I was in college in 1959 when Fidel Castro and his military overthrew the dictator Batista. College students were excited by this young revolutionary. He came to Cambridge to speak to a large audience and I covered him for my college newspaper. We had high hopes in those days.
It wasn’t long before Castro decided to align himself with the Soviet Union. Thereafter there were frequent reports of trials, imprisonment, executions, including some of his fellow revolutionaries. Disillusionment set in quickly.
I was never a fan of any dictator, including Fidel. I heard that literacy was high, and that people had access to medical care. But there was no freedom. Neighbors spied on neighbors. Cuba under Fidel was a police state.
When I visited Cuba in 2013, I saw the economic mess he had made of the country. By the time I got there, revolutionary fervor had dimmed almost to the vanishing point. There were revolutionary posters on the walls, but they seemed faded, antique. The revolutionaries were old men, the young seem eager to join the world.
The main impression I had was of deep and widespread poverty. From everyone I met, I got the feeling that ordinary Cubans are eager to break free of the stifling orthodoxy of Castroism. Even his brother Raul is. Raul’s daughter Mariela is a rebel against the regime. Although married with children, she has been a crusader for gay rights. Fidel imprisoned and isolated gays (read Reinaldo Arenas’ When Night Falls). Here and there were signs of entrepreneurship, restaurants in homes, bed and breakfast homes, restaurants pretending to be homes.
It struck me that the best way to free Cuba is to lift the embargo, permit normal tourism, and encourage economic development. That’s the process that President Obama started. JetBlue now offers daily flights to Havana. There will be other airlines flying there.
When I went to Cuba, my group of four flew on an American Airlines charter flight from Miami. It was a 45-minute trip. Most of those on the flight were Cubans returning home for a visit, carrying appliances.
It is a beautiful and unspoiled country. I urge everyone to visit.
Maybe Castro’s death will encourage greater liberalization of ties between our countries. I hope that Trump doesn’t re-impose the embargo to please the voting bloc of aging Cubans in Florida. The best way to create Cuba Libre is to establish full relations.
A site to discuss education and democracy
43 Comments
Leave a comment
-
Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
May he rest in peace eternal.
LikeLike
Thanks Diane for pointing out that Castro was a tyrant and a dictator who quashed freedom of expression and any kind of dissent. That does not justify our cruel treatment of Cuba over the decades. We were more than happy to do business with Batista and previous dictators. I don’t remember us embargoing Pinochet’s Chile or Peron’s Argentina.
When the hell do we finally return Guantanamo to Cuba; it is our mini colony. We have a more than 100 year old phony baloney lease with Cuba, the only way it can be annulled is if we say so. In effect, the renter is the one who is in control of the rental property, not the owner, Cuba. We imposed the lease on a compliant Cuban puppet government 100 plus years ago.
LikeLike
Castro overthrew a brutal US backed dictator that served the ‘Mob’ (US, mostly, Mafia) to the detriment of the Cuban people. Castro overthrew that system with a very small force and a great deal of public support.
The poverty of Cuba is not Castro’s responsibility (unless, of course, you subscribe to the belief that anyone who doesn’t do what the US ruling class wants ought to grovel in poverty until they starve and come to their senses). A U.S embargo can create immense poverty. Just ask Haiti.
I do agree with your final paragraph, however let’s hope that the price of American re-engagement doesn’t involve a loss of Cuban autonomy. We need to meet people as equals, not as subjects to be manipulated. Cubans never wanted to invade the US, they only wanted to live as a free people.
LikeLike
You are correct. Cuba is a stunningly beautiful island country. We spent time there a year ago with our Cuban son-in-law, and we fell in love with the Cuban people. They are friendly and anxious to join the rest of the world. At the same time, my son-in-law says the Cuban people are always ready to help one another. They are so poor and will do anything to make a living. While many are highly educated, they have no incentive to work harder as there is no reward. One taxi driver said his neonatologist wife makes $57 a month. Another observation by our son-in-law is that North Americans seem like a much lonelier people. Neighbors hardly know one another here, while it truly takes a village to keep the people going in Cuba. I pray the Cubans will feel some release from the bondage of the past 50 years. May God bless Cuba!
LikeLike
Deb, agree!
LikeLike
Why should there necessarily be a “reward” for higher education and the positions that come from that education?
One of the many unannounced assumptions (cultural habitus) that we live under, kind of like “grading students”, eh!
LikeLike
“One taxi driver said his neonatologist wife makes $57 a month.”
And????
LikeLike
The taxi driver is able to make a lot more money than his highly educated wife. There is little reward for her many years of education and training. Another observation is most of the family and friends we met do not blame the “bloqueo” (blockade) for their poverty or lack of necessities. They lay most of the blame at the feet of Fidel and his policies. We spoke with both older and younger Cubans. Going again in a few months, so we shall see if attitudes have changed.
LikeLike
Thanks for the explanation.
LikeLike
Deb,
I saw the same phenomena when I visited Cuba. Bartenders had a great job, because they got tips. Doctors got minimal salaries. There was no reward for education.
LikeLike
In college I read a number of books on the Cuban Revolution, most notably Hugh Thomas’s history. I also did an independent study on Mao’s political thought. I came to the conclusion, after studying both, that had Castro and Mao both died after the revolutionary phases and before they came to power, each would be considered among the greatest freedom fighters in history. But their regimes, for a variety of reasons, proved otherwise.
I could not agree with you more that more engagement rather than isolation leads to reform. Helmut Kohl even acknowledged that the first, most significant blow to the Berlin Wall was Willy Brandt’s policy of Ostpolitik, something Kohl and his party vehemently opposed for almost two decades. Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost had the same effects. Cuba will surely follow the same path. One wonders, however, how long it will take until they too revert to reactionary policies as we are doing, Russia has done, and Western Europe seems to be going. It will also be interesting to see how the Cuban-American community will respond. It’s still a problem for Europeans on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.
LikeLike
The US embargo put Cuba in poverty. Cubans could only rely on trade with Russia. When I was in Cuba I saw Black Cubans fully educated and the children all reading and writing Spanish and English. I saw Black Cubans “whether under dictator or not”, housing guests in the houses that were once the property of the rich Bastista Cubans. Maybe I only saw what they let me see, but I can’t help but remember the Blacks in the conferences I attended praising their education and medical systems, more than American Blacks can say. Rest in power Fidel, may normalizing our relationships ensure freedom for the Cuban people, but hopefully not Americanize them in a return to a Bastista-like government.
LikeLike
A very long time ago, my father and his twin brother worked for the Lykes brothers, then the largest cattle ranchers in Cuba. I grew up with tales of Batista’s rise to power, stories and photos of the hazards of ranch life back in the 1920’s.
Before the revolution, the old Lykes family farm, in the region known as la Candelaria, was bigger than Manhattan. My father managed that ranch. His twin brother ran the slaughterhouse in Havana.
I grew up in Tampa, Florida where Cuban lore and cultural fare was fused with Spanish and Italian infuence, easy to take for granted, and more interlaced with intrigues and violence from mob bosses than concerns about Castro’s regime. That changed with the rise of Castro, the Cuban Missile crisis and all that followed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficante_crime_family
LikeLike
Some other views of Fidel Casto & Cuba from the left:
Cuban Resilience
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13945
Will Cuban Reforms Create More Inequality? – James Early on Reality Asserts Itself pt3
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11056
Castro’s Legacy for Cuba, Latin America, and the World
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17016
History Will be the Judge: Fidel Castro, 1926-2016
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/25/history-will-be-the-judge-fidel-castro-1926-2016/
Fidel at 90: a Revolutionary Life
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/25/fidel-at-90-a-revolutionary-life/
The CIA and Castro: an Undying Obsession
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/25/the-cia-and-castro-an-undying-obsession-2/
Also, beware of the Washington Post’s view of U.S. foreign policy (and of the NY Times’ as well), because the Post and Times are the main print propagandists for the U.S. empire, especially with its “humanitarian interventionism” and inflated fear of “the Russian threat”.
See this:
Washington Post Thoroughly Discredits Itself With McCarthy-Style Smear Campaign Against ZeroHedge, Naked Capitalism, Truth-Out
LikeLike
Ed, all that aside, Fidel made Cuba a vassal state of the USSR, persecuted and imprisoned dissidents, rounded up homosexuals and put them in prison camps, prevented freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, and impoverished Cuba. He will get his just desserts in the afterlife, if there is one.
LikeLike
“. . . Fidel made Cuba a vassal state of the USSR. . . ”
What other choice did he have, other than throwing away his beliefs and joining up with the imperialistic US of A? The gringos forced his hand and then held it twisted up behind his shoulder blades for 50 odd years, mainly because for politicians of both sides of the duopoly Florida was too many votes to throw away.
LikeLike
Would Bezos do such a thing??? .I guess he would and did.
LikeLike
A very succinct and balanced view of Castro and Cuba. Well stated.
LikeLike
So here are a few points, I do not know if i am correct .
Did the repression start before or after the Bay of Pigs invasion ?.
It would seem if you do not fit right in with American interests in Latin America you might mysteriously die in a plane crash Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. . Or slain after a coup.Allende .
Elections are only as valid as being the candidate of US corporate interests. As we saw in Nicaragua as well. You might be taken out in soft coups as recently as Argentina and Brazil. A more violent affair in Honduras, the OAS seems to have called it a coup. Venezuela with two coup attempts the first under Chavez and the current unrest against Maduro . Perhaps they did not learn from Castro that self preservation means locking up your political opponents and closing down the press when your opponent is the US Corporatocracy. . Trump may be giving us lessons soon.
But here is a question as poor as Cuba is. Would you prefer to be a free man in Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador , Guatemala, Hatti … … or live in Cuba. You better believe you might prefer Miami but is that the fair comparison.
https://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/9/confessions_of_an_economic_hit_man
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-a6jzU0YgQ
As for that cab Driver in Cuba making more than a phd, plenty of adjuncts driving Uber
LikeLike
Trump is probably looking at ways to get a Trump hotel in Havana. You know there won’t be a conflict of interest because after all he is the president or el jefe. He’ll send Ivanka to seal the deal.
LikeLike
“Or slain after a coup.Allende .”
From my reading, it is a general consensus now that Allende took his own life to prevent being tortured and then killed (from wiki):
Allende’s glasses, found in the Palacio de La Moneda after his death
Salvador Allende, President of Chile, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds on September 11, 1973 during a coup d’état led by the Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet. After decades of suspicions that Allende might have been assassinated by the Chilean Armed Forces, a Chilean court in May 2011 authorized the exhumation and autopsy of Allende’s remains. A team of international experts examined the remains and concluded that the former president had shot himself with an AK-47 assault rifle.[1] In December 2011 the judge in charge of the investigation affirmed the experts’ findings and ruled Allende’s death a suicide.[2] On September 11, 2012, the 39th anniversary of Allende’s death, a Chilean appeals court unanimously upheld the trial court’s ruling, officially closing the case.[3]
According to Isabel Allende Bussi—the daughter of Salvador Allende and currently a member of the Chilean Senate—the Allende family has long accepted that the former President shot himself, telling the BBC that: “The report conclusions are consistent with what we already believed. When faced with extreme circumstances, he made the decision of taking his own life, instead of being humiliated.”[4]
LikeLike
Duane Swacker
Any relevance to your point .
So lets see I was 22 when Anaconda Copper and Kissinger put Pinochet up to it . I defer to your wisdom I should have followed the forensic trail for the next 38 years.
Is there some indication that he would not have been # 1 of possibly 3201 murdered . Or the 30,000 tutored , 80,000 imprisoned .
By the way how does that stack up with Castro because I think that is the point . Perhaps we should discuss the nature of some of that torture while we are at it . Second thought probably not a good Idea on this blog.
Suffice it to say when you are “our SOB” we don’t seem to object .
probably because we always have “God On Our Side”
https://vimeo.com/97672176
LikeLike
And I was 18 living in Peru when the Pinochet coup went down (and I thought I was an old fart-ha ha!).
At the time all the Latin American newspapers were screaming about CIA involvement which the US government finally admitted in 1995 I believe. I was just trying to correct what has been an historical misperception-nothing more. (But I certainly understand the rest of your post.)
LikeLike
“Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger directed the CIA to do whatever was necessary to defeat Allende and the growing workers’ struggle. U.S. copper monopolies Anaconda Copper Mining Co. and Kennecott Utah Mining Co. helped provide the coup’s financing, along with telecommunications giant ITT, which owned 70 percent of Chile’s telephone company.”
Now of course a congressional Committee found evidence of CIA involvement in Chile . But no evidence that they directed the coup.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/10/chile.jonathanfranklin
LikeLike
Notice I did not say they directed it but were involved. So much depends upon what you mean by “directed”. Generally, the CIA has not been that sloppy to allow itself be directly blamed, it knows how to obtain and maintain “plausible deniability”.
LikeLike
Emphasize sarcasm about the no evidence . Respect your elders(lol)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The embargo of Cuba is proof of the irrationality of our leaders. What the embargo does is to give Lefties a reason not to challenge their religious belief in socialism.
It hasn’t dislodged the Cuban dictatorship. Open up full trade with the place, and it with a bit of luck, it will be a hotbed of capitalist enterprise within a decade, just as Vietnam and China have become.
The Communist Party and the generals will still rule, but American capitalists will be able to make money (no problems with uppity trade unionists), American communists can go watch the dragooned masses dutifully turning out for the annual May Day parade … everyone will be happy.
I just hope that their very good education system doesn’t collapse, although I suspect it will, as no one will want to teach at a pitiful salary when they can be part of the tourist industry … in fact this is already happening.
LikeLike
Just like Honduras,Guatemala ,El Salvador … …. stunning examples of the power of markets. The most endangered species is a union organizer or a journalist in most of Latin America.
Perhaps “The Wealth of Nations” is not derived from their economic system . Not the exceptionalism of their peoples but rather their geography, climate and resources. Picture the Nation of Louisiana after Katrina (only an example ). I suspect it would look a lot like Hatti today. There is a lesson there about central banks , reserve currencies and the Greek financial crises as well, for another time.
China can not be described as an example of free market success any more than I can be described as an owner General Electric. The Centrally planed economy has the central Government as the controlling interest in the vast majority of companies. With localities also having a significant share of others.
http://fortune.com/2015/07/22/china-global-500-government-owned/
LikeLike
Allen,
The Cuban people should have a free election and decide if they prefer to live in poverty or have a chance at a different life.
LikeLike
False choice Diane.
If I may use my response to someone else who shared the link about Castro’s death with a “Yaaaayyyy!!” (with the last paragraph the most important):
Why should my comments surprise you, Donna? I don’t doubt that many are happy about his death, it’s not like it was unexpected.
But as with anything political Castro and Cuba have been and are a lot more complicated than the American Lame Stream Media’s portrayal of “communism vs capitalism”. Batista was one of the most violent and cruel dictators Latin America has ever known, but he was “our boy”, just as Pinochet, The Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Filipines, and many other brutal bastards that we put into power and helped stay in power because they were supposedly “anti-commies”.
For many Castro represents liberation from imperialistic domination of the US through it’s surrogate Batista.
Life is not so neat and tidy as most in the US of A make it out to be. Been thinking lately that the problem we have in America today, intellectually speaking, is that far too many, probably the vast majority on both sides of the mainstream political spectrum think in very simplistic, either/or, dichotomous terms which limits their ability to see and, more importantly, understand the gray from the black and white.
LikeLike
Walter Russell Mead describes the failure of Castro, who was unable to create a viable economy in Cuba and died with a population living in poverty:
LikeLike
Thanks for the read!
Can’t agree with his analysis, especially “Lee Kwan Yew, Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, Chiang Kai Shek, Park Chung-he: all of these dictators and authoritarians can mock Fidel Castro. They left their countries better off than they found them, and while many of them committed terrible crimes, they can also point to great accomplishments.”
Notice he doesn’t list any of those “great accomplishments”. Hmmm, wonder why? Actually I don’t wonder why because it’s made up hogwash.
I guess what Allen pointed out “Cuba was designated the only sustainable society in the world by the World Wildlife Fund. Cuba has zero child homelessness. Cuba has excellent education (higher literacy rate than US) and some of the best trained doctors in the world. Cuba exports more doctors to NEEDY places than any other country in the world. Cuba has universal health care. Cuba has virtually zero obesity. Cuba has invaded ZERO countries. I could go on.” is worth nothing, eh, in the eyes of Mead and yourself.
LikeLike
Cuba has “virtually no obesity”? I see a statement like that and every other statement suddenly seems questionable.
LikeLike
I’ll bet the vast majority of Cubans lived in poverty before Castro. I had a Cuban exile professor in college who told a story of her rich, white, plantation-owning grandfather. She once saw him kill a worker for some minor offense. Just shot the guy. Judge, jury and executioner all in one. You can be assured this was done with impunity. Cuba was known as the “brothel island” during Bautista’s reign. Castro was no savior, but Cuba’s current status isn’t much different from the faux democracies that litter Latin America. A former Mexican president tweeted he hopes liberty comes to Cuba. Yeah, it’d be nice if it came to Mexico too, but that thieving POS Calderon prefers the status quo.
LikeLike
Allen,
Under Fidel’s total control for the past 50+ years, the Cuban economy is a shambles. Poverty is widespread. Let the people decide.
LikeLike
The lousy economy and poverty are direct results of the US’s embargo. If Cuban Americans, who seem to love Trump, hadn’t had a stranglehold on our relations with Cuba, maybe the country wouldn’t be in such bad shape.
LikeLike
How is the economy of the rest of Central America , how is their human rights record? .
How is the economy of some of our inner cities or the rural poor communities. I suspect we may be doing some cherry picking and have some serious sampling errors .
One has to also ask what is happening in South America. Venezuela may be cracking down on free speech rights now . But that was not the case until Right wing rioting and direct attempts to destroy the economy occurred. I wonder who was coordinating this unrest in Argentina,Brazil , Venezuela.
.
LikeLike
Concur!
LikeLike
Diane,
Your simplistic and reactionary comments here are rather astounding for someone leading an educational blog.
That Cuba is in poverty is directly connected to US Imperialism throughout the Western Hemisphere. That you are ignoring this fact is like a child plugging their ears. Tell me how your comments here are any different than those we hear from the most ardent of right-wingers in the media circus.
You might also consider what poverty and wealth mean in the neoliberal economic model and how that wealth you seem to admire is built on the backs of others and requires massive theft of resources. You might also consider that the kind of wealth your palate desires is destroying the planet- that is not hyperbole that is material, scientific facts.
Your flippant comments here are very disturbing. Your lack of historical knowledge here is even worse.
LikeLike
I commend Ms. Ravitch for being a principled liberal who criticizes a left-wing dictator. I propose that a fund be established to buy a one way airline ticket for Allen to go live in the Utopia of Cuba. Of course, he won’t move there. He enjoys his freedom and prosperity in America, and uses his First Amendment right to free speech to cheerlead for a regime that brutally squashes all dissent. By all means, let’s have full relations with Cuba, and let tourists infect the Cuban people with ideas of freedom that Allen would imprison and kill them for supporting.
LikeLike
Allen, you need to get over your pretensions of moral and intellectual superiority. Diane Ravitch and I are well-informed about the realities of Cuba, but unlike you, we don’t support the Stalinists who govern there. I agree that the political pilgrims who have traveled to Cuba and extolled its glories are toxic; they give credulous people false ideas about the harshness of life there. I just checked on prices for one way flights to Havana, which range from $100-$510 depending on where you live. You can probably scrape up that amount on your own. You of course won’t give up your freedom and prosperity to live in a backward dictatorship where you would be imprisoned if you ever uttered an independent thought.
LikeLike
John,
We agree. Fidel created a vast prison camp and widespread poverty in Cuba. Totalitarianism is always bad, no matter what the ideology. No one person should control a nation for more than 50 years. Term limits are a good idea. So is freedom of the press, religion, assembly, speech, etc.
I hope you read the Walter Russell Mead article about Fidel that appears in an earlier comment I made on this thread.
LikeLike
So Castro didn’t imprison dissidents or prevent freedom of the press, religion, or expression?
LikeLike