Sunday 27 November 2016

Who's Mourning For Fidel Castro?

By most historical accounts, Fidel Castro is cited as being a cruel and violent dictator who slaughtered Cuban citizens who disagreed with him, abused homosexual and Cuban citizens of various religions by forcing them to work in camps (which most would call slavery), and sold his own people to repay debts to other countries, but his legacy stands out as a revolutionary. In the wake of his death, we see Cuban Americans, descendants of Cuban refugees who fled Cuba for fear of Castro, celebrating his death in Miami, Florida. While most media outlets reported this for what it was, which was the overdue death of a cruel dictator, many who’s political views sway far to the left mourned, with the general consensus being that he was a revolutionary who made Cuba great again, and many Cuban citizens still viewed Castro as being a good leader despite their overwhelming lack of freedoms and basic human rights that Castro himself never denied denying. How is it that on any level the work of Fidel Castro can be seen as positive.

To start with, Fidel Castro was well educated. Fidel’s father, after becoming wealthy selling sugar cane, sent young Fidel to live with his teacher where he would be baptized Roman Catholic, thus allowing him to attend Jesuit boarding school. After doing well here, he would go on to a more prestigious Jesuit school where he began to slack until he entered college at the University of Havana. At this time, Castro found himself “politically illiterate” and quickly became a young activist, going as far as traveling to the Dominican Republic to overthrow they’re then dictator Rafael Trujillo and then traveled to Columbia to participate in anti-government rioting. At this point, Castro is hardly any different from the social justice warriors holding up traffic. It’s also noteworthy and surprising that around this time, Fidel joined an anti-communist group.

Years later Castro married a woman from a wealthy family with strong political connections that helped push Castro’s political dreams to reality. Shortly after this, Castro began to dive deep into the communist manifesto of Karl Marx, changing is political ideology for the worst and inspiring him to run for a seat in congress in 1952 where a coup led by the soon to be dictator General Fulgencio Batista stopped the election. While imprisoned for trying to stop Batista, Castro was still in contact with the rest of his resistance, then called the “26th of July Movement”. Even after being freed under an amnesty deal, Castro left Cuba to plot against Batista and his government. It was during this he met with other exiles from Cuba and reached the conclusion violence was the only answer. At the 32 years old, Castro had become the dominant force of Cuba, and would go on to become a full on communist, growing close with Russia regarding oil, as well as a nationalist, implementing laws making it illegal for foreign property ownership, leading to conflict with the U.S and Castro’s actions becoming increasingly radical.

Castro wanted to emphasize that he didn’t need America, and that him and his communist allies were capable of taking care of themselves and able to fend of imperialists which resulted in catastrophical failure. To flex his power, Castro would send military force, that he was unable to afford, to other countries to help them in their efforts resulting in thousands of deaths. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuban citizens faced great hardships forcing many to leave Cuba. Castro was not fond of this as being unable to care for his people hurt his ego as a prideful leader. A notable incident involved a vessel with 72 Cuban citizens attempting to leave Cuba, where Castro ordered the boat be destroyed resulting in the deaths of 41 people, 10 of which were children. All surviving men were picked up and immediately jailed. During Castro’s reign, there were 3,615 firing squad related deaths for “Criminals”. The difference between most criminals getting the death penalty and these criminals was the fact that the results were predetermined and evidence was a luxury and as Castro himself said was “unnecessary”. While these are documented, there is evidence to suggest that were more than a thousand more firing squad related murders permitted by Fidel Castro. Fidel also strongly supported labor camps for those who resisted him, or for those he just didn’t like. Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, and even fellow Catholics made up the 30,000 Cuban citizens Fidel Castro wanted removed from his Cuba. Today Cuba’s lightened up a little on their human rights violations but keep just enough control to keep Cuban citizens in the dark restricting all media on every level, and yet people find Fidel’s Cuba to be good on it’s citizens.

A common pro-Fidel argument is the literacy rate, which is very high. This argument shows two things. One, American culture is dangerously dependent on social media, and two, due to the control of communist countries people have literally nothing to do other than improve on education. Russia and China also have literacy rates in the same range as Cuba and play the same media manipulation games as Cuba, banning things like Facebook for fearing users may find out new cars were made after the 50’s. Another argument pro-Fidel is Cuban healthcare. To be clear, Cuba does have good doctors as to be expected with high literacy rates. However, the laws regarding agreements between doctors and patients are extremely limited if nonexistent. Privacy, informed consent, refusal of treatment, and suing for malpractice are all forbidden. This goes very well with the Cuban government’s quota to make the government healthcare seem better than it is. For instance, as Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropology professor noted, if a baby in an ultrasound appeared to have any defects the doctor would perform an abortion and the patient would have, as the laws are made, no right to refuse. It’s also worth noting that basic, non-prescription drugs common in the states may only be found in the “black market” of Cuba.


There are two kinds of people who can review the history and actions of Fidel Castro and honestly believe he did good for Cuba: The ignorant and the un-American. Fidel Castro hated America and everything it stood for, which falls in line with the ever more normal far left ideology where celebrating Thanksgiving is immoral and America has always been a terrible place full of racists and bigots who have done nothing but impose their will on innocent countries. It’s this philosophy that opened the flood gates for socialists like Bernie Sanders who, if not for tampering by the party he aligned with, could become president of the United States and make things like “#resistcapitalism” trend on Twitter. For the ignorant, it’s more understandable. As stated, Cuba, prior to Castro, had an equally bad dictator leading them dethroned by Castro, and since then have shown, according to information given, very good statistics in literacy rates and health related issues. But, as this Caribbean iron curtain lifts and Cuban Americans rejoice, it’s very clear that Fidel Castro was a cruel dictator who has hurt Cuba for years to come.

No comments:

Post a Comment