…If you attended North Miami Senior High in the 60s, you would have had me for company. I too was bored with history and civics and subjects of little interest to a teenager. Somehow, however, I managed over the decades that followed to have assimilated enough of those topics to have some comprehension of what is going on today.
Even in those early years, while not thoroughly understanding Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement in the late 50s, I did see the sudden immigration of Cubans to Miami. It would be years before I learned that the CIA had funded Castro with the aim of gaining his goodwill and influence before he seized power.
I also saw when all that “goodwill” turned against us. On family drives to the keys in the fall of 1962, HAWK missile sites had sprung up in Miami and along US1 on various keys and at Smathers beach and other locations in Key West. There were radar installations, rocket launchers, barbed wire, and machine gun emplacements. Even as a kid you knew something was amiss.
Castro had militarily taken over the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista, the current dictator, who had himself come to power during a coup in 1952. Castro seized power in January of 1959, but he didn’t let people know he was a Marxist-Leninist until December of 1961. One dictator had replaced another dictator, then that dictator aligned with the Soviet Union who placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, and all of this brought us to the brink of nuclear war in October of 1962. I was a high school senior.
Yes, while sleeping through history class, history was being made all around me. It would be years before I realized how close I was to the proverbial fan with a ton of manure heading my way. Looking back, the old axiom of, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” has renewed emphasis.
Cuba had flirted with democracy between 1902 and the 1950s. During this period, it vacillated between democratic and authoritarian regimes. During its democratic periods, Cuba was plagued by social inequality brought on through political violence and corruption.
The Cuban 1940 Constitution was progressive with guarantees of civil rights, universal suffrage, a minimum wage, and social protections. Batista was elected president in 1940 and stepped down in 1944, at the end of his term when his opponent won a free election. He seized power again in 1952 and suspended the 1940 Constitution.
When Fidel Castro began his revolution, he publicly promised to restore democracy, individual rights, freedom of the press, free speech, free elections, and to reinstate the 1940 Constitution. He campaigned against the “regime of terror and dictatorship” of Fulgencio Batista. In a 1957 manifesto Castro vowed to, “put an end to a regime based on force and the violation of individual rights.”
After he seized power, however, Castro consolidated his control, banned all political parties except his own, censored the press, suspended elections, executed opponents, then openly declared himself to be a Marxist-Leninist. Cuba became a socialist state governed by another dictator.
Now, with that brief refresher course in the history of one failed state, we come to a state closer to home. In my case, a mere 90 miles away. It is here that we can begin our cautionary tale comparing Donald Trump’s current administration and the early promises of Fidel Castro.
We can do this, not focusing on ideology, but more on political method: both figures rose to power channeling popular frustration and pledging to restore dignity to the people. For Trump, it was to make America great again. Both leaders managed to portray established institutions as corrupt obstacles to national renewal.
Both leaders, after rhetoric about restoring and defending a constitution, then consolidated power, sidelined independent courts, marginalized the media and dissenting opinion, and eventually turned a promised democracy into one-man rule.
Trump’s rhetoric supported the “real” nation against the elites. He espoused this logic to eliminate institutional checks and used personal loyalty to determine a person’s worth. Even though the structural safeguards of American democracy are much stronger than in pre-Castro Cuba, there are parallels to be made. This is not a prediction of a similar outcome, but it is a warning of the damage that can be wrought at the hands of a single individual without a conscience surrounded by those who may stand to benefit from his actions.
That 68% of my Miami-Dade Cuban neighbors supported Donald Trump in the last election, is a sign that they not only slept through history class, but are confusing a democratic balance of capitalism, economic fairness, and community investment, with the dreaded socialism of their Cuba experience. They have once again tried to find the answer to their problems with another dictator. Their toxic masculinity and machismo seem to find solace in strongman leaders, i.e., authoritarian dictators.
The Castro-Trump analogies are about methodology and not ideology. We are not comparing communism or socialism to capitalism. When the result is a dictatorship, the political philosophy of that leader is a lesser concern. Benevolent dictators are as rare as polka dot unicorns and widely considered a myth. You need to go back to Frederick II in the 18th century, the “enlightened despot,” who enacted reforms beneficial to his subjects, to find something close. The overwhelming majority, however, are true tyrants seeking their own glorification and financial benefit. To quote British historian Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This is a reminder that history is rife with examples of democratic backsliding that often begins with populist promises and then an acceptance of a gradual normalization of attacks on accountability and pluralism. In our case, pluralism has been eroded by a corrupt Supreme Court that has consolidated power in a single branch of government without accountability. We end up with a kakistocracy, defined by a government run by the least suitable and least competent of our citizens.
If we study our history and learn its lessons, perhaps we can avoid further damage. We are just now seeing some of the backlash from the actions of our Supreme Commander with his armed men in balaclavas committing atrocities on both immigrants and citizens. They act without consequence as Trump’s personal goon squad, alongside a weaponized Attorney General’s office, to politically attack and intimidate democratic enclaves and his perceived rivals.
In this, he has truly, “crossed the Rubicon.” It is an act of insurrection. There is currently justifiable outrage as more Americans refuse to be complicit in the lies and actions of a corrupt leader. The civic destruction wrought in this first year will be decades in the mending. Some of the damage will never be undone. “The only true mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
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