Press Home » Press Releases » Mission Press Releases » Fact Sheets » Media Advisories » Speeches and Test » Development Calendar » Reports to Congress » Photo Gallery » FrontLines » Contact USAID »
	08/09/09: Remarks by Alonzo L. Fulgham, Acting Administrator, USAID, at the Second Annual Haitian Diaspora Unity Congress 07/30/09: Testimony by Earl Gast, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Africa, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations - "Responding to Humanitarian Needs, Supporting Peace, and Implementing Development Priorities in Sudan" 07/29/09: Statement for the Record of Jon C. Brause, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, before the Senate Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs 07/29/09: Statement for the Record Submitted by Margot B. Ellis, Acting Assistant Administrator for Asia, before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment - "Ushering in Change: A New Era for U.S. Regional Policy in the Pacific" RSS Feed for Recent USAID Speeches and Testimony
	Advanced search... Search USAID Personnel... Search USAID Documents...

This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.

Andrew S. Natsios
Administrator for United States Agency for International Development

United States Agency for International Development and Cuba

Speech delivered at Casa Bacardi
Institute for Cuban American Studies
University of Miami
March 11, 2004

"The history of all existing society," Karl Marx famously declared, "is the history of class struggles." Marx would have us believe that history is not determined by ideas. Rather, history is determined by the material interests that divide societies into classes - patricians and plebeians, lords and serfs, capitalists and proletarians, in a word, of oppressor and oppressed.

For those who were born in the last century-and survived it- this is manifestly not true. The last century was fundamentally a clash of ideas not a struggle between classes. It was the story of free market democracy and its struggle against rival ideologies of the left and right - of Communism and Nazism. The one had boasted that we would be "swept into the ashcan of history." The other had declared that the world would fall under the domination of "a Thousand Year Reich." Free market democracy emerged triumphant from the challenges. At the end of the century, it was accepted almost universally as the sole legitimate regime, an object of aspiration in the areas of the world where it is not yet fully realized.

I specifically said "almost universally." There are exceptions. In North Korea, of course, and among Medieval fundamentalists, like the Taliban. They and al-Qaeda remind us that we have not yet finished with totalitarian threats and the barbarous means by which they advance their agendas. And this includes Fidel Castro.

Mid-century, in the Cold War atmosphere of the fifties and sixties, he stood at the vanguard of world revolution. At the end of the century, this is his company: Kim Jung Il and the Taliban Mullahs. There are no more bizarre and reactionary leaders on the planet.

I would like to send a message to Castro. It's not the kind he is accustomed to receive, especially from a USG official. I recommend he reread his Marx, if he hasn't read it recently. Perhaps he hasn't read him at all, like many academics who nominally call themselves Marxists. Among other things, I refer him to Marx's commentary on the reign of Emperor Louis Napoleon.

Louis Napoleon came to power in a military coup. But toward the end of his long reign, the "wavering and fumbling" Emperor was unable to contain the forces for change that were accumulating under his tyrannical rule. He no longer had the ability to buy off disgruntled groups and was forced to a "miniature coup every day." He filled his prisons with journalists but could not still the dissident voices.

What tyrants have most to fear is appearing ludicrous. This is when the disconnect between their claims and reality become comically apparent to everyone, except perhaps the tyrant. Jokes at his expense can be more devastating than expressions of public outrage and protests. And the tyrant invites jokes by his vanity and exaggerations. Marx speaks of certain persons, like Louis Napoleon, as having usurped the stage of history and not knowing when to exit before it all ends in chaos.

I refer Mr. Castro to the Theses on Feuerbach, and one of the most succinct formulations of Marx's thinking. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways," Marx asserts, "the point, however, is to change it." As a materialist and revolutionary, Marx preferred action over speech. Castro, in contrast, prefers speech - rambling, mind-numbing speech - while blocking all the forces of change in Cuban society. Earlier this year, Cubans were treated to a five hour harangue. He seems to have been caught in a catch-22 situation. The speech was necessary to lay to rest rumors of his physical decline. But it only fueled rumors of serious mental failure.

It is unfair to say that nothing has changed in Castro's Cuba. Things have changed - decidedly for the worse - and the reverses have accelerated since the end of the Soviet Union, when the lifeline of support it lent its colony was not maintained by Russia. In the spirit of Marx, we would propose using only empirical measures, without any commentary on the demoralization and spiritual wasteland that Castro's failed revolution has left in its wake. The decline can be measured from the time of his military takeover to the present. It can also be measured by projecting the gains in other countries in Latin America to Cuba in order to assess the losses to this country during this period. We should keep in mind that both these statistics, as devastating as they are to Castro, fail to reckon with the losses that have come from his exiling the most talented and enterprising of his population. These losses are literally incalculable.

These same people have turned this city into one of the most vibrant cities in the hemisphere. Their abiding attachment to their homeland is the main reason why the future of Cuba - once the tyrant fades away - is so auspicious.

The myth endures that pre-Castro Cuba was socially and economically backward. The fact is that Cuba was a relatively advanced country by Latin American and even world standards. Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in per capita food consumption in Latin America. It ranks last or near last today. It is the only country in the world where rice production is lower today than it was forty years ago.

As far as consumer products go, Castro's Cuba has fewer automobiles today than it did in the 1950's, the only country in Latin America where this is the case. The number of telephone lines has stayed about the same since the 1950's, approximately 3 telephone lines per 100 residents. Per capita ownership of televisions has slipped considerably since then, when Cuba ranked fifth in the world. It was second in Latin America in per capita ownership of radios; it is now merely average. Its rate of development in electric power ranks behind every other Latin American country, except Haiti.

A vigorous media sector has been decimated with the loss of over 40 daily newspapers. There are also marked losses in the number of television and radio stations in the country since the 1950's.

Unemployment is not supposed to exist in the Communist worker's paradise, yet reliable estimates calculate Cuba's unemployment rate at double digits. Make-work characterizes the tasks of those who actually have jobs. A study from the University of Miami affirms that 94% of sugar industry workers were laid off in 2002. More than 300,000 urban farmers that year were working half time.

The fact of the matter is that the Castro's regime is sustained by outside support, through remittances and tourism. It is incapable of generating the means of supporting even bare subsistence by itself. In other words, this Communist regime survives by virtue of the surplus income and leisure that capitalist countries generate. Castro's Cuba is morally, politically, and economically bankrupt.

Some might object that we should give credit where credit is due. They inevitably cite literacy rates and health services as landmark achievements of the Castro revolution. Cuba has a literacy rate in excess of 90%. But so do eight other Latin American countries, four of which started at lower rates than Cuba in the early 1950's. Availability of dental and health care is the boast of the Castro regime. But it should be noted that the number of Cuban physicians and dentists in 1957 per 100,000 was the same as in the Netherlands and better than Great Britain and Finland at that time.

It is precisely when we acknowledge these "achievements" that we grasp the Orwellian character of the Castro regime. In effect, this most literate of nations has nothing to read. The bookshelves have been largely cleared of reading material. Journalists are kept on a short leash. And computers, where they exist, are closely guarded.

The FAO estimates that 13% of the Cuban population was chronically malnourished from 1998 -2000. Eastern Cuba suffers significant malnutrition. Near famine conditions have been sporadically reported elsewhere. At end, the health of a nation is not measured by the number of physicians and clinics. Cuba needs farmers and more efficient farming more than it does another graduating class of physicians from its medical schools, many of whom are sent abroad in a futile effort to spread Castro's influence.

This can be viewed as a step down from the 1970's when Castro exported his armies to Africa. The exertion of such "soft power" today will certainly be as futile as his exertion of "hard power" yesterday.

The country's agricultural sector is nothing less than catastrophic, though it has some of the richest soil in the world and one of the longest growing seasons. Cuba's experience in this regard is consistent with all Marxist and quasi-Marxist regimes, as evidenced today in Mugabe's rape of Zimbabwe.

Marx attacks elections, universal suffrage, party competition, and fixed terms of government as part of the elaborate machinery of capitalist politics. Given nearly fifty years of repression, forced exiles, and refugees, we might be hard pressed to find any capitalists in Castro's Cuba. There surely could be no fear of a capitalist counterrevolution in opening the country to elections. Castro's real fear is a wholesale repudiation of his rule.

In opposing elections, Castro might be seen as acting consistently with Marxist doctrine. The Party has a monopoly on truth. To Castro, the truth must not be put to the test by allowing the citizens of Cuba to vote. But the "truths" that Castro proclaims have been discredited. The twentieth century teaches us that they also have also been repudiated on the grounds of history, the only tribunal that Marxists are called to recognize.

At the end of the day, the only thing left for the Cuban people from Castro's revolution are his speeches. We can safely assume that these "testimonials" of Castro's thought will be ignored by future generations as Stalin's and Mao's are today, save for the stray psychologist or psychiatrist who seems best equipped to fathom them. The people can't eat Castro's speeches.

He opposes elections, not to "save the revolution," but to save himself - from the fate of Daniel Ortega, for sure, and ultimately, perhaps, to save his skin. This explains the reaction to Osvaldo Paya and the Varela Petition Drive. In Castro's Cuba, it should be known, prison awaits those who petition elections, even when following the letter of Cuban law.

Fidel Castro was never a revolutionary. He is a petty tyrant, who uses Marxism and anti-Americanism in all too easy and obvious ways to try to legitimate himself and his oppressive regime.

Scapegoating is the stock and trade of totalitarians. He has used "America" and "sanctions"- ad nauseam- for this purpose. I challenge him to give a speech which addresses the very real problems facing the Cuban people without these references. Should he agree to the challenge, his speech will be a greatly abbreviated one. I can at least bring this measure of relief to the Cuban people forced to listen to him.

There was always something vaguely "medieval" in Marxist doctrine when it claimed for itself a monopoly on truth. The same claim is heard today from the Taliban. There may be more in common between the aging revolutionary of yesterday and the reactionaries of today than first meets the eye. They too fear elections and turn to repressive force to support their "truths." And there is certainly something "medieval," if not tribal, in the mode of succession Castro has adopted. By anointing Raul, the fragility of his "revolution" must be apparent to Castro himself. This is a revolution that can be secured only by reverting to a pre-modern notion of succession by bloodlines.

The Marxist regimes of the 20th century were based on a kind of social compact. If the people would yield their freedom, the rulers would give them food and shelter - "cradle to grave" security. This might better be called a "corrupt bargain."

The Cubans have been forced to accept it under the point of a gun. And Comrade Castro, like "fellow travelers" before him, has proven himself unable to keep up his end of the deal.

In the absence of all legitimacy, he turns to force. This explains the long list of political prisoners, compiled by the Department of State and Human Rights groups, which currently contain hundreds of names. They are serving draconian sentences for exercising rights that are commonplace in the rest of the region, rights declared by the UN Charter, to which Cuba is a signatory nation. He has even reinstituted summary executions at the risk of alienating what remains of favorable public opinion outside of Cuba.

Fidel was never a revolutionary and his claims to being a Marxist are patently ludicrous and no longer tenable. Recognizing him for the tyrant that he is, is the first task in moving beyond the Castro era and building the future Cubans deserve. Many in this audience came to know the true character of this tyrant by first hand experience. They are tragic witnesses to the truth about Castro that is coming to be accepted today both inside and outside Cuba, and increasingly in European democracies appalled by the human rights abuses of his repressive regime.

What then is to be done with Fidel Castro, to paraphrase Lenin's famous book? Age and infirmity will take its course and this will ensure a transition will take place in Cuba in the not too distant future, since all of us are mortal even Fidel Castro. Mother nature will ensure we are rid of him. President Bush's development policy towards Cuba in preparing for this democratic transition is based on three strategies:

• First, President Bush has affirmed that the US will not impose change on Cuba. Change must come from within, from the Cuban people themselves.
• Second, the United States through USAID will prepare for the change now by supporting Cuban human rights activists and nascent civil society in Cuba in the form of NGOs so important to a democratic polity, give voice to Cuba's independent journalists, defend the rights of Cuban workers, and provide information to the Cuban people about the outside world.

• Third, the State Department and USAID will work on a transition plan now through the Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, appointed by President Bush and chaired by Secretary Powell.

We have already made progress on operationalizing the third strategy through our aid program. Over the past 12 months, in spite of the active opposition of the Castro regime:

• USAID grantees have provided more than 2,500 short wave radios, re-chargeable batteries and battery re-chargers to the Cuban people. That is in addition to 10 thousand radios we had already supplied. With those radios, the Cuban people can listen to Radio Marti, the BBC, Radio Netherlands, and other international broadcasts, or to the Cuban government if they want to.
• Over the past year, our grantees have provided more than 85 thousand books, video cassettes and other informational materials to Cuba's independent libraries and other independent organizations.

• We continue to send more than 80 thousand newsletters every month to Cuban citizens all over the island, using several different means of distribution.

• And this past year, grantees also delivered more than 70 thousand pounds of food and medicine to the families of political prisoners in Cuba and to other victims of Castro's repression.

• And with our support, CUBANET continues to publish over the internet the daily reports from Cuba's independent journalists - reports that document the continuing human rights abuses of the Castro government.

• As you know, USAID has long been a strong supporter of Cuba transition planning, through grants to Rutgers University, the U.S.-Cuba Business Council, the International Foundation for Election Systems, and the Cuba Transition Project here at the University of Miami. USAID is also an active participant in the new Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. I am a full member of the Commission's core group which is chaired by my boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell. USAID Assistant Administrator Adolfo Franco chairs the Working Group on Establishing Democratic Institutions, Respect for Human Rights, Rule of Law, National Justice and Reconciliation, and USAID Cuba Director David Mutchler is a member of all five of the Commission's working groups.

• First, we are going to help make the work of the Presidential Commission a solid success. The first task of the Commission is to find ways to hasten the transition. That is where most of the USAID program is focused. But we also intend to make significant contributions to transition planning - to make sure the U.S. Government is ready with concrete plans to support a post-Castro transition government in Cuba.
• USAID is committing more funds this year for the Cuba Program than we ever have: 7 million dollars. Program funding has averaged 4 million dollars a year over the past seven years.
• Second, we are going to increasingly use formal competitions to select and award grants. For example, in December the USAID Cuba Program issued over the internet a formal request for grant applications. The closing date is next Monday, March 15. A U.S. Government committee chaired by USAID will review the proposals and rank them for final approval. We intend to make several new grant awards as a result. This type of competitive procurement gives every U.S. university and non-governmental organization an equal chance to be considered for USAID grant funding.
• Third, we are going to competitively award a contract for a comprehensive evaluation of the work of the USAID Cuba Program and its grantees over the period since the last evaluation was completed in the year 2000. We have a good program. We want to improve it. By the way, you can download from our website www.usaid.gov the complete report of the evaluation PricewaterhouseCoopers carried out four years ago.

Mr. Castro, the desire for freedom cannot be extinguished. To the operatives in Castro's regime, stop the human rights abuses - your day of reckoning is near and you will be held accountable by the Cuban people. To the people of Cuba, we look forward to the joyous day when Castro and his regime are gone and when all Cubans are free.

Biographical Note

Andrew S. Natsios was sworn in on May 1, 2001, as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). For more than 40 years, USAID has been the lead U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance to transitioning and developing countries.

President Bush has also appointed him Special Coordinator for International Disaster Assistance and Special Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sudan.

Natsios has served previously at USAID, first as director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1989 to 1991 and then as assistant administrator for the Bureau for Food and Humanitarian Assistance (now the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance) from 1991 to January 1993.

Before assuming his new position, Natsios was chairman and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority from April 2000 to March 2001, and had responsibility for managing the Big Dig, the largest public works project in U.S. history. Before that, he was secretary for administration and finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from March 1999 to April 2000. From 1993 to 1998, Natsios was vice president of World Vision U.S. From 1987 to 1989, he was executive director of the Northeast Public Power Association in Milford, Massachusetts.

Natsios served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1975 to 1987 and was named legislator of the year by the Massachusetts Municipal Association (1978), the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (1986), and Citizens for Limited Taxation (1986). He also was chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee for seven years.

Natsios is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government where he received a master's degree in public administration.

Natsios is the author of numerous articles on foreign policy and humanitarian emergencies, as well as the author of two books: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997), and The Great North Korean Famine (U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001).

After serving 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserves, Natsios retired in 1995 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is a veteran of the Gulf War.

Back to Top ^