Winston Castro
SIR,--- What is Quoodle (if it really is Quoodle and not some gremlin) so upset about?
He can hardly accuse me of writing 'an apologia for the [Cuban] regime,' when he goes on to list everything he thinks wrong with it, all culled from my Observer article, and, as he underlines. repro- ducing what I saw with my own eyes (myopic as 1 may be. I'm not accustomed to using other people's).
1 am sure Quoodle doesn't sec any parallel be- tween Fidel and Churchill, but many Cubans do. And he's welcome to put Fidel in quotes if he likes, but Cubans don't. It's the man's name. The country, whatever may be alleged, does not seem like a military dictatorship; it seems like a country at war, which is not the same tit also seems like a country under a blockade. which it is). I've lived under a military dictatorship (Pectin's in Argentina) and it was very different. Fear was almost tangible; no one dared open his mouth.
In Cuba, on the other hand, my wife and 1 spent a day with a charming and witty self-styled gusano (worm or anti-revolutionary), who drove us around in his car, invited us to tea (Lipton's. and borrowed from the local Leyland bus represcnative), and con- demned Castro and all his works to all who would listen, in private and in public, concentrating his fire on a Communist doctor. In Peron's Argentina he'd have been arrested; in Nazi Germany he'd probably have been dead. But after six years of such self- expression he's alive and free.
I quite agree with Quoodle's remarks on the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution. I said they were 'probably the least desirable feature of the revue. and much disliked.' I couldn't have been mach plainer than that But their vigilance and unpopularity do vary irom place to place. Even our wilts worm friend admitted it. although he blames them ilim anytning. including a burglary and the breaking of one of the headlights of his car (tor which he could better blame the police, whose job is detending the citizen rather than the revolu- tion, or better still the burglars and the headlamp- breakers).
To bring in the Gestapo is fantastic, and to refer to Jews in concentration camps even more so. Pos- sibly the most positive achievement of the Castro regime has been the elimination of racial discrimina- tion. If religion is concerned, Quoodle is welcome (if he doesn't believe me) to consult the Papal Nuncio in Havana or the representative of the World Coun- cil of Churches who was in Cuba when we were, and not for the first time. .
'Marxist-Leninist tyranny'---well, it's a fine evoca- tive phrase which might make anyone tremble. True enough, the Cubans call their system Marxist- Leninism, but I doubt if Marx or Lenin would recog- nise it. or if most Cubans (for better or for worse) know what they mean by it.
And I see nothing 'wet' in refraining from bandy- ing about words like 'tyranny,' which might be reserved for regimes which merit them—of which there are doubtless enough, on both sides of the somewhat perforated Iron Curtain, for Quoodle to castigate one a week if he wants to. But irtnight be a
good idea for him to visit the countries concerned before he decides to denounce them.
Oh, and so I'm a Stalinist. Well, well! Stalin must be pretty posthumously surprised.
The 'Observer,' EC4
J. HALCRO FERGUSON
Previous page
