If the theory of supply and demand really worked, the United States and Cuba would be kissing cousins. The Cubans crave our business, and we theirs, but politics gets in the way.
The confounding reality is brought home in April 6 Economist in one of its typically fine country surveys, this of Cuba, that often beg to be clipped and filed away as superior insight into a nation’s culture, politics and economics.
The conservative, London-based publication, the best newsweekly in the English language, is generally sympathetic to Cuba, though readily conceding the sham of much of its socialist dream and its possible unraveling after Fidel Castro departs the scene, and skeptical about the motives of Cuba-bashing U.S. politicians.
After a detailed look at Cuba, it concludes with the reminder that Americans have often predicted the imminent demise of the regime and its fall into American hands.
It hasn’t happened. “Cuba is prickly, proud, nationalistic, and has only just begun to taste true independence. It wants to succeed on its own terms, even if those terms include political and economic mistakes–or, on occasion, acts of banditry. And that philosophy is held not only by Fidel Castro, whose active days are numbered, but also by the highly intelligent group of men who are poised to follow him.”
The Economist is convinced that the just-tightened U.S. embargo is a “cynical farce which unnecessarily hurts 11 million people” and won’t force change merely by its being tougher or forcing reform if it were to be lifted. Castro or no, democracy is unlikely since “after almost 40 years, most Cubans remain pledged to their original Faustian bargain: order and social justice from their government in return for political docility.”
“The Castro regime has schooled every Cuban in a set of heroic illusions; but none so heroic as those of the outsiders who suppose that Cuba’s authoritarian experiment is about to disappear.” (Reprints of this survey can be had for $3.75, plus postage, via Economist Newspaper Group Inc., Reprints Dept., 111 W. 57th St., New York, N.Y. 10019, or by calling 212-541-5730).
Quickly: The tardy March Hippocrates, a fine look at medicine, underlines the increasingly serious attention accorded massage therapy of various sorts, finding evidence of its generating “striking improvements in medical conditions ranging from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis to burns.” . . . Flyfishing purists may gag in reading Robert H. Boyle’s “Flagrante Delicto Fishing” in April Outdoor Life. He uses the Latin phrase that translates to “while the crime is blazing” to confess to having been caught flyfishing with lead jigs, rather than casting a duplicate of the insect upon which the trout are feeding (preferably a dry fly) to a specific rising fish. He quotes one columnist as warning that “morally superior anglers will consider you less than a lady or gentleman” since such jigs “remain beyond the pale.” . . . Discussing salary inflation in Hollywood, April 12 Entertainment Weekly says, “When Not Ready for Big Time Players like Adam Sandler and Chris Farley are getting offered up to $6 million, it’s time to start scanning the skies for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” . . . Canadian media mogul Conrad Black, whose American properties include the Chicago Sun-Times, submits to an interview in March-April American Enterprise and says this about a fierce rival: “I think at heart Rupert Murdoch, whom I rather like as an individual, is a cynic who thinks that the average member of the public is essentially a slob, and the lower you pitch it to him the better he likes it. A great industrialist, a very nice man socially, a swashbuckling buccaneer, and a cynical panderer to rather base instincts–all of those aspects of him coexist quite happily.” ($5.50, 1150 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036). . . . Who returned first to Jerusalem after the so-called Babylonian Exile of the Jews: Ezra, the priest and authority on ritual and law, or Nehemiah, the governor in charge of civil matters? Biblical scholars have wondered and April Bible Review says it was Nehemiah by a hair. . . . Weird photo of the month is in May Life. It turns out that just a couple of days before Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman used that day-glo head of his to butt a referee and get a big suspension, the charming (yellow) noggin was in the loving hands of his mom, Shirley, an administrative clerk at a Dallas plywood firm, for a photo snapped by hotshot Harry Benson.
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