José Martí, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and Global Development Ethics

The Battle for Ideas

S. Babbitt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137413239
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de desarrollo global

This book argues that the overlooked ideas of José Martí and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara explain recent politics in Latin America and the Caribbean but also, even more significantly, offer a defensible alternative direction for global development ethics.

Chapter 1

No Place at the Table

A Challenge for Freedom

The Brazilian film To the Left of the Father (Carvalho 2001) was described as a cry against the globalized annihilation of culture, the cry of those who have no place at the table of the rich (Mello 2001). The film is about a large family, the father of which is sternly religious and profoundly committed to family unity. The second son leaves the family because the unity, patience, and harmony of the family are not real. As a child, he felt the erotic beauty of his surroundings, including his mother’s touch and his sister’s dancing. But he found no expression for such sensuality in the family. When the eldest son goes after him, explaining that he has destroyed the family unity, the second son argues that it was broken long ago. He tries to explain to his older brother that real needs and desires are unspoken, even unrecognized.

The runaway son explains that false unity disallows expression of real connection, especially through the body. Finally, with his elder brother, he returns. He explains to his father who wants to understand. But the father does not understand, and the second son, recognizing that the father cannot understand, gives up. He says what his father wants to hear—namely, that family unity is most important and that he, the second son, is grateful for his place at the table. The party to celebrate his return begins. But unexpressed desires find expression at the party. His sister, who understood his departure, dances. As she becomes freer, the clapping becomes restrained, and those watching are afraid. The parents become nervous; the mother tries to capture her, to stop her dance, and the father, in terror, kills her.

Luis Fernando Carvalho, the director, says that imagination causes fear. He might mean that imagination, as Eduardo Galeano suggests, allows us to interpret the world as what it might be, not just what it is (cited in Timossi 2000: 98). And if we imagine how the world might be, we can be surprised at the way it is and raise questions. Questions elicit explanations, and explanations give rise to new meaning and, perhaps, more questions. According to Galeano, to not imagine how the world might be is to fail to respect reality. When things are the way we think they must be, and when we assume that they cannot be otherwise, there is no reason to even recognize that they are that way, let alone raise questions.

If, as the father insists, the family provides freedom and love, the second son’s dissatisfaction must have another explanation. It must be about something else—not about the family. The son’s protest against the family cannot constitute resistance to family unity if it is not about such unity. Instead, the second son’s message indicates illness, which needs toleration and requires patience. The second son left the family because he expected more from unity, suggesting that the unity he knew so far was inadequate. In the end, the sister’s dance demonstrates what might be possible, if there existed real freedom, real connection. But in doing so, she shows what is now—namely, that the family’s unity is not real. This is difficult to grasp, and she is killed.

To the Left of the Father was presented by Selton Mello at the New Latin American Film Festival in Havana as the cry of those who have no place at the table. The “table of the rich,” at the time, was where talks about freedom and democracy were taking place in relation to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Social movements throughout Latin America engaged in the hemispheric discussions taking place across the Americas and even in Europe (Weisman 2003). In the end, those who had no place at the table prevailed against the proposed FTAA, for the moment (Arashiro 2011).

The issue of free trade between the North and the South has been around for a long time. In 1891, after the first Pan-American Conference in New York City, 1889–90, Martí wrote, “The hour is near when . . . an enterprising and forceful nation . . . will demand intimate relations with [Latin America and the Caribbean], though it does not know her and disdains her” (1891/2002f: 295). The conference was supposedly about peace, the formation of a customs union, a common silver coin, and a common system of weights, measures, and trademarks. However, the New York tribune described it as an attempt by the United States to establish commercial supremacy. Martí understood imperialism and remarked that “the urgent duty of our America is to show herself as she is . . . rapidly overcoming the crushing weight of her past” (1891/2002f: 295). For him, free trade—and freedom, generally—was more interesting, and more complex, than suggested.

Che Guevara also saw broader issues. In 1961, he headed Cuba’s delegation to the Inter-American Economic and Social Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) at Punta del Este, Uruguay. The US delegation presented the recently proclaimed Alliance for Progress, a program for development, for official ratification. Guevara argued that the conference was political, not primarily economic. His reasons were the following: (1) all economic conferences are political when the destinies of entire regions are at stake, and (2) the United States had defined the conference in opposition to Cuba and its example (1961/1997b: 219). He cited President Kennedy’s claim that the conference would demonstrate the “capacity of free nations to meet the human and material needs of the modern world.” Cuba, of course, was soon to be expelled from such “free nations” of the OAS. Kennedy identified “a new stage” in relations between the peoples of the Americas. But Guevara saw one too, although for him “the new stage begins under the star of Cuba, free territory of the Americas” (1961/1997b: 220).

Cuba’s perspective was ruled out by Kennedy’s proclamation of the conference’s commitments. Thus the conference was political. But there is more to Guevara’s statement. Institutions, like the OAS, backed by the United States, consist of and give rise to social practices that, among other things, support expectations. Tariq Ali suggests that we think the way we do because of the “pressures and processes of everyday life as experienced within the specific social structures of a dominant counter-revolutionary state and its allies” (2006: 220). His view is favored by philosophers, although less politically stated. Institutions, according to Claudia Card, are social practices consisting of rules and conventions, which create roles and positions. Institutions, including such social practices as friendship, can “define new forms of interaction, create forms of agency, provide a friendly background setting . . . freeing up individual energy for creative projects” (1995: 88–89).

John Searle argues that all social interactions depend on expectations derived from institutions or social practices that give rise to rights, roles, and responsibilities (1995). Money is not money because of its physical/chemical structure but because we have, according to Searle, cooperatively agreed to treat it that way. So, for instance, paper comes to function as gold because of a process in which a certain physical structure—paper—is assigned a function as a result of what Searle calls “collective intentionality” (1995: 39). Money is an “institutional fact” in that its existence and use depend on conformity to rules, which emerge from practices and constitute institutions. A row of rocks on the ground acts as a barrier not because of its intrinsic properties but because of expectations giving rise to judgments about rights, roles, and responsibilities (Searle 1995: 79).

Guevara knew the significance of institutions. Social practices generate expectations, legitimizing forms of agency while ruling out others. As Frantz Fanon pointed out in his time, a white doctor can make mistakes, and such mistakes are explained. But if a black doctor makes mistakes, it is because he is black (1952). A black doctor does not make errors because the black doctor is an error and not expected to be a doctor in the first place. A black doctor’s practices do not elicit explanations; the black doctor himself or herself requires explanation.

In order to identify error, we have to expect correctness. Deviation doesn’t make sense unless there is something to be deviated from. If a way of being is established, it can be deviated from and changed. And such changes elicit explanations and generate learning. Fanon’s point is that it is hard to conceive of a mistaken black doctor because it is hard to conceive of a black doctor at all. A black doctor is not supposed to exist in the first place, and so his practices do not elicit explanations in the relevant sense.

Part of Guevara’s argument is that US institutions, including “democracy,” rule out Cuba’s counterarguments because any such challenge is not about democracy, by definition: Whatever else it is, Cuba is not democratic. Kennedy does not argue for this claim. He takes it for granted, as if it needs no argument. Guevara defends a counterposition, pointing out, as stated in the Second Declaration of Havana, that “democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy; with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan; with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvellous voice of Paul Robeson” (1961/1997b: 223). Guevara’s point at the conference, though, is not primarily to argue against the US definition of democracy. More significantly, he indicates the political constraints on the very raising of the question of democracy in the first place.

Critics of To the Left of the Father focus on the romantic love the second son feels for his sister (Deming 2012). They miss the deeper point. Institutions, of which romantic love is one, make relevant alternatives difficult to discuss, even to name. Oscar Wilde’s reference to love that “dared not speak its name” is, in part, about institutions. Heterosexuals can talk about relationship problems because their relationship has a name. In same-sex relationships, however, it is often difficult to talk about problems (e.g., Barnes 2011). If the relationship is not expected to exist in the first place, it cannot be deviated from. This is the situation of the second son who, rather than being engaged with, is explained away as sick. The second son in the film may or may not have been right about family unity, but this is not the issue. The real problem is how to even raise the question.

When little Cuban boy Elián González was held by distant relatives in the United States (Adalberto 2011), the press reported that his father was compelled by the Cuban government to travel to retrieve him. One might wonder, though, why a father’s interest in bringing home his six-year-old needs explanation. The boy’s mother had died, and the father was the surviving (nonabusive) parent. For normal folk, such an action would not be surprising and hence need no explanation. On the other hand, an explanation should have been required for why Elián’s distant relatives wanted to keep him. This was not explained (at least not in the mainstream US media). Someone who asked why Elián should not go back to Cuba, as if a Cuban boy is just like any other boy, would be challenging social practices, going against expectations, and might not be understood. Guevara understood that in Punta del Este, it was not a view of democracy that Cuba was challenging but expectations rooted in power. In this sense, the conference was political.

Galeano says that it is not true, as some argue, that Cuba has survived despite its errors. Instead, Cuba has survived because of its errors.1 By this, Galeano means that Cuba has survived because it has made errors and recognized them and because many such errors remain in public consciousness as errors.2 It is, though, hard to understand Cuba in this way. Many find it difficult to understand Cuba in terms of trial, error, and occasional progress from which much can be learned. US journalist Gail Reed writes that Cuba is the only ship on the sea that cannot afford to make a single mistake (1992). It is not just a political point. It is also about the institutional dependency of understanding, a point often ignored by political theorists: Cuba cannot make errors because Cuba is expected to be an error—like Fanon’s black doctor. Thus engaging fairly with Cuba, and with much that occurs in Latin America, requires identifying institutions that rule it out from the start, as Guevara did at Punta del Este.

Political Religions

One such institution is liberalism: philosophical and political. Social scientists and philosophers often refer to powerful political ideologies that have impeded freedom of thought and expression. But they don’t mention liberalism.

A. James Gregor, for example, argues that “Marxists, Fascists, National Socialists, Maoists and the followers of Pol Pot have all behaved very much as though possessed of revealed truth. They have behaved in fact as though they were communicants of a faith” (2012: 9). Social scientists increasingly acknowledge the peculiar phenomenon of “sacralised politics” according to which political systems have “taken on some of the distinguishing characteristics of what historically has been identified as religion—and which . . . has acquired the ability to control, and shape to its purposes, entire complex societies” (Gregor 2012: 5). One of the distinguishing characteristics of political religions is that the falsification of all beliefs would not provide reason for rejecting the ideology (Gregor 2012: 7). Those committed to such ideologies “spend surprisingly little time attempting to confirm or disconfirm its empirical claims” (Gregor 2012: 7).

Two points are of interest: The first is that although it may be true that falsification of beliefs does not provide a reason for rejecting political ideologies, it also does not provide a reason for rejecting scientific theories. Whereas it was once thought that science advances as a result of predictions of empirical results, which can be tested out, this picture is false. As mentioned in the Introduction, I may release an object that fails to fall without affecting anyone’s confidence in the law of gravity. A rational observer will seek alternative explanations, such as the existence of an opposing force (Kitcher 1982: ch. 2). Empirical results alone do not discredit a well-established scientific theory (Putnam 1975). Why this is so is relevant to Gregor’s concern for “fanaticism, intolerance and irrationality” (2012: 3) and how to resist it, as we will see.

Twentieth-century philosophical liberalism also possesses “the ability to control, and shape to its purposes, entire complex societies” (Gregor 2012: 5). Moreover, its adherents spend “surprisingly little time attempting to confirm or disconfirm its empirical claims,” or at least some crucial ones, as we see presently. As a political view in the eighteenth century, liberalism became associated with democracy and the self-government, including ideas about the primacy of the individual. In the twentieth century, liberalism has given rise to neoliberalism and social liberalism, depending on whether the state is expected to play a lesser or greater role in the economy. Whatever its political expression, liberal philosophical commitments promote the centrality of a certain conception of the individual, with implications for rationality as will be articulated.

Specific components of this conception contradict evidence. The view is that an individual’s best interests are defined by deep-seated preferences and desires with true beliefs.3 John Rawls, for instance, holds that if I have to act in someone’s interests (if, for example, that person is incompetent), I had better be able to argue that that person would herself have taken the action in question if she had been able and fully informed (1971: 248f.) The idea is that my individual interests are defined by what I would choose for myself if I had full information and could reason well instrumentally—that is, with a vivid imagination of the consequences (See also Sidgwick 1907; Brandt 1979; Hare 1981). If I cannot argue that the person for whom I take action would herself take such an action if able, my action in her behalf consists in undesirable paternalism, according to Rawls. Hence an individual’s best interest is defined ultimately by her own deep-seated desires and values.

Indeed, liberal political philosophers take it to be uncontroversial that it is always better to “live life from the inside” with true beliefs (Kymlicka 1991: 12). The view is appealing because no one likes to be told what to do or how to live. But empirical evidence indicates that it is not always better to live life “from the inside” according to deep-seated desires, value, and life plans (i.e., with true beliefs and a vivid imagination of consequences). For one thing, beliefs and values are acquired as a result of parental influence, school curricula, and indeed from social, political, economic, and cultural circumstances and conditions. Moreover, some such beliefs and values can be contrary to fundamental interests in, for example, dignity. As Fanon said about racism, “The occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes . . . The real world challenged my claims. It did not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and the world” (Fanon 1967: 109).

Circumstances and conditions can be systemically unjust, diminishing expectations so that living “life from the inside” (with true beliefs) is no guarantee of a good life in a human (nonmoral) sense. Moreover, in practice it is not clear that trying to influence someone’s well-thought-out values necessarily constitutes undesirable paternalism. If someone, without mental incompetence, adopts an extreme hedonistic set of values, deciding (with full information) to take a drug that will make him temporarily happy before killing him, those who care will try to stop him from living his life “from the inside” (with true beliefs, etc.). They will try to influence his well-informed, carefully thought-out choice by whatever means possible, and they will do so precisely because they care about his best interests (Feinberg 1971: 106–24).

In theory, many will resist such a response. We like to think that as long as someone’s choices are informed and consistent with her own values, intervention is disrespectful of the individual’s autonomy. After all, who’s to say what values are right for a person? We take this point up more fully in later chapters, since the popularity of that response has to do with assumptions about the nature of rationality. The point, at present, is that in practice, we sometimes intervene, because we care. Although living life “from the inside” is popular in theory, it is quite often not acceptable in practice. Education, for instance, is about molding people into different beings, making them into better people, better citizens, with more adequate desires, values, and preferences—although we don’t usually admit this. As such, education is precisely a process of transformation of that “inside” set of desires, values, and life plans, and anything less, arguably, would be considered training, not education.

Another fundamental claim of philosophical liberalism that does not stand up empirically is that it is always better to choose for oneself than to be coerced. When J. S. Mill suggests that it is better for people to make their own choices even if they are the wrong ones, the idea is that choosing itself has positive value (e.g., Appiah 2005: ch. 1). However, it is not true that it is always better to choose for oneself than to be coerced. Choice constitutes a relationship, involving identification between chooser and event (Korsgaard 1996: 30–48). Sometimes, although one may cause an event, one is better off not having chosen it. Sophie’s Choice is the story of a woman at a Nazi death camp who is forced to choose which of her two children will die (Styron 1979). Sophie must make the decision herself; otherwise, the commander will send both to die. It is the fact that she has to choose that eventually kills Sophie. If she had been coerced, even though the result would have been the same, she may have been able to free herself...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. No Place at the Table: A Challenge for Freedom
• 2. Cuban Internationalism and Martí’s “Trenches of Ideas”
• 3. Alienation and Authenticity
• 4. Revolutionary Love in Martí and Guevara
• 5. The Battle for Ideas and Global Development
• Notes
• References