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The abhorrent labor conditions of Cuban plantations are one of the strongest points illustrating the need for the Castro-led revolution.
This is an example of a strong point, with no credible counterargument, where a curious person can investigate further and find you to be more correct with everything they read.
Abhorrent labor conditions = slavery is a semantic debate. A skeptical person can easily disagree. See the difference I'm talking about?
Abhorrent labor conditions = slavery is a semantic debate.
I'm happy enough to let my counterpart muck around with the semantics, while I lay out the crimes of the Batista government and the plantation cartels.
A skeptical person can easily disagree.
Skeptics will dig deeper. You're describing a contrarian, and I'm not invested in convincing them of anything.
A skeptical person will google "when was slavery abolished in Cuba" and conclude you don't know what you're talking about. They won't read whatever else you have to say on the matter because you seem wrong or exaggerating right off the bat.
A skeptical person will google "when was slavery abolished in Cuba"
Good! The straight up lead-in line from Google is
Cuba stopped officially participating in the slave trade in 1867 but the institution of slavery was not abolished on the island until 1886. The demand for cheap labor never abated of course, and plantation owners sought other ways of obtaining workers.
At which point, the Libs are back to explaining why the conditions on Cuban sugar plantations after 1867 didn't count as slavery.
Directly under that link...
They followed the lead of the British and the French by switching to importing contract laborers (indentured servants), called colonos. Free people, either voluntarily or through coercion, signed a work contract that stipulated the term of service and the pay they would receive. In theory, the colonos could leave the employ of their owners at the end of the term of service, but in practice the conditions for the colonos were not much different than those endured by the slave population. The majority of the colonos came from China (Chinese Coolies) but they also imported people from the Canary Islands, Mexico, and Africa. This collection contains official letters, death certificates, birth certificates, legal cases, work contracts, an autopsy report, and inventories relating to the institution of slavery, slaves, and indentured servants in Cuba. Many of the documents refer to the Chinese people brought to Cuba as indentured servants or contract laborers.
At which point you ask how
the conditions for the colonos were not much different than those endured by the slave population
means Castro's overthrow of the plantation system in '59 didn't amount to a liberation of millions of Cuban plantation slaves.
They won't read whatever else you have to say on the matter
Again, if you want to line up folks who will "lalala I can't hear you" through a conversation about the history of Cuban labor practices, then you're right. But they were adversarial to begin with.
For folks genuinely curious in the history of Cuba, even this shallow dive operates in your favor.
The straight up lead-in line from Google is
slavery was not abolished on the island until 1886.
You really don't see how this presents a problem?
slavery was not abolished on the island
Seems that by truncating the comment further, I can get it to once again agree with my point of view.
You know that's ridiculous.
Gotta agree with you here.
Communist propaganda and is so strong because it's true. To say that Castro freed the slaves stretches the definition of slave beyond the point of usefulness.
We often liken modern day proletarians to peasants for rhetorical reasons, but we recognize that they are distinctly different things despite the fact that many of their class dynamics are similar. The people of Cuba were facing slave like conditions, and we, as Marxists, acknowledge that there's not a huge gap between slavery and wage labor (unlike liberals). But the fact remains, they were not slaves.
You can still say Castro liberated his people and greatly increased their quality of living, which is why he is so adored. These things are inarguably true.
In fact, by saying the cuban people were facing slave-like conditions, I think you have a better case in convincing people that modern wage labor and especially the conditions of migrant workers are unjust even though they exist outside the framework of slavery.
What about saying serfs instead of slaves? It’s a term people are more willing to loosely define, but still makes a powerful statement I think
I think that's less arguable, but something like "Castro liberated his people and greatly increased their quality of living" is still concise but avoids any semantic distractions altogether.