Recovering nonviolent history in Cuba

If there is one doctrine that has proven incompatible with human rights over the past century it is militarism. Unfortunately, the history books are full of stories about past military victories that focus on war as the means to achieve political objectives. The history of the success of nonviolent resistance over the centuries has been practically non-existent. Over the past generation a small group of academics have sought to remedy this and the latest is Maciej J. Bartkowski.

Maciej J. Bartkowski is the senior director for research and education at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the editor of Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles.The introduction and table of contents are available in pdf format.

Below is a presentation by Dr. Maciej Bartkowski in August of  2012 on "Forming a Movement: Cognitive Liberation "


There is a section on Cuba in this new work Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles that should be translated into Spanish and be required reading for anyone observing or involved in the pro-democracy struggle in Cuba to gain a better understanding of the underlying dynamics there. Below is a summary of the chapter.

Cuba: Nonviolent Strategies for Autonomy and Independence, 1810s-1902

by Alfonso W. Quiroz

Prevailing interpretations of nineteenth-century Cuban history eulogize guerrilla-style violence and fault nonviolent civilian efforts for undermining the national quest for independence. However, a detailed study of Cuban struggles for self-determination shows that at the core of the national cause lay nonviolent strategies and actions led by civilian-based political and civic movements. These were defiant struggles to oppose colonialist restrictions and abuses, build national consensus among popular groups, and achieve full constitutional rights and political autonomy. Through educational and journalistic efforts, as well as civil society organizing, nonviolent forms of action contributed to far-reaching reforms. Yet, destructive internal wars, triggered by separatist violence, and looming dangers of foreign intervention, seriously challenged nonviolent activities. Nonetheless, civil resistance managed to build the cornerstones of a post-independence republican democracy and civil society.

Bartkowski has also co-authored articles on civil resistance that include A Human Right to Resist, Egypt: How to Negotiate the Transition. Lessons from Poland and China  and forthcoming Snowball Effects and Political Space in Civil Resistance: Understanding the Effectiveness of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict. Dr. Bartkowski is an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University where he co-teaches a course on civil resistance. 

A conservative conception of universal human rights: Does full human rights protection require an engaged social democratic welfare state?

The dialogue on human rights continues

Gandhi: "The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form."

This is the third part of a dialogue with Joel R. Pruce, a Post Doc in Human Rights Studies at the University of Dayton on the conflicts between a conservative political outlook  and a liberal conception of human rights. In part one offered a conservative conception of human rights rooted in the Catholic Church. In part two explored, although incompletely, Edmund Burke's conception of particular human rights versus abstract human rights.

Now, will address two questions that arise from Joel's observation over twitter that:

"A full version of rights-protection requires an engaged social democratic welfare state, which modern conservatives oppose.  Short of that, certain rights may be protected (civ/pol), but the rest are left up to charity and the will of the market. Certainly many conservatives are caricatures, but even Reagan/Thatcherites had a disdain for the state and for its expansion. Spiritual and moral 'conservatism' as you call it may be very compatible w/ rights, but mainstream political conservatism isn't."   

 First question that arises as a matter of policy would conservatives when given power undo the social democratic welfare state? Both under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher the social democratic welfare state continued to grow, although at a slower pace than Democratic and Labor governments respectively. Also it was under George Herbert Walker Bush, Reagan's successor, that the American Disabilities Act was signed into law. Furthermore, under George W. Bush the Federal Government expanded into both health care with a seniors prescription drug benefit and the expansion of federal government control over education with No Child Left Behind.

It appears that mainstream "modern political conservatives" rhetorically oppose some aspects of "the social democratic welfare state"  but in practice have expanded it when not creating new entitlements and expanding rights categories.

The second question that arises is to the degree that an engaged social democratic welfare state requires an expansive and centralized government does it pose a threat to human rights? Conservatives, not libertarians, do not have a problem with a strong state that is limited to its proper scope. Unfortunately, today in American discourse those voices are few and far between. At the same time you have those who have some conservative instincts but combine them with libertarianism, which is not conservative, as is the case with former Congressman Ron Paul and Senator Rand Paul.

History has demonstrated, in the case of Weimar Germany in the 1920s and 1930s that a powerful social democratic welfare state can become so powerful that when bad actors get into a position of political control it can be transformed into a state that can systematically deny human rights to an extreme never seen before and with horrific consequences. Barry Goldwater's speechwriter Karl Hess summed it up:  "Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany is a horror; Adolf Hitler at a town meeting would be an asshole." In a social democratic welfare state the opportunity for the abuse of power is great whereas in a New England town hall meeting it is minimal.

Mohandas Gandhi, a self-described socialist, was not an enthusiastic proponent of an expanded welfare state arguing: 

The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. Hence I prefer the doctrine of trusteeship. [...] What I would personally prefer would be not centralization of power in the hands of the State, but an extension of the sense of trusteeship, as, in my opinion, the violence of private ownership is less injurious than the violence of the State. However, if it is unavoidable, I would support a minimum of State-ownership.

An aside, when Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 the Soviet press initially attacked him as a "reactionary utopian" due to his rejection of class warfare as violence and his doctrine of trusteeship.

 Finally, returning to Edmund Burke who observed that “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites." The conservative argument would be translated into modern terms that the more developed and responsive civil society is the less government is needed.  That this depends on the fundamental unit of political life, the family, being in good shape with divorce rates low and high percentages of two parent families. Now with the decline of two parent families over the past two generations in the United States the need for an expanded social welfare state is an unhappy necessity and a failure of civilization. The Catholic Church has a principle of subsidiarity that within in its catechism outlines the danger of extensive state intervention: 

Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

In conclusion, full human rights protection requires a fully engaged state but that does not mean that it has to be administered by the government. Now if society at large begins to fail then responsibilities that were handled in the private sphere may have to be picked up by government. The problem is that this raises new problems because the government is not good in doing many of these things and also it can lead to social atrophy which decreases social capital and leads to additional responsibilities being loaded onto the government in a vicious cycle that leads to a crisis of legitimacy for the government when it cannot meet its vastly expanded obligations. 

Evicted along with his family and left homeless for political reasons to die

 Former Cuban political prisoner Luis Enrique Santos Caballero evicted, humiliated and left homeless along with the rest of his family for political reasons in Cuba by State Security is slowly dying.  Luis Enrique began a hunger strike on May 24, 2013 demanding housing for him and his family. His health was compromised to begin with, he has only one kidney.

Fifteen days into the hunger strike and his condition has rapidly deteriorated and his demands have not been met. His wife has engaged in public protests demanding that Luis Enrique's demands be met. Until now the agents of the dictatorship have responded to the demands raised in public actions only with repression.

In a world where the stability of countries can be shaken and governments overthrown by a vendor being mistreated in Tunisia, or the police engaging in violence against activists protesting the destruction of one of the last spots of green space in Istanbul setting off nation wide protests in Turkey, regime's especially autocratic ones like Cuba had better think long and hard about the acts of repression and humiliation they carry out. Any one of them can be the straw that broke the camel's back and usher in dramatic change.
 
Last night, June 7, 2013,  Luis Enrique was transferred to a hospital and his condition was extremely fragile. Many fear for his life and are uncertain about his fate in the hands of regime officials.

Time is running out and Luis Enrique Santos Caballero risks suffering the fate of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar Mendoza, Pedro Luis Boitel, dying while defending dignity with his own body in a hunger strike.

Below is the latest report from Jorge Garcia Perez "Antunez" of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front on the status of Luis Enrique.

Porno para Ricardo calling out to fans: A New Album and A World Tour

"Inside the Revolution nothing, Outside of the Revolution everything." - Porno para Ricardo, This year it will fall

New Album from Porno para Ricardo: Maleconazo ahora

Nineteen years ago on August 5, 1994, the word "liberty"was chanted through the streets of Havana, Cuba by thousands of Cubans spontaneously gathered in protest against the dictatorship and desiring freedom. The response by the regime was violent repression and police shooting at unarmed civilians and beating them down with night sticks. This became known as the Maleconazo. Part of the reason for the uprising was the "13 de Marzo"tugboat massacre that had taken place less than three weeks earlier just six miles from the Malecon in Havana. Family members and survivors bravely spoke out and the news of what happened had gotten out. 

Three months ago Cuban blogger Reinaldo Escobar reported over twitter on Saturday March 9, 2013 at 10:23am that "Gorki Águila has just been detained by police to impede launch today of the record "Maleconazo Now." After 24 hours in detention Gorki was released. 


The record has been launched and is available for purchase online for $7.00. Some of their previous catalogue is available at Amazon.com. The band has also announced a world tour, but needs the help of fans to be able to finance part of the logistics of the trip. In the video above with English subtitles they explain the aims and costs of the tour.  Below you can listen to the new album.

Lessons from Tiananmen Square: The importance of strategy and planning

In the spring of 1989, Chinese students and workers occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square and began the largest nonviolent political protest in China's history. At the height of the movement, over one million people marched in the streets of Beijing. The movement ended with the government's crackdown and the Beijing massacre of June 4. Below is the documentary, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, that captures the days of protest leading up to the crackdown and the massacre.

Gene Sharp in the documentary How to Start a Revolution described what he witnessed during his visit to China in the summer of 1989:

I’d gone to Beijing after the Tiananmen Square protests were well underway. That whole event, which it should be remembered, was not just in Beijing, but reportedly in 350 other cities
of China, similar protests were going on, but they were not planned. They were not prepared. There was no strategic decision. There was no advanced decision how long you stay in the square and when you leave. What became very clear to me in retrospect was that the students in the square were operating with great commitment and bravery, but they really didn’t know what the hell they were doing. The students had no plan. They were improvising all the way through, and later on we know that many of those Chinese people who were out on the streets, in another day, were shot and killed. The attitude that you simply improvise and improvisation will bring you greater success is nonsense. Exactly the opposite – that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re likely to get into big trouble.

Both How to Start a Revolution and The Gate of Heavenly Peace are important documentaries that strategic nonviolent activists should watch. Especially as events unfold in Turkey both remain extremely relevant.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace - Tiananmen Square Protests (Part 1 of 2)

The Gate of Heavenly Peace - Tiananmen Square Protests (Part 2 of 2)