"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."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Cuba has been under a dictatorship for nearly 74 years. On March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista brought an end to Cuban democracy. Carlos Prio, the last democratic president, and his first lady were forced into exile. An increasingly unpopular authoritarian and corrupt regime ruled Cuba for the following seven years.
The
hope for the restoration of democratic governance came to an end when
Batista refused to cede power nonviolently through a dialogue process, opening a path for Fidel and Raul Castro to take it by force. Although they had repeatedly pledged to restore the 1940 Constitution, and Cuban democracy they imposed a communist dictatorship.
Cuba's official motto was
changed from Homeland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad) to Homeland or
Death, We Shall Triumph (¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!).
Presidents of Cuba from 1902 to 1952 and dictator Batista
Since the beginning of their struggle on July 26, 1953, the Castro brothers
promised a democratic restoration, but all along planned a
Marxist-Leninist takeover. They imposed a totalitarian communist
dictatorship, killing tens of thousands of Cubans. The Castro regime systematically denied human rights to all Cubans while exporting their repressive model to Africa and Latin America, creating misery for millions more.
The communist regime re-wrote the history of Cuba, creating myths to justify its tyranny. One of them is the so-called Cuban blockade, and the above documentary seeks to expose the false narrative.
From 1959 till now, generations of Cubans continue to resist this communist dictatorship.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans risked everything in July 2021, taking to the streets in nonviolent protests demanding an end to the dictatorship. The Castro regime responded
by firing on unarmed protesters, imprisoning over a thousand, and condemning
many of them to 20 and 30 year prison sentences for exercising their right to peaceful assembly.
Remembering this sad past and current reality, we resolve to work even harder to bring democracy back to Cuba, replacing Homeland or Death (¡Patria o Muerte!) with Homeland, Life, and Liberty (Patria, Vida y Libertad).
Both petitions are addressed to members of the international community.
Wishing
you all a happy new year in 2026, and through the continuing work and
struggle for a free Cuba may freedom be restored that will finally fulfill Cuban exiles goal of "this year in Havana!"
One is celebrated around the World for their profound Cubanness, pride, and
rejection of racism, while the other ended Black agency in Cuba, and
committed cultural genocide.
Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain.” – Celia Cruz
“On
Saturday, November 22nd, her legacy will be honored through Celia
Sinfónica, at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, with a spectacular
tribute unlike anything experienced before. Produced by Loud And Live
and the Celia Cruz Foundation, Celia Sinfónica is a groundbreaking
tribute concert that reimagines Celia Cruz’s most iconic songs as
symphonic masterpieces. For the first time ever, her timeless repertoire
including anthems like “La Vida Es Un Carnaval”, “Quimbara”,
and more, will be transformed by sweeping orchestral arrangements
together with the vibrant rhythms of Afro-Caribbean soul in an
unforgettable evening, performed live by the Florida International University (FIU) Symphony Orchestra
and accompanied by a lineup of renowned vocalists and instrumentalists,
soon to be announced. ‘Celia Cruz was more than a music legend, she was
a force of culture, identity, and inspiration for millions around the
world,’ said Nelson Albareda, CEO of Loud And Live. ‘With Celia Sinfónica,
we are honored to celebrate her enduring legacy in a way that’s never
been done before. This production is not only a tribute to her iconic
voice and music, but also a testament to her lasting impact on
generations past, present, and future.’”
On December 5, 2025 the Miami Film Festival will screen the documentary La Cuba Mia (My Cuba) at the Koubek Center which focuses on a concert held in Little Havana in April 2001, which brought
together Celia Cruz and her dear friend, Spanish artist Emilio Alberto
Aragón—better known as Miliki—a beloved singer, accordionist, and clown
who delighted Cuban children on 1950s television alongside his brothers
Gaby and Fofó.
She was born on October 21, 1925 in the poorest section of the Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana and lived in a small home with 13 relatives. Her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a stay-at-home mom who looked after her vast extended family, while her father, Simon Cruz, worked as a railroad stoker.
He monitored steam pressure, managed water levels, maintained the fire,
and regulated steam-powered jets that distributed coal within the
firebox of the locomotive engine.
She began singing as a child, and to compete on radio programs as a young woman. Cruz’s cousin Serafín entered her in a competition on the radio programLa Hora del Té (Tea Time) in 1947. She received first prize, a meringue cake, for her performance of the tango “Nostalgia.”
Fifty
two years later on April 30, 1999 in the Spanish program, Séptimo de
caballería”, in which she sang and took part in a panel discussion with
other artists: Ángela Carrasco, Lolita Flores, and Miguel Bosé. Celia briefly discussed the role her mom played
in circumventing her dad’s objections to his daughter having a career
in show business. “My father didn’t want me to be a singer or an artist.
My mother told me, ‘Forget it, I’ll get it sorted out with him.’”
To appease her father, who was embarrassed that his daughter
was involved in show business, Celia pursued her studies to become a
teacher, but continued to compete in singing competitions. She recorded her first track in Venezuela in 1948.
At the height of her popularity in Cuba, Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Miguel Angel Quevedo, a Cuban businessman, hired Celia Cruz to perform with a pianist in his home at the beginning of 1959.
The most influential magazine in Cuba, Bohemia, which had backed the
revolution, was owned by Quevedo. … On the night of the performance at
Quevedo’s house, Celia was singing when all of a sudden the guests began
to rush to the front door. Fidel Castro had arrived. She kept singing.
Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage prior to that, but Celia refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site
founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa
and tropical music. The following is their account of Celia Cruz’s
first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In the
early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist at the
house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo owned the
magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had supported the
revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement with a certain
Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the beginning of the
revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great popularity for “Yebero
Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had recorded with the
Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio Martinez’s group the
Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other contracts as a soloist. This
allowed her to show her talent on different radio stations in Havana,
and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru. Since the regime of Fidel
took power, it had begun to systematically seize businesses, radio and
television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking: ‘The revolution was
something like a hope and that joy, possibly, prevented us from thinking
all that we still had to do.’ For the Guarechera, Fidel was ending free
expression and the arts in her country. The night of the show in the
home of Quevedo, Celia was singing standing next to the pianist, when
suddenly the guests started to run to the front door of the house. Fidel
Castro had arrived. Neither she nor the pianist moved and continued
singing. Suddenly, Quevedo approached Celia and told her that Fidel
wanted to meet her because in his guerrilla days, when he cleaned his
rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been
hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted
to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not
do that.”
Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Since
Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue
to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba on July 15,
1960. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.
In
the same Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería, mentioned earlier she
was repeatedly asked to reconcile with the Cuban dictatorship, “to open
the door.”
Celia's assessment of the Cuban government
Celia responded to them,
“I’m not going to tell you she is above Cuba. But Catalina Alfonso [
her mom] is right next to Cuba, and for her I’m not the one who’s going
to open the door. I’m not there, because they closed it to me. My mother
died, and I couldn’t go and bury her because they didn’t want to let me
in. Let that regime leave then, because it has to go. But should I go
there? What you told me are pretty words but I won’t...”
“I
don’t want to go to a country where I can’t speak like I’m speaking to
you now. They were the first to [distance] themselves. Now, since the
dollars are so convenient for them, they send all those poor old people
here.” …“[Cuba is] a farm, and he’s the owner.” … “There’s a book of Cuban
music that couldn’t be released to the world if it didn’t feature Celia
Cruz. And it didn’t, because I’m out. So they’re the most unjust and
narrow-minded. Because Celia Cruz has to be included there, whether they
like it or not, I am Cuba, period.”
Regime
apologists and their agents of influence have attempted to pretend that
things have changed with regards to artistic freedom.
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported
that Cuba’s ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on
August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists
by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on
anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión
(ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue
to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: “All those who had allied with
the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio.”
Cuban cultural genocide
Celia
is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music
banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito
D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Israel Cachao López, Ramón “Mongo”
Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria
Estefan.
According to the 2004 book Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today edited by Marie Korpe,
there is growing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are
growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia
Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above. This could lead to a loss
of Cuban identity in future generations. This approach has been referred
to as a Cuban cultural genocide, denying generations of Cubans their
history.
How Fidel Castro destroyed Black Cuban civil society
This was known publicly by 1961 when Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay, "Castro and the Cuban Negro", published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.
“Of
the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and
others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without
the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the
hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical
impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of
censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously
exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer
America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule.
It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite
allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while
criticizing racism in the United States.
For decades, the Castro
regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes.
The elimination of Afro-Cubans from this dynamic by the new communist revolutionary elite turned racism into a political tool outside of Cuba
to advance the Castro regime's communist agenda, but turned it into a
taboo topic by ungrateful blacks, labeled counter-revolutionaries by the
dictatorship.
Castro said he ended anti-black racism in 1959, Blacks saying it still existed were punished.
On
March 22, 1959 Fidel Castro declared that racism no longer existed in
Cuba, to question that was to be a counter-revolutionary. The regime
claimed for decades that there was no racism in Cuba.
Abdias
Nascimento born in the town of Franca, State of São Paulo, in March
1914, Nascimento was the grandson of enslaved Africans. His father was a
cobbler and a musician; his mother made and catered sweets and candies.
He received his B. A. in Economics from the University of Rio de
Janeiro in 1938, and post-graduate degrees from the Higher Institute of
Brazilian Studies (1957) and the Oceanography Institute (1961).
Nascimento
participated early in Brazil’s equivalent of the civil rights movement,
the Brazilian Black Front (São Paulo, 1929-30). He led the organization
of the Afro-Campineiro Congress, a meeting of Brazilian blacks to
protest discrimination in the city of Campinas in 1938. Nascimento
passed away in 2011.
This is what he said in an open letter on October 30, 2009 concerning racism in Cuba:
“The
facts as I have come to know them indicate that we are facing a clear
case of political intimidation against those, in Cuba, who raise their
voices in protest against racism, discriminatory practices, and all
kinds of intimidations meted out to citizens who dare call for the
establishment, in their country, of a State that is respectful of Civil
Rights, of the right of citizens to freely congregate and form
organizations and to freely demonstrate their opposition to
discriminatory practices of which they feel they are a target for one
reason or another.”
Communists are already celebrating the centenary of the birth of
Fidel Castro in with a series of propaganda stunts over the next year.
They should be called out and fact checked.
However, supporters of
freedom and beautiful music should continue to commemorate Celia Cruz’s
entire life and legacy through her music, and words.
There are other events being organized to celebrate her life and legacy that you can still attend.
Learn why the Cuban dictatorship still fears her. #CeliaCruz100
Celia Cruz was born a hundred years ago, and passed away 22 years ago in 2003.
Her music continues to be censored in Cuba, and the Cuban dictatorship
cannot tolerate a group of Cuban artists honoring her memory.
What is it that the communists in Havana fear from this Black Cuban woman?
She was born on October 21, 1925 in the poorest section of the Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana and lived in a small home with 13 relatives. Her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a stay-at-home mom who looked after her vast extended family, while her father, Simon Cruz, worked as a railroad stoker.
He monitored steam pressure, managed water levels, maintained the fire,
and regulated steam-powered jets that distributed coal within the
firebox of the locomotive engine.
She began singing as a child, and to compete on radio programs as a young woman. Cruz’s cousin Serafín entered her in a competition on the radio programLa Hora del Té (Tea Time) in 1947. She received first prize, a meringue cake, for her performance of the tango “Nostalgia.”
Fifty
two years later on April 30, 1999 in the Spanish program, Séptimo de
caballería”, in which she sang and took part in a panel discussion with
other artists: Ángela Carrasco, Lolita Flores, and Miguel Bosé. Celia briefly discussed the role her mom played
in circumventing her dad’s objections to his daughter having a career
in show business. “My father didn’t want me to be a singer or an artist.
My mother told me, ‘Forget it, I’ll get it sorted out with him.’”
To appease her father, who was embarrassed that his daughter
was involved in show business, Celia pursued her studies to become a
teacher, but continued to compete in singing competitions. She recorded her first track in Venezuela in 1948.
At the height of her popularity in Cuba, Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Miguel Angel Quevedo, a Cuban businessman, hired Celia Cruz to perform with a pianist in his home at the beginning of 1959.
The most influential magazine in Cuba, Bohemia, which had backed the
revolution, was owned by Quevedo. … On the night of the performance at
Quevedo’s house, Celia was singing when all of a sudden the guests began
to rush to the front door. Fidel Castro had arrived. She kept singing.
Celia
was informed by Quevedo that Fidel was interested in meeting her. Celia
said she was hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place.
Fidel would have to approach her if he wished to meet her. However, the
commandant refrained from doing so.
On July 15, 1960, Celia Cruz was forced to leave Cuba because
she refused to submit to the new dictator and wanted to carry on living
as a free artist. But in 1962, when her mother was sick, she attempted to visit her, but Fidel Castro banned her from entering Cuba. The government once more prevented Celia from going to her mother’s funeral when she passed away. Her music was also censored in Cuba since she did not actively support the dictatorship.
In
the same Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería, mentioned earlier she
was repeatedly asked to reconcile with the Cuban dictatorship, “to open
the door.”
Celia responded to them,
“I’m not going to tell you she is above Cuba. But Catalina Alfonso [
her mom] is right next to Cuba, and for her I’m not the one who’s going
to open the door. I’m not there, because they closed it to me. My mother
died, and I couldn’t go and bury her because they didn’t want to let me
in. Let that regime leave then, because it has to go. But should I go
there? What you told me are pretty words but I won’t...”
“I
don’t want to go to a country where I can’t speak like I’m speaking to
you now. They were the first to [distance] themselves. Now, since the
dollars are so convenient for them, they send all those poor old people
here.” …“[Cuba is] a farm, and he’s the owner.” … “There’s a book of Cuban
music that couldn’t be released to the world if it didn’t feature Celia
Cruz. And it didn’t, because I’m out. So they’re the most unjust and
narrow-minded. Because Celia Cruz has to be included there, whether they
like it or not, I am Cuba, period.”
Celia Cruz is the “Queen of Salsa.” She was also called the “Queen of
Cuba” but in reality she is the “Queen of a Free Cuba.” Celia still
holds a symbolic position in Cuba that is a focus for national identity
and unity. She is a synthesis both of the Afro-Spanish culture, the
defense of human dignity, and resistance to tyranny throughout her own
life.
During the Summit of the Americas in 1994, she asked the leaders of the Americas,
“Please, on behalf of my compatriots, I ask you not to help Fidel
Castro any more so he can go away and leave us a Cuba free of
communism.” She said that all the artists had been asked to refrain from
expressing political messages, but she had engaged in an act of civil
disobedience.
Even
22 years after her passing she remains a Cuban icon internationally,
and her example, when shared with the Cuban populace at large, endangers
the continuing rule of Cuba’s communist dictatorship.
This is why they still fear the Queen, and why the secret police continue to censor her memory and ban her music.
More on this important anniversary here. A Spanish version of this OpEd was published in Diario Las Americas earlier today.
The People's Forum
warmly welcomes the Cuban dictatorship’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Eduardo
Rodríguez Parrilla in New York City, but should be celebrating the life and legacy of
Celia Cruz instead.
Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain.” – Celia Cruz
The centennial of Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso's
birth will be celebrated on October 21, 2025. She is better known by her
stage name Celia Cruz.
Celia had agency and she decided not to
bend the knee to the dictatorship. She wanted to live and perform in
freedom, which meant leaving Cuba after 1959.
Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage, but Celia refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site
founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa
and tropical music, provides a more comprehensive and accurate history
than the Smithsonian Institution.
The following is an account of Celia Cruz’s first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In
the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist
at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo
owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had
supported the revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement
with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the
beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great
popularity for “Yebero Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had
recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio
Martinez’s group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other
contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different
radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru.
Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically
seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking:
‘The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly,
prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.’ For the
Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her
country. The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing
standing next to the pianist, when suddenly the guests started to run
to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived. Neither she
nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo
approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in
his
guerrilla days, when he cleaned his
rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been
hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted
to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not
do that.”
Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Since
Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue
to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba on July 15,
1960. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.
Regime
apologists and their agents of influence have attempted to pretend that
things have changed with regards to artistic freedom.
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported
that Cuba’s ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on
August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists
by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on
anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión
(ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue
to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: “All those who had allied with
the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio ”
Celia
is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music
banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito
D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Israel Cachao López, Ramón “Mongo”
Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria
Estefan.
Cuban cultural genocide
According to the 2004 book Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today edited by Marie Korpe,
there is growing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are
growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia
Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above. This could lead to a loss
of Cuban identity in future generations. This approach has been referred
to as a Cuban cultural genocide, denying generations of Cubans their
history.
Communists are celebrating the centenary of the
birth of Fidel Castro with a series of propaganda stunts over the next
year. They should be called out and fact checked.
One of these stunts was carried out by the People's Forum in New York City on September 21, 2025, and was an effort to whitewash the racist legacy of the Cuban dictatorship.
This was known by 1961 when Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay, "Castro and the Cuban Negro", published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.
“Of
the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and
others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without
the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the
hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical
impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of
censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously
exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer
America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule.
It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite
allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while
criticizing racism in the United States.
For decades, the Castro
regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes.
The elimination of Afro-Cubans from this dynamic by the new communist revolutionary elite turned racism into a political tool outside of Cuba
to advance the Castro regime's communist agenda, but turned it into a
taboo topic by ungrateful blacks, labeled counter-revolutionaries by the
dictatorship.
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.
"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.
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.
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 statisticsthat 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.
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