Imagine what Cuba would be like today if Fidel Castro was never born.

 

Fidel Castro: A better world if he had never been born.

Totalitarians and aspiring totalitarians today celebrate the birth of Fidel Castro over social media, but others try to imagine what state Cuba would be in now if it weren't for him.

What if Fidel Castro had never been born and his 66-year tyranny had never existed? Let us compare where Cuba was before 1959 to where it is now and speculate on "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. In 2015, 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, the past six decades have been a disaster for Cuba.

 Cuban death toll

There are tens of thousands of Cubans who would be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

 

Many of the leaders of the July 26th movement, who did the heavy lifting in the fighting in the field, and lobbying Washington DC to place an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, authentically wanted a democratic restoration in Cuba. As did the majority of the Cuban people. This is why Fidel Castro lied systematically through the 1950s and into 1960 denying that he was a communist and claiming to respect civil liberties and democracy.  

While Fidel Castro paid lip service to civil liberties, and locked up his compatriots, who had complained that communists were infiltrating the revolution as slanderers, he carried out the consolidation of power and formed a communist totalitarian dictatorship. 

Fidel Castro turned Cuba's diplomatic corps into a weapon of subversion and violence, recruited Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the mid 1960s, and linked up with cocaine traffickers in an effort to target the soft underbelly of the United States.

Without Fidel Castro, the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been side-lined and the old democratic order that had done pioneering work on international human rights would have been restored. 

Nicaragua

If Fidel Castro had never been born, then Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas would not have taken power in 1979. Without the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Nicaragua again in 2007 and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Cuban advisers and Nicaraguans fleeing the country.

 

Venezuela

 

If Fidel Castro was never 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 Nicolas Maduro and the humanitarian crisis threatening the region.

 

 

Human rights in Cuba

 

If Fidel Castro had never come into existence, 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.

  

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been killed 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 slaughtered by Castro regime agents for trying to flee Cuba.

Education

 

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

 

Castro regime officials decided early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that they wanted to “be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines” and were willing to let Cubans die while they developed their domestic vaccines instead of importing them, including from their allies Russia and China, in order to advance their “healthcare superpower” narrative.

 

According to official regime statistics, by August 2022 COVID had killed 8,529 of Cuba’s 11m people. But The Economist model estimates that the true death toll was up to 62,000 Cubans. This is not the first time that Havana has under reported numbers killed in a disease outbreak.

 

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

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.

This may also raise new 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 dictatorship.

 

#5A Maleconazo at 31: When secret police shot into crowds of non-violent Cuban protesters with live ammunition

 "Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future." - Elie Wiesel

Secret police in plain clothes firing live ammunition at protesters on August 5, 1994

31 years ago on August 5, 1994, a thousand Cubans marched through the streets of Havana chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro!" They were met with brutal repression, including regime agents dressed in plain clothes shooting live rounds at unarmed demonstrators.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Castro" on August 5, 1994 in Havana

Four years ago on July 11, 2021 it happened again, but this time it was not just in Havana, but across the island with hundreds of thousands of Cubans participating in over 50 cities and towns. The response of the dictatorship was the same as 1994, but this time the images reached the world almost immediately. 

Cubans chant "Freedom" "Patria y Vida" and "Down with the dictatorship" on July 11, 2021.

In 2013 photographs taken during the 1994 protests by Karel Poort, a Dutch visitor, were made public and confirmed the anecdotal accounts of that day. Cuban dissident Regis Iglesias described how the dictatorship militarized the streets in an effort to terrorize the populace: 

A convoy of trucks crammed with repressive special troops and a vehicle with a 50 caliber machine gun on top patrolled up and down the long street.

Little has been reported on this, but some of the images and sounds remain. This combined with testimony of those who were there provide a better idea of what took place.

What happened?

Five hundred of the Cubans had arrived at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to board a launch that was rumored was going to be taken to Miami.  These people were not seeking to overthrow the dictatorship but did want to live in freedom.

They were met by the Castro dictatorship's secret police who told the crowd to disperse.

Instead of diffusing the situation another 500 Cubans joined in and  they began to march along the Malecon chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro! After marching for a kilometer, a hundred Special Brigade members and plain clothes police confronted the protesters firing live rounds into the crowd.

Secret police aiming handgun at protesters on August 5, 1994

31 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day. 

Eyewitness account 

 

Ignacio Martínez Montero

Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:

Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year's day, I'd arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that's why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting. 

Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution ... And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one. 

They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream "Viva Fidel." They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say "kidnapped" because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.

Thirty one years later and the Castro regime continues in power terrorizing, beating, torturing and murdering nonviolent dissidents, and shooting young black men in the back, but some Progressive Americans want to apply Cuban style policing in the United States, and claim that there is a lot we can learn from them. 

 

We invite all people of good will to remember some of the victims of the Cuban dictatorship.

 

Diubis Laurencio Tejeda was a 36-year-old singer who was shot in the back by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Havana on July 12. 

 

There are others, but they have not been officially recognized. 

 

This is the case of Christian Díaz, age 24, disappeared after joining the 11J protests. Relatives on July 12 reported him missing to the PNR in Cárdenas. Police told his father that Christian was jailed in Matanzas. On Aug. 5, officials informed his family he’d drowned in the sea and was buried in a mass grave. His family is convinced he was beaten to death.

 

Hopefully, the events of July 11, 2021 and August 5, 1994 will wake up more to the true nature of the Castro dictatorship, and the need to be in solidarity with the Cuban people, not their oppressors. 

Cuba's Dueling Legacies: Moncada July 26, 1953 and Varela May 10, 2002

Moncada vs Varela

July 26, 1953: Moncada Assault. May 10, 2002: MCL turns in Project Varela petitions

 

Today, the Castro regime, its fellow travelers and agents of influence will continue the lie that something positive occurred on July 26, 1953. The only way that they can accomplish this exercise is by rewriting and omitting history.

Here is some of what they won't tell you.

July 26, 1953 was a tragic day when Cubans killed Cubans in a failed attempt to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an attack on the Moncada Barracks.

In the early morning hours of July 26, 1953 a group of Cubans led by Fidel Castro assaulted the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Approximately, 18 government officials were killed and 28 wounded in the attack. 27 rebels were killed and 11 wounded. 51 of the surviving 99 rebels were placed on trial. Fidel Castro turned himself in after seeking guarantees for his safety and was also put on trial.

Aftermath of the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks

This attack turned Fidel Castro into a national figure. He would go on to name his movement, the July 26th Movement.

Between 1902 and 1952 with moments of glory and shame the Cuban Republic transited through 17 democratically elected presidents. One of them, Gerardo Machado elected in 1925, despite constitutional prohibitions, he had the constitution modified and ran for re-election in 1928. He became a despot, and was removed from office by force in 1933. This led to a return to democracy.

Cuban presidents from 1902 to 1952, and dictator Batista 1952-1959.

 

Tragically, this democratic republic was brought to an end on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista. Batista was a military man who had entered the presidency in free and fair elections in 1940 ( in coalition with the communist party) and left office in 1944. He returned to Cuba under the presidency of Cuba's last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio and within days of the next presidential elections, when Batista saw that he could not win at the ballot box, carried out a successful coup against the democratic order that had existed from 1902 - 1952.

Fidel Castro during his trial on October 16, 1953 addressed the court in what became known as the "“History Will Absolve Me” speech:

“Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of Law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom." …"Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of common interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, radio and television debates and forums of public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm.”

The promise made by the July 26th Movement was to restore the preexisting democratic order along with reforms. The Castro brothers ended a seven year authoritarian dictatorship, and replaced it with a communist dictatorship that has ruled over Cuba for 66 years and counting.

#TheyAreContinuity #TheyAreDictators ( #SomosContinuidad #SonDictadores)

The Castro dictatorship was not a break from Batista but a continuity into more profound tyranny that continues to kill Cubans.

Contrast this with what Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) did. In the midst of a totalitarian dictatorship were all media are controlled by the government along with economic life they managed to lead a movement that persuaded more than 35,000 Cubans to identify themselves, demand democratic reforms, and the restoration of human rights knowing that the Varela Project petition they were signing could lead to losing their jobs, having their children denied access to higher education and in the worse case prison.

MCL delivers 11,020 Varela Project petitions to the National Assembly. (J Goitia/AP)

 

The images of the movement, unlike the Castro regime's are nonviolent and inclusive and focus on liberation and reconciliation not violence and killing. They do not seek to destroy or slander anyone but to free a people.

Coordinators of the Varela Project

 

Oswaldo and his movement rejected hatred and violence. They never killed anyone and offered a path to a nonviolent democratic transition.

Oswaldo's nonviolent legacy has continued beyond him and is a positive tradition for Cuba. His nonviolent struggle followed two of the basic principles outlined by nonviolence practitioner Michael N. Nagler: "We are not against other people, only what they are doing. Means are ends in the making; nothing good can finally result from violence."

Oswaldo Payá receives the Sakharov Prize in Strasbourg, France in 2002

In December 2002, thanks to lobbying and pressure from Spain, Oswaldo Payá was able to travel to Strasbourg, France to receive the European Union's Sakharov Prize and address the chamber where he outlined the movement's position to an international audience.

The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” This is the liberation which we are proclaiming.

Seventy two years after the tragic events of July 26, 1953 the Castro regime celebrates this shedding of blood between Cubans as "the victory of ideas," but in reality it was the triumph of brute violence and terror in the short term by Batista's forces on that day and in 1959 by Castro's forces.

In Cuba the government has turned it into a day of drinking, parties, parades, speeches and the colors red and black prominently displayed. This all occurs with prominent military displays and propaganda images worshiping violent revolution.

There are two traditions battling for control in Cuba.

One tradition, embodied by the Castro regime, based on violence and the destruction of the other has dominated Cuba's political discourse for over six and a half decades. It views dissent as treason and demands unanimity; the only acceptable ideas are the dictatorship's.

The second tradition built the institutions of Cuban democracy in the 19th Century using nonviolent means. They founded companies with a social conscience such as Bacardi that contributed to the common good until forced out of their homeland in 1960. The Cuban democrats who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Their counterparts are still there in Cuba's nonviolent civic resistance movement.

 

These civic activists were courteous, and respected the dignity of all Cubans. Some were feminists who obtained the right of Cuban women to vote in the old Republic and went on to defend the rights of poor women to a decent education and better opportunities.

They nonviolently resisted the imposition of Castro's totalitarian regime and either went into exile, prison, were killed, or despite great odds are still struggling for Cuban freedom on the streets of Cuba today.

Thirteen years after the July 22, 2012 murders of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante and it remains clear that the future belongs to the nonviolent resistance. The dictatorship may have killed two of its great nonviolent leaders, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, but in doing so exposed its own brutal nature and undermined itself.

What a post-Castro Cuba will look like can already be intimated.

Castroism will be relegated to a sad and cautionary chapter in Cuban history that it deserves to be.

May 10, 2002 will be a day of celebration in Cuba commemorating the day that the first 11,020 signatures of the Varela Project were presented to the National Assembly demanding human rights and democratic reforms.

July 11, 2021 will also be a day of celebration for the day that tens of thousands of Cubans peacefully gathered across the island demanding freedom and an end to dictatorship.

International Human Rights Day will once again become a day to celebrate and observe human rights in Cuba and not a day of repression. The Cuban Republic's human rights tradition and the role it played in the drafting and passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 will be restored and celebrated in Cuba.

Today, Chinese and Cuban dissidents, inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Vaclav Havel, exchange their visions for a democratic future challenging the totalitarian alternative.

Remembering Cuban dissident leaders, Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, both assassinated by the Cuban dictatorship on July 22, 2012.

 We remember, continue to demand justice, and follow their courageous example.

 

The Cuban dictatorship imprisons, forcibly exiles, or kills those who nonviolently advocate for human rights reforms within the existing constitutional framework. The Castro dynasty has also engaged in and sponsored terrorism for 66 years, but before spreading terror around the world, the Castros took power in Cuba through a campaign of terrorism that included bombings, killings, kidnappings, and hijackings in the 1950s.

On July 22, 2012, Havana's secret police murdered Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante, two heroes for democracy in the Americas. The Cuban dictatorship, and its agents of influence have continued to attempt to cover up this crime.

In 2023, following a ten year investigation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the two human rights defenders were killed by Cuban government agents.

Oswaldo Payá  was sixty years old when he was assassinated by Castro regime agents on this day 13 years ago. 

Oswaldo was a family man and lay Catholic from Havana, an engineer who, in September 1988, founded the Christian Liberation Movement with fellow Catholics in the El Cerro neighborhood, and over the next 23 years would carry out important campaigns to support human rights and a democratic transition in Cuba. 

He would speak out against human rights breaches and demand victims' dignity, even if it meant denouncing the United States for mistreating Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002.

Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights, but not the only one.

Harold Cepero  was 32 years old when he was extrajudicially executed alongside Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila.  Harold began studying at the University of Camaguey when he was 18 years old, and in 2002, he and other students signed the Varela Project. It was a legal measure inside the existing Cuban constitution sponsored by the Christian Liberation Movement.

Despite this, Harold and other students were expelled from the university for signing it and sharing it with others. The secret police would organize a mob to "judge", scream at, insult, threaten and expel the students who had signed the Varela Project. Following his expulsion on November 13, 2002, Harold wrote a letter warning that "those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves." 

Expelled from university for signing the Varela Project with fellow students. He enrolled in a seminary and began studying for the priesthood before leaving to join the Christian Liberation Movement, embracing a new vocation as a human rights defender.

Why did the Cuban dictatorship seek revenge on Oswaldo and Harold? The Varela Project proved to the world that tens of thousands of Cubans were dissatisfied with the status quo and wanted human rights and multiparty democracy restored in Cuba. 

This contradicts the official narrative.

On May 10, 2002, Oswaldo, along with Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez of the Christian Liberation Movement, turned in 11,020 Varela Project petitions, and news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.

Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez were sentenced to long prison sentences in March 2003 following show trials, along with 73 other Cuban dissidents. Many of them had taken part in the Varela Project and, nearly eight years later, were forced into exile as an alternative to completing their prison sentences.

In spite of the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures with Freddy Martini on October 5, 2003. He would spend the next eight years campaigning for the release of his imprisoned compatriots and continuing campaigns to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba.

Ten years, two months and twelve days after turning in the first Varela Project petitions while traveling with two international visitors in Eastern Cuba on a Sunday afternoon on July 22, 2012, Oswaldo and Harold were killed. Cuban state security bumped into the car they were driving, and when the vehicles stopped, with everyone still alive in the car, they approached the driver, striking him in the temple with the butt of a pistol. Within hours, the lifeless bodies of both men would appear.

 

Cuba currently has around 1,158 identified political prisoners, with many more imprisoned under the Orwellian statute known as "precrime." The dictatorship will lock you up simply because you have the potential to become a threat in the future. 

  

Oswaldo Payá, when awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought on December 17, 2002, spoke prophetically when he said: "The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people." "The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized."

 

In the midst of the darkness, it is critical to recall the beams of light that illuminate the path to freedom and the full enjoyment of human rights in Cuba and around the world.

Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero, and others, both living and dead, laid the framework for the nonviolent nature of the large nationwide protests that began on July 11, 2021, which established a new before and after in Cuban history.