Cuba on Way to Ecotopia
Prof. Benson’s article demands a response if only to give notice that the entire Loyola Law School community is not so cavalier about the Cuban people’s legitimate aspirations for freedom.
Fifty years ago, Benson would have been crowing about the delight of Stalin’s workers’ paradise: employment for all, free medical care, a rising tide of revolutionary fervor. The mechanisms of tyranny would be dismissed as mere “excesses.” Today, the location has changed, but leftist pilgrims like Benson are still marveling at the Potemkin village of socialist ideology.
The plain facts are that Cuba is in the grip of a ruthless dictator, and that the age of totalitarians is ending. In Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet Union, the people have spoken. When given the chance to vote freely, the people of Nicaragua tossed out their Sandinista oppressors.
Today, the Cuban people are voting with their oars, fleeing their ruined homeland and the monster who rules it. Castro has bankrupted the island with his rule-by-whim socialism, and contrary to Benson’s assertions, Cuba’s environment is a major disaster due to the overexpansion of farmland required to produce the cash crops Castro needs to fuel his military machine.
The island’s society is poisoned by Castro’s militarism. The professor would do well to remember that it is not George Bush who wears fatigues and a pistol when exhorting the masses. KURT SCHLICHTER
Loyola Law School, Class of ’94
Pasadena
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