Cuba's revolution of 1959 was similar to the budding revolutions that are now taking place in the Middle East in that ordinary citizens were fed up with an unfair regime. Cuban people once viewed Fulgencio Batista as Egyptians now see Mubarak. Although the Cuban Revolution was successful in ending Batista's reign, the manner in which this goal was achieved resulted in grave consequences, including tremendous bloodshed and a loss of civil liberties.
The leaders of the Cuban Revolution, including Castro and Guevara, used violence rather than peaceful civil disobedience to win their struggle and their new government ended up adopting a restrictive style of government rather than a democracy. (I realize that there are many complexities to these movements that won't be addressed in this post, however I just wanted to draw the historical link in light of the present situation.) The political unrest that many Mid-East nations are experiencing as a result of revolutionary-style protests has placed the citizens of these nations in a vulnerable position.
In addition to being fed-up with autocratic rule, demonstrators in Jordan are motivated by rising food and fuel prices, and poor living conditions; all of which many blame on market-liberalizing economic decisions implemented in the 2000's. Revolutionaries in Cuba were led by similar concerns and once their revolutionary war was over, Cuba's new government mistakenly aligned itself with the international Communist Party while implementing social justice reforms to benefit its formerly oppressed citizenry. Hopefully, this scenario won't play out in the Mid-East with new governments siding with terrorist groups or extremist elements of more pluralistic groups. Yemen is the home to Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula and the Muslim Brotherhood, which has some questionable elements among its ranks, has taken a leadership role in speaking for protestors in Jordan.
History in the making is always fascinating to watch and I really hope that the United States and other nations continue to weigh-in on the Mid-East protests in the interest of peaceful democratic social change in whatever ways they can.
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1 comment:
I'm not a great student of revolutions but it seems like so many end up replacing oppressive regimes with another variety of oppressive regimes. It seems that without elections or even a change in constitution, bill of rights or something of the sort revolutions are nothing more than riots. I see why they are frustrated but this outburst may be more self mutilating than reforming.
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