A Green revolution?

"Cuba: The Accidental Eden" isn't really a nature documentary sensu stricto, but a political opinion piece. The documentary argues that Cuba has a virtually pristine nature, due to its lack of economic development and the U.S. embargo. (The lack of development is mentioned somewhat obliquely, perhaps in order not to insult the Cuban government.) When the embargo is lifted in the future, Cuba will be inundated by American tourists and foreign companies looking for oil and precious minerals. This might have an adverse effect on the island's unique fauna. Thus, "Cuba: The Accidental Eden" takes a kind of "deep ecological" perspective on Cuban affairs, presumably a more extreme one than the Communist government, which wants the embargo to be lifted and has developed the local tourist industry. The producers of "Accidental Eden" hope that the lasting revolution on the island will be Green, rather than Red.

I don't know much about Cuban environmental policy, but on the face of it, the documentary isn't convincing. Other socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union, Poland and China, had massive environmental destruction. There are also a lot of environmental problems in poorer nations, regardless of political system. If Cuba is different, the reason can't be its splendid socialist isolation per se. At several points, "Accidental Eden" hints at native dangers to the wildlife: poachers shooting the endemic Cuban Crocodile, farmers eating exotic snails and persons unknown raiding the nests of sea turtles. The documentary mentions a failed development project in 1989, which made the Cuban regime change its course and create new, vast national parks and reservations.

Here's a wild guess: perhaps Cuban environmental policy is so effective, because of...well, state repression? (A capitalist version of the same would be the Dominican Republic under Trujillo and Balaguer.) It's difficult to see how nature could be saved otherwise in an economy in free fall, which Cuba was after the cancellation of Soviet aid.

Somehow, this documentary raises more questions (and eye-brows) than it gives answers.