HAVANA — There was a moment in history when Cuba was a beacon for the Latin American left. A now remote past when the Plaza of the Revolution was a beacon for the dozens of progressive movements that crossed the continent. "The island where utopia triumphed," many thought, the place that showed the way for revolutionaries and idealists everywhere.
Those were the days when young people kept posters of Fidel Castro in their rooms, believing that the dreams of so many years of proletarian struggle had come to fruition in the Caribbean. Our cultural centers filled with writers and artists, born from the Río Bravo all the way to Patagonia. And some of those who would later become the region's political leaders came to study in schools across the country.
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The infatuation with the Cuban process eventually fell victim to events; the executions, purges, and censorship of the early Castro era led millions of admirers to realize that "Red Cuba" was living not under the old ideals of Marx and Engels, but rather under authoritarianism. The excessive presence of the Soviet Union in decision-making, the Kremlin subsidies, and the high costs in political independence paid for them alienated the faithful followers of years past.
The apex of disappointment came in 1968, when the treads of the Soviet tanks entered Czechoslovakia, and Fidel Castro -- before the stunned eyes of those who had raised him up as the indisputable emblem of the Latin American left -- gave his blessing to the military action. Something irreversibly snapped that day, shattering the link (based more on emotion than reality even in the best of times) between Castro and a good part of the progressive world. The honeymoon was over.
But compared with the right-wing dictatorships spreading across the southern cone of the Americas, the Cuban Revolution still offered a little light at the end of the tunnel -- flickering, it was true, but still phosphorescent. Eminent visitors from elsewhere in Latin America continued coming to the island from all over to get their picture taken with the leader in olive green. Landing at Havana's airport, placing a wreath on a statue of José Martí -- the man Cubans call "The Apostle"-- or joining those on the dais during some popular parade, all were common events on the agendas of these foreign friends.
Nor could anyone miss the marathon conversations with Castro, who left his visitors from abroad dumbfounded by his knowledge of agriculture, genetics, space exploration, or biotechnology -- not to mention historical details he would know about his guests' own countries. The chat would be accompanied by advice for whatever group or political power could take control in that country, and finally put an end to capitalism. Thus, the chief officiant of the left catechized the new shoots who would spread Marxism across the continent. Returning afterward to their respective countries, they would report that they had been in the sanctum sanctorum of socialist Cuba and repeat, over and over, the words they had heard from the Maximum Leader.
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