¿Vamos Bien?

Eric Hershberg

  • BuyCuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos by Louis Pérez
    North Carolina, 333 pp, £32.95, August 2008, ISBN 978 0 8078 3216 5
  • BuyCuba in Revolution: A History since the 1950s by Antoni Kapcia
    Reaktion, 208 pp, £15.95, September 2008, ISBN 978 1 86189 402 1

Colin Powell’s service to the cause of regime change wasn’t confined to Iraq. George W. Bush got him to chair his Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which in 2004 produced a report suggesting ways to undermine the Cuban government and replace it with a system of ‘open market’ capitalism and multi-party elections. Citing the Eastern Bloc as a precedent, the commission proposed a series of initiatives aimed at destabilising Cuba’s ‘totalitarian’ government with a view to ‘rebuilding’ the country’s institutions afterwards. The report even called for the vaccination of children and other basic health services, as if these were not already available to all Cubans, and demanded the restitution of property formerly owned by Cubans living in the US – and if not outright restitution then at least compensation. The report ‘envisioned’ and ‘welcomed’ the contributions of these Cuban Americans to the transformation of Cuba, praising their ‘business acumen and capital’ as well as their ‘entrepreneurial spirit and patriotism’.

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