Film documentary portrays 30 years of Cuban Revolution

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Cuban Premier Fidel Castro with Saul Landau during filming of The SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1989 11 The Uncompromising Revolution, a film by Saul Landau.

Thirty years after Fidel Castro's victorious march into Havana at the beginning of 1959, the Cuban Revolution continues to be a force of attraction. The image of a broad popular struggle waged in the shadow of the United States gave hope to millions, especially in Latin America. In the United States, Cuba is still maligned as the spearhead of Soviet expansionism in Africa and Central America, or a tropical Gulag 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Saul Landau's movie, The Uncompromising Revolution, is an attempt to cut through this ideological falsification. This, of course, is no easy task. And although the result is uneven, the film warrants viewing by supporters of Cuba and those who are curious about the first socialist revolution to take place in the Western hemisphere.

The film reviews the social advances of the revolution: universal access to education and health care, the right to a job, the elimination of hunger. This may lead the viewer to the impression that Landau is idealizing the revolution. But these impressive achievements are proof positive that only through the elimination of capitalism could this underdeveloped country exorcise scourges plaguing the rest of Latin America.

Complex and contradictory society The film tempers these remarkable successes, however, by touching on Cuba's continuing shortcomings, obliquely reviewed through narration and interviews of people ranging from the ordinary person to Fidel Castro himself. If these views only skim the surface, they hint at a complex and contradictory society still unable to shake off its economic dependency as it creates the foundations of a socialist future.

Thus, while the dominance of U.S. imperialism was shed, Cuba has been unable to escape its dependence on the production of sugar as its main export crop.

Hence, as the price of this commodity plunged, Cuba has depended on subsidies from the Soviet Union estimated at $14 million per day. And recent reports suggest that Moscow is anxious to significantly reduce this drain on its own economy, especially given the possibility of "peaceful coexistence" with Washington.

Landau's film is full of seemingly selfcontradictory and ambiguous scenes. The expansion of education for the Cuban people is juxtaposed to an off-handed comment that Cuba's stagnant economy may not in the future be able to absorb the skilled workforce trained by the revolution. The obvious rise in the standard of living of the great majority— symbolized by peasants bringing home their new refrigerator on the back of a horse-drawn cart—is contrasted to a middle-aged streetsweeper apparently unable to enjoy the new consumerism.

While interviewees claim that racism and sexism have disappeared, a Black Cuban is shown bemoaning the lack of democracy. Of course the very fact that this opinion could be expressed bęlies the U.S. media depiction of Cuba as a police state.

A nuclear power plant is shown under construction-Fidel explaining that the country needs electricity yet lacks either hydraulic or coal resources—with one worker suggesting that Chernobyl could be avoided "with the help of our Soviet comrades."

Cuban internationalism

The title of the movie alludes in part to the Cuban Revolution's role internationally, which continues to distinguish it from the Soviet Union, China, and the Eastern Bloc. The film surveys the socialist transformation of the revolution in response to U.S. attempts to reassert its economic and political hegemony. Similarities are noted between the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the contra war in Nicaragua.

Cuba's internationalism is highlighted. While enduring a U.S.-imposed trade embargo and the threat of a U.S. invasion, Cuba's international policies have been much more radical than the policies of the Soviet Union or China.

In the 1960s, Cuba supported guerrilla movements throughout Latin America, understanding that the defense of its own revolution was tied to its extension throughout the continent. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese Revolution. In the 1970s, this spirit led to its intervention in Angola against a South African invasion.

The Cubans took the initiative again in late 1987, stepping up their defense of Angola by launching a counteroffensive against the invading South Africans-even as Mikhail Gorbachev sat down to discuss arms reductions with Ronald Reagan. Cuba's solidarity showed that the spirit of the Cuban Revolution had not been subordinated to "peaceful coexistence."

But Cuba's internationalism has been mixed and uneven. If on the one hand it is uncompromising in the fight against U.S. or South African encroachments, it has downplayed the betrayals of capitalist governments with which it has friendly relations.

Some examples include uncritical support nternational International Viewpoint s a biweekly magazine pub. lished under the auspices of the Fourth International. A one-year subscription costs only $47. Write to:

International Viewpoint, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France. to the Salvador Allende and Juan Velazco Alvarado regimes in Chile and Peru, respectively, in the 1970s; and political support for Panama's Gen. Manuel Noriega and Mexico's fraudulently elected President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. These important contradictions are not covered in the film.

The "Rectification Campaign"

The film's title also alludes to Cuba's current campaign to "rectify errors" and parenthetically, to reject Perestroika.

The film only lightly touches on this "Rectification Campaign" and the underlying economic malaise which sparked it. The campaign began in 1986, originally in reaction to a layer of farmers and middlemen who were striking it rich supplying the nonstate-controlled agricultural markets. But the campaign soon burgeoned into a larger affair, aimed at bureaucracy, declining production, and "indiscipline" on all levels.

Interviewees gave Landau examples of the problem. Stories of broken pipes and oil spills caused by bureaucratic indifference are interspliced with accounts of sales clerks who could care less about their customers, or workers who don't work.

The "Rectification Campaign" is an attempt to conquer these problems through appeals to emulate socialist ideals. In many ways it resembles the voluntarism of the 1960s, which ended with the failure to achieve the 10-million-ton sugar harvest (zafra) of 1970.

The problem facing Cuba, however, is the same for other workers' states: The limits of the bureaucratically controlled economy, which stresses quotas rather than quality, have been reached.

And while the right to a job was one of the principal conquests of the socialist revolution, "indiscipline" or a careless attitude toward work is one of the means a worker can express his/her lack of control over the system. While socialists welcome Fidel's attacks on bureaucratic privilege, his appeal to socialist principles, without conceding to the workers and farmers a hand in the management of production, can go only so far.

No workers' democracy Cuba-to its credit-is currently swimming against the tide within the "socialist camp." The Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, and Vietnam have opted for the pandora's box of "market socialism." Cuba, the uncompromising revolution, has rejected this road, though without pointing to the only viable alternative—workers' democracy. Uncompromising Revolution.

Unfortunately, Landau's film fails to explain the underlying contradictions of all of the post-capitalist economies, including Cuba's. But in his own way, he senses that the key to Cuba's dilemma is the lack of workers' democracy.

In an article published in the Oct. 24, 1988, issue of The Nation, George Black facetiously noted that Fidel was Cuba's greatest, and only, internal critic. The film follows Castro tirelessly touring the country, hearing the problems of the people, and attempting to personally right wrongs. But one person, even one as gifted as Fidel, can only do so much.

The current "Rectification Campaign" is not the first time that Castro has tried to attack bureaucratic privileges and deformities. In 1974, Cuba adopted a system of People's Power, intending to dilute the concentration of power which had passed into the hands of a bureaucratic layer.

Yet grassroots influence was only felt at the lowest levels. Moreover, the Communist Party's political monopoly-which forbids the organization of political tendencies and factions— seriously hampered the ability of the people to critically approach the problems facing their society.

This shortcoming has been replicated in the factories, where planning and management methods were learned in the Eastern Bloc. As a result, the worker-consumers have extreme difficulty having their desires fulfilled by the plan.

Fidel's enormous influence, his critical but uncompromising defense of the existing system, and his ubiquitous presence throughout the country have also hindered the political development of the country. After all, what happens after Fidel? Landau at one point asks Fidel what would happen when he retired. His reply: "That's the subject of the next movie."

The Cuban Revolution has been a source of inspiration for 30 years. It remains the most positive example of post-capitalist society today. Yet the revolution remains plagued by the absence of true institutions of workers' democracy. Ultimately, this is the source of the stagnation plaguing all the workers' states.

Landau's film only hints at this problem. Perhaps too many subjects were attempted to be covered. Nevertheless, the film is a good introduction to the Cuban Revolution-a revolution that has inspired millions of toilers around the world. The Uncompromising Revolution can only whet the appetite of the serious student of socialism.

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victories against the 'enemies of perestroika.

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the Cubans called for "two, three, many Vietnams" to insure the victory of the