Imagine what would Cuba and the world be like today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

 Today, supporters of totalitarianism celebrate Fidel Castro's birth, and the cult of personality that the dictatorship claims does not exist is on display in Revolutionary Square this year.

Some commemorating Fidel Castro's birthday, such as the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, assert that "For more than 65 years the Cuban Revolution has been an inspiration to people around the world for its achievements in health, education, internationalism and more. Hasta Siempre, Comandante." Debated one of their leaders in 2017, and exposed his totalitarian orientation when he claimed North Korea was also a democracy.

 
This brings up a thought-provoking exercise. What would have happened if the 65-year old communist dictatorship in Cuba had never come to be? If Fidel Castro had never been born? Let us look at Cuba's pre-1959 and post-1959 and imagine "what might have been?"

The economy

 

 

In 1959 in terms of per-capita GDP Cuba was second to Chile and was doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. Under communism. Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies that the past six and a half decades have been a disaster for Cuba.  

Death count in Cuba

 

Firing squad in Cuba.

 

Tens of thousands of Cubans would still be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born. In 1987, historian R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii reported that credible estimates of the Castro regime's death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000." Rummel made a career out of studying what he termed "democide," the killing of people by their own government.

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

 

  Cuban diplomats pushed for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948

 

Many of the July 26th movement's leaders, who put in a lot of hard work fighting in the field and persuading Washington to impose an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, really desired the restoration of democracy in Cuba. Much like the vast majority of Cubans did. For this reason, Fidel Castro lied systematically throughout the 1950s and into 1960, insisting he respected democracy and civil freedoms while denying being a communist.

Fidel Castro carried out the consolidation of power and established a communist totalitarian dictatorship as he paid lip service to civil rights and imprisoned his fellow countrymen who had warned that communists were infiltrating the revolution as traitors. 

 

Without Fidel Castro, the old democratic regime that had pioneered work on international human rights would have been restored and the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been sidelined.

Killing Americans through the drug trade and terrorism

 

In an attempt to strike at the sensitive underbelly of the United States, Fidel Castro teamed up with drug traffickers, hired Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the middle of the 1960s, and converted Cuba's diplomatic corps into a tool of violence and subversion.

The Castro dictatorship early on began, with the assistance of the KGB, assisting drug trafficking networks improve their ability to get more drugs into the United States to strike at American youth. The Havana Cartel documentary provides an overview of these practices to the present day.

Havana hosted terrorists from Africa, the Americas, and Asia at the Tri-Continental Conference on January 3rd through 16th in 1966.At the Conference, Fidel “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.”  He maintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’

The Cuban dictatorship created the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) to coordinate terrorist groups worldwide. 

Havana then established terrorist training facilities in Algeria, Libya, and Cuba.
 

This had devastating effects on Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America; the United States was not immune.

Terrorists attack on U.S. soil killing Americans

The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña, (FALN), from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, carried out more than 130 bombings, including in the United States. 

This group was started in the mid-1960s and received advanced training in Cuba. This information is taken from Zach Dorfman’s article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America: ‘FALN was started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus . . . that received advanced training in Cuba,’” published in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2017.

The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City which killed Alejandro Berger (28), James Gezork (32), Frank Connor (33), Harold H. Sherburne (66) and wounded 63 others.

The same Puerto Rican terrorists were also responsible for a bombing spree in New York City in August 1977 that killed Charles Steinberg, (age 26), injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; and the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers, among many other crimes. 

Without Fidel Castro this terrorism international most likely would not have been brought into existence.

Installing  and maintaining tyranny in Venezuela

 

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro

If Fidel Castro had never been born then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Chavez's successor Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban mole, and tens of thousands of Cuban "advisers" torturing, jailing, and killing Venezuelans who want to live in freedom, and the ongoing crisis threatening the region.

 

Human rights in Cuba

 

If Fidel Castro had never been born then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs, and over 1,100 today.

 

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been assassinated on July 22, 2012 by Castro's state security agents. Nor the games played by Castro to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in order to get positive media coverage but then not follow through. There would not have been the massacre of refugees by Castro regime agents slaughtered for trying to flee Cuba.

 

 

Education politicized and degraded

Students entering the University of Havana

 

Cuba in 1953 had the fourth lowest illiteracy rate in Latin America with an illiteracy rate that was 23.6%. Costa Rica's at the time was 20.6%, Chile's was 19.6%. and Argentina's was the lowest at 13.6%.  The rest of Latin America showed similar or greater gains without sacrificing civil liberties. 

There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers. 

Without Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.

 

Healthcare

The Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat.  In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases.

On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported that the  Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.

 

Cuba's Covid-19 pandemic response was one of the worse, in the Americas, even the United States carried out a better response.

This also raised questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statistics that present the regime in a positive light.

Without Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be both an independent press and civil society to keep the government honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his regime.

 

Cholera patients in Cuba (CNN)