can see lately that in Cuba some changes are taking place concerning religion and personal er expression er as we saw a few years ago when the Pope visited Cuba and in Christmas of nineteen-ninety-seven if i remember well er Castro allowed the Cubans to practise er to celebrate Christmas freely and you know they opened all these shopping malls they had in pre-Batista period and they were buying Christmas trees and all these things er we can see Castro's realizing perhaps that some things er not exactly can't say that it was wrong for him to have done but some things should have not been suppressed Cuba was so a very catholic country as well almost all well all of Latin America is lots of people perhaps fled the country because they just also wanted to keep their religion practice free and if you allow people in a country to practise whatever religion they want and that's a big plus for the state it he will probably gain a lot of support from a lot of devout Catholics that still reside in Cuba by allow allowing them to celebrate Christmas and we saw that a lot of Cubans did celebrate Christmas that year and they are still celebrating it and the church has started to be boosted a lot especially by the visit of the Pope a few years ago sm5087: i think to start off i'd like to point out you know Fidel's you know a good progressive guy the no but i don't think we were saying that Cuba's not a religious place we were just saying that meant i don't always appreciate the influence of the Catholic Church sm5086: i think i think with the continuing revolution the the kind of the increasing tolerance of the Catholic Church is kind of acceptable because it was it was it was flattened so much it became so unintrusive so there's that's kind of practical side but i also think there's a kind of political side to it in the fact that Castro was looking for an ally in the Pope and to bring the Pope on his side he had to bow to his needs sm5093: yeah perhaps actually the church is has two faces in Latin America it might be very very oppressive and it might be a help especially in countries where there was a military dictatorship for a lot for quite a lot of years or you know a dictatorship the kind of Peron the church will be the only place where people could flee and be safe from propaganda and all the mumbo jumbo the dictatorships were trying to preach people and you can see that in the dictatorships and you know Mussolini-style dictatorships in Italy too the church was the only place where young people could go to avoid getting brainwashed by propaganda it's double facing Janus or something sm5087: i'm not sure if i take your your example there about the church and Mussolini think they were sm5093: Chile too no yeah but still a lot of people do not join the Brown Shirts or the Black Shirts of Mussolini in World War Two because they became they went to Catholic schools they just didn't get involved in the whole situation but also in Chile with the dictatorship or when there was a Marxist regime regime the Marxist government of Allende the church was opposed to the Marxist whole Marxist theory but later with Pinochet it was the only place where people could find salvation not salvation they could you know could go in order to avoid getting oppressed by the detention commission nf5085: i mean i think that we could go on and on about the Catholic Church what i think would be a good thing to do at this stage now that i think i mean it sounds to me from what you're saying that both sides feel that they've aired their views as fully as they feel they want them to be aired as nobody's sitting there waiting to bursting with some final bit of information that they wish that they i think now that we've done that i thought both sides did a very good job at putting forward a coherent argument i was impressed by your structure i mean i thought you both had good good form to your presentation but i think what we should be doing now is we should perhaps now be moving away from just the the argument and thinking about whether we could do some crossing over and what i'm interested in hearing about first of all is whether either group felt that there were is this that too loud that thing su5090: i'll probably close it once it's cooled down it's hot in here but it's okay for a couple of minutes nf5085: okay i mean i think what would be a good thing if we did is if we first of all could hear from each group whether you think that there are issues that the other side actually should have been mentioning in their own case that that you think they actually overlooked so i mean this is a chance to do sort of you know to do sort of rehearse the other side's argument a bit and see if you think they could have done it better than they could sm5087: i would have placed democracy as the central plank of your argument nf5085: yeah sm5087: i would have said well look these guys can't vote they've got no civil liberties people get executed and i would have said well look this is just not right sm5086: yeah i think the biggest irony of that when Fidel i think Fidel's like seventy-six or seventy-seven and when Fidel dies which will probably be in the next couple of years there's a gaping lack of transparency with regard to who's going to take over what what the situation's going to be they think it might be Raul you know his brother Raul Castro but he's like he's like some sort of psycho sf5088: Raul sm5086: Raul sf5088: Raul sm5086: he's like some sort of psychopath people think he's crazy really so they don't know nf5085: he's also not a lot younger i mean sm5086: yeah exactly he's like he's like three or four years younger er and they just don't know what's going to happen they you know and they the death of Fidel might see the complete collapse of Cuba and er i still blame that on the Americans sm5093: actually they say that the whole Castro period will become a parenthesis between the Batista period when you know Cuba was a kind of another Puerto Rico or something and perhaps Cuba will begin getting transformed into who knows a fifty-first kind of colony of the United States so we'll blame them again anyway sm5086: well you can already see that you can already see that in Havana if you go to Havana there's there's like four or five hotels that you can just go into you just see like loads of Americans and they don't have anything to do with Cuban society or Cuban culture they have no idea they just go like to the Club Tropicana and they just like sf5092: that's in every single country in the world you go sm5086: no no no but i think it's worse in Cuba because it has such a history of it you know what i mean and i think it does have a big social effect because there's like there's high amounts of prostitution in Cuba which you did mention but prostitution in Cuba is really high like Gary Glitter's going to go and live there you know what i mean Jesus sm5087: i don't think he's going for the beaches sm5093: there's a great crisis of AIDS too sm5086: er AIDS yeah AIDS is a funny one they used to institutionalize people with AIDS so if you had AIDS they'd lock you away so there's not that many people with AIDS but they treat them quite badly sm5087: but again i don't think the Catholic Church would have helped matters with AIDS too much would they really sm5093: but still it's true that Cuba is one of the most popular and most you know celebrated countries in the world you can say you know what about that how did it happen sm5086: yeah there's i don't know there's a certain mystique attached to Cuba isn't there like and Che Guevara is like the icon nf5085: i mean it goes back way before it i mean look in the nineteen-twenties and thirties if you if you look at it already had this reputation as sm5086: yeah nf5085: being a tropical paradise yeah sm5086: yeah like Guys and Dolls and stuff sm5086: there are also i don't know it's immortalized in that way you know in sort of American popular songs there's some there's one a song by George Gershwin one of these cabaret songs in the nineteen-twenties about somebody who's it's singing singing about how they'd gone to Cuba and fallen in love which i think is wonderful it has one of the best rhyme of all George Gershwin songs as the refrain goes why did i have to plan a vacation in Havana she thinks she's been bitten by the bug of a rumba just under rumba that's got me under its thumba back in a way before Cuba already had a certain reputation as this sort of island paradise which the revolution with Che the Che Guevara image transformed and built on but sm5093: it's the fault of Hemingway it's his fault nf5085: Hemingway sm5093: yeah he did it all sm5086: i think with that though that's interesting because it is a bit of an island paradise but then one of the things that Cuba has like one of the failures that Cuba has is like er environmental failures it like it's terrible with respect to the environment like really polluting because they just use this big sludgy diesel which is just like unrefined they just pump it out it's just terrible for the environment so that's one of the failures and then you know they're kind of wrecking their own beaches with that wrecking Havana's air and stuff like on the north face of Havana there's a big just like factory i don't know what it is just burning stuff and the smog passes over Havana and like sometimes the air's unbreathable and stuff not very often sm5093: so many advertising set in Havana in periods of time sm5086: like when i was there they were filming a Nescafe advert i like got onto the back of a Nescafe advert sm5087: they filmed a Guinness advert there which is quite ironic isn't it sm5086: i don't think that's filmed there though sm5087: oh you don't but it's set in Cuba though sm5086: certainly the Bacardi sm5087: Bacardi sm5086: because if you go to Cuba the Cubans hate Bacardi properly hate Bacardi because they went they like they took all their money to America and Bacardi's like it says established in Cuba it doesn't say made in Cuba sm5093: established sm5086: they've still got the Bacardi factory in Santiago but like nothing's made there nf5085: so what other things from your side i mean you've done a good you did a good sort of appendix to what they were saying you said some things about stuff you thought they could have made more of as a in terms of successes i'd be interested to hear from Miriam because she actually thought she was in the wrong group and then actually seemed to become to grow into the role sf5092: only because i had to nf5085: so i wondered whether you know i wondered whether you or indeed anybody the things that you think they should have made more of or whether you think they covered it in terms of what you would have said sf5092: i think they're right in that basic premise of like there is no democracy so i think like you know you can't even though you may agree or support some of the actions of a dictator it doesn't excuse the fact that it is a dictatorship or i mean and you can't really get away from the fact that the people don't have a say or a big enough say in what happens in their country and so even though there's very good lit lit er reading rate su5090: literacy sf5092: yeah thank you there is basic health care i just from my point of view i don't think you can i don't know i'm kind of can't get away from that sm5093: what price has to be paid for that sm5086: that's it yes sm5087: it's a trade off isn't it but what we were trying to emphasize all along was these social benefits outweigh the big democratic deficit sm5086: you see i think the revolution's failed politically sf5092: i don't think social benefits can outweigh like you know if you have political repression and if you have people being er like one of Castro's top men in the armed forces he was he criticized the regime because it was leaning towards communism i can't remember his name General Huberto somebody er Matos or something like that but yeah you can't i don't think social benefits can ever outweigh political repression or lack of freedom of you know thoughts or sm5087: i think we've got to remember that Cuba was in a right state before the revolution to put it bluntly wasn't it and you know people wouldn't be worried about democracy you know the first thing they worried about was getting some running water some clean water some food sm5086: i think that that is the value of the revolution the fact that they've politically failed i think you can't assess the revolution until it's finished the revolution will finish when Fidel dies and then you'll be able to see what's going on and then sm5093: we were saying the revolution finishes that it's as if the revolution is still going on for since nineteen-fifty-nine for forty-one years sm5086: yeah sf5092: keeps on trying sm5086: i think Fidel's been quite a really popular dictator but i just think that a dictatorship isn't a good means to be able to on political legitimacy you know what i mean sf5091: have there been attempts apart from the U-S to overthrow sm5086: no sm5093: cigars sf5088: has anyone seen the film J-F-K right there's this bit in this where they're talking about poisoning his soup to make his beard fall out sm5086: they were going to put crystals in his shoes because Fidel didn't like to wear socks and they were going to put crystals in his shoes and then he was and that was going to make all his hair drop out and then that was going to be like the loss of his like sf5088: yeah his masculinity what is this obsession Cubans have with like having a beard like Che Guevara nf5085: where does the beard come from does anybody know sm5086: it comes from like in the mountains they didn't shave sf5088: it makes them manly and revolutionary nf5085: 'cause as you said on the one hand they took these vows the guys in the Sierra Maestra they weren't going to shave until Batista fell so but i mean actually not to get too sort of history about this actually there's this long tradition certainly in the western world of seeing the beard as a sign of manliness there's a whole there's a whole interesting there's a whole interesting substory about Europeans the Europeans when they first came to the Americas at the time of the conquest just looking at the Indians looking at Indian men and deciding that they were basically women because among other things they didn't have facial hair and they lacked the fundamental crowning sign of manliness in the eyes of the Spaniards which was the beard so they actually i think you're right to say that i think to say in the case of the Cuban Revolution that the beard had this particular political significance but actually i think you're just tapping into the sm5086: nf5085: it is there's a whole book about it sm5093: sm5087: to start with i mean Castro's legitimacy was based on him being a guerrilla and this charismatic authority of being a guerrilla and fighting for the people and that's what kept him in power i think for the first few years authority and legitimacy it wasn't it wasn't funnelled through democracy or through some sort of bureaucracy it was funnelled through this charisma and sm5086: just like personal appeal sm5087: yeah and this guerrilla sort of portrayal the role of the beard in Cuban history sf5088: the role of the beard sm5086: with what Fidel has managed to do with Che is quite phenomenal as well because Che was like wasn't that resounding a success you know what i mean he played a fairly important part in the revolution itself but certainly and how many people have heard of him he kind of failed in Bolivia he didn't really do that much but you know there's this big mystique and mythology of sf5088: everyone wants to sf5091: he's kind of like this crusader sf5088: yeah sf5091: going to Africa going to Bolivia and sf5088: yeah] sf5091: getting killed sf5088: does anybody like listen to like Rage Against the Machine music because that's like their symbol on all the T-shirts there's this Che Guevara picture sf5091: it's on that it's on that multicoloured poster as well sf5088: i think often people like wear it and carry it around without actually knowing who he is and what he's about it i don't know i think it's weird sm5086: and that's kind of Fidel's i think being quite clever with that because you know he's he's elevated Che to such a high level but by doing that he's kind of elevated himself by proxy to the similar level he's kind of said er Che Fidel and me Che and Fidel sf5088: martyrdom sm5093: if Che had if Che had died in Cuba he would probably have him or something like Evita nf5085: let's not go there sf5088: no last week sm5093: not again sm5086: i think Che's Che's one of the great kind of popular culture figures of the twentieth century like the him him looking Christ-like on his deathbed in Bolivia and stuff is kind of the great imagery of the modern day images of the twentieth century sm5093: they were showing images of Che in his deathbed and they were paralysing it with a picture of Christ on his you know when he was er nf5085: the deposition sm5093: the deposition yeah nf5085: you're the this idea you know what will happen your question of what's going to happen when when Castro dies and what i'm reminded of in the way the discussion was going was what used to be a classic C-A-S Latin American exam question on the Mexican Revolution which was very boring sounding which was the Mexican Revolution occurred because Porfirio Diaz did not make adequate provision for his succession discuss and i mean in some ways you one can imagine you know in thirty years time having a you know exam question about whatever happens in Cuba because Fidel Castro did not make adequate provision for his succession i mean i think that it's i agree with you that i think you were right and as well that the question of democracy isn't sort of marginal in a way i mean it's something that in some ways it infiltrates into many of the different areas of successes and failures that you were talking about so it's the sort of hoary response to say well you know good social policies bad on the economy too bad about the politics but you know in some ways that's a sort of false division that these these these different things all infiltrate one into another sm5086: there's a definite girth in Cuba of like what's going to happen afterwards it's not going to be you know Fidel's son or whatever set up this kind of new royalty that's not going to happen no one really knows sm5087: i've got a problem sm5086: there's a complete lack of transparency like the paper the oesn't talk about it you know what i mean sm5087: so much legitimacy and authority is focused through Fidel that you know if he goes the whole caboodle could collapse because so much of it's focused through this charismatic authority of Fidel Castro so if he goes they've got a really big problem sm5086: and also you know if America are quite sly and say right when Fidel dies we'll bring down all the embargoes and things then that'll be like the end of the revolution and i have no doubt that kind of America will probably do that 'cause they are sly nf5085: we're a cunning bunch well i think i think this has been a very funct i think fruitful area i mean i think you did a very good job at really researching a number of different positions and i don't know if you found that i think you did a very good job at moving through these different positions and avoiding er painting yourself into ideological corners that you didn't i thought you did a good job at sort of looking at the different sides of the same question and talking around them i thought that was very impressive i thought you did a very good job i was going to my intention to was to refer going back to the question of culture as the great achievement of one of the great achievements of the Cuban Revolution i was going to have a cultural moment but i was i forgot my tape so i was going to play you a little bit of the two great salsa superstars Celia Cruz and Selina Gonzalez who sort of span sort of this is s kind of virtual performance since i didn't actually bring the tape they're the two great classical yeah superstars of Cuban music i mean now somewhat you know left behind they're getting on in years but Celia Cruz left Cuba she went to the United States and she and she went to she joined in a sense the exiled community and Selina Gonzalez remained in Cuba and in some ways the sort of they were kind of rival divas in a way i think people in Cuba don't have a lot of good things to say about Celia Cruz sm5086: no nf5085: in general sm5086: yeah she's like the nf5085: yeah but i mean but actually sm5086: there's a lot of situations like that happens as well there's like sport a couple of years ago this this baseball player baseball in America is big America Cuba is huge like there was this geezer called El Dupe who was a baseball player and his brother went and played in America for like fifty- million dollars and he and he was better than his brother but stayed in Cuba and like they couldn't pay him but they just made him like this national hero this institution nf5085: yeah i mean this is this this issue this sort of the idea that Cuba is kind of spread out between Cuba and the United States i mean every book that i've read by er Cuban writers who have gone to the United States deals with this topic i mean it's a kind of unavoidable theme in in the is the novel of family division the novel of the split i mean all of the the Cuban writers who are who are known in English i mean there was there's a huge a huge group of these people have left Cuba and gone to the United States i mean the most famous is probably Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings sm5086: but the best is nf5085: which was converted to a cracking movie and the best sm5086: Infanto i think nf5085: yeah sm5086: is the best nf5085: yeah but i mean this this this idea of the division the divided family the family that's partly in Cuba that's partly in the United States that won't speak to each other and then you were saying it's reproduced in the world of sport it's reproduced in the world of music this is one of the iconic themes of of Cuban culture sm5086: well yeah and it's so like you can pick up American T-V and radio in Havana like and if you go out to a night club in Havana like a youth night club they'll be listening to like west coast American rap and stuff and they won't be listening to salsa or whatever nf5085: i heard you say that The Buena Vista Social Club sf5088: anyone seen that film it's amazing su5090: i've heard the soundtrack sf5088: oh it's a really good film it's actually there's a scene towards the end when they actually go across to America and perform in New York for the last time they're all getting on like eighties or nineties and er they're just walking around just going wow look at New York and it's just so beautiful there's this like i wish my family were here to see it and all this kind of stuff and really there's no hostility between them they're just fascinated to be in this country you know and they like it but it's a really beautiful film you should try and see it nf5085: but you're saying that's not the music of youth sf5088: no sm5086: that's kind of like i'm going to go The Buena Vista Social Club is like five geezers and three of them are playing at the Barbican in a couple of weeks sf5088: really sm5086: yeah so i'm going to go down and see that but it's like no young people you like Buena Vista and they're like yeah old people's music you know what i mean sf5088: yeah sm5086: they want Tupac and stuff and they want like if you walk in somewhere with like a pair of Nikes and they're like i really want your Nikes please can i have them sf5092: no sm5086: like there's a real dearth of like support for the revolution amongst the young in Cuba sm5087: unfortunately nf5085: i mean the suggestion of people you know that people a peculiar suggestion has been made that this this the migration is due fundamentally to boredom you know that these Cuban people are hanging around bored and uninspired what the hell but we don't really have time for this what i was going to do in the absence of Selina Gonzaleaz singing her Afro-Caribbean er celebrations of deities and Selina Gon Celia Cruz singing about how people lips are like sugar and what i'm going to do instead is i'm going to pass around a quotation so i have to feel i've done a little bit of Cuban culture i'm going to pass around to you just to read in your own time one of the classic poems of the pro-revolutionary poem well one of the classic poems of the Cuban Revolution which is by somebody called Nicolas Guillen who is the great poet of the revolution who was a pioneering originator of a new style of writing poetry that was trying to aim at simplicity and responding to the African heritage of Cuba and who who was a very interesting poet ina number of different ways but it's quite a famous poem called Tengo which which some those of who Spanish means i have which is how many of you are doing Spanish yeah oh you're also doing Spanish great okay it's a really famous poem i just think you ought to read it it's a rather interesting attempt to try to present the gains and successes of the revolution through the in the in the words of somebody who presents himself as a you know a simple poor man a peasant who who talks about how he's after the revolution he now has these things the word tengo i have keeps is repeated through it and he's learned to write and he's learned to count and he's learned to write and he's learned to think and he's learned to laugh through the revolution and it's this very very nice i think summary of of the things that the revolution saw itself as achieving i mean saw hope to be achieving which which feeds into what you were talking about in terms of what the successes were i mean these are the things that Nicolas Guillen saw as the successes this is Nicolas Guillen's take on the question of success and it's also just a rather nice classic famous poem i thought you might as it's i've photocopied it in Spanish but it's also got in smaller type it's got the translation at the bottom it went over onto the other page sf5088: namex will be impressed nf5085: yeah namex will be awfully pleased sf5088: i will i'll give it to namex 'cause he likes things like that all every single lesson we always look at a poem or song and he gets his guitar out and sings brilliant nf5085: you can see if he'll sing this i don't know the words the music su5090: he'll find a record with it on it sf5088: he'll already have a copy of it sm5086: what's this guy called sf5088: namex sf5092: sf5088: our Spanish teacher namex sf5092: he's very cool sf5088: once you've met him you wouldn't you wouldn't forget him su5090: he's great he's completely mad sf5088: slightly mad but in a good way sm5093: translates the name here namex it says namex sm5086: namex nf5085: yes sm5086: i was wondering about my mode of assessment is that alright to talk about this just now nf5085: oh yes sure we can shall we do the poetry thing in a little bit then we can go onto yeah mode of assessment sm5086: yeah sm5087: we have to do an assessed essay of about four-and-a-half-thousand sm5086: do me and namex have to do we're policy students nf5085: God knows hang on let me look on the while i answer the phone why don't does any do any of you have the course materials that pack get it out and i will check hello Dr namex