Interviews with Carlos Alberto Montaner

In general, investing and having good economic relationships with dictatorships does not help establish democracy. That is a fallacy, the fallacy that having economic relationships bring freedom and democracy. I remember for many years I had very good relationships with other academics while I was a professor in Puerto Rico. There were Paraguayan and Nicaraguan professors as well, back in the 60s. Paraguayans said that Stroessner´s dictatorship, which lasted many decades, was the consequence of the US having a good relationship with the dictator, and there were financial investments from American businessmen keeping the dictatorship afloat.

That was the same argument with Somoza’s dictatorship. Foreign investments and the good relationships with Washington, at that time, consolidated the Somoza dictatorship. It’s not true that the idea of freedom is benefited by the presence of foreign investments. You can have a terrible dictatorship with private enterprise and businessmen that earn money. And it’s not true that that will at some time bring freedom or democracy. It might help bring people out of poverty, but the moral argument cannot be accepted. I can accept the economic argument, which is that a business is interested in making money, and that being situated in a country with a dictatorship helps the economy, but you cannot accept that it aids freedom and democracy.That is a lie, a fallacy and hypocrisy.

On the other hand, in Cuba, up until now the situation has been more serious, because businessmen have not only invested in a country with a dictatorship, they have also established an economic complicity with the regime. They have become partners with the dictatorship in order to exploit Cuban workers. So, far from helping to establish democracy, they are directly assisting the dictatorship. They are bringing resources to the dictatorship and becoming the accomplices of an oppressive regime, which makes them criminally liable.

For example, hotels. In all Cuban hotels there are listening devices and hidden surveillance systems, and these devices are controlled by the political police, and the workers in the hotel are controlled by the political police. The businessman who runs a hotel and becomes a partner of the Cuban government on these conditions is complicit in the dictatorship. And the day the system changes, and democracy comes, it’s possible they will be charged with criminal liability. They are not innocent. They know what is happening, and they collaborate with what’s happening for monetary reasons. This debate was held in Europe after World War II, with German companies that colaborated with the Nazis. Companies such as Volkswagen and Siemens that contributed to Nazism paid compensations for many decades because they shared responsibility for crimes pertaining to the Nazi dictatorship.

Carlos Alberto Montaner is an exiled Cuban author and journalist. He was born in Havana in 1943. Soon after the revolution of 1959, he was imprisoned by the Castro regime on charges of participating in terrorist attacks and working with the CIA. Montaner, who was 16 years old at the time, emphatically denied the charges. He later escaped from prison and from Cuba.

In the 1960s, Montaner began writing a weekly column that was soon appearing in almost every Latin American country. In 1970, he moved to Madrid and began writing works of fiction and nonfiction. In 1972 he established a publishing house, Editorial Playor. His most widely acclaimed books include “Informe Secreto Sobre la Revolución Cubana,” published in 1975; “200 Años de Gringos,” published in 1976 on the occasion of the bicentennial of the United States and analyzing the reasons the United States has developed differently than Latin American countries; and “Fidel Castro y la Revolución Cubana” (1984).

It has been estimated that 6 million people now read his weekly columns, and he has lectured frequently throughout the hemisphere about the defense of liberty, economic development, and the important role of culture in the evolution of societies. He is also a regular commentator on CNN’s Spanish-language broadcasts.