Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

In addition to playing such a significant role in the ending of apartheid, Cuba has managed to avoid the ravages that drug trafficking wrought on the rest of the region. The murder rate in Cuba is four times lower than the average for Latin America, or to put it another way, the murder rate in many US cities is ten times worse than the murder rate in Cuba. The same is true in relation to nearby Jamaica, and South Africa frequently ranks in the top ten for murder rate in the world. The kinds of massacres of workers that occurred at Sharpeville and Marikana simply have not occurred in post-1959 Cuba, and even the most ardent anti-Cuba ideologues could not try and pretend that the kind of police brutality that is so common in South Africa, Jamaica, Brazil and even the USA exists on anything like that scale in Cuba. The extreme inequality and particular history that makes Latin America the most violent region of the world is due in no small part to a long history of the United States supporting dictators in the region, and this is part of why so many of the people there look to Cuba as a source of hope and pride – it is the one nation that stood up to Uncle Sam and won out.