So Castro is dead. In spite of the media headlines, I wonder
how many people actually care or for that matter have any sense of who or what
he was. I have to wonder in light of the mini tempest that was caused by Trudeau's
( the younger) comments upon Castro's death, why anyone bothers to pretend they are interested.
For those of us who belong to a certain spectrum of the Baby
boom generation, Castro and Cuba might evoke a specific set of memories. I can
remember, when I was quite young in elementary school, being taught how to hide
under my desk if and when the nuclear bombs started to fall (one would think
that adults who had seen pictures of Hiroshima or Nagasaki would have had more
sense than to waste time teaching us such silly manoeuvres). I can remember
somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind my father talking about him trying to
get home if there was such an attack. When the Cuban missile crisis occurred - I can
remember being scared and wondering if those lessons would be needed. The news
was full of dark comments and the adults I knew seemed to be worried. At that
time the geo-political complications were beyond me. I know I took the danger
as being real and that my world as I knew it was at risk. I had no
understanding that it was all a game of political chicken that had gotten a bit
out of control.
Five years later, some people of my generation were in
university - and starting to incorporate into our conversation the parts they
had "cherry picked" from Marxism that they were comfortable with. Then
we liked Cuba and Castro. Or rather it was not that we liked Castro (or in fact
understood very much at all about the revolution) but we knew that anyone who
was anti the USA must be good (the enemy of my enemy must be my friend). We
railed against the corporate/capitalist elite and cheered on the long suffering
Cubans who were struggling against them. We somewhat smugly hung posters of
Castro and of Che Guevara in the safety of our warm and
comfortable bedrooms. It was "in" to quote how well Cuba was doing
after the revolution. Noticeably we did not talk about the low standard of
living, or the oppression that must come with any type of dictatorship no
matter how benevolent or that the revolution was only possible because the Soviet
union was financing it for its own political machinations.
When our hip and somewhat anti-establishment prime minister
(the elder Trudeau) visited Cuba in 1976. I suspect that most Canadians were
proud. It was one more desperately needed proof that Canada was different than
the USA.
However, in the next 40 or so years, with the exception of
Canadians who flew to Cuba for cheaper winter holidays, most of us spent very
little time thinking about Cuba or their revolutionary leader. Cuba was a destination
to escape the cold weather. It was a place for the slightly more adventurous
traveller who wanted the opportunity to experience visiting a developing
country without any real danger. We admired their free medical help ( and their
way of providing it), we were perhaps envious of their technically free
education (their literacy rate according to UNICEF is 100%) and we could admire
how they coped with a world that, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union,
provided little assistance.
It has long stopped being fashionable to cheer on Castro and
his revolution. Perhaps because Canadians have grown up a little, we no longer
look to support countries that are different from the USA. There have been
countless revolutions since - most of them far less successful than Cuba's. We
have perhaps become too at ease with the concept that larger, more powerful countries
chronically, perhaps somewhat obsessively, meddle in other country's affairs.
We have given up trying to understand why who is doing what to whom. We seem
incapable of either understanding the causes of inequality, of poverty or of political
oppression or looking for long term solutions to those issues. Those political
powers will continue to support revolutions because they are incapable of
finding other solutions.
I suspect that Castro and his long ago revolution is not
relevant to the vast majority of Canadians. Those who care beyond a tourist
level are well into their 60s if not older. For the rest - there are, rightly
or wrongly, far more pressing issues than to revisit the heroes and villains of
half a century ago. We didn't learn anything from that revolution and the
characters it spawned. Not surprisingly, we have a new pantheon of minor gods
and devils to worry about.
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