Economaton

The Wall Street Journal published a fine piece of propaganda this Saturday, entitled Cuban Revolution: Yoani Sánchez fights tropical totalitarianism, one blog post at a time. This article is no lunatic passing out Xeroxed copies of his manifesto on a streetcorner; the Wall Street Journal attracts a rather well educated readership, and thus requires propaganda of a much higher caliber. Half truths are smoothly worked in via the omission of important details rather than through brazen lies, which would easily be detected by many readers. A few mildly neutral statements about the Cuban government are carefully inserted; contrasted with the blatant attacks present throughout the article, these function to lend it a sheen of objectivity. Let’s take a look in more detail at how the WSJ’s top editors carefully groom their presentation of reality so as to shepherd the public along the opinion paths they’ve chosen for us.

Through careful selection of facts, the reader is fed information that is technically true though lacking critical context necessary to fully understand its import. This allows the WSJ to maintain a charade of journalistic neutrality while still accomplishing their propaganda goal of creating and reinforcing negative attitudes towards socialism generally and the current government of Cuba in particular.

I should say up front that I have never been to Cuba. I would like to go, but I am a US citizen, and I am forbidden by my government from going. I believe that the best way to find out how things are in a place is to go there and see it for yourself, firsthand. This way, you can be assured that what you learn is not being filtered through anyone’s biases and altered in transmission. Unfortunately, that is not possible in the case of Cuba. I must therefore rely on the many personal conversations I have had with those who have been to Cuba, and with accounts of Cuba that I have read on the Internet and elsewhere.

I am acutely aware that the topic of Cuba arouses strong passions in many, and that many people on both sides of the issue are thus presenting me with biased information. All I can do to create my own evaluation, therefore, is attempt to gather as much information from all points of view as possible, attempt to become aware of what biases inform each individual report, and hope that the travel embargo will be lifted by the United States government one day so I can see for myself. This article is a part of this effort. I have found an obviously biased source — the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of capitalism itself — and I am attempting to disassemble their writing to become better informed of how things actually are.

Starting at line one, the author is unidentified. The article’s byline says only “Havana, Cuba”; presumably, the Journal editors’ political connections were able to get them a journalistic waiver of the embargo, and the nameless journalist who wrote the piece is even now sipping mojitos on the beach in front of a five star hotel in Havana on the WSJ’s dime for “research and fact gathering purposes”.

The subject of money is fertile ground for such manipulation due to the vast differences in price standards between Cuba and the United States or Europe, where most of the Wall Street Journal’s readers are. In paragraph 2, we read that “The $3 she paid for a half-hour [of Internet access] is nearly a week’s wage for many Cubans”; farther down, “The family lives on between $20 and $60 a month…” This seems like an absurdly tiny amount of money to those of us who live in capitalist economies. However, the Journal neglects to mention that nearly everything in Cuba is either free or sells for pennies &em; doctors are free, medicine is free, university education is free, rent and food and telephone and electricity cost a few US cents every month. When your monthly expenses are less than $10, $20 to $60 is quite good. The average level of expenses is obviously important information to have when evaluating an income stream (as the WSJ, of all people, know very well), yet they somehow overlooked including such information in their article. This can only be deliberate.

The topic of food shortages sticks out as another major theme of the Journal’s anonymous article. I have heard this theme repeatedly in anti-Castro propaganda and especially from the vociferous Cuban exile communinty in Florida, where I lived for many years, so I make it a point to ask people I meet who have been to Cuba about the availability of food. With the exception of the vehemently anti-Castro bloc in Florida, they have universally reported no visible shortage of food. No huge surplus, but no shortage, either. The Journal mentions that the bread ration is “one bun per person per day,” but again fails to provide any meaningful context for this information, preferring to leave it vague and sensationalist. I have no specific information on what food rations are in Cuba. Could it be, perhaps, that everyone receives 1 bun, 1 muffin, and 1 loaf, or something similar, in addition to whatever eggs, meat, flour, etc. they all receive? They could receive a mountain of food every day and the Journal’s statement would still be true as long as only one bun is included. Based on what they say, we just don’t know. Given the obvious omission of context with the question of money, I am strongly inclined to believe they have performed a similar feat of sophistic trickery here.

Finally, the issue of oppression and freedom of speech: the Journal says that Cuba is “Stalinism with conga drums,” describes Sanchez’ routine of posting her blog to the Internet as a “cloak-and-dagger routine,” accompanies the article with film noir-style graphics of a shady back alley Internet cafe, mentions that “saying what you think in Cuba can be dangerous,” etc., and then, “Not only does she write from Cuba, she even signs her name and posts a photo of herself on her Web site.” That hardly sounds like the action of a woman who fears the secret police coming and hauling her off in the middle of the night.

Comparisons to the Soviet Union under Stalin are absurd at best. The author further mentions in passing that there is an “official opposition” to the government (without elaboration), and says that “dozens” of journalists were arrested in 2002 for unspecified “criticisms of the regime”, and “many” are still there. I suspect that these journalists were making overt threats to overthrow the government, and I suspect that far more than 12 people are in jail right now for making similar threats against the government of the United States - though again, details are lacking from the reportage. Here we have several huge contradictions: they attempt to paint a country where criticism of the government is suppressed, though there is an “offical opposition;” the article itself is about a blogger who writes posts critical of the government and yet uses her real name and photo on her website.

Is Sanchez real? According to the WSJ, many Cuban exiles in the US suspect that she is an operative of the Cuban government, because if not she would be in jail. Perhaps they must besmirch her reputation so because her very existence demonstrates that Cuba isn’t nearly so bad as they would like people in the USA to believe. This is indeed the biggest hole I find in the anti-Cuban propaganda: if Cuba really was an island of starving, wretched, miserable people living in constant fear of their own government, the capitalists would be very happy for residents of the US to go and see such horrid conditions for themselves, firsthand &em; there could be no better indictment of Communism. That they have chosen instead the opposite tack, that is, to restrict US residents from visting Cuba freely, merely indicates that there is something there they want to hide: Communism in Cuba is probably actually not so bad. I don’t know. I hope I can go and see for myself what it’s actually like one day.