UNITED States President Barack Obama’s recent announcement of efforts to normalize relations between his country and Cuba should provide the Philippines with the opportunity to resume active diplomatic ties with the Caribbean island-nation. These ties have been fluctuating in the last 50 years—partially closing in 1961, reopening in 1975 and then closing again in 2012. They now need to be stabilized and normalized.
We have been closely linked with Cuba historically, because, like the Philippines, it was a Spanish colony. Recall that, in 1896, the Spanish authorities in the Philippines allowed Dr. Jose P. Rizal, who was suspected of supporting the Philippine Revolution, to travel to Cuba to help in controlling yellow fever in that country. Rizal did not reach his destination, because he was arrested on the way and brought back to the Philippines to face trial for treason.
In the 1950s the Cubans rose up in armed revolution against the government of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The revolution, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, was successful, and he and his fellow revolutionaries established a socialist government in its wake.
The socialist government then launched a health and education program of a depth and extent never before imagined as possible in Cuba, eradicating ailments among the Cubans, wiping out illiteracy among adults, and bringing education to children and young people. It was a program of urban and rural upliftment that, since then, has served as a model for new socialist-oriented governments everywhere to emulate and replicate.
Not everyone was happy with the turn of events in Cuba, certainly not the US Central Intelligence Agency, which plotted night and day to overthrow the new Cuban government. Through sympathizers, it actually launched what’s now known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, only to be quickly made a laughingstock because the invaders were repulsed by the Cuban defenders with little effort.
Through the ebb and flow of the Cold War, many Filipinos, principally those in academe, never wavered in their admiration of the Cuban people and their revolution. Our government, despite its meandering foreign policy, continued to hold the Cubans and their government in high esteem.
What will this diplomatic thaw bring to Cuba and the US? Without question, it will bring enormous benefits to both—incomes from expanded investments and trade, as US capitalists pour capital in various sectors of the Cuban economy, and make money; and the Cuban people fill up new employment and other income-generating opportunities, and improve their standard of living.
But herein lurks a peril for Cuba. Will Cuban socialist institutions aimed at maintaining some semblance of income equality among the Cuban people withstand the onslaught of capitalism that generate not just high incomes, but severely unequal ones? Will this new arrangement increase prosperity and poverty in Cuba? Cuban President Raul Castro has stated clearly that his country will never abandon its socialist way of life. The next few years will put that declaration to a severe test.
Let us wish the Cuban people all success in this new adventure to achieve prosperity with income equality. Let us restore our relations with Cuba in all fields of human endeavor, as soon as possible.
Image credits: Benjo Laygo