A former
baseball player and lawyer who led the Cuban Revolution that toppled Fulgencio Batista's
tourist trap kleptocracy. In his day, he was the most long-winded speechifier of the
20th Century. Fidel's made quite a few mistakes over the years, e.g., being too stubbornly hands-on sometimes (what the fuck does a
lawyer know about advanced topix in agriculture policy?), but I think Cubans who have lived under both Batista and
Castro would give Fidel at least a muted thumbs-up. Until recently, anyway. To the posh first-wave emigres (et al) in
Florida, he's the
devil's son. And in
politics,
money talks. Just ask the CANF. Or
Jesse Helms.
Cuba, with its many flaws, has, under Castro, allowed many people (blacks, women, and the poor) to rise up from second-class status, and, prior to the spasms in the Soviet Bloc, it had by far the best health-care and educational systems in Latin America - it may still have the best. Remember that the country has had no longstanding tradition or ethos of democracy - these past four decades have been, arguably, some of the best in Cuban history.
Yes, there were show trials, and often a zero tolerance policy on dissent, but Castro's record is damn near spotless compared to Uncle Sam's buddies in China, Indonesia, Chile, and Argentina over the same period. The US propped up its various CIA-sponsored butchers and despots, while sending agents to kill or do "dirty tricks" ops against Fidel, insisting that he was somehow ten times worse than a Suharto or a Pinochet.
The bottom line is that Fidel stole a "US possession" out from under the noses of its "owners" - us.gov, the multinationals, and the Mafia - and has been made to pay for his audacity ever since. I'm sorry if the bourgeoisie and corporations got screwed, but it must have been fun to see the tables turned for once. Don't believe the yanqui hype. See also: Manufacturing Consent.