JVLV: Pope’s Visit to Cuba: Tyranny of Communism vs Tyranny of the Market, by Jiri and Leni Friedman Valenta, 9-18-15

These writers admire His Holiness, Pope Francis. Like Jean Paul II, he has shown remarkable courage and compassion while supporting the poor, suffering and disenfranchised throughout the world. Yet, on the eve of his visit to Cuba, and less experienced with communism than his Polish born predecessor, he describes the capitalism replacing communism in various countries as “a new tyranny. ” But while capitalism is flawed system, communism is a disastrous one.  Like fascism, it encompasses a totalitarian system that destroys the souls of human beings, stripping them of all political, civic and religious freedoms. Capitalism, on the other hand, is intricately associated with a rising middle class and its consequent restraints on executive power.

We do not take issue with the U.S. opening to Cuba. This event, partly possible because of Francis’s help, was the right thing to do.  Past U.S. policies have not worked. Economically suffering like its ally, radical Chavista Venezuela, and no longer able to rely on Venezuelan oil, the Cuban regime desperately needed economic assistance and foreign trade to survive.

With all this leverage, however, the opening presided over by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, was not exactly the “art of the deal.” Despite all rhetoric, Kerry unfortunately shunned the Cuban dissidents. At the opening of the U.S. Embassy he shut them out of the building. No space for them. Some excuse!  Neither did he address Russian-Cuban security ties,such as the visit of a Russian intelligence ship to Havana Harbor a day before the invasion of Ukraine, or the Russian interest in renewing listening posts in Lourdes.

The month of August saw hundreds of arrests of dissidents in Cuba, as well as the beatings and dispersions of the Ladies in White, married to political prisoners.  It behooves His Holiness to fill in where Kerry failed. He must take the case of the dissidents to the source, insist on meeting with human rights activists at the Vatican Embassy in Havana, and demand that all political prisoners be freed. He should not be confused by the empty gesture of Castro brothers, used before the visits of the Pope’s two predecessors, Jean Paul II in 1998, and Pope Benedict, in 2012. In both cases the Castros released some prisoners before the papal visit, but those set free did not include prisoners convicted of “violations of state security,” i.e., political prisoners and human rights activists.

Pope Francis should follow the examples of the Czech dissidents turned leaders of the 1989 gentle revolution, the late Vaclav Havel , Minister of Foreign Affairs Jiri Dienstbier and his still living deputy, Martin Palous.  All of these men I brought to Miami with the help of CANF leaders Jorge Mas Canosa and Feliciano Foyo. They rendered selfless support in the cause of human rights and liberty for the still oppressed island of Cuba.  Capitalism may be morally flawed, but Pope Francis hopefully will come to understand that the tyranny of communism is much worse than the tyranny of the market.

Dr. Jiri Valenta is the President of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism.  He was the first academic from the U. of Miami asked to be part of a pioneering, U.S. government-t supported trip of leading American scholars visiting Havana, shortly before the 1988 elections.   His paper presented at the conference was entitled “Comrades, You Need Glasnost Here!” It was reprinted in the Miami Herald in English and Spanish.  He has written on Cuban communism,  Cuban  relations with the former USSR and other former communist nations, and on international terrorism. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Times,  Washington Quarterly,  Cuban Studies, Problems of Communism, and Studies in Comparative Communism, as well as Moscow News  and other leading Russian and Czech periodicals.

In 1988-91, he was the key organizer together with Dr. Andrey Kortunov,  Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, of the Moscow- Miami Dialogues at the University of Miami.  It included the visit of Boris Yeltsin in 1989, and dialogue between key legislators of the Russian parliament and the U.S. Congress.  Valenta also organized the Prague- Miami Dialogues with Czech Foreign Ministry press secetary, Michael Cermak, that brought Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier and his deputy, Martin Palous, to Miami.  He has been a recipient of grants from the Cuban American National Foundation and many others.

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