Memories of Underdevelopment has a scene near its beginning that the Republican senator Marco Rubio might find moving. It dramatizes the values that have helped Rubio rise to the upper ranks of a political party that rewards the most heartless Americans, the GOP. The scene is set in 1961. It's two years after the Cuban Revolution put Fidel Castro into power. A youngish man named Sergio is standing in Havana's airport watching his parents and wife walk to an airplane that will transport them to Miami. Those characters, like the others boarding the plane, are rich and want nothing to do with Castro's socialist experiment that's committed to depriving them of their property and privileges. Here is the reason Rubio is a member of the party that hates poor people. Just look at what poor people did to Cuba's rich—made them leave all of that wealth on a doomed island. As for the rest of the film, Rubio would most likely find it dull. Why does Sergio, the son of parents who own a whole apartment tower with a view of the sea, not leave this future shithole? No film in the history of cinema better captures the curse of the intellectual than Memories of Underdevelopment. Sergio doesn't leave with everyone else because he hates the rich. An intellectual can never side with those who make "callous cash payment" the entire meaning of society. The intellectual strives for a mental freedom that's immeasurable and promises no returns. by Charles Mudede