Fidel Castro was a monster who tortured and murdered his people for over half-a-century. He was Stalin with a beard, Hitler with a stogie. His passing will be celebrated by freedom-loving people everywhere and mourned only by the evil and the credulous.
I was in Cuba in 1997, not on a Beyonce/Jay-Z celebrity tour, but as a journalist who met ordinary Cubans.
I've never been to a sadder place, or one more beautiful in a decaying way. Like North Korea, Cuba is a family business. In the former, the scepter was passed from Kim Il-sung (Glorious Leader) to Kim Jong-il (Dear Leader) to Kim Jong-un (Outstanding Leader). Since Fidel's retirement in 2008, his baby brother Raul – age 86 (Decrepit Leader) – has ruled.
Castro entered Havana on January 8, 1959, after overthrowing the comic-opera regime of Fulgenico Batista. Cubans are still waiting for the free elections the Comandante promised – a fact his legion of Western admirers conveniently overlooks.
Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation, notes: "Fidel Castro leaves behind a nation awash with tears and blood from thousands of executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, concentration camps for gay men, labor camps for those who thought differently, listened to jazz or even have long hair." On its human rights index, Freedom House gives Cuba a rating of 6.5 – with 1 being the most free and 7 the most repressive.
The oppression I witnessed was far more prosaic.
The doorman at my hotel told me he was a civil engineer. "Aren't you wasting your talent?" I asked. His answer: "I can earn $20 a month as an engineer or $20 a day as a doorman." Such is the genius of socialism; it takes engineers and turns them into doormen.
My first day in Havana, I met a man on the Malecon. We were deep in conversation, when I invited him back to my hotel for lunch. "I can't go in your hotel," he told me. Only tourists, officials of the regime and hotel employees are permitted on the premises. Sixty years after the Cuban revolution, and the proletariat are barred from tourist hotels, built on their backs.
The liberal Brookings Institution notes: "The Cuban economy has been mired in stagnation for more than two decades." Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
In Cuba, I saw people so miserably poor that existence was a daily struggle. I saw a man sitting at a card table on a street refilling disposable BIC lighters. A country with a gentle climate and fertile soil imports 80% of its food. While its people starve, it exports 95% of its citrus crop. It also exports repression. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela sent oil to Cuba and Havana sent security agents (skilled in the art of interrogation) to Caracas, to show the Chavez regime how to deal with dissent.
After one of Fidel's famous 6-hour harangues (talk about a captive audience), I met a school teacher on the veranda of a hotel. "What did El Presidente say last night?" I teased. She leaned close to me and uttered a four-letter word. Then she whispered in my ear: "I would like to kill him."
The night before I left Havana, I met a young man selling post cards on the street. Fluent in several languages, including English, he was an unofficial guide when there was work and sold post cards when there wasn't. He asked me if I could introduce him to an American woman he could marry to get out. "Why not," I replied, "You're young, intelligent and good looking. I bet there are a lot of young women who'd marry you."
"I wouldn't care if she was 90," he replied. "I'd do anything to get out of here." With his chin, he pointed to middle-aged people shuffling along the street, looking dejected. "If I stay here any longer, I'll end up like them – a zombie."
Everywhere I went, ordinary Cubans urged me to "tell the American people what it's like here." For the American left, that would be a waste of breath. Castro is part of its pantheon. From the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (Lee Harvey Oswald was a member) to the latest saccharine pronouncements of the mainstream media on Cuba's alleged achievements in education and medicine, the left has had a long-running love affair with the house that Fidel built.
Those rioting against democracy in our streets secretly envy the Cuban regime. On the island gulag, rulers are self-selected, not elected. The official media is the only media. The masses don't have to be persuaded, just told what to do. Socialism has been realized with a vengeance. Counterrevolutionary elements are rehabilitated by long prison terms.
Of course, if that happened here, most of today's agitators would be tomorrow's political prisoners, along with college professors, artists, entertainers and journalists who gaze longingly at Cuba. The cast of "Hamilton" could try to lecture their guards on diversity and respect for civil liberties.
Reaction to Castro's death is a litmus test for political correctness. President-elect Donald Trump commented, "Today, the world marked the passing of a brutal dictator." While President Barack Obama noted, "History will recall and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."
But he wasn't a singular figure. His counterparts have existed throughout the ages – from the pagan priests who made human sacrifices to the brown-shirted goons who goose-stepped through Weimar Germany. His impact on Cuba has been the same as Ebola's on West Africa. History will judge him the worst 20th century dictator in the Western hemisphere, far surpassing all of the caudillos and juntas combined.
It's estimated that 58% of Cuban-Americans voted for Trump – two points higher that his share of the white vote. It figures.
