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Fidel Castro leaves behind a nation awash with tears and blood from thousands of executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, concentration camps for g

Fidel Castro leaves behind a nation awash with tears and blood from thousands of executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, concentration camps for gay men, labor camps for those who thought differently, listened to jazz, or even just had long hair. These are facts I learned only after doing more research, after listening to friends who are gay and who did years of research. So we all need to be careful not to repeat the trope "but healthcare and education were good and free and available to all". I for many years allowed those reports, parroted so often, to soften my judgment of Castro. But now learning of the extent of the horrors of oppression, those outweigh any social welfare "results". And now I have had cause to question even those results as I read and learn of a healthcare system where critical operations that were performed only after agonizing waits for eight months and then by doctors and nurses so starved of supplies that they sometimes operated with bare hands. Castro should be remembered for the suffering he caused - all of it preventable. The best way to him sum up is to consider that he created an island prison where nobody was allowed to leave without his permission - and for an unbearable number of years most of the world applauded him. I hope you will remember this and hear the cynical trying to tie themselves to a "distinguished legacy" when politicians comment today.

danharaj 10y ago
Yes, Cuba was a shitty place for gay people before 1981. Then the government declared that homosexuality was a valid variation of human sexuality and that previous attitudes towards it were unacceptable. Keep in mind during the same period that Cuba was repressing homosexuality, so was the United States. Cuba did not ignore the AIDS epidemic that killed literally an entire generation of gay people. The Cuban government did not laugh and call it the gay plague. I don't like Cuba. I'm not a state socialist. But I find it disconcerting that everyone is so passionately piling up their attacks on the Cuban government but would never scrutinize the US government in such detail. There are people in this thread who are bringing up actions the US have taken that would be considered objectionable by the same standards, but they aren't being addressed; they are being brushed aside as irrelevant or incomparable. Imagine being that drunk on propaganda. As if the United States did not forcibly dismantle political parties it deemed dangerous in the United States. As if the United States did not repress its LGBT minorities. As if the United States doesn't bully the entire world in order to get its economic benefits. As if the United States doesn't torture and murder civilians. As if the United States and capitalism are completely blameless for the extreme poverty in Detroit or Flint. It's really sickening to watch people deny or downplay the violence inherent in the perpetuation of their favorite system of government. Ironic, I guess.
sspiff 10y ago
I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone. He leaves behind a Cuba that was embargoed by the US, their closest and largest trade partner after the US had staged a failed invasion to overthrow the government. This forced them into the Soviet sphere of influence for supplies and trade. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the cold war, it could no longer support Cuba. The island nation was driven further into poverty and essential goods like food and medicine became scarce. And what did the US do at that point? Did they reopen diplomatic relations and try to find some rapprochement after an era of high tensions? No. Instead they decided that now was an excellent time to extend their embargo to include food and medicine as well, which were up to that point exempt from the trade ban. To point to a single man and his inner circle as the sole cause for the sad state Cuba is in today is just as absurd as to deny the wrongs of the Castro regime, nor did he only do bad things for the Cuban people. The "trope" of education and healthcare being available to all is not some straw man. It is a legitimate achievement, and one that many nations the world around have not been able to match, no matter their affluence.
- deleted 10y ago
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- cmbailey 10y ago
  >I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone. In American English, the phrase, "He murdered thousands," can't be followed by the word "but..."
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Obama didn't murder thousands? Yet I hear good things about him. FDR? Any US president basically? The people responsible for staging coups abroad to replace democratically elected leaders, install sympathetic dictators and overall fuck up life in a region for 50 years? Yet I hear good things about them too. Why can't the same be applied to Fidel? He committed atrocities and he did good for the country. And indeed much of the suffering (the "millions" not the "thousands") was directly caused by US actions, so don't come with the holier than thou.
vlado 10y ago
Indeed those words about good free education and healthcare in "those days" are what "former" communists use to try to brainwash the kids from today in former socialist block countries like my homeland Bulgaria. The history textbooks are written by communists. Grandparents express their nostalgia for those days ('cause they were young back then and now they live in mysery). Every now and then the communists come back to power and one realizes for the nth time, that there's no such thing as a former communist. Another thing they say in Bulgaria is that you take the power from a communist the same way you can take the lard from a pig - with a knife. So, yes, those bastards need to be talked about the same way Hitler is talked about in Germany, make sure kids are aware of the evil and can spot and identify it as soon as it emerges.
cmdrfred 10y ago
>But now learning of the extent of the horrors of oppression, those outweigh any social welfare "results". >Castro should be remembered for the suffering he caused - all of it preventable. >"distinguished legacy" Isn't all the same true about Obama[0][1][2], perhaps to a lesser degree but still true? Will we eulogize him in the same way? [0]http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/07/obamas-surveillance-state/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/07/obamas-surveillance-stat... [1]http://www.mintpressnews.com/barack-obama-the-nobel-peace-prize-winner-whos-bombed-7-countries/208748/ http://www.mintpressnews.com/barack-obama-the-nobel-peace-pr... [2]http://warisacrime.org/content/why-obama-torturing-private-bradley-manning-0 http://warisacrime.org/content/why-obama-torturing-private-b...
anigbrowl 10y ago
You can apply this analysis to anything. The US bills itself as the 'land of the free' while imprisoning more people than any other country, frequently in deplorable conditions by the standards of what we know about human psychology, penal theory and so on. How exactly are you weighting the good and bad factors here? How do you criticize the economic policies that led to doctors being desperately short of supplies without mentioning the bizarre asymmetry of US sanctions on a tiny island with few economic resources of its own? I was not a fan of Castro but to be honest I don't think that Americans have much standing to criticize him given the frequently atrocious nature of their own country. I have to agree with the poster above in observing that much of the criticism here is nothing more than the regurgitation of propaganda that people have been fed since birth, and I question the ability of many posters here to distinguish between derived and received opinions on this topic. This is why I ask how you're weighting the good and bad factors. No doubt your feelings are sincerely held, but since we're not privy to your personal moral calculus, how else can we evaluate it, or make meaningful comparisons with prior alternatives? This might seem academic, but it matters. I would likely have done quite badly as an individual in Castro's Cuba and would probably have been in a hurry to leave; on the other hand I can't but be aware of the dreadful conditions there that led to the overthrow of the Batista government in the first place, nor of the US' intransigence in refusing to tolerate a neighboring country following a path of political self-determination on purely ideological grounds, and putting it under extreme economic pressure for doing so. To use a Christian metaphor, don't be in such a hurry to point out the mote in your neighbor's eye that you miss the beam in your own.

danharaj 10y ago

Yes, Cuba was a shitty place for gay people before 1981. Then the government declared that homosexuality was a valid variation of human sexuality and that previous attitudes towards it were unacceptable. Keep in mind during the same period that Cuba was repressing homosexuality, so was the United States. Cuba did not ignore the AIDS epidemic that killed literally an entire generation of gay people. The Cuban government did not laugh and call it the gay plague. I don't like Cuba. I'm not a state socialist. But I find it disconcerting that everyone is so passionately piling up their attacks on the Cuban government but would never scrutinize the US government in such detail. There are people in this thread who are bringing up actions the US have taken that would be considered objectionable by the same standards, but they aren't being addressed; they are being brushed aside as irrelevant or incomparable. Imagine being that drunk on propaganda. As if the United States did not forcibly dismantle political parties it deemed dangerous in the United States. As if the United States did not repress its LGBT minorities. As if the United States doesn't bully the entire world in order to get its economic benefits. As if the United States doesn't torture and murder civilians. As if the United States and capitalism are completely blameless for the extreme poverty in Detroit or Flint. It's really sickening to watch people deny or downplay the violence inherent in the perpetuation of their favorite system of government. Ironic, I guess.

sspiff 10y ago

I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone. He leaves behind a Cuba that was embargoed by the US, their closest and largest trade partner after the US had staged a failed invasion to overthrow the government. This forced them into the Soviet sphere of influence for supplies and trade. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the cold war, it could no longer support Cuba. The island nation was driven further into poverty and essential goods like food and medicine became scarce. And what did the US do at that point? Did they reopen diplomatic relations and try to find some rapprochement after an era of high tensions? No. Instead they decided that now was an excellent time to extend their embargo to include food and medicine as well, which were up to that point exempt from the trade ban. To point to a single man and his inner circle as the sole cause for the sad state Cuba is in today is just as absurd as to deny the wrongs of the Castro regime, nor did he only do bad things for the Cuban people. The "trope" of education and healthcare being available to all is not some straw man. It is a legitimate achievement, and one that many nations the world around have not been able to match, no matter their affluence.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cmbailey 10y ago
>I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone. In American English, the phrase, "He murdered thousands," can't be followed by the word "but..."
- andrepd 10y ago
  Obama didn't murder thousands? Yet I hear good things about him. FDR? Any US president basically? The people responsible for staging coups abroad to replace democratically elected leaders, install sympathetic dictators and overall fuck up life in a region for 50 years? Yet I hear good things about them too. Why can't the same be applied to Fidel? He committed atrocities and he did good for the country. And indeed much of the suffering (the "millions" not the "thousands") was directly caused by US actions, so don't come with the holier than thou.

vlado 10y ago

Indeed those words about good free education and healthcare in "those days" are what "former" communists use to try to brainwash the kids from today in former socialist block countries like my homeland Bulgaria. The history textbooks are written by communists. Grandparents express their nostalgia for those days ('cause they were young back then and now they live in mysery). Every now and then the communists come back to power and one realizes for the nth time, that there's no such thing as a former communist. Another thing they say in Bulgaria is that you take the power from a communist the same way you can take the lard from a pig - with a knife. So, yes, those bastards need to be talked about the same way Hitler is talked about in Germany, make sure kids are aware of the evil and can spot and identify it as soon as it emerges.

cmdrfred 10y ago

>But now learning of the extent of the horrors of oppression, those outweigh any social welfare "results". >Castro should be remembered for the suffering he caused - all of it preventable. >"distinguished legacy" Isn't all the same true about Obama[0][1][2], perhaps to a lesser degree but still true? Will we eulogize him in the same way? [0]http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/07/obamas-surveillance-state/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/07/obamas-surveillance-stat... [1]http://www.mintpressnews.com/barack-obama-the-nobel-peace-prize-winner-whos-bombed-7-countries/208748/ http://www.mintpressnews.com/barack-obama-the-nobel-peace-pr... [2]http://warisacrime.org/content/why-obama-torturing-private-bradley-manning-0 http://warisacrime.org/content/why-obama-torturing-private-b...

anigbrowl 10y ago

You can apply this analysis to anything. The US bills itself as the 'land of the free' while imprisoning more people than any other country, frequently in deplorable conditions by the standards of what we know about human psychology, penal theory and so on. How exactly are you weighting the good and bad factors here? How do you criticize the economic policies that led to doctors being desperately short of supplies without mentioning the bizarre asymmetry of US sanctions on a tiny island with few economic resources of its own? I was not a fan of Castro but to be honest I don't think that Americans have much standing to criticize him given the frequently atrocious nature of their own country. I have to agree with the poster above in observing that much of the criticism here is nothing more than the regurgitation of propaganda that people have been fed since birth, and I question the ability of many posters here to distinguish between derived and received opinions on this topic. This is why I ask how you're weighting the good and bad factors. No doubt your feelings are sincerely held, but since we're not privy to your personal moral calculus, how else can we evaluate it, or make meaningful comparisons with prior alternatives? This might seem academic, but it matters. I would likely have done quite badly as an individual in Castro's Cuba and would probably have been in a hurry to leave; on the other hand I can't but be aware of the dreadful conditions there that led to the overthrow of the Batista government in the first place, nor of the US' intransigence in refusing to tolerate a neighboring country following a path of political self-determination on purely ideological grounds, and putting it under extreme economic pressure for doing so. To use a Christian metaphor, don't be in such a hurry to point out the mote in your neighbor's eye that you miss the beam in your own.