A quote on Cuba from another board

[ButterflyBlood]

i'm interested in what people here think of this:

You have to look at the mess Cuba was in when Castro took over, and what he's made it today. Castro's parliment and cabinet are more moderate, and once he dies, it will probably move towards a democratic government. Then it will be one of the most prosperous and free nations in Latin America, if not the single most. Regardless of Castro's methods of retaining control, he is one very effective leader, if you see how he improved the health care system and education there. And to many homeless, poor and sick Cubans, he has been a hero who has vastly improved their lives.

Some friends who have actually visited Cuba (using third nations to get around the ban on travel by the US) say that Castro is actually quite popular there, and could probably win a fair election. When you think of how many people's lives he's improved and saved, it's hard not to see Cuba not mourning when he passes, and him not being remembered as the hero and savior of Cuba there for years to come.

[Ardee]

1. Wildly popular in fact

I was in Cuba before and after the revolution ( as a very young child with my vacationing father and uncle, and later with Venceramos helping with the sugar cane harvest , damn hard work ) and Batista ran the place as one giant gambling casino and whorehouse. Castro brought full literacy to Cuba and ,if not for the US embargo, would have brought full employment as well.

Everyone there has access to excellent health care, again despite that damnable embargo, and the myth of Castro's lack of popularity stems from the cuban american community who are, after all, embittered former Batista supporters and the wealthiest class who lived off the sweat of others toil under a brutal dictator.

Elections in Cuba are free of governmental control and Castro would certainly win overwhelming support if he were not already ensured of heading up that government for life. Are there problems in Cuba? Certainly there are, the judicial system needs an overhaul but so does our own!

[Indiana_Dem]

2. I was reading an article in my local paper

today regarding Cuba. I was thinking to myself that Castro sure has lived for a long time! (as long as I've been alive anyway) I think there will be a big change of regime there when he dies and it will seem rather strange to me to think of a perhaps free Cuba?? I'm sure America will step in and get its nose into it, no doubt. It always does. We'll probably screw it all up for them just like Russia and Iraq and other less publicized places.

I was also wondering, if people like him so much over there then why do so many want to come here and risk their lives doing it?

[guajira]

3. They Come here for Jobs - same as Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans,etc

Recent arrivals admit they come for economic reasons. They also favor lifting the embargo and travel ban against Americans!

[Sam Lowry]

4. Fidel Castro is a Big, Fat Shitburger

And it sucks hard to live there. My girlfriend just went down there last summer to study its architecture. I doubt that the poor and homeless have any love for Castro, unless they enjoy selling their bodies for money to European perverts. Child prostitution is a huge problem, but I guess if you can read and get free flu shots it's not so bad after all.

It's wrong when the right defends Pinochet and Franco, and it's equally wrong when the left defends dickfaces like Castro.

[scisyhp]

5. I just returned from Cuba

and there are no homeless there. At all. Like in zero. Same is with
child prostitution. Not only is it not a "huge problem", it simply
doesn't exist there. One can argue that there are many "poor" there,
but from that would follow that everybody in Cuba is "poor", since
their society is highly egalitarian. They may be poor by American
standards, but a comparison with any other Third World country
won't be at all unfavorable.

[tkmorris]

12. Sam

You haven't the foggiest idea what you are talking about. Your post is full of things that are outright false, and pretty crude as well. There are legitimate criticisms to make of Castro, and we can discuss those if you like, but you need to learn what Cuba is really like first, not the right-wing spin version.

[Ardee]

14. You add nothing to this debate

and I doubt ,with a mouth like that, you even have a girlfriend. You are simply lying or misled about what you wrote there and I see a tombstone in your future.

[Vadem]

6. I was in Cuba in 1978 to bring back my husband who had...

been injured in a car accident in which his lower leg had been crushed, and his femur snapped, resulting in a compound fracture. He was in a body cast and needed help to get back home. He was in a hospital in Matanza, in the country, where the accident occurred, several miles from Havana. I had to get special permission from the State Dept. to go to Cuba; my late husband, who worked at the Library of Congress at the time, was there on a research project. Only scholars and researchers were allowed at that time to receive permission from the State Dept. to go to Cuba. They had to be invited by the Cuban government and could not spend any US dollars there, so their trips, after they arrived there, were basically paid for by the Cuban government. My husband made many trips thereafter when he worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and wrote several trip reports that were printed in the Federal Register. His degree was in Latin American studies, with a speciality on Cuba. I found that the Cuban people loved Americans; they listened to the Miami radio stations (before it was blocked by the right wing Radio Marti) and loved the music and the people. We met and toured Raul Castro's farm and "met" the cattle they developed that produced so much milk that the American farmers were very much interested in finding out how they did it. The Cubans gave us a wheelchair (which I still have in my basement) from Russia, with a tag on the side which stated that it was made in the USSR. In fact, when we arrived in Miami, I had my husband place his hand over the Russian tag because we expected Customs to confiscate the wheelchair (as they did the Cuban cigars and Rum) and then we would have been SOL. It was quite an experience. Ironically, my husband died on Father's Day in 1997 while on his bike, from a blood clot from his bad "Cuban" leg. He had suffered for years from that accident, with no feeling in his foot, poor circulation and constant pain. His leg was 3/4 inches shorter after the accident. However,the day we arrived back in the USA from Cuba, I had to rush him to the hospital in an ambulance because of a pulmonary embolism due to the broken leg. Apparently, it is quite common. The X-Ray technicians and doctors were very interested in the fact that he had a pin installed into his femur in Cuba. They were amazed that his leg was set so perfectly. They stated that the people in the US who had broken legs never had their legs set so straight after a compound fracture. Interesting, eh??

[Judi Lynn]

7. Sure hope a lot of people get a chance to read

the actual first hand stories by posters offered in this thread.

They are very consistant with the tone of accounts I've heard from other travelers to Cuba. Just great.

Thanks.

[JanMichael]

8. Castro is a big poopy pants!

Neener neener neener!

[Solomon]

9. Here's my heartache about Castro and Cuba.

People forget that Castro is a lawyer. He could have made a good living under the Baptista regime, but as a lawyer, he chose to use his services on behalf of the poor and needy.

From what I can see of it and from reading, Castro, whatever else you can say about him, he did what he thought was for the best for his people, not for himself, but for his people. Can we say the same about our guy?

Now this is what really gets my craw. We as a country have done everything in our power except to bomb the country to smithereens, to make it hard for Castro to succeed. We have put embargoes, sanctions, whatever, you know, make sure their economy fails, and then we turn an ugly finger on them and sneer and say "see, we told that kind of system doesn't work." It makes me ill.

But you know what? Despite being shut out, seems like Castro at least got priorities straight: they have one of world's best health care systems, and one of the best educational systems. Again, he works for his people. How arrogant of us to decide what political model Cuba has to choose to achieve its goals?

I wonder what Cuba would be like if they had a fair chance to develop a good economy and have a good relationship with us instead of the bad one that developed? I sigh when I imagine being on a cuban beach smoking a cuban cigar. Arghh. I hope there's a parallel universe somewhere.

[Dirk39]

10. These are the reasons, the US elites hate Cuba...

they fear nothing more than an alternative to their system, esp. for the poor countries. They don't hate Cuba and use their media-whores to brainwash their citizens, because of the lack of human rights, free speech or democracy there. It's the opposite. If Cuba would be a concentration camp - not Bush's U.S. concentration camp there, I'm talking of Casto's Cuba - if Castro would be a fashist dictator, selling his country out to corporate U.S.-America, the U.S. elites would love him.

More and more this becomes so ridiculous. The U.S. elites state openly that they want total global hegemony and dominance. They state openly that part of their military strategy is due to the fact that their foreign neocolonial policy will cause rebellions and revolts all over the world, 'cause it will destroy more human lives, it will make more people poor, it will destroy the existence of millions and millions and millions of people. And they want to use their military effectively to kill and oppress these people. They say it. It's not even hidden. And it's going on for decades now, no matter if it's Bush Sr. or Clinton or Clark or Carter. The only path to global happyness is capitalism the U.S. kind of way. And if you don't like that or it destroys your live, they will declare war.


Every single year the U.S. foreign policy, pushed to the world via the Pentagon, the Nato, the White House, the Worldbank and the IMF along with the WTO kills more people than Word-War II (Hitlers concentration camps included). And you sit there, thinking about, if Castro violates human rights?

Funny think to sit there and think,
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Solomon]

11. Thanks for that good right hand, right after my left jab. Good

combination. :thumbsup:

[Dirk39]

13. Klitschko did write this post for me....

But don't tell anyone.
I just hope. these idiots have made a mistake in their strategy concerning, HOW stupid their democratic and republican sheeps are.

If you tell anyone, that Klitschko did write this post, I invade you and install public health care in your country. And if this isn't enough to degrade you, I will install communist media forces in your country. Just after about two month, U.S. citizens will not know simply facts anymore, they will forget that Saddam Hussein was in one of the planes attacking the WTC, they will not even know any more, that Bin Ladden and Hussein did own WMD's, when this gay married couple was still ruling and torturing Iraq.

After reading 100 posts on "democratic" DU about Cuba:



Shut them down,
Dirk

[Ardee]

15. Yo Dirk, howdy

Its good to read some truth about Castro and Cuba amidst the lies and rhetoric of the right. Fidel ,Raoul and Che planned at least a part of that revolution in a restaurant on Mission Street here in San Francisco and Fidel was fanatically pro american. he wanted nothing more than good relations with the USA. We responded by closing our factories down there and embargoing everything they needed to survive, arent we just the best!

Fidel turned the abandoned factories into schools and was forced to turn to the Soviet union for his nations survival. The US in typical fashion lost a potentially good and loyal ally and Cuba is now a great example to the third world of why they should distrust and fear us.