I am not a fan of Fidel Castro - quite the opposite - but humans are cut from a common cloth. When we see revolutions turn into dictatorships, and idealism deteriorate into a cynical fight to survive, it is foolish and dangerous to dismiss the dictators and revolutionaries as "evil" or "idiots" or some similarly otherizing term. It is dangerous because it means we are refusing to learn from history, and to apply the lessons of other lives to our own. Fidel Castro's mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from.
If you hold yourself holier than Fidel Castro, and think that celebrating the death of someone you perceive as "evil" is prudent, take a deep long moment and try to learn something non-trivial from his life. "Fidel Castro" in the particular was not some kind of unique demon who plagued humanity. He was a charismatic revolutionary who occupied a very complex time. His life's trajectory was in many respects one of tragic failure. He may have, in reality, occupied a very dark corner of history, but that is for us to learn and judge, not to assume.
If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.
Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did, share a very predictable set of psychopathic/narcissistic/paranoid personality characteristics. They are, by definition, not normal.
Like the well-known western government(s) that deliberately destabilized The Congo early in its independence and installed a dictator, because they did not like the ideological leanings of whoever was in power then? A conflict that still continues 56 years later?
But then it becomes hard to pick out a specific person and say how evil they are, and how they're different from me and you.
Judging on the comments on this thread most people (I'm not specifically referring to you) are making statements based on what they've heard, not by what they've personally researched, and unfortunately a lot of that information is biased or propaganda.
I'm not coming down one way or the other but something I found very interesting was comparing the comments in this thread to those of world leaders. The vast majority of world leaders, including those in modern, developer, western states, are praising Castro for helping bring down apartheid, providing good health care and education to his citizens etc.
My point really is that on this issue as persons views are clearly shaped by the propaganda they are exposed to and their personal political opinions (e.g. socialism is evil, socialism is fair and good). Like most people Castro did good and bad. Some of the things he did may be construed as evil but he also did quite a lot of good things so brandishing the person as evil rather than considering all of the factors is foolish.
Really have to question this reification of "evil" per se. Evil is most immediately a religious construct. Or, in the words of Hannah Arendt, it is "banal." When did calling people evil ever lead to more justice in the world?
As if George W Bush having the courage to call Iran and Iraq and Libya the "Axis of Evil" led to the US promoting peace in those countries? No, there's been a proportional increase in US-led suffering (death toll in Iraq post-invasion around .5 million).
I don't honestly know too much about Fidel Castro, but take a minute to look at the US-installed Batista, who was overthrown. And, gawd, what about JFK? What about Kissinger These leaders had all the advantages of starting out in a relatively functional industrially-developed democracy, and they managed to do all kinds of evil, mainly to countries like Cuba.
Tangentially, IMHO, I don't believe Castro was nearly as "pathological" a human being as a number of US presidents.
Sorry, this is not a discriminative feature of dictators, non-dictators also prosecute and murder their opponents. (e.g. see any government involved in a war)
The difference is that you feel like they are right to do it.
This is dangerous when genuinely evil people apply the label 'evil' to people they wish to persecute.
* A tendency which is underappreciated in politics. Consider for example, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as an instantiation of George W. Bush for the Iranian political market.
It is easier to hate people than to accept that their behavior is emergent and afflicts us as well. The most intelligent, benevolent AI or angel will fail in our complex systems/organizations. This is an incredibly desperate understanding, particularly when you realize that those in power are disincentivized from making improvements.
Organizations DEMAND 'evil' behavior. It is not User Error.
CGP Grey has a great video that can help open your mind, if you are willing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
The US govt has done that too, so US presidents are no different from people like Castro, Franco, etc. We have just been brainwashed that our leaders are the good guys and the other guys are the bad guys.
Bottom line, as has been posted already, and much to the chagrin of demagogues and their supporters, the world is not comprised solely of "goodies" and "baddies". Realpolitik is shades of grey. It's possible for leaders, governments, regimes, parties, to have done both good and bad things. This applies as much to "us" as "them". Sorry to rain on your[1] patriotism parade.
[1] 'you' collectively. Not erokar individually.
Do they? What facts have you go to support your thesis?
Of course their actions should be condemned but what you wrote is just wrong, a lot of them were like us until they stopped.. Most murderers do not born as murderers, they are made murderers.
They've become a psychological comforting mechanism where we apply "good" to things we like or want to like and "evil" to things that we don't. But the words themselves connote something deeper than that--something foundational about morality.
It's convenient. Tidy. We all want to think of ourselves as "good." We don't want to think that we, individually or as a nation or whatever group identity we cling to, is capable of being "evil." Calling something evil is a way of creating cognitive distance between ourselves and what we don't like.
I think it's dangerous. Literally dangerous to engage in the world this way. The real fact of the matter is that perfectly normal, sane, rational, "good" people are capable of doing atrocious things. Even you. Even me.
Hitler wasn't fundamentally different from any of us. Any one of us could become just as bad under the right (wrong?) circumstances.
Pretending that we are different in some basic way paves the path for us to become "evil." It allows us to believe that we are immune to certain types of bad actions.
But we aren't.
Any single individual among us has the capacity to do awful things. Some people were simply able to scale awfulness effectively. That doesn't make them fundamentally different from us.
Calling some individual "evil" isn't semantically different from applying the "good" label to yourself. And when you believe that you are good, it's a lot easier to bend the rules.
There's a specific and frightening chain of logic that goes like this:
I'm good. Good people don't do evil things. So this [insert bad behavior here] is good. Because I'm good.
But the good/evil lens of the world has another drawback. It removes accountability and consequence. If I believe that I'm "good", there's no credit to be given when I choose not to do "evil" deeds. Of course I wouldn't do that. I'm not "evil".
When you apply a label like "evil" to a person, what else could you expect? Of course that person is going to do horrible things. That person is "evil."
The Good/Evil abstraction is pernicious, self-fulfilling, and circular.
We need to be better than that. We need to own up to the full spectrum of our nature and accept it so that we can guard against the worst parts of it.
Pretending that we are not capable of being "evil" is pretty much the foundational mechanism that allows truly terrible things to happen.
This is NOT ok, and I'm shocked that it's even a thought to entertain here on HN.
The respected daily Le Monde said the letters were exchanged between Castro and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.
In an acrimonious reply, Khrushchev suggested that Castro was irresponsible, since such a war would have killed millions of people in both East and West and destroyed Cuba."
It was a US-caused political niche that was eagerly filled by the most opportunistic/capable people available.
Nor was there universal adulation of the Castro-ites by Marxists around the world.
There is a lot of criticism of the Cuban revolution, and debate whether it was in fact a revolution or a coup, within Marxism itself.
Castro himself was not a self-described socialist until after he was spurned by the U.S. who committed a major foreign policy blunder by supporting Batista, the landowner class, and the existing regime long after they had shown themselves to be brutal and corrupt and after Castro had overthrown them.
Castro threw himself into the Stalinist bloc out of necessity. Blame for the 50 year trajectory of Cuba can be placed squarely on ineptness of U.S. foreign policy to deal with the post-colonial reality. They committed similar and in fact bloodier and worse blunders in central America throughout the 70s and 80s with Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guetemala.
A very sad incompetent and shameful history that Obama looked like he was finally willing to confront.
That's like saying modern terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS has nothing to do with a particular interpretation of Islam, but is rather just a response to colonialism and foreign interference in middle eastern countries, etc.
There was an ideological basis to the Cuban revolution that tapped into a existing global Marxist ideology. 'Packaging' was critical.
No cuban children sleeps in the streets tonight. You can't say that about northamerican children.
Please stop trying to humanize him.
I believe we should be able to. I don't like Hitler and I'm quite on the left, but if we can start to stop demonizing political characters, it would appease many political problems.
He generously donated it every time he executed a dissenter.
In addition to what I wrote below about the nature of the Good/Evil abstraction, I want to put this here.
I think there's a level at which this all boils down to beliefs. Not which ones you (generally you, not you as an individual) have, but rather if you believe anything at all.
Beliefs--like believing in good and evil, but there are many--are fundamentally a scary proposition. And I can't understand how people maintain them.
Belief, by definition, is accepting something as true while knowing there is insufficient evidence for that thing to be true.
This is not substantively different from a definition of insanity: a case where a person accepts something as true that isn't supported by a reasonable body of evidence.
This is kind of a bold statement, but I stand by it. People who believe things are not really different from people who are insane. There's a lack of reason common to both categories of people.
The Good/Evil dichotomy is only one projection of belief. But it may well be the most important one. Because fundamentally, assertions of good and evil are really just high-level abstractions for the beliefs.
Good vs. Evil is a shortcut to feeling good about yourself. It's a shortcut for saying, "I believe x about y and I have no reasonable proof for any of that, but it makes me feel good about myself."
We should do away with beliefs. We're smarter and better than that. And getting rid of beliefs would have the nice effect of tossing the good/evil garbage out as well.
I believe the quote is from Noam Chomsky but couldn't find any references. Some interesting debate in this thread, but as you and the OP say, there is no black and white, good vs evil, just many shades in between with many actors playing many roles simultaneously. Fidel Castro was certainly no saint and at times was the devil, but there were also those other times inbetween.
i don't see how i could ever turn into a dictator who puts his political opponents in jail (as well as everyone who just wants to get out of the country) - all in the name of some higher cause. Interesting if these dictators ever took note of the discrepancy between the Cause and reality; or were they always able to self-justify their actions like in the 'grand inquisitor' by Dostoevsky, who knows...
All the complexities in the world won't cover up the fact that communism was by far the worst evil of the 20th century, beating nazism by a mile, by tens of millions of people killed to no benefit. It had no redeeming qualities. Murder, slavery, and poverty is all communism gave to the world.
Now its major protagonists can burn in hell together. I hope they do.
I can't say anything about your experience, but I can share something about my childhood in Brazil. A middle-class home, private school, private health-care family under a brutal US-sponsored military dictatorship. I never even suspected people were getting arrested and murdered for criticizing the government. I enjoyed the military parades. It never occurred to me that public school was really bad, that not every kid had access to it (most didn't), that unless you had a stable job (and, once labeled a subversive, that was mostly impossible), you had absolutely no health care. The cost of my happy childhood completely eluded me until I was an adult.
In Africa Fidel Castro also took part in one of the most murderous civil wars in the continent, the Angolan civil war, and fought to establish the continent's worse dictator and cleptocracy, José Eduardo dos Santos and his MPLA cronies.
What happened in Cuba after Castro came into power is similar to what happened in other countries after the revolutionaries won. We should try and understand if these sorts of people were evil to begin with or became evil as a natural transition after tasting power following a successful revolution.
Simply terming them as evil (honestly, Castro and others did many evil deeds), and not trying to understand and learn from the pattern is going to be a problem that humanity as a whole will suffer from.
The old man in the back of the audience, marcoperaza, sighs and says, "Alas! If only it were the other way around..."
Neither was Rafidel Baticastro in any way special - he was just another human, using the chances that life presented him- and many of those for selfish reasons, like we all would. The Dynamics of revolution and upheaval could have swept anybody ruthless enough to the top. What the ruthless person then does, is on his account, but usually mirrors the way the opponents of the era engaged him/her and is only limited by nuclear deterrence from becoming total war as seen in Europe pre-nuke. Thus you are right in that he was evil when it came to trying to expand his power-base at any cost.
But then again, i also refuse the "single-saint-sinner" in the front row narrative. A individual like him needs followers, needs people desperate enough to throw there lives into the ring at his feet, needs a society that is prone to collapse anyway and this society is created by the every day villainy of you and me.
Its neither "tragic", nor inevitable, neither are the causes unknown. We all vote day to day with our feet for the likes of him and with the total of our life's for the circumstances to be "tragic".
We buy products assembled in sweatshops, we raise to large family's, who disguise themselves as SUVs and the ecological footprint of long commutes. And because we refuse to reduce our lifes-standard, this is "inevitable".
When the billing day arrives, we step back from the mess, throw ourselves on the floor in a tantrum, and demand the conservative equals to a economic "Safespace" aka a dictatorship of either a stabilizing Strong-Man or a Revolutionary (depending entirely on the ratio of nothing-to-loosers:small-time-croonies) .
So before writing history, i would like to hear more about the living circumstances, this all originated from. I would like to hear about your towns priest, who every Sunday preached, be fruitful and multiply, while condemning new ways of thinking, to a population consisting mostly out of hopeless-unemployed- youth.
I would like to here about the companys who held monopolys on sugar cane production, using up cheap human resources and sabotaged developments that would have reduced the availability of unskilled labor.
I would like to hear the whole story, see the whole picture. And yes, the murders are still on him. So that's it, another murderous Movement bastard, but if we dont find out what made him possible and prevent society from sliding into that direction again- your family suffered for nothing. Suffered to allow the survivors to suffer again the same fate, two or three generations down the row.
PS: My condolences to the CIA, who right at this moment must scrap the final assassination attempt - shooting him with salute guns at his funeral.
Batista was a violent, corrupt dictator. My grandmother lived in Cuba during those days in absolute poverty. It's not wise to talk in absolutes, your family was prosperous but most Cubans were not.
---
Commenting on the genesis of this provision, Edward Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq (under Jimmy Carter) and former ambassador to Mauritania said:
> In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, [my working group was asked] to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities. […] After the task force concluded its work, Congress [passed] U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331 ... the US definition of terrorism. […] one of the terms, "international terrorism," means "activities that," I quote, "appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping." […] Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. […] And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.[62]
So, let's get it clear that that doesn't make him humane and good for society.
>>If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.
This is a disingenuous advice.
Will you not criticize Hitler? So, do you propose to acknowledge the humanity of Hitler and don't criticize him? Castro would have happily become Hitler, if he could get power.
Criticizing him or anyone is not necessarily reducing them to a tagline. He deserves much and harsh criticism than most thugs, criminals and religious extremists in the world. He was an extremely cruel, dictator with no remorse for his cruel and inhumane actions.
But what do you expect from a follower of communism? Communism is a very vicious ideology which leaves no room for any type of dissent. You either toe the party-line or get killed/maimed/imprisoned.
Sad, this criminal didn't die a lot earlier.
For some objectivity, we could look at some stats. PPP adjusted GDP per capita is much lower than the US, but way better than China. Education is excellent [2] because they spend 10% of their budget on it. Life expectancy (~79, gasp!) is higher than the United States. All of this with a near total embargo from the next-door global economic super power.
Western record on human rights is equally bad. In Castro's time, the Vietnam war resulted in 1.3 million deaths. More recently, the invasion of Iraq has resulted in 125,000 non-combatant deaths. Western allies today like Saudi have the most egregious human rights records.
I hate communism, but even with unrestrained exaggeration, Castro isn't Hitler. Such a claim is either a result of media manipulation of history or a flawed history curriculum.
[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/02/19/global-views-on-castro-a...
[2] https://novakdjokovicfoundation.org/education-system-of-cuba...
Expected a higher level of discourse on HN. Wishful thinking.
Looks like you have no idea what communism really is.
I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fate/government.
> Dictatorship contains evil.
> this is a black-and-white matter
To pretend here, for me, as if he was cruel to our continent would be both ungrateful and untrue. The man offered free training and medical school for most of our African doctors, he harbored, trained and armed many a guerilla group in our pursuit of independence from colonization. Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free.
The truth is, if as a continent we are to point at individual world leaders who did the most for African nations, Fidel Castro is very high up that list, if not at the top.
He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
With that, rest in peace Fidel Castro. Your legend lives on.
Many central and south American heads of state have tried to stand up to that empire, and many have died in plane crashes. Hugh Chavez, demonized in American media, put pieces of the bill of rights on all food packaging, stood up for the poor and was opposed by the rich. Those people help him survive a military coupé. I would not be surprised if in 40 years, declassified documented revealed that coupé was US led.
For those who think that's crazy tin foil hat, remember that the US did cause the September 11th 1973 uprising in Chile, which led to the deaths of 11,000 civilians.
In a few hundred years when this era is not covered in the relentless nationalism that paints our view of the world, people will discover how much of our modern world was controlled by so very few.
+ Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment.
+ Fidel does not allow democracy
+ He does not allow any real internet access
+ Fidel puts political dissidents in jail
+ Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy
+ Cuban's live in relative poverty
+ Only the US 'embargos' Cuba, they are free to trade with 167 other nations in the world - and even buy American products from wherever they want - just not America.
This is not 'propaganda'.
The US didn't cause this. They tried to stop it.
But I'd say its factually incorrect.
Should incorrect statements be downvoted even if it shows an interesting state of mind?
No I'm not denying that providing hospitals and doctors to Africa is a good thing, but America, and even ordinary Americans like Bill Gates have done so much more for Africa than Castro ever did, and it seems rather unfair that Western efforts are neglected and we are seen as colonizers to seek independence from whereas brutal and oppressive dictators such as Castro are presented as honored crusaders for throwing a smidgen of help to Africa.
What do you have to say, as an African, to Fidel Castro's role in the Angolan civil war, and in establishing Angola's dictatorship?
Many don't know this, but George W. Bush had quite an impact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for...
It's the time when society divides into economic winners and losers, and the wealth gap will increase - sometimes dramatically. So yay innovation and (somewhat more) freedom, but woe social tensions.
I don't doubt that his doctors may have helped you.
However, the man has committed grievous crimes, keeps 'his people' in abject poverty, on an 'island prison'. More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
"Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free."
This is false and misleading. They do not provide it for free - they are paid by international agencies and it is one of the few real 'exports' that Cuba has.
Most perniciously - the money that is supposed to go to the doctors mostly goes to the military junta - while the doctors themselves receive very little.
Moreover - the Cuban doctors abroad are prisoners. They are held with the threat of violence or internment of their families back home. If they try to escape or leave - they go to prison:
http://www.cubanet.org/htdocs/CNews/y00/jun00/06e4.htm
Those doctors that 'helped you' get 5% of their 'salary' - while 95% goes to their captors.
Praise the doctors, not Fidel.
I find it abhorrent that such statements could be made about a cruel dictator, who has done 'some possibly good things' in the name of his legacy, whilst at the same time tormenting millions.
It's sad that people should hold such a tyrant in such esteem - because not only are those medical programs are paid for mostly by 'evil Western Nations' - aid to African nations is overwhelmingly from 'Western nations' (at least in terms of direct/indirect aid - of course China is a huge economic investor).
Let us not make a totem of this man without being cognizant of all the things he has done.
Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides.
>keeps 'his people' in abject poverty
A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too...
>More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
It's in control of the state, which is how things are supposed to work in communist countries. Not necessarily worse than having it in the hands of corporations...
What is sad is how quickly people reach for a wide, monotone brush they like to paint things with lately. As an american, i have heard roughly your description of castro my entire life. To hear another version, from someone living a life in a continent i have never visited is both refreshing and educational.
As for the two doctors your pointed to, I am sure they are the exception. I happen to be Zimbabwean, actually, a good number of my childhood doctors were Cuban and they were there happily and willingly. My brother, a doctor himself, has many friends from Cuba who say the same.
You should read this article when you get a chance.
http://qz.com/846337/cuban-leader-fidel-castro-was-a-liberat...
There really is nothing disturbing about my opinion. At least on the African continent that is. Perspectives differ, I guess.
I didn't really want to comment in this thread but to be clear, the US embargo has kept Cuba in abject economic poverty not Castro.
The comment you are replying to is embracing that complexity. Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I am no fan of the shape Fidel Castro's Cuba took, but I think it is more important that we learn from the mistakes of the revolution (which are not a simple matter of being 'evil' or 'wrong') than that we demonize them.
In general, we should learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
As someone who studied the subject formally, don't place maximum weight on the success and failures of the (statistically insignificant) rise and fall of modern nation states. This is a very far cry from a controlled experiment to begin with, anyways.
Don't read into that too much. I'm not saying mainstream economics doesn't have compelling arguments to make about the elegant effectiveness of free (properly regulated) markets. I'm just trying to be fair: it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
> He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
Yeah, generally with his own citizens who he stomped on for decades. But hey, at least you got a couple free doctors out of it so screw those guys.
Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal.
How many people can you say that of?
> He was also an evil dictator...
Lol @ evil dictator. Fidel Castro never killed as many people as Nixon, Reagan, Bush or Blair. He did not go half way around the world as Thatcher did to claim an Island 4,000 km away from home (Falklands).
>...who silenced any and all opposition
What opposition? Imperialists and mafia members who wished to turn Cuba into an enclave for gambling? CIA operatives who tried to return Cuba to its occupied past?
> just look at Cuba today
Just look at Iraq, Libya,Syria today. And while you are at it; look also at Iran, China, Russia (which evaded western occupation). Indeed, look at Mexico which is friendly terms and has not been invaded yet by the US and tell me how much they have gained from that relationship.
I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators. The spin and one sided arguments, the glossing over historical truths. Cuba is behind in development because of the American embargo.Simple. Not because the regime had no plan for economic development. In healthcare, this small nation with a health care budget 0.001% of the US beats the USA hands down in universal coverage and access to health. Who knows what would have happened if previous administrations had left them alone.
Finally, Castro sent troops to Africa to fight against colonial occupiers. He sent armies to harass the apartheid regime at the Angolan/ Namibian border. This counts as a plus in my book.
Rest on Fidel. You have fought the fight and lived like a man. I will pray for you. May heaven receive your soul.
> I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators.
A counterexample: this photo was taken in NYC after the most recent US presidential election:
http://i.imgur.com/DcVbqAm.jpg
It's a picture of someone standing in front of Trump Tower holding a sign that says "You're not my president. Fuck you."
Can you imagine someone getting away with that in Castro's Cuba?
Maybe Americans value their rights more than anything else, but to me as a Chinese citizen, this is both laughable and disrespectful.
I'm genuinely asking. Not from the US and just today found out (by curiosity) where Cuba is.
Like comparing Nixon and Castro. Nixon's most famous scandal was when he tried to wiretap his political opponents. It ended with his resignation. Castro outright killed his political opponents, and had the rest thrown in prison. He continued to rule for decades. There is absolutely no comparison.
Yes, I understand that U.S. foreign policy played a huge role in shaping the revolution. But let Castro's legacy stand on what he actually did, not on trying to throw shade on everyone else.
Apart from carpet bombing Laos And Cambodia as hackeboos has pointed out, he engaged the Vietcong leadership in secret discussions to prolong the war so that Democrats would lose the '74. Elections. Think on that. Killing your fellow soldier citizens for political power.
There's a lot of positive things to be said about Castro. But your unqualified hymn isn't going to help your cause. Just the number of people making the rather dangerous journey to the US proves how misguided your comparisons are.
You mean, the colonialists sent by the UK government?
They shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Letting historical arguments about borders override the basic question if the culture of the people living there right now is stupid, 18th-century thinking.
I'm sympathetic to Argentina's arguments about resource rights to the water surrounding the island, but the nationality of the island itself is not in question, and Thatcher was right to protect British people.
Israel Gaza and Iraq are not thousands of miles from the original home countries.
But I am genuinely curious that you answer these:
1.How can the nationality of the Island not be in question and at the same time Argentina have valid claims to the resources? It must be one or the other else there is a contradiction there.
2.There were Britons living in enclaves in South Africa during the Thatcher era.Some of these dated back 400 years. Would the UK have been justified in sending troops to defend their land claims?
" They talk about the failure of socialism, but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?"
" ...I began a revolution with 82 men.
If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15
and absolute faith.
It does not matter how small you are if you have faith
and a plan of action."
Fidel Castro 1926 - 2016When Castro asked that question in 1991, around 60% of people in East Asia were living in extreme poverty. Today it is 3.5% [1]. The change is mostly due to China switching from a socialist to capitalist economy.
[1] http://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/2/13123980/extreme-poverty-...
Well, yeah. After all, they have been fed anti-fidel/anti-communist propaganda for half a century.
American embargo was put in place because the US can't afford communist fools on its border. Simple. You swing at the big guy and you lose. That is war. Mistakes are unforgivable.
And despite his flaws (and/or crimes against humanity) I can't help but wonder how Cuba would have faired under different leadership. Looking at the next-island neighbors in Haiti, or any number of comparable African countries, it seems the Cubans got the better deal. Just one example: life expectancy is 15 years higher than Haiti, and actually even a bit higher than in the US.
Organizing the necessities for life on this island, with a superpower fixated on killing you (and ruining you economy) next door, and keeping it peaceful for 50 years must be some sort of high score.
I know there'll be many Americans dancing on his grave (once the Trump International Hotel Havanna has opened). They may not even be wrong in an absolute sense. But there have been dozens of leaders in South America, Africa and Asia in the last 50 years much worse than Castro who don't seem to trigger the reflexes of righteousness. Actual mass-murdering sadists like Manuel Noriega, throwing living people into the ocean, from airplanes paid for by the CIA.
Let's hope for a bright future for Cuba – I met many people there who felt paralyzed by the stagnation, the constant scarcity. The beginning of the end of the embargo may turn out to be one of the most significant legacies of President Obama.
Why didn't you compared Cuba before the coup, and after Fidel Castro established his dictatorship?
Comparing Cuba to one of the lowest developed nations on earth, particularly while ignoring the other half of the island (Dominican republic) is a tad disingenuous.
Does this sound better?
Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[4] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts.[4][5] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people.[6][7][8] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.[9]
You can argue whether that's something that can be blamed on him, but if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt I wouldn't call that a fair comparison.
For example, there was a story posted on HN long ago about a Soviet dissident who had his life ruined because he was known to be a dissident. They didn't imprison him and torture him, they just got him fired, made sure he couldn't find any but the most menial work, discredited him, etc. Would we say that it was his fault for adopting a pro-Western position? That it was "his policies" that ruined his life, family? Or that an external force opposed to his views and more powerful than him punished him for his views?
Cuba was twice as rich as Haiti (see graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba#/media/File:GD... for example) even before the revolution and had a lot more social capital. Yes, there was a good bit of inequality. Yes, the Batista regime was not great in all sorts of ways. But I expect Cuba would have been better off than Haiti even without the revolution happening.
What African countries are you thinking of that you consider comparable to Cuba in 1958?
Fully agreed on your last paragraph, though.
Look at how awful the quality of life in Cuba is today. Look at its people's lack of basic freedoms. Look at its awful economy. The US tried to save Cuba from itself.
I've been to Cuba, and life there is somewhat boring, and the standard of living is obviously low. But it's not the kind of poverty you seen many other countries. No starving old people and children in the streets, also no gang violence ruling your block.
Streetlife in general seemed quite happy – old people playing chess, young girls playing soccer (in school uniforms, no less), groups of three or four neighbors fixing one of those old cars etc.
Now it sounds too much like glorification – I also listened to 6 hours of Castro's labor day sermon in 2003 and most people around me felt I was insane for attending it voluntarily – they only went because somebody, somewhere had to check their name of a list or they may get into trouble. That's a price I wouldn't be willing to pay.
I hope Cuba will find a way to preserve a bit of what made it bearable in its worst times.
"One Castro or another has ruled Cuba over a period that spans seven decades and 11 U.S. presidents. Fidel Castro outlived six of those presidents,[[[NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro]]] including Cold War warriors John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan."
Yet today it's difficult for most people to appreciate the extreme threat and terror of nuclear weapons in the 1960's. Half of US voters think life was better then than now [3]. Really? To me, there's no level of job security that could possibly compensate for such a high chance of nuclear catastrophe.
[1] Reported in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RKO6MS8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
[2] As described by Robert McNamara in 'The Fog of War'
[3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/20/6-charts-tha...
Liberal Arts students across the Western World are saddened.
To me that's funny.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042460 and marked it off-topic.
These days it's like superhuman to be able to look at an issue from two sides.
Meanwhile, the liberal arts students may have learned to compare Cuba to other and similar countries and draw their conclusions. I have referred to the HDI in a different post where Cuba ranks 40. I have also traveled extensively throughout Latin America and lived there for some time. So I can make some comparisons as well.
Nelson Mandela for instance made life better for black South Africans, but he's implicated in violence against white south africans.
Hitler made life better for many Germans, especially given the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles.
Turning back to the US, you could argue that those descended from native americans have not had their lives improved by an ugly history of genocide. The US also enslaved people who our citizens today descended from. There was also internment of Japanese-American citizens. And to this day, high incarceration rates for the poor/minorities.
Looking back, it will be crazy to think, I went to Cuba while Fidel Castro was still alive.
It's always amazing when something becomes history so suddenly.
Look at countries who declared a war against free markets - Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea. They are absolutely pathetic.
Your problem is thinking that covered operations make the world better. It obviously didn't work in Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and many others countries. In fact it made the situation worse in most cases.
I don't think he cared about them in any way. He had a totalitarian view of how they should be, and he forced that upon them.
The blockade of Cuba began before Castro nationalized the American-owned oil refineries by Eisenhower drastically reducing the amount of sugar Cuba could export to the US. As the Cuban economy was dependent on sugar exports they didn't have much choice when the Soviet Union stepped in and offered to buy their sugar.
The rest is history. Cuba aligning with the Soviet Union was by force, not by choice. That's why the blockade was such a cluster-fuck from the beginning.
Similarly Ruanda/Rwanda
But tonight, I'll remember my family members that were killed in Las Cabañas by Che. I'll embrace my uncle who endured torture in Cuban prisons for buying black market bread. I'll remember my late aunt, who had to flee Cuba for her life under an assumed identity as a housekeeper. I'll remember my grandparents, who were always optimistic that they would soon return to their homes that were taken from them.
Tonight is for us. Tonight, I celebrate...
Admirers of Fidel Castro around the world - and all his admirers on this page - have one thing in common: they never had to live under his dictatorship.
The level of poverty I saw as someone from the Nordics was new to me, and while things like hospital visits were free (even for me as a tourist), people really had so little money, to the point it drastically affected the kind of food they could buy. And indeed many types of food wasn't even available in the peso shops, or was rationed.
At the same time, there was very little crime, and it was generally quite safe, probably due to a large police force, and lack gangs or organised crime. The people were fantastic, so warm and hospitable even they had so little.
There was inequality too, some very nice houses in the rich parts of Havana reserved for members of the political/military elite while a lot of people live in extremely run down conditions, and bizarre things like taxi drivers who get paid in dollars and receive dollar tips easily making 20-40x more per month than doctors.
I understand that part of the reason the country has been struggling is the long US embargo, but I can't help feeling part of it is due to bad governance too. When I arrived I had a rose-tinted picture of Cuban communism like many tourists, but it shocked me when I asked some of the band memebers what would be needed to make things better, they said "The best thing would be if Fidel died".
Now that has happened, I wonder what the way forward will look like - if they will be able to retain the best parts of the socialist ideals and start growing the economy responsibly, or if it will turn into a land grab with the majority being left in poverty.
And what is wrong with this? Or should physicians continue using health to become rich as it is the case in so many other countries?
And in that his enemies were right.
His enemies say if Napoleon had had a newspaper similar to the «Granma», no french would have ever heard about Waterloo.
And in that his enemies were right.
His enemies say he used power by talking and not listening, because he was more comfortable with echoes than with voices.
And in that his enemies were right.
But his enemies won't say that he didn't just stood by while history moved forward that he faced the bullets when the USA invasion arrived, that he faced hurricanes with equal fury as the wind, that he survived 637 attemps on his life, that his energy was decisive to turn a colony into homeland and that it wasn't by any spell or miracle that that homeland was able to survive 10 US presidents.
And his enemies won't say Cuba is one of those countries that won't compete in the International World Cup as to whom is the most servient.
And they won't say this revolution, grown in punishment, is what could be and not what it wanted to be. Nor they say that the division between the wish and the reality grew taller and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, that drowned the development of a cuban democracy, forced militarization of society and granted bureaucracy, which for every solution has a problem, the alibies it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.
And they won't say that despite all of the problems, despite the agressions from outside and arbitrariness from inside, this small island, suffered but stubbornly happy, has created the least unjust latin american society.
And they won't say that this achievement was because of the sacrifice of their people, but also because of the stubborn will and outdated sense of honor of this gentleman who always fought for the losers, much like that renowned colleague from the fields of Castilla.
Eduardo Galeano.
(apologies in advance for any mistakes I may have made while translating this from spanish)
Thank you for posting this.
Now, suppose you're a leader of such a movement. What's going to be your ideology, beyond just national self-determination?
Well, on one hand, you look at the guys that are currently busy denying you that, and you notice that they generally tend to be capitalist countries. If you listen to what their ideologues have to say, they notice they aren't actually saying much about your plight at all - it's all about some abstract stuff like free markets.
On the other hand, you have those communists, who constantly talk about imperialism and colonialism, and how it sucks for those on the receiving end. And you know it's true, from your own experience. And those guys haven't ever made you their colony, and aren't demanding that you become one. Basically, their talk on that subject is entirely in your favor. Well, why wouldn't you believe that they're right on all those other things, as well?
There are actually several examples of leaders that weren't initially particularly left-wing becoming more so solely because they were fighting against some Western country occupying them, other Western countries were just pretending nothing's happening (at best; at worst, they were actively helping the occupier, as in e.g. Indochina), while the Soviets were ready and willing to supply food, arms, and everything else you need to fight. Of course, it came with ideological strings attached, but beggars can't be choosers.
Castro, for example, was not a communist when he first started to participate in violent resistance. He was anti-American, and specifically anti-American involvement in the countries in the region, which then consisted of backing dictators like Batista and Trujillo. It was sometime after he started down that road that he became to radicalize along Marxist lines, especially after several bitter setbacks (that also made it clear that fighting against US requires a powerful ally to succeed).
I'm talking about the Dominican Republic. US had ensured that it would not go communist or socialist by two direct successful military interventions. It had its own corrupt capitalist dictator, but from there gradually reformed into a free (albeit still corrupt) democracy. It is geographically very close, and has a similar population size. So it's interesting to compare and contrast metrics like GDP, life expectancy, literacy etc:
http://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/cuba.dominican-re...
Reading the historical/design notes in the player's guide and watching events unfold while playing as M26 brought history to life in a very visceral way. I spent the week after playing obsessively reading about modern Cuban history.
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-497-cuba-libre-reprint-edition.asp...
Cuba Libre is part of a game series on COunter-INsurgencies (COIN). "Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection" covers the American Revolution using the same system.
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-582-liberty-or-death-the-american-...
Afterwards, I inhaled biographies on him. My favorite was the Felix Markham book: https://www.amazon.com/Napoleon-Signet-Classics-Felix-Markha...
But hopefully the foolishness of the embargo can really end now.
American culture has had a huge effect on the world. To attend an island off the coast of Florida and find it more or less free of that cultural influence was fascinating. Fascinating in that they were even just able to do it.
I didn't see an island prison there. Which is not to whitewash anything. However, I was free to go anywhere I wanted and did. People I met were kind, welcoming and seemed, to my eyes and ears, content.
The view of Fidel as a tyrant is not the view one finds as they travel the world. Neither is he viewed as a saint. He is viewed as someone who achieved something incredible, with all that entails, good and bad.
People live in very basic conditions under constant surveillance. Phone lines, Internet connections, etc. are monitored.
Most cars and electronics are still from the 50s, from the Batista era, and are repaired with homemade parts.
People can study for free, but there are no job opportunities, so you can see architects sweeping the streets and physicians driving cabs.
Disturbing a tourist is a grave offense and lead to years in jail. There are 2 currencies, one for tourists, another one for nationals, and nationals are not allowed to have tourist currency. Nationals are not allowed to enter hotels or tourist facilities.
People grow animals at home and give all scraps to them. Once they grow big enough they kill them for consumption. People rely on the black market for their basic needs. Some set up clandestine restaurants at home to make a living.
Cubans are not allowed to leave the country. They need to pay for the privilege of traveling, and all trips must include a return ticket. If multiple family members are traveling, at least one has to stay to ensure the family doesn't escape the regime. People bypass that by creating fake families through marriage.
As you can see, their life experience is BAD. The Castros are personally responsible for a lot of it. They should have stepped down for humanitarian reasons. People that supported the revolution initially would not have done so if they knew what was going to happen to them.
When he was very old but still in power, I always wondered if he would just suddenly die one day and his country would descend into chaos. At least that has not happened, what, if you like or dislike him, you should probably still credit him. I hope Cuba will develop into a freer society over time.
It is amazing that a small island could defy the empire to his north for half a century. Such courage is probably what caused Khrushchev to send him nuclear missiles when talk of invasion of the rebelling perceived colony became widespread in the US. Courage, fortitude, the love of the people and international solidarity helped maintain the Cuban people's defiance of and independence from the empire which is soon to be Trump's.
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cuba/dictatorship.html
The man was an evil murderous dictator, and the world - and his subjects - are better off without him.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/wont-jeremy-corbyn-like...
I remember stories about how he, or Raul for that matter, would request to have sushi, even though she didn't have access to salmon, tuna nor eel. Even sushi rice was impossible to get by. The classic seaweed another hard to find item. These kind of crazy requests would usually come in a handful of hours, or less, before said meal was due to happen. Her job for many years was to pass off whatever she had access to as the real deal. Call it "tantrum trompe l'œil", if you will.
I remember being surprised when she said it was probably the most fulfilling position to be in as a chef, because of how challenging it was.
The first time I saw one on the beach in the Florida Keys, I was astonished at the ingenuity of the craft and marveled that someone had so longed for freedom that they had spend years building it in secret.
Then, I was chilled.
http://www.floatingcubans.com/
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1...
Also: there is nice set of photos here: http://lahabanaphoto.com/?page_id=132
I think I've only seen him in the green military uniform. But at the congress he wore an Adidas jacket!
It would be interesting to know the story behind that.
Edit: Naturally, a half hour after posting this, I realized there was probably a way to find out...
Long Live Comantade
The room goes totally silent. All eyes on Castro and his bodyguards lining the walls. He says 'when the missiles were removed, the US vowed not to invade Cuba. I would've been a fool to do anything that would give the US the desire and moral high ground to break that promise. Nothing could come from killing Kennedy that would justify such a risk for Cuba'.
The remarkable part, I'm told, is that he laughed it off and the revelry continued.
In any case, Fidel lived long enough to see the American overreaction through most of it's shelf life.
This is destruction and devastation of tens of millions of lives. Libya was one of the most advanced countries in Africa, now its a basketcase. That's millions of lives in disarray setback for generations. Who takes responsibility for this? If these are not crimes against humanity what is?
We have got used to a fraudulent narrative supported by 'our' media where we can judge and think the worst of others and not examine our own devious actions. But if we want to judge and get self righteous about Castro we must first hold our own government to account to have an iota of credibility.
Since there is zero interest in prosecuting or even reining in the warmongers this persistent kneejerk rush to the moral highground is a sinister posturing by people who know exactly what this country has been doing and are out to defraud the world.
He demonstrated that it is possible to survive without compromising with the hegemon.
A lot of cubans and venezolanos are my neighbors, and there is whistling going on.
Communism looks awesome on paper, but hardly works in practice.
Castro tried, all the way.
<3 <3 <3
A thought exercise: Here is an attempt to take on an argument made by the communist apologists about Cuba in favor of Castro: that "there are no children sleeping on the streets."
May be that's true even if we don't have any independent scrutiny made by human rights organizations to support it. But "no children sleeping on the streets" is not a sufficient condition to judge the social progress of the nation.
For instance, these children may be sent to gulags (if they happen to be of the lesser equal people) or they may be forced to sleep on floors in a dungeon and still the claim "no cuban children sleeping on the streets" will be technically true. Or even the tyrant Castro might have ordered to kill all the children who were seen to be sleeping on streets (who's to prevent him from doing so there?)
The apologists just shun away from such critique as they are dishonest or are passionate followers blinded by their faith in communism.
