Are We There Yet?

I couldn’t help but discover how romantic the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara was in my analysis of the man. Che is portrayed as a smart and fortunate person who left medical school, because of all the injustice around him in Latin America. Che’s love of the Latin people drives him to Join the 26^th of July Movement, a rebel army, where he will help Fidel Castro overthrow Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Numerous books and films romanticize Che, as well as bring to life his ideologies of socialism and communitarism. However, each form of rhetoric doesn’t have the optimistic Hollywood ending, as well as leaves the audience wondering what happened to Cuba after the Cuban revolution.

Che’s efforts and ideologies would give the Cuban people the basic human needs: education, public health services, food distribution and longer life expectancy, as well as rid the country of foreign capitalists. However, after Che’s death in Bolivia, Cuba was left with a reality of an undeveloped economy, and a leader that couldn’t seem to decide what direction the government and its society was heading in. During the Batista reign, the economy relied on its main product, sugar, in which the United States would control 70 to 80% of the consumption. The shortcoming in the economical development would force vulnerability in Cuban trade, as well as force Fidel Castro to depend on the Russian economy after the U.S. embargoed Cuba in the after effects of the revolution.

The declining economy would lead to non housing development, and the citizens were forced to live in the urban slums that dated back to the 1920’s. Worst of all, Fidel Castro became a totalitarian that couldn’t decide whether the Cuban society should head toward socialism or democracy. Castro withholds the countries money, and forces the people to rely on food rationings that have declined due to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and Cuba’s poor agriculture. By the 1990’s, the Cuban people were then left to rely on the tourist attraction in Havana and Varadero, where they commit prostitution, theft, and other violent crimes. The decline in food rationings, as well as the little money that the Cuban people make in sinister actions, have forced the citizens to consume their currency in the black market. In 2001, Castro announced that his brother, Raul, would be his successor. Raul would inherit $20 billion in unpaid debt to Russia, as well as a limping economy that is on the verge of collapse.

The aftereffects of the revolution have helped me see why Che’s stories don’t have the cliché of romantic Hollywood endings. The overthrow of Batista in the later 1950’s gave the Cuban people their basic survival needs, but the country never developed politically or economically. The people are still left with uncertain futures, and the aftereffects make me wonder if Cuba ever won the war.