opinion@dailylobo.com
What greater pride can a nation have than that for having stood up and exercised self determination to free itself from tyranny? What better feeling can a nation feel when each July they see their flag — that red, white and blue — rise high, knowing the legacy that stands behind it? Every nation should be so fortunate to have a group of patriots willing to lead it from subjugation into self determination.
Consider this small group, patriots in a colony ruled by a distant empire across the sea. With leaders foisted upon them, supporting policies not for the benefit of the citizens but for foreign businesses. They labored under laws enacted to advance all but themselves and finally came to see they were not citizens at all, but mere subjects. These patriots rose up to shed themselves of tyranny and a government in which they had no representation.
In the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers put the preamble first for a reason. It is a mission statement of sorts; the laws in the rest of the document are meant to support it. These ideals in the preamble are essential to liberty, intrinsic to freedom, invaluable to self determination. Without them you cannot have a secure nation, a healthy nation, an educated nation and, most importantly, a sovereign nation.
There is no free will nor self determination, as they are a colony; they are subjects, not citizens. At least until a small group revolts.
A government with no vested interests but profit, distant from its colony, is no perfect union. A government without presence lacks compassion for its people and cannot establish justice. Force of arms and soldiers used to enforce colonial rule for profit could provide no domestic tranquility.
When people have no means to protect themselves or resist, there’s no common defense. When profits are more important than people, there can be no general welfare. These are the basic tenets of our preamble.
But one nation and its patriots threw off these shackles of colonialism and imperialism, and in doing so improved the lives of their citizens at every basic level. Gone were the chains of a government across the sea. Gone were laws made to profit foreign business. Gone was the idea they were mere subjects to an uncaring empire.
In its place came education, health care and the knowledge that these things weren’t just changes for the now and for themselves, but for their posterity and future.
So their children could grow and have access to the kind of life only the privileged were entitled to before. Education and an ability to rise above. Health care that would raise life expectancy and lower infant mortality. Their children could work for the betterment of their nation, not just to enrich businesses and a government overseas. That their future would have a government of the people, for the people and by the people. That their nation would not be a colony, but a sovereign nation.
With a vision and perseverance their desires were accomplished. In fewer than 50 years, the average life expectancy increased from 59.5 years to 77.1. Infant mortality decreased from 32 in 1,000 to five. Mortality in children under 5 years of age decreased from 54 in 1,000 to 6.1. The building of hospitals flourished and preventative medicine and simple hygiene were brought to all in urban and rural areas.
During the next 50 years, education became a focus and the dividends were seen in this. Literacy across the board rose from 75 percent to 99.8 percent. In rural areas, often paid no attention while in colonial status except to supply labor, literacy rose from 45 percent to 98 percent. Their efforts can now boast of 100 percent literacy rates among children. Schools and universities exploded across the nation as education became paramount.
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These patriots led a revolution that pushed off a history of colonialism and imperialistic rule, and replaced it with the betterment of its people — core concepts lost on many of us today as we benefit from a healthy system in place for hundreds of years. It’s easy in retrospect to lose sight of what gifts these must have been for those subjects who became citizens. Not just to those living in those times, but their children and their children’s, knowing their children would have access to the fruits of a system they were previously denied. A system that now provides education, health care and life expectancy, concepts that are difficult to comprehend as lacking today, yet rarities to these subjects in the past.
These ideologies came about because a nation had a small group of visionaries willing to fight against a corrupt and abusive colonial system. A group willing to embrace the ideals of our preamble ensuring a future for their growing country. This was a group who suffered through hardships and deprivation to fight not just for their freedom and that of their countrymen, but for the changing and removal of a system that was designed to make them subjects. Led by the father of their country, against all odds, against the will and wishes of the largest empire in the world at the time, succeeded in securing their right to self determination and a government led by their own people.
This nation was Cuba, and its patriots were men such as Raul Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos and their leader, the father of their new country, Fidel Castro. They took up arms to oust a government that worked not for the benefit of their people, but for vested business interests of the United States. United Fruit Company was the exploiter here, much like the Saint Johns Bay company was for England in the United States colonies. They chose to fight for the opportunity to lead Cuba and remove the control of a far-flung empire across the sea.
And despite American claims to support free will of the people and self determination, it was not supportive it in this case, despite all evidence that this colony of subjects suffered under its reaching rule. Instead, the United States immediately enacted a policy and efforts to work externally to subdue and remove a government that came about from the will of the residents of the nation itself. A policy they would repeat in Vietnam and seek to repeat today in Egypt. Because these countries acted in self determination, but contrary to the desires and wants of the United States.
Despite financing and supplying invasions of Cuba, a plethora of failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, and a decades-long embargo imposed on Cuba, the nation has thrived. To actually best the U.S. in literacy rates, life expectancy and infant mortality rates — core needs of a people. What couldn’t Cuba have done if it hadn’t had to work against the constant attempts of the U.S. to undermine it? It could probably be a nation filled with a population that matched the standards of what Americans hold dear: a flat screen TV in every room to watch reality television.
It’s easy to judge Cuba from an American point of view, in terms of what it lacks, but the perspective of a nation whose citizens have been assured of quality of life and education for hundreds of years might be a flawed perspective to judge a nation that has had it for mere decades. A nation that had to fight for itself against corrupt leadership supported by the largest empire in the world.
An empire that at its foundation speaks of a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but seems determined not to let it happen elsewhere.
It’s time for America to look at its perspective on how it judges and treats other nations and the desires of their people. Even if those people in those nations choose to have a nation that does not fit into America’s view of what a nation should be. Those people in those nations live there with a vested interest in their country outside of profit and political morals.
It’s time for America to not just espouse self determination as an ideal, but to embrace it as an idea and justice for all.
