, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human rights records in all of Latin America. If, despite this record, the United States can insist that Cuba is the only "non-democracy" in the Western Hemisphere, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that this thing called "democracy", as seen from the White House, may have little or nothing to do with many of our most cherished human rights. Indeed, numerous pronouncements emanating from Washington officialdom over the years make plain that "democracy", at best, or at most, is equated solely with elections and civil liberties. Not even jobs, food, and shelter are part of the equation. Thus, a nation with hordes of hungry, homeless, untended sick, barely literate, unemployed, and/or tortured people, who have loved ones, are being disappeared and/or murdered with state connivance, can be said to be living in a "democracy". Its literal Greek meaning of "rule of the people" implying that this is the kind of life the people actually want -- provided that every two years or four years they have the right to go to a designated place and put an X next to the name of one or another individual who promises to relieve their miserable condition. But who will, typically, do virtually nothing of the kind; and provided further that in this society there is at least a certain minimum of freedom -- how much being in large measure a function of one's wealth -- for one to express ones views about the powers-that-be and the workings of the society. Without undue fear of punishment, regardless of whether expressing these views has any influence whatsoever over the way things are. It is not by chance that the United States has defined democracy in this narrow manner. Throughout the cold war, the absence of "free and fair" multiparty elections and adequate civil liberties were what marked the Soviet foe and its satellites. These nations, however, provided their citizens with a relatively decent standard of l...
