Fidel Castro is dead but the evil he did lives on

Castro's legacy and Cuba's killing fields

Executed in Santiago de Cuba by the Castro regime in 1959

Fidel Castro, the Cuban tyrant, who presided over the extrajudicial execution of thousands of his countrymen, the destruction of Cuba, twice called for a nuclear first strike on the United States, sponsored terrorism across the world, collaborated with genocidal dictators who murdered millions in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East is dead at age 90. An official statement from the Cuban Embassy in the United States said he died on November 25, 2016 at 10:29pm.

Fidel Castro with ally and war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia 1977

It is difficult to understand some of the voices coming forth to say positive things celebrating the life of Fidel Castro with all the usual cliches about education and healthcare in Cuba to justify the dictator. They ring hollow when faced with the facts on the ground in Cuba and in the rest of Latin America. Healthcare, despite the propaganda is a disaster in Cuba with a two tiered system that benefits the elite and foreigners with hard currency and a disaster for the average Cuban. Most of Latin America's leaders raised literary rates with similar or greater success than Cuba without having a communist dictatorship imposed in their respective countries along with censorship and propaganda being passed off as education. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich offered sound advice that he tweeted earlier today:

Build a list of those praising Castro and you will have a list of leftists who reject reality for an ideological fantasy

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 26, 2016

The ongoing destruction of Venezuela is a legacy of the Castro regime and the continuing systematic brutalization of women and the murder of Cuban dissidents is cause for condemnation of the late Cuban dictator.

Some of the Cuban dissidents killed during the Obama years

Not to mention Fidel Castro turning Cuba's diplomatic corps into a weapon of subversion and violence, recruiting Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the mid 1960s and being caught up with cocaine traffickers in the 1980s in an effort to target the soft underbelly of the United States. The extreme violence against those who peacefully dissent has been well documented as recently as a 2015 machete attack against Sirley Avila Leon, a dissident who had been purged from her government post trying to keep a school open and later joined the opposition.


In the streets of Miami the victims of the Castro regime are celebrating the tyrant's death and are happy and hopeful that the end of the dictatorship is near. For over 57 years Fidel Castro has been a symbol of the communist tyranny in Cuba. The crowds celebrating his death have believed for a long time that the dictatorship in Cuba will somehow disappear when Castro is gone.

Tragically that may not be the case because the international community led by President Barack Obama has sought to bury the past, ignoring and downplaying past crimes, while trying to legitimize the Castro regime. This approach is evident in the statement issued by the Obama White House earlier today in which not one negative thing was written about Fidel Castro. The words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to mind while reading the White House statement: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

Sadly the brutal totalitarian dictatorship that Fidel Castro founded in Cuba in 1959 lives on with his brother Raul Castro in charge and another generation of Castros preparing to take over in a generational succession. However after 57 years of the same people in power there maybe enough pent up frustration in the population that has given the dictatorship cause for concern. This could explain all the lights on in the early morning hours at the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Havana.

"The lights in the Armed Forces Ministry reveal rare activity in the AM" - Yoani Sanchez

Predictably over the next few weeks inside Cuba the world will see spectacles organized by the totalitarian dictatorship to "mourn the great leader." The regime has already started with nine days set aside for official mourning. This will not be the first time that monsters are mourned by an oppressed people through different methods of command, control and manipulation. The world has witnessed it before in the Soviet Union in 1953 and more recently in North Korea with the Kim dynasty. The death of Stalin as dramatized in the film "The Inner Circle" is recommended viewing for those about to follow the circus in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro's death.

 Meanwhile in Cuba as the regime prepares its state funeral the Castro dictatorship's secret police begin to make threats, round up and take dissidents to undisclosed location and commit acts of violence. Let us not forget that is many celebrate the departure of Fidel Castro it is his brother Raul who personally carried out the firing squads in Cuba in 1959. Furthermore it has been on Raul Castro's watch since 2006 that violence and extrajudicial executions have escalated, especially during the Obama Presidency, against nonviolent opponents such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Harold Cepero, Laura Pollán, and many others.

Hopefully the international media will now take notice, but whether they do or not this blog will be following developments closely.

Cuban Americans celebrating the death of Fidel Castro in Miami