Why Cuba is a democracy and the US is not

By the constitution, no-one in Cuba can be imprisoned without proper charges, a trial, and the right to a defence (Art 59). Cuba’s “political prisoners” are those who have been convicted of taking money to help overthrow the constitutional system.

By contrast, in the US, thousands of people are held without charge or trial, including several hundred in the illegally occupied section of Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay. The rate of imprisonment in the US, which has more than two million prisoners, is far higher than in Cuba (or indeed any other country). African-Americans are massively over-represented in US jails. Prisoners in the US lose many of their civil rights; prisoners in Cuba keep most of their civil rights.

Institutionalised racial discrimination persisted in the US well into the 1960s. Even today, the gap between formal and effective rights is very great in the US, because there are so few social guarantees.

Cuba, on the other hand, has made great efforts to overcome the denial of effective rights on racial grounds. The Cuban guarantees of universal and free education, health care and social security have proven powerful and effective tools against social marginalisation. Educational and health standards in Cuba are similar to, and in some respects better than, those of the US. This is despite the US having an average per capita income almost ten times higher than Cuba. The US has permanent wealth and poverty. Cuba shares its ups and downs.

In the US “freedom of speech” means that a handful of private corporations dominate the mass media.

In Cuba, the media (television, radio, magazines, newspapers) are all run by public bodies or community organisations. No private individual or investment group can capture or dominate public debate in Cuba. Nor is there mind numbing, commercial advertising.

In the US mass communications are dominated by consumerism and celebrity trivia; politics is about individuals seeking public office. In Cuba, mass communications are dominated by education and cultural programs; politics is about co-ordinated social responses to social problems.

Cuba does not use state power to intervene in the affairs of others or to push international propaganda, but rather sends doctors to more than 60 countries to assist communities which have no medical services. This internationalism, recognised by the World Health Organization, contrasts with US interventionism.

The US government maintains state-propaganda stations (for example, Voice of America, Radio Marti), funds opposition political groups (through the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department, USAID and the CIA) as well as funding pro-US academic centres and think tanks around the world.

Cuba’s human rights record is far better than that of the US. Amnesty International said the US in 2006 had “thousands of detainees … without charge or trial … deaths in custody, torture and ill-treatment … disappearances ... failure to hold officials at the highest levels accountable … [for] war crimes or crimes against humanity”. Within the US “sixty-one people died after being struck by police tasers … [and] 60 people were executed”. The Amnesty report did not address the thousands killed and maimed in the illegal occupation of Iraq.

By contrast, Amnesty’s criticism of Cuba in 2006 was mild. There were some “restrictions on freedom of expression, association and movement … nearly 70 prisoners of conscience … the government attempted to suppress private entrepreneurship. More than 30 prisoners remained on death row [but] no one was executed.”

Amnesty (whose US branch is responsible for reports on Cuba) did not note that the “seventy prisoners of conscience” had been charged and convicted of the specific offences of taking money from a foreign power to seek the overthrow of the Cuban constitutional system. Most were arrested in 2003, during a wave of hijackings, and many have since been released.