Former Cuban President and leader of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, took leave of this earthly realm on November 25, 2016 at the age of 90. Coincidentally, his passing took place on the anniversary of the Granma’s departure from Mexico in 1959 to liberate Cuba. Despite the prevailing Washington narrative of […]
May he RIP.
A coin has two sides this article paints a picture of a kind man a humanitarian called Fidel Castro The other side of the coin carries a fear by which he ruled his country a fear which today lives in the hearts of many cubans who were forced to leave cuba under Fidel Castro rule
Castro the revolutionary.
May he Rest in Peace.
I am impressed by men and women of action. People who take chances and risk it all for what they believe. These are the people that dominate History’s pages. That said I do not support every man of action but it is undeniable that such people get to make history.
I am happy that I grew up in Barbados and not Cuba. Barrow achieved in Barbados what many Cubans would risk their lives crossing the Straits of Florida for.
Well Ping Pong Castro had to respond to those marauding imperialists.
>
Alicia’s piece is well done except for one thing. She tries to explain the poverty of Cuba today by referencing the US trade embargo.
Wrong, Alicia. It is not the trade embargo. As any competent economist will tell you, there is no Third World country that can escape poverty by simply confiscating and redistributing the wealth of elite groups in society. There is not enough to go around, period, and the only way to achieve general affluence is to make far reaching changes in technologies of production, and then find ways to make money from the new technologies.
For whatever reason, Castro was never able to develop the new products and services needed to dramatically raise living standards for everyone on the island.
Fidel will rest in Peace but his actions will live in the hearts of many of the cuban people whose lives were destroyed trying to flee his rule by the iron fist
ac
The reason Castro ruled with an iron fist is that his enemies were as ruthless as he was. The dispossession of Cuba’s elites was a good thing because the resources transferred to the poor relieved their suffering.
Most of the elites who lost property were able to move to the United States and achieve an even higher standard of living than they would have had without emigration. All in all, a win-win for most Cubans.
Only a few thousand people lost out by trying to overthrow the Revolution.
Just like many demagogues Fidel started out with an ideology of taking his country back , Setting up and depending oh trade barriers that would have only benefited his people and country with terms and conditions screaming protectionism , Therein lie his downfall and a failure to build and develop a country on those ideas he had promised to his faithful a country which would benefit from the hard work of its people and a govt who would be willing and able to give to its people all that it hoped for
Unfortunately Fidel hopes and dreams became a night mare as the country became isolated Fidel however remained relevant to the economic stability of Cuba but far removed from a reality of progress which meant he would have to become less rigged and opened to opinions and ideas by those he despised the most
Rather than being diplomatic he committed his country to large economic boycotts anger and hostility from within his country and a parting of ways from USA his greatest rival
@chad999999
Are you saying the! Trade embargo would not have contributed to Cuba’s poorer economic state?
George Galloway on Castro and Cuba (from 2012)
@chad999999
Are you saying the trade embargo would not have contributed to Cuba’s poorer economic state?
chad99999 November 26, 2016 at 9:53 PM #
And how about the Caribbean nationals,including many Barbadians,some with their Cuban born wives, who were dispossessed and deported to their homeland with only the shirts on their backs. Something we never like to talk about.
David
Cuba has had excellent terms of trade with the Soviet Union/Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, China, India, Canada and many other countries. It has always been able to buy food and medicines, even from the United States, and the flow of remittances from Miami has always been substantial, even when it was restricted in the 1970s and 80s.
Trading sugar, tobacco and nickel with the United States at (lower) world prices would not have been helpful. The major loss was in revenue from tourism and banking services, but this would have been largely offset by the constant leakage of capital to the US, if Cuba had retained a capitalist economy. Cuban elites would have continued to bank most of their profits in Miami and New York if Castro had eschewed socialism.
The trade embargo kept Castro in power. The Soviet Union collapsed not because it had inferior weapons but because it had inferior stoves, washing machines and fridges.
Fidel Castro cannot die!
This thing about resting in peace belongs to mere mortals.
Fidel shall live forever poking his finger in the eyeballs of western capitalism.
Until that dies.
Viva Fidel!
I have to agree with chad99999. This one time only.
Fidel Castro will be forgotten in 5 years. His future will be as a T shirt emblem. He is irrelevant now and has been so for the last 8 years.
He was my childhood hero! His heart was in the right place with respect to his country, but he wasn’t a perfect man by any stretch of the human imagination. Nevertheless, America ought to take the blame for making Castro into a communist because after the revolution Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro turned to America for help, and America turned its back on Castro and Che, who then turned to the Soviet Union. But after Nikita Khrushchev took down the missiles unknown to Castro, Castro then turned to China.
The message is in the music. Where is our spirit of revolution?
What do black Cubans have to say?
The Castro experience through the lens of the American press.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-dies.html?_r=0&referer=
>
There are those twistorians who would be quick to rewrite Fidel Castro history replacing and resurfacing an image of a man with compassion ! a humanatarian !and a man who had a right to torture and imprisoned his enemies and others whose ideas and philosophies that were in disagreement with Fidel.
However truth cannot be deleted with evidence .Evidence which shows
Fidel encouraged torture
Many of his citizenry flee on rickty boats braving the high seas trying to get away from poverty and acts detected to be against human rights which included persecution of gays
He censor all means of expression and communication including the outlaw of Unions
Yes there are countries who might have benefited from a benevolent Fidel but Fidel would have realised that having placed his country on a path of economic runination and almost total isolation it would have been better to save some of his integrity by surrounding himself with affluent respected people of character rather than being thought of as a despised and despicable human being world wide an image not even a dog would want to carry to the grave
Yes there are those would remember his charm and benevolence but those people never lived in Cuba nor had to battle treacherous waters fleeing a man who ruled with an iron fist named Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro was a facking tyrant.
This monster was asked by a Reporter years ago why so many women in Cuba have to sell their bodies.
His reply was at least most were college graduates.
Whilst he and his family including Raul his brother and current leader of Cuba lived like kings, the population lived in constant fear and poverty totally controlled by a repressive government to its Cuba citizens.
Neighbour pitted against neighbour to spy to see if anyone was bad talking the regime where if informed would be arrested and thrown in jail for years.
Cuba is the North Korea of the West.
Why you think that so many thousands lost their lives at sea trying to flee to Miami by boat risking jail if they were caught before leaving Cuba and death at sea.
Is it normal for citizens of any not to be able to travel without being arrested who have no criminal records?
This man is no hero he was/is a monster to millions of Cubans who fear the ramifications of being truly free and living in an island which was like a prison.
Modern day Western North Korea.
Hal Austin
Though the ideology of totalitarianism preaches egalitarianism, but at the end of the day the Cubans of Hispanic descent are still human beings with racial biases like most if all human beings today. Listen! The concept utopianism is an idealist dream, and a dream which I do believe will be made possible when the Man who sits on high and looks down low regain His world. Now weren’t there biases amongst Jews and Gentiles; and the Pharisees the Sadducees?
I am cognizant of the mindset of Castro and the actions he took regarding Cuba, though I don’t agree with everything Castro did, still I support his efforts to dismantle the European Economic Colonialism throughout the Americas, and the African continent. Why would Nelson Mandela embraced Fidel Castro? Mendela, stood on the principles equality,human rights and justice, but he was ungreatful of the sacrifices the Cubans freedom fighters made in an effort to demantle European colonialism and apartheid in South Africa.
Hal Austin
I am quite sure you have read Che Guevara bio as well as Fidel Castro, in an effort to better understand what really motivated the both of these men to take such action?
Dompey even the devil has something in common with God. and do not forget that Cuba was in the throngs of economic depression and needed all the help and support it could get ,After all Who said Castro was a fool it would have been folly for Castro to totally annex Cuba from the rest of a democratic world he needed all those people that he went forward in his benevolence asking or seeking nothing in return but knowing those voices could have a subliminal effect across the world as voices as reason in helping him to prop up his regime
This is the real reality for Cubans living under these monsters.
When asked what they thought about the sudden passing of Fidel Castro, a group of young women began to giggle. One of them, who asked to be identified just as Laura, didn’t seem shocked by the news.
“He was old already. It was his time,” she said. “Does anyone know how he died?”
Laura’s friend, Camila, asked, as she looked suspiciously around and then admitted, “I’ll have an opinion when that policeman over there stops looking in our direction.”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/cubans-react-death-fidel-castro/story?id=43794341
AC
I am not minimizing the lack of self-determination not availed to the Cuban people because of the system of governance under which these people resided, but what’s the difference between a democratic system of governance which promises the people the world and reneges? At least under a totalitarian system of governance the people knows where the ruling hierarchy stands though they’re not able to effectuate further suffering by electing those kind of characters in our democratic system of governance who continues to perpetuate it.
Who revels in the death of a human being?
David
Jesus was divine as well as human and we revels in His death, so what’s your point now?
Dompey i wish you would re-read your last comment and apply a sense of humanity which at the core of totalitarian is restrictive goverance which hampers and take away simple human rights of it’s people and which would never be never be tolerated in a democracy
The difference is as clear as day from night.
@ David
This man was a tyrant to millions of his own people that is why most of those who left Cuba are rejoicing his death knowing they can freely do so with no threats of punishment or imprisonment unlike those still living in modern day Cuba aka North Korea under Raul and its tyrannical regime.
It is also a matter of perspective. Are you aware the introduction of water boarding is being discussed in the USA.
@ David
Doesn’t make it any less right.
I don’t agree with waterboarding and I am a former US military officer.
A tyrant is a tyrant irregardless of Country or Nationality.
The point is that we are not as severely critical of these practices practiced by western democracies.
While his modish Western admirers liked to call him ‘Fidel’, the despotic President Castro’s frightened subjects dared not speak his name. They feared they would be overheard by ever-present secret police spies who made East Germany’s Stasi look like amateurs.
Glancing around nervously, they would mime either a beard or a set of epaulettes, before speaking in whispers about the tyrant who dominated every aspect of their hungry, censored lives.
No wonder. The ‘Committees for the Defence of the Revolution’, present in every workplace, school and street, watched everyone, reported every word out of place and ruined the lives of those who spoke out of turn.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3974756/Peter-Hitchens-Fidel-Castro-slaughtered-critics-brought-world-brink-Armageddon.html#ixzz4RChKu0Ic
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Castro was a tyrant, but the the US gangsters who controlled Havana, and the governments that turned a blind eye.
Any country or head of govt who seeks to suppress there people human rights by any means necessary should not be revered ,
Today as many heaps loads of accolades on Fidel head while he sleeps in death slumber many thousands of his citizens are restricted to life sentences in his hell hole call prison for speaking against his cruel injustices
there are two sides to a coin and this is one of them
Turn on
Where and when did you served and what was your commission MOS? I am sure military officers have those right?
@ David
Reality is waterboarding started under a Republican Administration ran by George Bush Jnr and banned by a Democratic President Obama.
Trump is a Republican and his administration can reversed and go back to waterboarding.
Trump and his people if they do so should face the wrath of the World and the American people.
Wrong is wrong doesn’t matter if it is Cuba, Russia, North Korea, China or United States.
United States Air force, 1st Lieutenant.
Waterboarding was started in the West during the Spanish Inquisition 1400, 1500s – circa
Previously, the Chinese practiced it
@ Pachamama
For clarification my reference to waterboarding being started by Republican George Bush Jnr Administration was in regards to it being used in Guantanamo Bay Cuba by the US Military personnel on suspected terrorists held there and banned by President Obama a Democrat.
That is what is feared to happen again under Trump Republican administration to suspected terrorists.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base,[1] also referred to as Guantánamo or GTMO (pronounced ‘gitmo’), which fronts on Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Due to the facts that the inmates are detained indefinitely without trial and several inmates were severely tortured this camp is considered as a major breach of human rights by great parts of the world.[2]
The camp was established by the Bush administration in 2002. 44th President Barack Obama promised its closure during his first campaign in 2008, but it remains open as of November 2016.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
The measure of a leader is, did he leave his country better than he found it?
I didn’t agree with some of Castro’s policies but the answer is a resounding YES, no one mentions his immediate predecessor Batista and I was reading some stats today and here is some info:
Infant mortality:4.5 per 1000 vs US 5.8 per 1000
6.72 Doctors per 1000 vs. US 2.45
Life expectancy in Cuba 78.7; 1/10 of a year shorter than US
US policy towards Cuba has been guided by exiles in Miami whose influence is far greater than their numbers should dictate. If the Cubans in Florida were relocated to some other State their influence would wane but Florida with 29 Electoral votes is the tail that wags the electoral dog.
The US left 33,000 souls in Vietnam yet it has been more conciliatory towards Vietnam (led by the Communists that defeated the US) than to its next-door neighbor. Obama tried to reverse that trend but today Rubio – fighting his parent’s battle and who is out of touch with today’s young descendants of those who left Cuba) is still trying to fight the battles of the past. What will Trump do? His tweet of about Castro’s death seems to indicate he wants to roll back the clock but money talks and BS walks so the billionaires who support Trump (and Trump himself) will see an opportunity to make money like the Europeans already there.
History marches on.
Truth on
10th Mountain Division rank of staff sergeant! Now I am here wondering why an Air Force guy would wish to waterboard anyone when his job doesn’t entails that kind of stuff? You should be worrying about getting waterboard if come into enemy hands.
Truth on
I do agree with Trump’s position to bring back waterboarding in view of the kind of stuff Isis is doing to its captives.
@ Dompey
Are you slow or can’t comprehend?
Where did it say I support waterboarding or would be involved in carrying out.
I was responding to a comment by David.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.