Source: AOL News
10 September 2010
None other than Fidel Castro himself now appears to have given up on
Cuba's archaic communist system.
The revolutionary leader last week launched a surprise attack on the
state-controlled economy he helped create 50 years ago during an
interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic magazine.
Goldberg asked the aging leader if Cuba's economic system was still
worth exporting to other nations and was stunned by Castro's brutally
honest response. "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore,"
said the 84-year-old former president, Goldberg wrote in a blog post.
Made in an "off-hand way," Goldberg said the former Cuban leader wasn't
joking. "I think this was an honest recognition on his part that his
brother must re-order Cuba's economic system in order to keep the
country afloat," he said.
Of course, the revelation that things aren't going well on the
cash-starved Caribbean island isn't news to many people in the outside
world. Cuba continues to suffer from the 48-year-old U.S trade embargo
and has recently been battered by three hurricanes and a hefty drop in
the price of nickel, its main export.
Fidel's younger brother Raul, who took over as president when his
sibling fell seriously ill in 2006, has repeatedly called for
wide-ranging reform of the state-controlled economy. And Raul has
attempted to stanch the country's decline with limited economic
liberalisation and warned Cubans that they will need to work harder and
expect less from the government. (The state pays workers salaries of
about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and
almost free transportation and housing.)
However, he has also said that Cuba won't abandon socialism.
http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2010/09/10/Castro-blasts-communism/
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