What Does He Mean?

It was a stunner. Fidel Castro grants an in-depth interview with Jeff Goldberg for Atlantic Monthly and says this:

I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, "He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."

It is a fascinating interview, particularly if the leader of the revolution is actually honestly appraising what he has done over the last fifty years to a nation which potentially could have been a garden spot of tourism and industry in the Caribbean.

Time For Transition ala China?

The interpreter offers a reasonable explanation of such a statement. All societies are inherently a mix of market and planned economies. If the balance is heavily into free enterprise we call it capitalism. If the weight falls on government planning, regulation and controls then we call it communism or socialist. There is still always an element of the opposite model. Cuba's model has always been heavily weighted in favor of the state. They don't go as far as North Korea, but they are a long way to the left of China as it exists today. Maybe Castro sees the future? Possibly he is proposing a bit of lightening up.

But, no. That's not what he meant when he said what seemed quite clear. Here's the revision. Apparently there is a Latin parallel to Robert Gibbs who does a classic "What the Captain Means" shtick.

When I Said Cuban I Meant Capitalist

Got that? He must be from the same school of logic and rhetoric as our own Dear Messiah. He communicates similarly employing reverse-speak. Whatever he said, he means exactly the opposite.