The amount of BS that Castro spouts during this interview is laughable. His ideology and theories have ruined a nation and imprisoned the minds of millions of it's citizens. The funniest part of all is that almost 60 years later Cuba is in shambles and the government still speaks in this way.
A lot of that is due to their circumstances and the US embargo. I don't quite see what you are saying here – we may disagree with his policies and ideology, but he seems very candid and truthful here, admitting many faults of his country's system. This is something a "Western" politician would rarely – if ever – do these days.
You also need to be mindful of the situation in Cuba before the revolution, where the people felt that their country was becoming a satellite of the US, and losing control over its own destiny.
I was born in Cuba and just returned from the island 3 days ago. I'm pretty mindful of the situation there. There is no one to blame for the dire situation in Cuba other than the regime and it's leaders.
So... in your opinion the US embargo had absolutely no effect on the situation? Or you're suggesting that any nation that doesn't act as a puppet of the US should be forced into severe economic sanctions as punishment? In other words, the US should be the only sovereign nation in the world?
I didn't stuff any words into his mouth - that's what the question marks were for. His first comment made his stance pretty clear so I gave him room for clarification. But thank you for doing what you just accused me of - I'm surprised your head didn't explode from the irony.
Well, at a minimum you're asking him, in quite an accusing way, to defend against a bunch of things he didn't say. That's pretty close to "putting words in his mouth, but with question marks after them". It's not a fair form of debate, and it's not welcome here.
He actually literally said that when someone mentioned the embargo being a huge reason that Cuba was in the situation they're in (which is true). If asking people to explain inflammatory statements like there's NOBODY to blame but the leaders in a situation like Cuba's is unwelcome, I'm not sure why this place exits.
>There is no one to blame for the dire situation in Cuba other than the regime and it's leaders.
I've not heard a single credible expert on the subject throw out an idea as laughable as the US embargo not having any effect on the Cuban economy. If you're going to support him I suggest you also provide some facts to backup such a ludicrous statement. Or, you know, just down vote me for calling him out.
> Or you're suggesting that any nation that doesn't act as a puppet of the US should be forced into severe economic sanctions as punishment? In other words, the US should be the only sovereign nation in the world?
That's stuffing words in his mouth, because he literally didn't say anything remotely like that. It's also far more inflamatory than anything he said.
The embargo had little effect, as with embargo Cuba could/was doing business with Spain, several nordic countries, Mexico, various South American countries, etc. It is the retrograde economical system in the island what has caused most of the problem, and that is linked to the political/dictatorial behaviour of the current system.
For the records, I do not agree with the embargo, as I see it as 1) worthless, and 2) only affecting Cubans and Americans (the people).
For the record, the Cuban embargo has been great for Canada. Energy and mining companies (nickel) have done very well without having to compete with American companies and it has been a beautiful low cost vacation destination to one of the safest places in the Carribean.
I think the embargo kept Fidel in power. With the US constantly trying to assassinate their head of state, the dismal record with American organized crime, and their multinational corporations already behaving badly, Cuba had an enemy. An enemy + control of the press = a beautiful world for a dictator.
Today, much of their infrastructure is a disaster, but they are some of the most enterprising people I have met, reasonably well educated, remarkably socially cohesive and very happy (though ridiculously poor).
This can end well, but does require that America finally end the disastrous embargo policy Apologies to Cuban Americans who won't agree because they hate Fidel too much to realize it...
The US has increased the regime's oppressive effects, though.
The embargo has created a dearth of medical supplies & knowledge, has negatively impacted nutrition, lack of resources, lack of tourism dollars, and provides a bogeyman for the regime to blame for all its ails. It has helped repress and impoverish the people more than anything else. The United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution every year since 1992 opposing it.
It's possible that, like China, the oppressive effects of Communism could have been lessened (even if just a little) under the benefits of trade with a Capitalist democracy. Medical crises would have been dealt with quicker, and they would have had more cash on hand from tourism to invest in agriculture (or at the very least, import more food).
And you may feel differently about this, but I think the ban on travel really sucked ass for Cuban families who couldn't visit their relatives, and the bans on transfer of money to family members in Cuba. But that's not really a regime thing, that was just the US being dicks.
> like China, the oppressive effects of Communism could have been lessened (even if just a little) under the benefits of trade with a Capitalist democracy
The oppressive effects of communism were lessened because China lessened communism by introducing free market reforms. It wasn't just trade with capitalist nations that improved the welfare of China and its people, it was becoming more capitalist a nation itself.
Right... and it was becoming a more capitalist nation (technically a socialist market economy, otherwise known as state capitalism) due to influences by its Capitalist trade partners.
In a single year (1978-1979) new party leader Deng Xiaoping led economic reforms to the PRC, signed an accord with Jimmy Carter for the US to officially recognize the PRC, and attracted new business from Boeing and Coca-Cola. More reforms followed soon after. But it is absolutely clear that they thought the Capitalist model was what worked and they wanted a form of it, and used trade with the US as its beginning.
I make this distinction about the US influencing them because without the successful model (and attractive potential partner) of the US, the push for a market economy may not have worked.
Cuba could have done the same, except we were still giving them the finger.
With respect to oppressive effects, how well exactly has capitalism (Or, if we want to split hairs, imperialism) worked out for Cuba's Carribean and Latin American neighbours?
Cuba is towards the top of that list, by life expectancy, caloric intake, GDP per capita, literacy, child mortality.
Cuba has a lot of problems... But still it turned out far better then, say, Haiti, or Honduras ever will be, despite all the benefits of open markets. This is consistently missing from the narrative.
If you're at the bottom of the ladder (possibly Afro-Cuban), you're better off in Cuba than most other Latin American countries.
If you're one of the educated white folks whose family lost a plantation or Havana mansion, I can understand you hate the Castros. It's like getting kicked out of Paris and 60 years later the city is literally crumbling. For a while it was like a civilization trapped in amber but infrastructure has gone over the line into complete decay.
On the plus side is good education, good health care, not a lot of crime, until recently a guarantee of a job that would keep body and soul together.
The Castros still have > 50% popular support, they have managed to maintain control of the country and the armed forces despite all their failures, foreign military adventures, withdrawal of Russian support, constant pressure from the USA.
It's a very mixed bag but not the one-sided disaster we constantly hear about from people who make a cottage industry of selling that story (someone has got the US to spend $500m on broadcasts to Cuba no one can receive, and that's just one example).
Moving to a more liberalized economy and attracting foreign investment without causing social unrest, giving up control will be a challenge, and the fact that all the educated people want to leave will not make it easier.
You are just a victim of propaganda. Cuba had decent education and decent healthcare system by third world standards but the Cuban economy wasn't able to support either of them and everything came tumbling down when the soviet money stopped flowing in.
It would be also very interesting to know from where you get that figure that more than 50% of the population support the Castros as that data is famously unavailable.
poll is linked ... read the references ... Cuba's biggest source of FX is exporting doctors, plus just look at the public health stats. I've informed myself and, sorry, not the one who's the victim of propaganda.
for the record, it's an effed system and economy and a poor country, just not quite as effed as people would like you to believe. people flock to the US from Mexico too, and that's without the wet foot/dry foot policy giving Cubans automatic asylum.
if they do get decent Internet it will be a pretty good tech hub due to the education. Americans might even flock there for a cheap, beautiful and fascinating place to live. Cubans actually have the full US cable/media package via el paquete and eat it up.
while you're at it, read up on the Fanjuls, some of America's greatest recipients of corporate welfare, and why US sugar prices are a multiple of world prices. if you love free markets, best thing we could do for poor countries is not blockade them while subsidizing politically connected moguls. (who profit from boycott and generated the constant anti-Castro drumbeat and policy...until they decided they'd rather do business with Cuba)
Right, all those white-ex-plantation-owners-mansion-living-elite risking their lives in the ocean to flee the country... Or asking for political asylum in every opportunity such as during Olympic Games...
They certainly don't seem to be fleeing to the capitalist paradises of Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc.
If the United States had a wet foot/dry foot policy with the rest of Central America, it would be absolutely flooded with asylum seekers. It's already flooded with illegal aliens risking their lives, paying coyotes to smuggle them across the Mexican border - imagine what would happen if they were automatically legalized.
Anything approaching what could be called a capitalistic/free market economy is basically nonexistent in Latin America, with rare exceptions such as possibly Chile, which by no coincidence leads the quality of life rankings in the region.
Other countries had brief experiences with more pro market governments (even if by necessity as opposed to ideology, such as in Brazil), or now in Argentina.
The results have always been positive, but we seem destined to be governed by populist left wing governments.
I don't know about its neighbors, but i'm talking specifically about Cuba.
Cuba was at the top of the list by the end of the 1950's, when its US-backed dictator had turned it into one of the leading developed nations in the world. Then the Castro regime comes in, and things don't go very well, but the Soviet Union floats it along for a few decades. Then things go down hill real fast.
Almost any regime that didn't have such an antagonistic relationship with the US would probably have done better. But it's clear the US was intentionally hurting them in order to pressure some sort of additional revolution so they could install a new dictator. That never happened, so the US forced them to suffer the continued loss of US trade. We could have lifted it during the 90's famine (the OAS lifted its embargo 30 years prior), but still no. I don't see why anyone would downvote my parent comment; the UN has been agreeing with me for 25 years.
So are you blaming all the human rights issues on the US embargo? One of my Spanish teachers grew up in Cuba. He was extremely vocal about how bad it was there, and he was well off because his parents were part of the government. He ended up getting snuck out on a sailboat with his grandparents and never saw his parents again. Perhaps his stories were unique and his visible anger misplaced, but I don't think so.
It was ~20 years ago, so I don't remember all of the details. The main things centered around what we have all read and heard about. Lack of freedom and political dissidence landing people in prison or worse.
I'm sorry but no. They destroyed the lives of my parents. They convinced a generation that the future was at hand, that you only need to sacrifice a little more, and everything would be great.
They convinced a generation that any other alternative was a treason against Cuba and humanity.
The Castros are the main responsible for the dire economic situation of Cuba. Regardless of all the international relationship mistakes he made, Fidel Castro stands as one of the most economic incompetent of all communist dictators, with the notable exception of the ones in North Korea. Despite the embargo which affects mainly the commerce with the US, Cuba has always had commercial relations with many countries that were largely unaffected by the embargo. He basically had the whole country under his control. Think about a CEO of a very diversified industrial and agricultural conglomerate. He managed to screw it all and there was no other reason than his incompetence.
I confess to some degree of admiration towards young Castro. He led possibly the most successful guerrilla war in history. In about two years, he went from having an army of exactly two people stranded in a tobacco field to defeating a dictator supported by the world's strongest army.
(In a way he is the ultimate "startup hero" -- from zero to world-class disruptor!)
That said, his government has clearly failed all the ideals he touts in this '60s interview. For example, he speaks in favour of freedom of expression -- if only the means were there for everybody to get published:
"The day will come when all the resources will be available, that is, when such a book would not be published to the detriment of a textbook or of a book having universal value in world literature. Then there will be resources to publish books on the basis of a broader criterion, and one will be able to argue whatever one wishes about any theme. I, especially, am a partisan of the widest possible discussion in the intellectual realm. Why? Because I believe in the free man, I believe in the well-educated man, I believe in the man able to think, in the man who acts always out of conviction, without fear of any kind. And I believe that ideas must be able to defend themselves. I am opposed to the blacklists of books, prohibited films, and all such things."
Well, the Internet became just that medium, but Castro never deemed fit to give access to the citizens of his country. He and his comrades are just too old to get it. They should have made room for new generations long ago instead of clinging to power and the illusion of their own indispensability. Their extended single-party reign has crippled the Cuban economy more than any sanctions could.
There's nothing to admire. The brutal repression started very shortly after Castro marched into Havana. The romantacization of his regime by elements of Western political groups is reminiscent of their praises for Stalin in an earlier time, or their enthusiastic support of Hugo Chavez more recently. It requires a willful ignorance of the facts, or a deeply troubling view of the world that accepts execution of dissidents as acceptable when used to achieve one's political goals.
Beyond the political executions and purges, one of the first orders of business for Castro was the establishment of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood. Their task? To monitor the population for disloyalty and errant political thoughts.
My family escaped this horror and had to rebuild their lives from scratch well into adulthood and with children in a new land, so it really bothers me to see people praise anything about this monster.
Would you post a comment saying that you admire Hitler for his takeover of a massive industrial power? So why would you for Castro?
I love how all the folks in this thread who actually lived in Cuba (or their families did) are getting down voted. I'm guessing by people who don't have the same type of experience.
I do not know about any posters on this thread, but in general when a country undergoes a revolution, the families of former elites flee (generals, the wealthy, etc). In the case of Cuba, many exiles went to the US and even gained CIA support for ongoing attacks against Cuba and other Cuban immigrants. (https://books.google.com/books?id=qlny4FXvAzYC&pg=PA88&lpg=P...)
Plenty of elites fled, but so did plenty of everyone else. On one side of the family, my grandfather was a self-made businessman with a 4th grade education who sold appliances in a rural area. On the other side, my grandfather was a middle-class computer technician in Havana.
Also, quoting from the Chomsky clan doesn't help your credibility. These are the same people who sang the praises of Hugo Chavez as he ruled Venezuela by decree and ran it into the ground.
And yes, the CIA did help organize an invasion force made up of Cuban exiles who wanted to save their country from communism. It's a shame Jack Kennedy didn't have the intestinal fortitude to either see it through or cancel it, instead deciding to cancel air support after landing people on the beaches.
Would you find it reasonable for someone to express admiration for Napoleon or Julius Caesar? Both were genocidal narcissists, but also brilliant military strategists and orators.
It's possible to admire the latter aspects in isolation, without condoning most of what they did. I feel the same way about Castro's revolutionary campaign.
(Let's leave Hitler out of online forum conversations for everyone's sake...)
>Well, the Internet became just that medium, but Castro never deemed fit to give access to the citizens of his country. He and his comrades are just too old to get it.
I think this quote from your original post better shows the profound misconceptions that you have about the Castro regime.
The internet is not tightly restricted because the "he and his comrades are just too old to get it". It's restricted because the free exchange of ideas and facts is a threat to their brutal dictatorship. Because all of their heads would probably roll if it ever collapses.
Napoleon and Caesar are now academic history. They are not combatants in any ongoing conflicts, nor causing any ongoing suffering. The Castros, meanwhile, are still exporting their "revolution" to other places (Venezuela is a very visible victim) and those who suffer greatly at their hands are still with us.
First of all, Fidel Castro had the support of most of the Cuban population. Everybody opposed the old brutal dictatorship. Second, Batista regime did not have the support of the US. Quite the opposite, there was an arms embargo against it.
For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.
The Kennedy speech they link to is amazing:
The real question is: What should we have done? What did we do wrong? How did we permit the Communists to establish this foothold 90 miles away?
The answer is fourfold.
First, we refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress. In 1953 the average Cuban family had an income of $6 a week. Fifteen to twenty percent of the labor force was chronically unemployed.
Only a third of the homes in the island even had running water, and in the years which preceded the Castro revolution this abysmal standard of living was driven still lower as population expansion out-distanced economic growth.
Only 90 miles away stood the United States - their good neighbor - the richest Nation on earth - its radios and newspapers and movies spreading the story of America's material wealth and surplus crops.
But instead of holding out a helping hand of friendship to the desperate people of Cuba, nearly all our aid was in the form of weapons assistance - assistance which merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship - assistance which completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people - assistance which enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life.
This year Mr. Nixon admitted that if we had formulated a program of Latin American economic development 5 years ago: "It might have produced economic progress in Cuba which might have averted the Castro takeover." But what Mr. Nixon neglects to mention is the fact that he was in Cuba 5 years ago himself - gaining experience. He saw the conditions. He talked with the leaders. He knew what our aid program consisted of. But his only conclusion as stated in a Havana press conference, was his statement that he was "very much impressed with the competence and stability" of the Batista dictatorship.
Mr. Nixon could not see then what should have been obvious - and which should have been even more obvious when he made his ill-fated Latin American trip in 1958 - that unless the Cuban people, with our help, made substantial economic progress, trouble was on its way. If this is the kind of experience Mr. Nixon claims entitles him to be President, then I would say that the American people cannot afford many more such experiences.
Secondly, in a manner certain to antagonize the Cuban people, we used the influence of our Government to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which dominated the island's economy. At the beginning of 1959 U.S. companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands - almost all the cattle ranches - 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions - 80 percent of the utilities - and practically all the oil industry - and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.
Of course, our private investment did much to help Cuba. But our action too often gave the impression that this country was more interested in taking money from the Cuban people than in helping them build a strong and diversified economy of their own.
The symbol of this shortsighted attitude is now on display in a Havana museum. It is a solid gold telephone presented to Batista by the American-owned Cuban telephone company. It is an expression of gratitude for the excessive telephone rate increase which the Cuban dictator had granted at the urging of our Government. But visitors to the museum are reminded that America made no expression at all over the other events which occurred on the same day this burdensome rate increase was granted, when 40 Cubans lost their lives in an assault on Batista's palace.
The third, and perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of L...
I'm not being sarcastic. The effect internet has on society is too big to be understood. How could we, mere humans, actually know if internet has or will have a positive effect on a society? We couldn't, there's no way. Castro, as well, couldn't possibly discern whether internet is good or bad for Cuba, yet it remains that he could have good reasons to prohibit it.
48 comments
[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadYou also need to be mindful of the situation in Cuba before the revolution, where the people felt that their country was becoming a satellite of the US, and losing control over its own destiny.
>There is no one to blame for the dire situation in Cuba other than the regime and it's leaders.
I've not heard a single credible expert on the subject throw out an idea as laughable as the US embargo not having any effect on the Cuban economy. If you're going to support him I suggest you also provide some facts to backup such a ludicrous statement. Or, you know, just down vote me for calling him out.
> Or you're suggesting that any nation that doesn't act as a puppet of the US should be forced into severe economic sanctions as punishment? In other words, the US should be the only sovereign nation in the world?
That's stuffing words in his mouth, because he literally didn't say anything remotely like that. It's also far more inflamatory than anything he said.
Please don't include things like this in comments, it violates the guidelines that ask for civility.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For the records, I do not agree with the embargo, as I see it as 1) worthless, and 2) only affecting Cubans and Americans (the people).
The embargo has created a dearth of medical supplies & knowledge, has negatively impacted nutrition, lack of resources, lack of tourism dollars, and provides a bogeyman for the regime to blame for all its ails. It has helped repress and impoverish the people more than anything else. The United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution every year since 1992 opposing it.
It's possible that, like China, the oppressive effects of Communism could have been lessened (even if just a little) under the benefits of trade with a Capitalist democracy. Medical crises would have been dealt with quicker, and they would have had more cash on hand from tourism to invest in agriculture (or at the very least, import more food).
And you may feel differently about this, but I think the ban on travel really sucked ass for Cuban families who couldn't visit their relatives, and the bans on transfer of money to family members in Cuba. But that's not really a regime thing, that was just the US being dicks.
The oppressive effects of communism were lessened because China lessened communism by introducing free market reforms. It wasn't just trade with capitalist nations that improved the welfare of China and its people, it was becoming more capitalist a nation itself.
In a single year (1978-1979) new party leader Deng Xiaoping led economic reforms to the PRC, signed an accord with Jimmy Carter for the US to officially recognize the PRC, and attracted new business from Boeing and Coca-Cola. More reforms followed soon after. But it is absolutely clear that they thought the Capitalist model was what worked and they wanted a form of it, and used trade with the US as its beginning.
I make this distinction about the US influencing them because without the successful model (and attractive potential partner) of the US, the push for a market economy may not have worked.
Cuba could have done the same, except we were still giving them the finger.
Cuba is towards the top of that list, by life expectancy, caloric intake, GDP per capita, literacy, child mortality.
Cuba has a lot of problems... But still it turned out far better then, say, Haiti, or Honduras ever will be, despite all the benefits of open markets. This is consistently missing from the narrative.
If you're one of the educated white folks whose family lost a plantation or Havana mansion, I can understand you hate the Castros. It's like getting kicked out of Paris and 60 years later the city is literally crumbling. For a while it was like a civilization trapped in amber but infrastructure has gone over the line into complete decay.
On the plus side is good education, good health care, not a lot of crime, until recently a guarantee of a job that would keep body and soul together.
The Castros still have > 50% popular support, they have managed to maintain control of the country and the armed forces despite all their failures, foreign military adventures, withdrawal of Russian support, constant pressure from the USA.
It's a very mixed bag but not the one-sided disaster we constantly hear about from people who make a cottage industry of selling that story (someone has got the US to spend $500m on broadcasts to Cuba no one can receive, and that's just one example).
Moving to a more liberalized economy and attracting foreign investment without causing social unrest, giving up control will be a challenge, and the fact that all the educated people want to leave will not make it easier.
these were interesting http://fusion.net/story/116226/historic-poll-top-25-findings...
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/03/21/2157021/the-us-and-cub...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/cuba-after-obama...
https://medium.com/@dtemkin/spending-the-last-week-in-cuba-w...
It would be also very interesting to know from where you get that figure that more than 50% of the population support the Castros as that data is famously unavailable.
for the record, it's an effed system and economy and a poor country, just not quite as effed as people would like you to believe. people flock to the US from Mexico too, and that's without the wet foot/dry foot policy giving Cubans automatic asylum.
if they do get decent Internet it will be a pretty good tech hub due to the education. Americans might even flock there for a cheap, beautiful and fascinating place to live. Cubans actually have the full US cable/media package via el paquete and eat it up.
while you're at it, read up on the Fanjuls, some of America's greatest recipients of corporate welfare, and why US sugar prices are a multiple of world prices. if you love free markets, best thing we could do for poor countries is not blockade them while subsidizing politically connected moguls. (who profit from boycott and generated the constant anti-Castro drumbeat and policy...until they decided they'd rather do business with Cuba)
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2001/02/floridas-fanjuls-2001...
https://www.aei.org/publication/protectionist-sugar-policy-c...
If the United States had a wet foot/dry foot policy with the rest of Central America, it would be absolutely flooded with asylum seekers. It's already flooded with illegal aliens risking their lives, paying coyotes to smuggle them across the Mexican border - imagine what would happen if they were automatically legalized.
Other countries had brief experiences with more pro market governments (even if by necessity as opposed to ideology, such as in Brazil), or now in Argentina.
The results have always been positive, but we seem destined to be governed by populist left wing governments.
Cuba was at the top of the list by the end of the 1950's, when its US-backed dictator had turned it into one of the leading developed nations in the world. Then the Castro regime comes in, and things don't go very well, but the Soviet Union floats it along for a few decades. Then things go down hill real fast.
Almost any regime that didn't have such an antagonistic relationship with the US would probably have done better. But it's clear the US was intentionally hurting them in order to pressure some sort of additional revolution so they could install a new dictator. That never happened, so the US forced them to suffer the continued loss of US trade. We could have lifted it during the 90's famine (the OAS lifted its embargo 30 years prior), but still no. I don't see why anyone would downvote my parent comment; the UN has been agreeing with me for 25 years.
There is no justification for what they did.
(In a way he is the ultimate "startup hero" -- from zero to world-class disruptor!)
That said, his government has clearly failed all the ideals he touts in this '60s interview. For example, he speaks in favour of freedom of expression -- if only the means were there for everybody to get published:
"The day will come when all the resources will be available, that is, when such a book would not be published to the detriment of a textbook or of a book having universal value in world literature. Then there will be resources to publish books on the basis of a broader criterion, and one will be able to argue whatever one wishes about any theme. I, especially, am a partisan of the widest possible discussion in the intellectual realm. Why? Because I believe in the free man, I believe in the well-educated man, I believe in the man able to think, in the man who acts always out of conviction, without fear of any kind. And I believe that ideas must be able to defend themselves. I am opposed to the blacklists of books, prohibited films, and all such things."
Well, the Internet became just that medium, but Castro never deemed fit to give access to the citizens of his country. He and his comrades are just too old to get it. They should have made room for new generations long ago instead of clinging to power and the illusion of their own indispensability. Their extended single-party reign has crippled the Cuban economy more than any sanctions could.
Beyond the political executions and purges, one of the first orders of business for Castro was the establishment of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood. Their task? To monitor the population for disloyalty and errant political thoughts.
My family escaped this horror and had to rebuild their lives from scratch well into adulthood and with children in a new land, so it really bothers me to see people praise anything about this monster.
Would you post a comment saying that you admire Hitler for his takeover of a massive industrial power? So why would you for Castro?
Also, quoting from the Chomsky clan doesn't help your credibility. These are the same people who sang the praises of Hugo Chavez as he ruled Venezuela by decree and ran it into the ground.
And yes, the CIA did help organize an invasion force made up of Cuban exiles who wanted to save their country from communism. It's a shame Jack Kennedy didn't have the intestinal fortitude to either see it through or cancel it, instead deciding to cancel air support after landing people on the beaches.
It's possible to admire the latter aspects in isolation, without condoning most of what they did. I feel the same way about Castro's revolutionary campaign.
(Let's leave Hitler out of online forum conversations for everyone's sake...)
I think this quote from your original post better shows the profound misconceptions that you have about the Castro regime.
The internet is not tightly restricted because the "he and his comrades are just too old to get it". It's restricted because the free exchange of ideas and facts is a threat to their brutal dictatorship. Because all of their heads would probably roll if it ever collapses.
Napoleon and Caesar are now academic history. They are not combatants in any ongoing conflicts, nor causing any ongoing suffering. The Castros, meanwhile, are still exporting their "revolution" to other places (Venezuela is a very visible victim) and those who suffer greatly at their hands are still with us.
For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.
The Kennedy speech they link to is amazing:
The real question is: What should we have done? What did we do wrong? How did we permit the Communists to establish this foothold 90 miles away?
The answer is fourfold.
First, we refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress. In 1953 the average Cuban family had an income of $6 a week. Fifteen to twenty percent of the labor force was chronically unemployed.
Only a third of the homes in the island even had running water, and in the years which preceded the Castro revolution this abysmal standard of living was driven still lower as population expansion out-distanced economic growth.
Only 90 miles away stood the United States - their good neighbor - the richest Nation on earth - its radios and newspapers and movies spreading the story of America's material wealth and surplus crops.
But instead of holding out a helping hand of friendship to the desperate people of Cuba, nearly all our aid was in the form of weapons assistance - assistance which merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship - assistance which completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people - assistance which enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life.
This year Mr. Nixon admitted that if we had formulated a program of Latin American economic development 5 years ago: "It might have produced economic progress in Cuba which might have averted the Castro takeover." But what Mr. Nixon neglects to mention is the fact that he was in Cuba 5 years ago himself - gaining experience. He saw the conditions. He talked with the leaders. He knew what our aid program consisted of. But his only conclusion as stated in a Havana press conference, was his statement that he was "very much impressed with the competence and stability" of the Batista dictatorship.
Mr. Nixon could not see then what should have been obvious - and which should have been even more obvious when he made his ill-fated Latin American trip in 1958 - that unless the Cuban people, with our help, made substantial economic progress, trouble was on its way. If this is the kind of experience Mr. Nixon claims entitles him to be President, then I would say that the American people cannot afford many more such experiences.
Secondly, in a manner certain to antagonize the Cuban people, we used the influence of our Government to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which dominated the island's economy. At the beginning of 1959 U.S. companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands - almost all the cattle ranches - 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions - 80 percent of the utilities - and practically all the oil industry - and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.
Of course, our private investment did much to help Cuba. But our action too often gave the impression that this country was more interested in taking money from the Cuban people than in helping them build a strong and diversified economy of their own.
The symbol of this shortsighted attitude is now on display in a Havana museum. It is a solid gold telephone presented to Batista by the American-owned Cuban telephone company. It is an expression of gratitude for the excessive telephone rate increase which the Cuban dictator had granted at the urging of our Government. But visitors to the museum are reminded that America made no expression at all over the other events which occurred on the same day this burdensome rate increase was granted, when 40 Cubans lost their lives in an assault on Batista's palace.
The third, and perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of L...