Fidel Castro in Havana on February 11, 2012. Source: CubaDebate
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.”
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
First, 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
Secondly, 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
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.
For instance, 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.
In conclusion, 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 for 65 years.
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.
For example, 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.
Additionally, 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.’
Finally, 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.
Terrorism: The Cuban Connection
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.
Subsequently, 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
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
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’s 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 communist regime.
Office of Senator Marco Rubio, August 12, 2024
Rubio, Scott Introduce Resolution Condemning Cuban Regime
The illegitimate Cuban regime has made Cuba a safe haven for Communist China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. This poses a direct threat, just 90 miles from our shores, to our national security interests, and the stability of our region. The United States must continue to defend democracy and defend the rights of the Cuban people.
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rick Scott (R-FL) introduced a resolution calling for accountability of the Cuban regime’s heinous crimes against its citizens:
- “The world is bearing witness to the multiple ways the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia. America has a moral duty to defend our nation’s interests and we must continue to uphold democratic order and justice in our hemisphere.” – Senator Rubio
- “The illegitimate Communist Cuban regime is a destabilizing force in the Western Hemisphere, a safe harbor to terrorists, a friend to America’s enemies, an oppressor of the Cuban people and violator of human rights. Sadly, that hasn’t stopped the Biden-Harris administration from chasing the same weak appeasement policies prioritized by Obama for this State Sponsor of Terrorism, which have done nothing but strengthen the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime. As we speak, Cuban military thugs are being used to prop up puppets like Maduro and repress the Venezuelan people. The United States must take a stand, and I’m proud to join my colleagues in this resolution to make clear we will NOT condone the illegitimate communist Cuban regime’s human rights abuses and will use the full force of our government to hold them accountable. I stand with the brave Cuban people and will never forget their fight.” – Senator Scott
Representative María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) introduced a companion resolution in the House.
Want more information?
- May 2024: Rubio, Giménez, and Colleagues to Biden Officials About Members of Cuban Regime at MIA: “You Have Made Americans Less Safe”
- November 2023: Rubio Presses Blinken to Update Cuban Regime’s Restricted Entities List
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-scott-introduce-resolution-condemning-cuban-regime/
Office of Senator Rick Scott, August 13, 2024
Sen. Rick Scott & Sen. Marco Rubio Introduce Resolution Condemning Cuban Regime
August 12, 2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, while the illegitimate Cuban regime, just 90 miles off of Florida’s coast, continues its attempts to threaten stability and security in the Western Hemisphere and carry out heinous crimes against its citizens, Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio announced the introduction of their resolution calling for accountability. The illegitimate Cuban regime has made Cuba a safe haven for Communist China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela and the United States must continue to defend democracy and the rights of the Cuban people. Representative María Elvira Salazar introduced a companion resolution in the House.
Senator Rick Scott said, “The illegitimate Communist Cuban regime is a destabilizing force in the Western Hemisphere, a safe harbor to terrorists, a friend to America’s enemies, an oppressor of the Cuban people and violator of human rights. Sadly, that hasn’t stopped the Biden-Harris administration from chasing the same weak appeasement policies prioritized by Obama for this State Sponsor of Terrorism, which have done nothing but strengthen the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime. As we speak, Cuban military thugs are being used to prop up puppets like Maduro and repress the Venezuelan people. The United States must take a stand, and I’m proud to join my colleagues in this resolution to make clear we will NOT condone the illegitimate communist Cuban regime’s human rights abuses and will use the full force of our government to hold them accountable. I stand with the brave Cuban people and will never forget their fight.”
Senator Marco Rubio said, “The world is bearing witness to the multiple ways the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia. America has a moral duty to defend our nation’s interests and we must continue to uphold democratic order and justice in our hemisphere.”
Read the full resolution HERE.
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Primary School Textbooks in Cuba: Ideological Manuals
Marxism, praise for the countries of the (defunct) Socialist Bloc and the ‘heroes’ of the Revolution. This is the motto that Cuban children must repeat daily: ‘Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.’
Laura Rodríguez Fuentes
In the late 1990s journalist Mario Vallejo approached Vilma Espín in New York, when the then-president of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) had traveled to the United States to participate in a United Nations conference. In a short and quick interview, the reporter inquired about the contents of primary school books in Cuba; specifically, on the issue of the use of weapons, taking as reference a text that appears in the first-grade book A leer, on page 84. The passage reads: “The militiaman has a rifle. He loves peace. In the right hands, a rifle is good.”
The founder of the FMC, who had not yet realized that she was being questioned by a channel based in Miami, replied: “We must not fall into their hands by paying attention to that kind of rubbish,” and added: “Boy, don’t ask me that, you’re going to lose your job. ”
The vast majority of school books for primary-level education in Cuba were published in 1990 by Pueblo y Educación. The textbook itself, A leer, was “corrected” in 2010 and released again with very few changes. On page four one can see the image of a militiaman dressed 80s style. Below are illustrations and poems about the military beret, rifles, and the May 1 parades in the Plaza.
More than 40% of the paragraphs and readings present in this primary-level academic material allude to political issues and transmit socialist ideological content, some more subtly than others, while highlighting episodes of the armed struggle, and figures like Fidel Castro, Celia Sánchez, Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto Guevara. The sentences in the first grade text used to teach “C” and “Ch” refer to these last two figures in revolutionary history, with the sentences “Che fought in Cuba” and “Camilo lives”.
At a panel discussion held at the ICAIC Cinematographic Cultural Center on October 28, 2010, in which researchers from the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists, and several authors of works created for primary education, participated, the outdated nature of many of these texts was recognized, with many dating from 1989 or 1990, with subsequent editions in which the changes made are almost imperceptible.
Ricardo Quiza, a historian and professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana, stated, in a debate with the writers published in the magazine Temas, that the textbooks are characterized by “a predominance of the history of political processes, infused with elements of Marxism and economic processes, promoting an excessively structuralist vision of society, framed with figures and data, and spiced up with the epic stories of the feats of great heroes and their feats, supposedly contributing to foster positive values, but sometimes going too far. ”
A survey completed by this group of Cuban researchers and authors found that 63.7% of the women interviewed, and 94.7% of the men, considered the textbooks complementary materials for their children. In this regard Cuban writer and essayist Enrique Pérez Díaz stressed that, lacking complete and updated books, students turn to other resources to do their work, such as the Internet, or the portable Wikipedia.
The study itself also revealed that most Cubans believe that their primary education manuals do not reflect the country’s cultural and social diversity. Much of the complementary content and images are Havana-centric, and ignore issues like gender, race and religion.
According to Georgina Arias, a pedagogue and specialist at the Ministry of Education’s (MINED) Directorate of Primary Education, “the books have many deficiencies. Around the world they are updated about every ten years. We, for obvious reasons, have not been able to do so. The ministry has not been able to tackle this task again. Everyone is aware that it cannot wait any longer, because twenty years have passed (…) a general revision is necessary, as was done at the beginning “.
Pioneers for Communism
Malena Cárdenas, the mother of an eight-year-old boy, has been waiting for a visa to reunite with her husband in the United States for three months now. A few weeks ago she had to meet with the school principal because the teachers were “scaring” her son. They told him that he would have no friends there, because it was “a country of bad people.” Malena has detected the influence of the curriculum’s political contents in her son’s behavior.
“Any adult eye, moderately trained and tired of the propaganda, can tell,” she says. “Children, however, do not realize this, and incorporate that dosage of ideology into their thinking. In my son’s books they were talking about socialism and imperialism when he didn’t even know how to add and subtract. And it is not limited to just those texts. In the homework, for example, they are assigned sentences related to political figures, or to the CDR. Fortunately, as parents today our thinking is more independent, and we avoid being manipulated with these ideas of good and evil. ”
Another mother interviewed said that she took exception to her son learning to read and write through texts that only refer to the armed struggle and “even the election of candidates.” “I remember one that was about what Fidel wanted children to be like.”
The first, second and third-grade reading materials repeatedly mention the word “Yankee”, associating it with evildoers, in contrast to the concept of the new man and the defiant Cuban people. The book designed for the second grade was published in 1989, and in it one can find stanzas of poems like: “Throughout Cuba / the pioneers advance / they are the soldiers / of a new world”; and “Be like the brave fighter Che / is the beautiful goal of the pioneers. ” At the bottom of this page, as a reading comprehension task, the authors posed the question: “What do the Cuban pioneers want to be like?”
Philosophy professor Rosa Álvarez stressed, in the publication of the magazine Temas, the importance of independent thinking in children. “Sometimes I say to my students: ‘You can disagree with what I tell you’; I want them to challenge me, but to have arguments of why ‘I am against this and that’. This is why I think that the education system is, to a degree, designed to create people who just repeat slogans , like parrots, and that is not the way it should be. ”
According to Lourdes Ferrer, a retired teacher who currently tutors children in different subjects in her living room, the methodological curricula demanded students’ Marxist, socialist education. “We had to prioritize readings related to the heroes of the Fatherland, those related to the struggle for independence, and the Revolution. That was not negotiable. It came down from above. Whatever was in the books, that is what you had to teach them.”
“Every Cuban, a soldier”
The introduction to the history of the Cuban nation in school texts is rife with passages and symbols of the guerrilla struggle, as well as constant reference to formerly socialist countries. This can be seen in various poems and stories: “I know very beautiful stories / of the heroes of El Moncada, of the Sierra and the bearded ones / of the landing of the Granma” (page 86, Lecturas, 2nd grade). Next there is the image of a girl cleaning the boots of her militia parents, who will be attending a parade the next day, with a text concluding with the phrase: “I will also be in the militia, like Mom and Dad.”
In Cuban schools, according to psychologist Mireya Aldama, whose has resided in the United States for years, students’ political perceptions are shaped starting at the preschool level. “The children get the message, by means of repetition,” says the specialist.
“A basic example is the motto ‘Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che’. From an early age they are taught to identify with political figures and leaders, their images, their semblances. They are depicted as kinds of demigods, without any defects, almost otherworldly. Since the 70s Cuban books have portrayed an idyllic image of Cuba and the countries of the then-socialist camp, in contrast to the “imperialists”, sometimes in a subtle way, and sometimes with a distinct ideological component. ”
Another episode in the same book, entitled “Las FAR”, reads: “The Revolutionary Armed Forces include soldiers, aviators and sailors. All are our comrades, and bear weapons to protect the people and defend them from their enemies. In the socialist countries the Armed Forces are revolutionary. And being revolutionary means always being on the side of the people, and always defending them.”
In a short story on page 163 they call for a class exercise to act out a scene in which a Soviet girl named Natasha receives candies from a “brave and beautiful country” as a gift for “behaving like a good pioneer.” Later one can read a set of verses dedicated to Cuban women, who must be card-carrying, revolutionary cederista, with a “rifle on her shoulder”, a woman of “tenderness and action.”
In various articles and discussions Cuban intellectuals have expressed their concern about the outmoded contents of the books, averting mention of their repeated political themes. And they have underscored, in general, that they do not address pressing social issues in the country, such as homosexuality and drug addiction. Some of these manuals even feature antiquated references to the positions of political leaders. Professor and Secretary of the Commission for the Study of the History of the Church in Cuba, Enrique López Oliva, said: “I am very concerned about the textbooks. I am opposed to them, because they remind me a little of the Catholic Church’s catechisms, manuals that dictate truths that one must learn by heart, and accept.”