I admit I don’t know much about the man, especially in later years. I will always remember a story a friend, my age, told me. Her family escaped Cuba back in the 60s. She said they told everyone they were going to the U.S. for a vacation. They gave away their nice kitchen appliances, but then replaced with old, non-working appliances, so as to not raise any suspicions. I figured things must have been pretty bad to go to such great lengths.
Hoping for good things for Cuba, and for US/Cuba relations.
As usual, exaggerated denunciations and praises are flying around…
The two most sober and interesting observations I have read and heard are those of Juanita Castro, his sister, and Marco Rubio. Juanita has been living in Miami since 1964 or so. She broke with her older brothers, called them out and even participated in occasional public denunciations. But her comments this week were aimed at people whom rejoiced in Fidel’s death. “Not Christian,” she said.
As for Rubio, somewhat surprisingly he was reserved, saying ‘today and tomorrow, nothing is different than last week for the Cuban people.’
I also observed both from a few FB friends and was disappointed in the sweeping generalizations based on lack of historical and geopolitical contexts between their own experiences and those of the Cuban exiles, Cuban/non-Cuban mourners of Castro(some of whom weren’t necessarily supporters of Communism or all of Castro’s policies)*, etc.
Funny part was I was thanked by everyone when I posted the added historical and geopolitical contexts to explain why each of those groups felt the way they did. Some of that reaction is a very human venting of strong emotions based on their own perceptions/experiences and should be understood as such.
- Contrary to popular belief among many ardent Communist Castro supporters, not all or even most of the exiles were rich/upper middle class. That and many of the Cuban upper/upper-middle class initially supported Castro because even they were getting fed up with the Batista regime's corruption and dictatorial rule. In this respect, there's some parallels with what happened in Nicaragua in the late '70s between the Sandinistas and the Somoza regime.
** Many Latin Americans admired Castro for “standing up to the US” due to past issues with American intervention in Latin-American nations not only in the last century…but as recently as 40 odd years ago(Pinochet in Chile, Argentinian junta, etc). Also, many in the decolonization movements in Africa admired him for providing meaningful support during a period when they were trying to throw off remnants of Western European colonialism from the '60s onward.
As with many things, Americans like to see things as black or white, fail to see the gray, fail to know history, including our countries role in it beyond the propaganda that was fed to them as part of the Cold War.
Castro was not Stalin…but he did kill thousands of people, tortured thousands of political prisoners, caused thousands to flee his country and caused nothing but poverty for his nation. And no amount of Political Correctness will change these facts to people who lived behind the Iron Curtain.
Castro was a dictator who tortured and killed his enemies, caused a diaspora that drove nearly 20 percent of the Cuban population overseas and kept those that remained in a poverty stricken police state while he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. There is not much of a gray area when it comes to Castro and Cuba.
The embargo probably helped Fidel Castro remain in power by giving him a convenient nationalism card to play and a threatening foreign enemy to blame for any problems.
Actually, I think there is a whole lot of gray including stats people like to throw around. No one can point with any accuracy at death tolls or at percentages of the population that left. Estimates are rough, not fact based, and all over the map. Our country’s policies did have an impact on how things developed especially before the revolution and in the immediate aftermath. To not consider that is whitewashing history. I’m not lauding Castro but opining that what many think are the “facts” really aren’t black and white. People were living in poverty and being killed in large numbers both before and after Baptista’s fall and Castro’s rise to power. (Our role in other dictatorships throughout Latin America leading to many, many deaths goes well beyond the scope of this thread.)
Speaking of poverty, if we’re all so concerned about poverty in Caribbean countries, let’s focus in our own backyard, Puerto Rico. It’s a shambles and should be considered a disgrace.
Most of history is very gray. Castro and Cuban history is no different.
I’m kind of shocked, really, listening to any defense of Castro. I guess all those people who claimed their friends, coworkers and relatives were tortured, imprisoned and executed must be lying. That the people who are still imprisoned for speaking against the regime really don’t exist. And even if it does, it’s a small price to pay for free healthcare and free education, right?
Freedom to raise your own chickens? Crazy talk, who needs that! Freedom to travel, speak your mind, own private property…nah. All these personal stories you read in the newspapers, lies, all lies. Castro rocks! I mean…rocked. 
While the above is true, it omits the fact that the preceding Batista regime was also a brutal corrupt dictatorship and police state in which the ruler and his family/cronies lived high on the hog while the vast majority lived in poverty.
The level of corruption was so bad that by the mid-late '50s, even increasing numbers of upper/upper-middle class Cubans were fed up enough by the mid-late '50s to initially support Castro’s rebellion and government.
This is shown in the following quote by an American journalist who visited Cuba in the early-mid '50s:
While omitting the fact one of the key reasons why Cuba has the economic problems it has for the last 2 odd decades is due to the cessation of massive subsidies as its provider, the Soviet Union could no longer afford it and ceased to exist not too long afterwards.
For that reason, the embargo didn’t really bite until the Soviet Union was nearing its demise.
Is that supposed to be some kind of mitigating factor for the wrongs perpetrated by the Castro regime?
Some people overly romanticize the few good things (health care, literacy, better than Batista) and ignore the bad things (authoritarianism, inefficient economic organization).
On the other hand, the US maintains full diplomatic and trade relations (including sales of military stuff) with a country even more unfree than Cuba, and whose domestic governance is cringeworthy from both right and left wing viewpoints in the US. So it is not like the ineffective and counterproductive embargo on Cuba stands up even to moralizing scrutiny.
Living in SE Fl, I’ve been surrounded by former Cubans. I know I’m not objective.
Also, I’ve been FB friends with Alan Gross and family since he was inprisoned.
No, but this is the typical emotional black and white reactions I have observed and expected from both sides of this issue, whether the camps are pro or anti-Castro.
Both sides don’t want to acknowledge that there’s some exceedingly unsavory historical and geopolitical aspects to each of their camps.
And failure among American policymakers to understand and account for those factors is one of the reasons why Castro has been able to stay in power for as long as he has and gain much positive PR in Latin-America, Africa, and other parts of the world…even among folks who don’t support communism or Castro’s regime.
And like the ardent Pro-Castro communists who ignored the fact Castro was a brutal repressive dictator and most of the economic improvements up until the late '80s were due to massive Soviet subsidies, the anti-Castro camp often fails to acknowledge the fact the preceding regime was just as brutal, repressive, arguably more corrupt*, and had even greater levels of poverty…including ~50% illiteracy rate in the rural population in the '50s.
- I.e. The Batista regime were very friendly to the mob and instituted policies which made pre-revolutionary Cuba an effective playground for it and its enterprises.
Corruption within the state became so bad even upper/upper-middle class Cubans were getting fed up as it affected their livelihoods and personal safety when they complained/spoke out against it. This was one of the reasons why an increasing number of them initially supported Castro’s rebellion in the late '50s as it seemed anything was better than Batista.
Unfortunately for them and Cuba, what Castro brought was another brutal dictator with a different branding.
Socialist Utopia resulted in 100 Million death on our planet. Castro was part of this ideology.
When we forget history …we are forever doomed to repeat it.
The following is a chapter from the book “Sultanistic Regimes” which provides one scholarly take on the corrupt dictatorial nature of Batista’s rule, especially after his last coup in 1952 and how it paved the way for Castro’s uprising and rise to power:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jidoming/images/jid_batista.PDF
It also reveals that contrary to pro-Castro portrayals of Castro’s revolutionary heroism being a hard-won fight led by monolithic committed revolutionaries, it was more a story of a tiny guerilla band* opportunistically taking advantage of a regime increasingly losing support from important sectors of Cuban society and rotting from within by corruption.
This included massive withdrawals of political support from increasing numbers of the Cuban upper/upper-middle class and armed forces/police so ridden with corruption that it was much more inclined to rapid collapse and retreat rather than fight Castro and his rebels despite the former’s far greater superiority in numbers and far greater weapons.
Interesting how a scholarly take on the subject of Batista’s collapse and Castro’s rise paints a far less heroic portrayal of Castro’s much vaunted “revolution” than he and his propagandists would later portray.
- Chapter cites a figure of ~500 total when accounting for Fidel and Raul Castro's guerilla forces in mid-1958.
As I said before, this is very personal for me, as a family member and friends were deeply affected by the regime. I don’t want nor need history lectures from those who have no intimate knowledge. Until you’ve lost a loved one, because his Rolex watch wasn’t enough to secure medical care, and it took a few days to get $$$ to Cuban hospital for treatment, which was too late, then …