Castro, Travel and Political Relativity

Mark Twain, one of the most quotable authors, was also one of the world’s great travelers. He traveled widely around the world throughout his life long before international air travel was available. His first published book “The Innocents Abroad” was a travelogue.

One of my favorites of hundreds of great Mark Twain quotes is this one:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

Twain was right when he said this more than a century ago and it is just as true today. Among its many benefits, travel does mount a powerful assault against narrow-minded attitudes. There is nothing like travel to show you the relativity of political views.

We can see from our own bewilderingly divided country how different people can see the same things through such different lenses that it sometimes seems impossible that they could even be looking at the same things.

Internationally the range of differences is even larger. Traveling abroad opens the mind the way a can opener demolishes the resistance of a rusty can.

When you travel you are forced to confront the unfamiliar. It tends to force people to become a little more open minded and not quite as cocksure that everything they believe is always absolutely right without question.

We may never be converted to another person’s belief. It may be that the best we can do is to be tolerant of others’ beliefs. But at the very least we must recognize that political truths are relative truths. They are subjective, depending on what affects you in your life and how you perceive it.

Even those truths that we hold to be unassailable may be seen through a different prism by someone else coming from a different historical and cultural background, or just a different personal situation. They may come to a different opinion. And it is good to remember that people of good will may disagree.

This week the world experienced the long-anticipated death of Fidel Castro, and no incident could better illustrate the stark differences of point of view around the world.

I grew up in America, where Castro is seen as one of the worst tyrants in history, practically the devil himself. My Spanish teacher in high school, who became a close friend, was a Cuban exile who had been wounded while participating as a soldier in the failed U.S. invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. I’ve known many Cuban exile families over the years. I heard almost nothing good about Castro growing up in America.

It was striking then to discover while traveling in South Africa that Castro is seen as a hero there.

At first the confrontation with that fact was dumbfounding to me. How could this Latin American dictator be revered way over in South Africa? To see the image of Castro surface in South Africa at all was strange enough. To find that he was a hero there was even more disorienting.

Nelson Mandela called Castro "A source of inspiration to all freedom-loving peoples."

Then I learned why. It was because he was instrumental in the overthrow of the apartheid government.

In the wave of universal adulation of Nelson Mandela after his death, the celebration of his peaceful liberation of South Africa from apartheid and bringing all colors of people together under his vision of a Rainbow Nation, it is sometimes forgotten that at the time Mandela’s struggle was taking place, the U.S. government was not a friend to the resistance against apartheid.

Back in 1962 it was the CIA who told the apartheid government where to find Mandela, which led to his successful capture, trial and sentence of life imprisonment.

President Reagan vetoed the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, which called for sanctions of the apartheid government until it changed its apartheid policies.

In 2000 Dick Cheney said he didn’t regret voting against the Anti-Apartheid Act because “the ANC [African National Congress] was then viewed as a terrorist organization.” Since that time, Cheney said, Mandela had “mellowed.”

But Mandela remained on the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008.  

Castro, on the other hand, was a vigorous supporter of liberation movements in Africa, and that’s why he is looked upon favorably in many African countries.

In 1988 Castro sent 36,000 Cuban troops to help beat back a U.S.-supported South African apartheid-era invasion of Angola. The defeat of the apartheid government in Angola presaged its collapse on the home front.

Castro also aided African nationalist liberation movements in other African nations, not only through military aid, but also through technical and medical assistance.

Castro, like most major world historical figures, must always be seen as a mixed bag. His actions affected millions of people in various ways, inspiring some to hate and some to love him, and no doubt both points of view can be justified by different circumstances.

But it is a healthy exercise to realize that one’s own point of view is not the only one. And it is useful to see that around the world Castro and Cuba are viewed very differently to how we view them in the states.

So now he is gone. We can bury the disagreements we may have had about him during his lifetime, and hopefully find new common ground on which to build a better future.

Travel has been and will continue to be a bridge between the American people and the Cuban people, who have a deep affinity and a bond that has stayed strong even as the governments battled each other.

Here’s to hopes that travel can continue to forge paths toward world peace.

Follow @CogswellTravelP