CHILE: Miracleman Pinochet

Tim Brown, whose wife is Costa Rican, writes to us from San José: "Carmen Negrin's view of Cuba and Havana suffers from only two errors of fact. If Cuba has done so well, why did the UN development Program just rank it below Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica when - in 1959 it was far, far ahead of all three? I fully expect her reply to go as follows - in so far as there is anything at all wrong in Cuba, it is entirely the fault of the Americans and their embargo. Neither Castro, Communism nor the absolute absence of a free market have had anything whatsoever to do with it. Having free and continuous trade with Canada, and all of Europe, Asia, and Latin America has not and cannot be sufficient to any nation, nor in the case of Cuba was receiving massive Soviet Bloc economic assistance over a period of more than forty years at an average rate equal to more than 20% of Cuba's gross national product of any value whatsoever. All this is nothing because, regardless of massive economic aid that, on a per capita basis, was the highest of any country in the world, without trading with the US, Cuba cannot possibly be expected ever to prosper.

As to her argument that Cuba has done better than Haiti, she is correct. But, then, so has every other country in the Western Hemisphere and most of the countries of Africa. What she omits is that a dozen countries at least, such as Costa Rica (I''m sitting in an internet cafe in San Jose, Costa Rica writing this, after a trip to Nicaragua, both of which look better than Cuba did two years ago when I was there) have run rings about Castro Cuba, without having to deny their citizens their civil liberties. In relative life expectancy, infant moprtality and literacy, Cuba started extremely high in 1959 and has been dropping steadily ever since, while virtually every other country in the Americas, with the exception of Haiti, has been steadily improving. And that's not just my personal view. The UNDP agrees with me and just published its annual ranking of all the countries in the world based on these and similar key indicators of social well-being, and its conclusions fully support this view.

Ms. Negrin's second factual error is either never to have personally visited Old Havana, or having done so with her eyes wide shut by looking at false store fronts without ever knocking on their doors and looking inside. With the exception of a handful of facades and a couple of government offices, not one building in Old Havana has been adequately restored. This despite tens of millions of dollars every year from UNESCO. If that is the best the world can do with its architectual jewels, of which Old Havana is one, the world's treasure of such buildings and areas is doomed to disappear very soon indeed.

On Pinochet, I would hardly call him a miracle worker. He was not. What he was was a pragmatist willing to get the government out of the way of private industry, and not too proud to listen to his economists.

Ronald Hilton - 8/2/03