Rust Martialis posted:

I just really don't think it's actually a particularly interesting discussion. The disparity of violence alone calls any attempt at equivocation into question, but if you want to call it a coup, go hog wild.

Squalid posted:

I guess my main problem with the idea of the economic war is that under capitalism, it is essentially impossible for private capital to be motivated by anything besides profit. For the same reason under conventional Marxist theory there can never be a humanitarian capitalist whose business decisions are driven by their desire for people's welfare, the collective decision making of business can not be driven systemically by ideology. The demands of profit trump everything. It's not that there can't be other motivations, but that taking all industry as a whole, profit is a necessity and all other considerations will be bend to accommodate it.

Al Jazeera posted:

Erik Prince - the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of US President Donald Trump - has been pushing to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela's socialist president, Nicholas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Over the last several months, the sources said, Prince has sought investment and political support for such an operation from influential Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles.

In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Prince's pitch.

One source said Prince has conducted meetings about the issue as recently as mid-April.

White House National Security Council Spokesman Garrett Marquis declined to comment when asked whether Prince had put his plan to the government and whether it would be considered.

A person familiar with the administration's thinking said the White House would not support such a plan.

Sinteres posted:

IMO if the US intervenes it probably will actually be over pretty quickly and easily (Panama seems more relevant than Iraq, even if it wouldn't be quite that rosy a picture), but I hope it doesn't come to that.

Sinteres posted:

The invasion isn't the hard part--even in Iraq that was the easy part. The hard part is leaving behind something better than was there to begin with, and I think that's where political culture plays a bigger role than geography (though Caracas being on the coast is obviously favorable to the US). Iraq didn't have any institutions left after Saddam fell, because he was the only institution that was allowed to exist in Iraq during his reign. Can you imagine an "acting president" running around leading protests in pre-war Iraq like Guiado is doing right now as I type this in Venezuela? Colectivos firing into crowds or not, the stakes are just totally different, and it's because Venezuela was until recently a democracy with political freedoms, and I think that makes it easier for society to reconstitute itself once Maduro is gone than Iraq could after Saddam's defeat.

I don't think Venezuela is a country as disposed to collapse into chaos, but I do think an invasion is unwise because it does increase the risk of destroying any perception of legitimacy the opposition has and seeing a speedier return of regime elements to power in the future and/or contributing to more unrest by regime holdouts in the near future. Also because Trump doesn't give a poo poo about the Venezuelan people, so I trust the ability of the US to provide a positive outcome even less than usual.

Kawasaki Nun posted:

If you think there is any question of America's capability to wage war in South America you need to educate yourself because it is absolutely not a question of capability.

Maybe don't trust your memory or instincts.

zocio posted:

Edit: read too fast, carry on.

alpha_destroy posted:

For fun I fed this into Google translate. But the thing about Latin mottos is you have to get them down to three words. So I did the only rational thing. Keep feeding out through a bunch of languages until it simplifies. And this process distilled the slogan down to something I think might be more even more of a threat: Quid amplius possumus.

Discendo Vox posted:

Mordin, here are some questions for you

1. Who is currently in the embassy?
2. Who was in the embassy previously?
3. How does the US determine who has legal control of assets held by a foreign state?
4. What is an embassy?
5. What did the US actually do with regard to the Venezuelan consulates and embassy?

6. What's the source you're citing here?
7. How are other sources covering the same events?
8. Is there corroboration for the specific claims made by the source you're using?
9. What does this source's profile image depict?

Chuck Boone posted:

A friend just forwarded me this note written by the "Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo" (League of Workers for Socialism), which is a Venezuelan group. I'm sharing it here because I hope that the position that the note puts forward will help people in this thread think critically about their blind support for Maduro.

quote:

Since January 23, imperialism has used appeals, maneuvers and threats to try to split the Armed Forces in order to overthrow Maduro. After their attempts failed and their coup offensive entered a stalemate, they concentrated on economic aggression and asphyxiation, which has worsened the hardships of the people. The plans for a coup remained latent, and were reactivated with this Tuesday’s attempt.

A government emerging from a military coup, under the control of the U.S., would mean nothing good for the masses! In the name of “freedom” and “democracy,” they are attempting to install a government of national subordination to the dictates of the IMF and imperialist capital, who would become the new masters of the country, with the imposition of more foreign debt and the massive surrender of companies and resources in a wave of privatizations. This plan is totally pro-business, anti-national and against the people. The needs of working people would be, even further subordinated to guaranteeing capitalist interests and profits. Those of us who confront Maduro’s government and its policies must firmly oppose this recolonizing offensive by imperialism, with Guaidó as its vehicle.

Chuck Boone posted:

Yes, to a large extent. I think the statement is downplaying the real, palpable desire for change that the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans have and eclipsing it with "imperialism did this!!!" which is pretty much this whole thread.

quote:

I do agree 100% that "a government emerging from a military coup, under the control of the U.S., would mean nothing good for the masses!". But, I think the statement lacks an important level of nuance. For example, it's highly debatable that what we saw on April 30 was a military coup, or that an opposition government will definitely be "under the control" of the U.S, which is what the statement implies. Friendly to the U.S., certainly, but "under the control" of the U.S. is something else entirely. Say what you will about Guaido, but the point of this movement is to allow Venezuelans to vote in free, fair and transparent elections. Whether or not Guaido runs in those elections, or if he wins, is another issue. But to even get to the point where we can vote, we need Maduro to let go of power, which again, is what this whole thing is about.

I agree that privatization, pro-business governments tend to be extremely bad and I never vote for them in elections here. I do not want a future Venezuela to be subordinate "to the dictates of the IMF and imperialist capital", or for it to be some neoliberal playground.

If I could snap my fingers, this is what would happen: 1) Guaido wouldn't run in a free and fair post-Maduro election (his role would be limited to interim president), 2) there would be an actual leftist (non-PSUV) option on the ballot, and 3) this actual leftist option would win.

punk rebel ecks posted:

This isn't really a good metric because this thread has been alive and kicking for almost half a decade and it's really been over the past two or three months that it exploded due to Washington stepping up their "game".

Discendo Vox posted:

Because the NYT is a source of legitimate original journalism with specific identifiable biases and teleSUR et al is a state propaganda outlet that exists entirely to lie to, mislead and control its targets. Again, totalizing reductive cynicism doesn’t make you a savvy consumer of media, it makes you a mark.

The New York Times posted:

FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq
MAY 26, 2004

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so -- reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation -- we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on ''regime change'' in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations -- in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, ''An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago.'' Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector -- his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri -- to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined ''U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts.'' That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: ''The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.''

Five days later, the Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view (''White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons''). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, ''Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert.'' It began this way: ''A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.''

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda -- two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi ''scientist'' -- who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence -- had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday said he has instructed his political envoy in Washington to immediately open relations with the US military, in an attempt to put more pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to resign.



Definitely not a coup, Guaido is definitely not conspiring with the US to overthrow the government!

Kawasaki Nun posted:

Right I'm not trying to say the msm works well or serves it purpose or anything else. I'm simply trying to illustrate how there on constraints in a competitive media system that are absent for state run media.

Everyone equivicaring between SUR and the NYT seems to be conveniently if ignoring how these factors function in reporting within the USA

Squalid posted:

Condiv posted:

i dunno why the generals would go along with this and not flock to guaido if they're so corrupt since guaido had a guy advocating for selling international aid on the free market advising him

Flayer posted:

Guaido better hope he's in some place safe, the CIA are about to sacrifice him for the cause (of financial profit for vulture capitalism).

The Nixon tapes, June 11, 1971, 9:37 - 10:36 a.m. posted:

Nixon: Connally’s feeling is this: He feels—and he, his gut reaction may be right, Henry, that the
effect on the rest of Latin America, whatever we hear from State and the rest, is going to be bad
for us to quit screwing around and being so soft on the Chileans.
Kissinger: I have no problem with it—
Nixon: Second, he believes that, as far as American public opinion is concerned, the American
people are just aching for us to kick somebody in the rear end, and that he wants us to do it.
Kissinger: Well—
Nixon: Now, here I am, approving both the [unclear]—You see, State, goddamnit, they never are
against anything.
Kissinger: Well, Mr. President—
Nixon: They’re never been against anything—
Kissinger: —you know my view on the Chilean situation—
Nixon: —except against aiding Pakistan.
Kissinger: Yeah, and Brazil. But, on the Chilean thing, I’ve always been for a harder line. We
have a pretty good pretext now, because they’ve just—there’s just been an assassination of—
Nixon: I saw that.
Kissinger: —of the right-wing Christian Democrat.
Nixon: I know.
Kissinger: And the sons-of-bitches are blaming us for it. He was—
Haldeman: Blaming the CIA? [Laughs]
Kissinger: They’re blaming the CIA.
Nixon: Why the hell would we assassinate him?
Kissinger: Well, a) we couldn’t. We’re—
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: CIA’s too incompetent to do it. You remember—
Nixon: Sure, but that’s the best thing. [Unclear].
Kissinger: —when they did try to assassinate somebody, it took three attempts—
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: —and he lived for three weeks afterwards.
Nixon: Yeah.

fnox posted:

You can see how those individuals sanctions didn’t affect the Venezuelan economy, because the Venezuelan economy boomed in 2009. Conversely, the negative trend correlated almost immediately with Maduro taking power. Inflation spirals out of control almost the second he takes power.

fnox posted:

This is the inflation rate during 2 years of Maduro. This is before any sanctions, by the way, just from January 2013 to December 2014. The poverty rate doubled within that period before they stopped reporting on it. GDP growth stopped. I can find you every economic marker that you want, it will tell the same story.

Squalid posted:

I don't think you're really giving me poo poo for "calling Nicaragua a case of sanctions and sanctions alone working" because I quite explicitly repudiated idea, and did so in a post that you quoted. Maybe it just went over your head, but I don't think that's what really happened. I think you understood my meaning, but chose to act as if you did not.

Instead what I see here is you doing something that I often see in this thread. You are engaging in moral reasoning. You aren't really interested in breaking down the comparative contribution to Chamorro's vote share in the 1990 Nicaraguan election, even if that's they way you framed your argument.

In this discussion you are not really making arguments grounded in empirical observations or a theoretical understanding of political-economy. Instead your reasoning is based on something more intuitive. When I say "sanctions worked in Nicaragua," (in the sense of accomplishing George Bush's agenda) you read this to mean "sanctions WILL work in Venezueala," It is not a logical inference, however emotionally, it is easy to understand the connection. This is how most people reason in practice, and in many contexts it basically works.

As you believe the policy of the United States is not moral or just, you want to argue against applying sanctions to Venezuela. This is where I see you beginning to engage in moral reasoning. Because you believe sanctions are bad in a moral sense, you also want to argue that they will not and cannot accomplish their goals. If we are not thinking , it can be easy to conflate that which is moral and that which is true. Sometimes this is a mistake but often it is a rhetorically useful tactic. Certainly it would be nice if this were true and good always triumphed over evil, but I don't think that is the world we live in.

Squalid posted:

I disagree, but regardless I also provided an example where there was definitely no military action. Anyway, the contras had just had their funding slashed and were already in the process of disbanding when Ortega lost the 1990 election. If you want to point to an alternative explanation than the sanctions for this result you'd do better to bring up the gigantic sum of US funding spent on Chamorro's campaign, rather than the war that was already in the process of ending.

for the record i also think caps on caps on caps idea that sanctions should be used more was stupid.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

This entire conversation started with a reference to the Cuban refugees who have been crossing the straits to Florida for decades in improvised boats, not the rich shitheads who bailed out alongside Batista in 1959. The former are comparable to current Venezuelan refugees, the latter are ironically enough more like Maduro and his cronies.

WHO posted:

Cuban health authorities give large credit for the country’s impressive health indicators to the preventive, primary-care emphasis pursued for the last four decades. These indicators – which are close or equal to those in developed countries – speak for themselves. For example, in 2004, there were seven deaths for every 1000 children aged less than five years – a decrease from 46 such deaths 40 years earlier, according to WHO. Meanwhile Cubans have one of the world’s highest life expectancies of 77 years.

The centrepiece of this system is the community-based polyclinic, each of the 498 nationwide serving a catchment area of between 30 000 and 60 000 people. The polyclinics act also as the organizational hub for 20 to 40 neighbourhood-based family doctor-and-nurse offices, and as accredited research and teaching centres for medical, nursing and allied health sciences students. “These are the backbone of Cuba’s health system,” Luna says.

“But today we’re not just challenged to provide universal care at all levels, but also better quality care, better organized and integrated services. People expect much more of us now than when we were introducing the Rural Medical Service.”

The period Luna refers to was the early 1960s, when Cuban government policy first focused on reaching people – mainly in rural areas – with little or no access to medical services following the Cuban revolution during the 1950s. The government started by enlisting 750 physicians and medical students for a period of their professional lives to work in the mountains and coastal communities. The aim of el servicio médico rural or the Rural Medical Service, according to its developers, was to provide “disease prevention and to revitalize health services for those most in need, whether because they are poor, in precarious health or live far from urban centres”.

Multi-specialty polyclinics were established across Cuba in the 1970s, before the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata, and these were transformed with the addition of the family doctor-and-nurse programme in the mid-1980s, enhancing the health system’s ability to deliver on prevention and community-health analysis, as well as clinical services. By the 1990s, the programme had posted family doctors and nurses throughout the country, and was attending to more than 95% of the population. “We were conscious that prevention had to be a cornerstone of our system,” Luna says, “and that people had to be understood in all their dimensions: biological, psychological and social [and] as individuals, within families, and within their communities.”

Today, Cuba has about 33 000 family physicians. Specialization in family medicine is a requirement for more than 97% of medical graduates, who spend one internship year and two residency years in training after they receive their degrees. Later, they can apply for a residency in a second specialty. As a result, the ranks in these second specialties are being swelled by physicians who started their careers in family medicine.

Wikipedia, Cuban Literacy Campaign posted:

The Cuban Literacy Campaign (Spanish: Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba) was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the Cuban Revolution.[1] It began on January 1 and ended on December 22, 1961, becoming the world's most ambitious and organized literacy campaign.[2][3]

Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60% and 76%, largely because of lack of education access in rural areas and a lack of instructors.[4] As a result, the Cuban government of Fidel Castro at Che Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education" and sent "literacy brigades" out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominantly illiterate guajiros (peasants) to read and write. The campaign was "a remarkable success." By its completion, 707,212 adults were taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%.[4]

M. Discordia posted:

This actually has a lot to do with Venezuela so I wanted to go over the absurdity on that page:

The Independent, Latin lessons: What can we learn from the world's most ambitious literacy campaign? posted:

Tuesday afternoon in the José Marti Primary School means it's time for maths. A classroom full of wide-eyed eight-year-old boys and girls are poring over frayed workbooks in pairs while their teacher walks around peering over tiny shoulders. Each wears the standard Cuban primary-school uniform of burgundy shorts or mini-skirt and white short-sleeved shirt, and eager hands go up one after the other as the day's sums are completed.

It is an industrious scene, and one that plays out daily at any of the numerous schools that dot the narrow streets of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana). The schools are old and cramped – this part of the capital is a World Heritage site, and subject to Unesco's building restrictions as well as the ongoing US blockade on materials that blights the country as a whole. Teachers must therefore use the city's many parks and plazas for PE lessons, while paper, books and other basic materials that British schoolchildren take for granted are also in short supply. Yet despite these and other problems, education in Havana – indeed, across Cuba – remains one of the wonders of this evolving socialist republic.

The statistics alone are enough to make the parent of the average British schoolchild green with envy: there is a strict maximum of 25 children per primary-school class, many of which have as few as 20. Secondary schools are striving towards only 15 pupils per class – less than half the UK norm.

Irrespective of your class, your income or where you live, education at every level is free, and standards are high. The primary-school curriculum includes dance and gardening, lessons on health and hygiene, and, naturally, revolutionary history. Children are expected to help each other so that no one in the class lags too far behind. And parents must work closely with teachers as part of every child's education and social development.

Expectations are high; indiscipline and truancy are rare; school meals and uniforms are free. Although computers in good working order may be scarce, it is not uncommon for schools to open at 6.30am and close 12 hours later, providing free morning and after-school care for working parents with no extended family. "Mobile teachers" are deployed to homes if children are unable to come to school because of sickness or disability.

Micro-universities which offer part-time and distance learning have been set up in the provinces over the past few years, as competition for the country's 15 universities has become so fierce that some require 90 per cent exam averages to guarantee entry. Adult education at all levels, from Open University-type degrees to English- and French-language classes on TV, is free and popular.

The vast majority of Cuba's 150,000 teachers have studied for a minimum of five years, half to master's level. And despite financial woes which prompted the government to recently announce one million public-sector job cuts, it has promised to keep investing in free education at all levels.

Cuba spends 10 per cent of its central budget on education, compared with 4 per cent in the UK and just 2 per cent in the US, according to Unesco. The result is that three out of five Cubans over the age of 16 are in some type of formal, higher education. Wherever you travel in Cuba, just about everyone can read and write, and many have one or more academic qualifications.

In a mere half-century, Cuba has developed one of the world's most successful free education systems, admired everywhere, from the UK to Canada to New Zealand. Yet, even though Cuba's 11 million citizens are enormously proud of the educational system that has nourished them for five decades, there is increasing concern that the country's classrooms are not preparing Cubans for life beyond education.

Sitting on a park bench in Central Havana, Augusto Perdomo, an economist, electrician and housing officer in his early forties, encapsulates the issue: "Education here is great; you can study again and again, whatever you like. But then, there is not much else." It is a thirst for opportunities, felt most intensely among the youth, which poses one of the biggest threats to the Cuban political system. Will education for education's sake be enough to unite the people for another 50 years, or will the government be forced to invite foreign investment, ideas and opportunities and the inevitable social upheaval these will entail? '

In September 1960, a year after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, prime minister of the fledgling government, stood before the United Nations assembly in New York and promised to wipe out illiteracy by the end of the following year – of its total seven million population at the time, more than a million adults were illiterate and less than half of all children had access to school. "Cuba will be the first country of America which will be able to say it does not have one person who remains illiterate," he declared. He dared to make such a bold pledge, just months after becoming leader, because preparations for universal literacy in Cuba had actually begun several years earlier.

High in the lush, foggy rainforests of the Sierra Maestra mountains in the south-east of Cuba, Castro and his fellow rebel leader Che Guevara spent two years living hidden among poor subsistence farmers, or campesinos, plotting the revolution. Here, hundreds of miles away from Havana – where the pro-government professional classes lived comfortably, enjoying private schooling and colour television – Guevara and Castro discovered that more than 40 per cent of adults were illiterate; there were no schools, no electricity and minimal access to healthcare.

The Sierra Maestra is part of the mainly rural region previously known as Oriente Province, which has a strong revolutionary history. It was here in 1895 that one of Cuba's great heroes, José Marti, was shot dead, aged 42. A poet, journalist, philosopher and political theorist, Marti dedicated his short life to the political, intellectual and cultural independence of all Latin Americans from Spanish colonialism and American expansionism.

It was his teachings that influenced the young Guevara and Castro as they transmitted messages of solidarity across the waves of Radio Rebelidad. But more significantly it was here that Marti's idea to bring the "light" of culture and the "bread" of literacy to peasants and newly freed slaves was made reality. Every day the rebel fighters made time to teach the uneducated campesinos with whom they lived and fought to read and write, in what Guevara termed the "battle against ignorance".

After the fall of Fulgencio Batista's regime in 1959, Castro wasted no time – 50 years ago this month, the revolutionary government had already began to mobilise the entire country, especially the youth, for what would become the world's most ambitious and organised literacy campaign.

Quickly realising that the country's educational system would buckle under the demands imposed by the drive to universal literacy, Castro used his imagination. Anyone, adult or child, who could read and write was encouraged to become an alfabetizador, or literacy teacher. René Mujica Cantelar, the current Cuban ambassador to the UK, volunteered as an alfabetizador in 1961 – one of 100,000 school-aged children to do so, the youngest being a girl of eight.

The youngest son of a barber and a housewife, Cantelar was 12 years old, just out of primary school, when he responded to the barrage of posters, newspapers, radio and TV adverts calling for volunteers to join the literacy brigadistas. "Those months after the Batista government fell were incredible," he recalls. "There was great euphoria on the streets of Havana. It was children like me, not our parents, who felt most involved, so when the call came for volunteers, I went to the nearest office, signed my name, and waited to be called."

The brigadistas were taken in buses to the beach resort of Varadero, a former playground for wealthy Americans and the mafia, 85 miles east of Havana, and given a maximum of two weeks' intensive training in how to teach and how to survive the harsh, rural conditions they were about to encounter.

Newspapers listed the names of the each new brigadista and showed pictures of the youngsters arriving from all over the country, but Cantelar's name never appeared: "I couldn't understand it; I was so desperate to be a part of the campaign, so I went back and found that my mum had come in and taken my name off the register," he laughs. Days later, having convinced his mother, he was on the bus to Varadero where thousands of youngsters were crammed into casinos, ballrooms, hotels and bars. Already-anxious parents were left terrified by the bloody Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, just two days after the first training camp opened. But the US attack failed, and volunteer numbers swelled.

The intensive training reflected life to come: up at 5am, classes started at 6.30am; afternoons were spent hiking and in physical training. The youngsters were then sent off to live with families armed with a standard grey uniform, a warm blanket, a hammock, two textbooks – We Shall Read and We Shall Conquer – and a gas-powered lantern, so that lessons could be given at night after work ended.

Cantelar ended up on a 65 hectare farm in San José de las Lagas, a municipality near Havana. During the day he worked alongside his host family of four, planting, cultivating and harvesting maize, sweet potatoes and pumpkins. For two hours each night, he taught the old man and eldest son to read and write using the lantern for light.

Many of the young teachers ate no meat or eggs or drank fresh milk for weeks, but Cantelar had been lucky – his farm also kept pigs, chickens and cows. "I learnt so much in those three months, and that was the point: we were learning more than we taught."

Schools were suspended across the country from April 1961 so that every teacher could teach and co-ordinate the 100,000 volunteers, half of whom were girls. Thousands of adults were drafted in as teachers over the last few months of that year, in order to ensure its success – and avoid embarrassment for Castro. Never before, or since, has a country used masses of unqualified teachers in such a co-ordinated way. The daily newspaper, Revolucion, published sketch maps showing each village and town that conquered illiteracy, as it happened. Everyone who had the intellectual capacity to learn was taught: the oldest person was a woman aged 106, a former slave.

Cantelar himself had mixed success: the old man dropped out after some weeks but his son, Ildo Estevez, learnt to read and write after three months and like all new literates, he wrote to Fidel, thanking him for the opportunity. Now aged 13, Cantelar joined a brigade in the northern province of Matanzas, teaching several families who worked in a salt farm, until the campaign was declared a success in December 1961: the illiteracy rate had been slashed from 25 per cent to less than 4 per cent within a year. Hundreds of thousands of alfabetizadores marched euphorically to the Plaza de la Revolucion on 22 December, carrying giant pencils, chanting, "Fidel Fidel tell us what else we can do". "Study, study, study!" came the reply. And they did.

Within months, a programme was set up for the new literates, now hungry for knowledge, to continue studying up to sixth grade, the equivalent of a primary education. Teacher-training was reformed and thousands of classrooms built; primary- and pre-school education were almost universally available in Cuba by 1970 (45 years ahead of the UN's 2015 deadline for its Millennium Development Goal).

College and university education expanded, became free, and started focusing on courses that reflected the country's skill shortages, and agricultural sciences, engineering, medicine and teaching degrees, for example, proliferated. Cuba's world-renowned healthcare system developed on the back of its educational reforms; there are now 23 medical schools in Cuba, up from three in 1959.

These changes happened at a furious pace, with the emphasis on quantity rather than quality at first, but today its defenders, such as Diosdada Vidal Valle, executive member of the education, science and sports union, claim that Cuba has a flexible education system which regularly reforms, often because of grass-roots pressure from parents and teachers.

So why did Cuba succeed where so many other literacy campaigns failed? The mass mobilisation of volunteer teachers and a system that used pictures depicting everyday scenes which people could relate to, discuss, and then learn to read and write about, were key factors, according to ' the doctor and educationalist Theodore Macdonald, honorary visiting professor at London Metropolitan University's Human Rights & Social Justice Research Institute, who has worked in, and written about, Cuba's education system. He believes that people were convinced of the need to read and write not just for their own sakes, but for the good of the country, which had lost huge numbers of skilled professionals, who had fled to Miami after the revolution. "The genius of the Cuban campaign was that they made it make a difference," he says. "It wasn't just about peasants becoming literate; it was about learning to read so they could join in politically and socially: there was a point to it. And then they wanted more."

The symbolic thank-you letters to Fidel, used by Unesco to evaluate the success of the campaign in 1964, are kept along with photographs and details of all 100,000 volunteers in a wonderful museum in La Ciudad Libertad, or the City of Liberty, which is situated in the former, vast Batista headquarters in the western suburbs of Havana. The former government offices and officials' homes are now home to bright, airy classrooms for several schools, colleges and universities, including three special schools for children with autism, learning disabilities and visual impairments.

Luisa Yara Campos, literacy museum director, teacher and committed socialist of some 40 years' standing, says: "Before 1959 it was the countryside versus the city. The literacy campaign united the country because, for the first time, people from the city understood how hard life was for people before the revolution, that they survived on their own, and that as people they had much in common. This was very important for the new government."

Over the past 50 years, thousands of Cuban literacy teachers have volunteered in countries such as Haiti, Nicaragua and Mozambique. Critics claim that this is motivated by the desire to promote socialist propaganda and the government's reputation in these countries. But Dr Jaime Canfux Gutiérrez, director of literacy at the Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute in La Ciudad Libertad, insists that this initiative is about promotion of Marti's principle of "literacy without borders". "This is about education for everyone as a human right, no matter who you are or where you live."

The Cuban programme continues to be adapted for use all over the world, including in Canada, Venezuela and among Maori people in New Zealand today. But, insists Professor Macdonald, the speed and extent of Cuba's advances in literacy struggle to be replicated elsewhere without the same political commitment to education and social change.

Furthering this argument, Bill Greenshields, the former president of the UK's National Union of Teachers, believes that the achievements of the Cuban education system are so inextricably linked to its socialist principles, that they remain unpalatable, and largely overlooked, by many governments not so disposed to Cuba's politics.

Indeed, even in Cuba, the great experiment has been beset by problems of late. In recent years, there has been an exodus of secondary-school teachers, seeking to earn "hard currency" by working with tourists as taxi drivers, guides or in hotels, according to Valle from the education union. Attempts to fill the gap by using intensive teacher-training courses for young people barely out of school, and introducing a generalist degree, attracted widespread criticism and have recently been abandoned.

The exodus is, in fact, a symptom of a wider problem, which has become more pronounced since visa restrictions were eased to encourage more tourists, and their dollars. Cubans meet these incomers, see their fashionable clothes, hear about their lifestyles, and many obviously want the same opportunities to travel and earn money. Some are even talking of a "crisis in education".

"A youngster sees that his dad is a doctor, his mum is a teacher, his uncle an engineer, and yet the family cannot afford a TV or nice clothes," says primary-school teacher Julio Gomez. "So they think, 'I'm better off working with tourists.' This is a problem for teaching, for our education [system], but also for the country."

Valle, however, is confident that the Cuban education system will not only survive, but will continue to reform and improve. "Here we are always seeking for a perfect system; that is the way it has been for 50 years. When we encounter problems, we introduce modifications; the next is always better than the last. It is true that many teachers have left because of the economic situation; wanting more money is a reasonable desire. But teaching remains a very respected profession. We have introduced a new minimum salary and modified the training, so I am confident that we will resolve this crisis as well."

Yet Professor Macdonald is less certain that the Cuban system can survive, at least within its own borders. "The Cuban model is at the vanguard of education, and health, but its future in a neo-liberal [market-driven] world is grim. There is an increasing shift towards appreciating and copying the Cuban system in Latin America and many other countries such as Malawi and Pakistan, but it is unlikely that [the original] will survive to see these changes. Cuba is like Moses in the wilderness. It will lead people to the Promised Land but it will never get there itself." n

My part in a nation's education

by Dr Jorge Fiallo

Dr Jorge Fiallo, 63, adviser to the vice-president of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute of Pedagogy in La Ciudad Libertad, was 14 when he volunteered for the literacy campaign. "My father was a soldier in the Batista army and died fighting against Fidel's men's in 1958," he recalls, while looking through his archived records for the first time. "At the time I was living a comfortable life with my mother in a house in Havana, attending a private Catholic school, so I guess I should have been against the revolution, but I wasn't; I was still too young.

"You couldn't miss the call for teachers, and I went to Varadero in July for training. I was sent to a farm in Pinar del Rio to live with a very poor family of five. I stayed for 115 days. The men's work was dangerous, climbing up palm trees to chop down leaves to make roofs. I helped on the farm and then taught the three adults at night.

"I was always hungry. They ate so badly: maize and rice, nothing else. I used to spend my monthly 100 peso (£2.80) allowance on processed meat for us all. There was no electricity; the river for water was 150 metres away. I was so scared of the snakes that I slept in my hammock. Once I needed a doctor, but the hospital was 21km away: 10km by horse, then 11km by shared truck; I couldn't believe what their life was like. It was a truly extraordinary experience and changed me forever, in a good way." NL

M. Discordia posted:

Undoubtedly there was a literacy program in Cuba in 1961, undoubtedly no one can quantitatively measure how effective it was because the numbers provided are provable fabrications, undoubtedly worldwide literacy has risen at a steady 4% every year for decades, indicating that perhaps Castro's prison camps and Guevara's mass graves were not necessary to teach some amount of people to read.

fnox posted:

So, this is part of what makes this particular thread so loving awful to post in. You and other posters have, consistently, engaged into this type of strawman that is meant to portray me as a fascist. This is what you use to deflect any sort of pointed criticism at Maduro, this is what you use to loop back to America, this is what you use to get out of tight spots. This doesn't help the debate, this doesn't help your point, this is you literally inverting what I am saying and then claiming it as a fact, despite me constantly clarifying about this point being false. I never, not loving once said that I would rather have Pinochet than Maduro. The reason why Maduro is worse than Pinochet is that unlike Chile, Venezuela will never recover from the damage Maduro has caused to it, Maduro has just loving doomed the country, he's killed thousands directly, many thousands more indirectly, and more will be known once he's out.

Quit this bullshit and maybe we can begin steering this thread somewhere productive.

fnox posted:

Maduro is worse than Pinochet. That's how you interpret it. That doesn't mean I would want a Pinochet, that would also be bad and would be something I would fight tooth and nail against. What that means is that, in the scale of damage, Maduro exceeds him, and if you start viewing it with those eyes, then you realise why people get loving angry when criticism about him is deflected.

fnox posted:

An important piece of context for those hoping for an endogenous leftist uprising: that already happened, you’re looking at it. The current situation is like the 90s was in Venezuela only 10 times worse.

I think a crucial part of historical context that is what leads to my pessimism regarding a deal that would result in Maduro’s exit is that the Venezuelan people have had to endure almost 30 years of nothing but political turmoil. They’ve lost faith in politicians doing anything right.

fnox posted:

You seem to have no faith in the west whatsoever, I have no faith whatsoever in Venezuela’s politicians be them right or left. What would be the middle point here? Someone like AMLO intervening in this conflict?

fnox posted:

This doesn't help remove Maduro though, it's palliative care. It helps him continue using hunger as a mean of social control, only he wouldn't have to dig a deeper hole to be able to give out free food. It would have to come with the condition that Maduro steps down or at the very least agrees to a transition plan. I'm not sure if the Red Cross aid is helping at all, I think it's mostly targetted towards refugees.

He needs to agree to a deal. It's hard enough to get him to sit down and actually buy into what he's saying because he's done this many times before as a way to buy time. You need to hold something over him to bring him to the negotiating table.

fnox posted:

You do understand that, we’ve been trying to change the government for more than a decade and it’s the lack of international support what has killed us every time? I mean what kind of loving idiots do you think we are, do you think the Venezuelan people are not aware that getting rid of Maduro and replacing him with a transitional government would be the way to go?

I mean, it was the international left blocking any attempt to remove him before. Or what, you think the rhetoric changed only now? It’s been the same old song and dance since the beginning. I’m loving sick and tired of hearing about the US this and the US that but when we request help from other sources your branch of the international left blocks it anyway, because for some loving reason claiming you’re a Marxist and anti imperialist shields you from scrutiny.

When the crisis wasn’t as bad as it was, we tried. We got blocked, we didn’t get international backing, so Maduro stayed. The international left has done next to nothing to ensure the wellbeing of Venezuela’s democracy, but now you want us to loving listen to you? No solutions whatsoever for 8 years, but nah you know better than us?

fnox posted:

Literally, the left intelligentsia abroad. The Latin American left is mostly sympathetic and perhaps realises that getting rid of Maduro ASAP is crucial in avoiding further US action and stabilizing the country to put a brake on the refugee crisis. The European left (I’m going to exclude the British from that) similarly have turned against Maduro, albeit far too late and after having fallen for Maduro’s stall tactics. Maduro’s remaining allies are the Cuba aligned countries of Latin America, and anglophone leftists without much of a clue of what’s really going on in the country.

fnox posted:

We live in a world that is very, very tightly connected through social media. The news that people spread, they matter. What you say on the internet, matters. At some point nobody gave a poo poo, but if you have a large enough following, you have influence. The influence of the American left in social media is entirely destructive to any opposition causes (be them left or right) in Venezuela. They do not contribute towards advancing a peaceful transition.

Social media got Trump elected, I'd just like to remind you of that. The spread of misinformation is an extremely powerful weapon for maintaining control over people, and thus far the American left has been dedicated to spreading Maduro's propaganda unquestioningly. One thing that Maduro is extremely effective at is the creation of propaganda and of misdirections and he, as did Chavez, understands how loving easy it is to get Marxists and Communists to vociferously spread anything that is perceived anti-imperialist. Maduro having outreach grants him leverage, it makes him stronger, just like Trump he is able to make divisions where there should be none.

And I'll of course admit that the opposition has been absolutely loving awful at using social media to their advantage. Someone like Capriles, who had a sizeable amount of support, completely squandered his potential by being atrocious at handling his internet presence. Guaido similarly has flubbed things, and it doesn't help that Youtube and Twitter are blocked countrywide every time he makes one of his hour long statements. The leftist opposition to Maduro? They're a complete loving joke at handling social media, this is why you don't know of them. But truth be told, having a constant stream of misinformation repeated ad nauseum does not help.

fnox posted:

I'm not talking about right now. I'm talking about the rest of the Maduro presidency. The US could invade whenever they want to, the people responsible (other than Trump) don't want to, therefore it hasn't happened. That's always been plenty obvious to me. Those democracy watchdogs that I am talking about already failed to keep Maduro in check, that's already happened. I'm talking about the dozens of times there were endogenous threats to the Maduro presidency and this same old song and dance came along, and it quieted things down. You know what has happened on the last 7 or so years right? You don't think that the only opposition to Maduro is Guaido, am I correct?