Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led a people’s rebellion against Fulgencio Batista, who had established himself as a dictator in a military coup in 1952. In 1959 the Batista regime collapsed.
According to Wikipedia, “Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. Batista’s increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba’s commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts. To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people. For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.”
The US government had the option of accepting the Cuban Revolution and working with the new leaders. Instead, Washington drove Cuba into Soviet arms by denouncing Castro as a communist and a dictator, by imposing sanctions that have outlived Castro, and by preparing plans for regime change.
Copyright © 2016 Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
Hasta la Victoria siempre! Viva Fidel!
Two Responses to the Death and Resting Place of Fidel Castro’s Ashes.
1) AN ENEMY OF HIS OWN COUNTRY WILL FINALLY REST IN SANTA EFIGENIA CEMETERY OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA
By Charles A. Santos-Buch
November 27, 2016
When it was announced around the world where and when the tyrant of Cuba was to be buried many compatriots winced in disbelief. The date was November 30, 2016 which is the date when the Cuban anti-Batista insurrects of the 26 of July Movement under the command of Fran Pais staged a well-planned and successful uprising in the venerable ancient city of Santiago de Cuba. It is pure theater because Pais and Castro were bitter rivals, one a Marxist-Leninist and the other a republican of Jose Marti student and admirer. In the course of the Revolution, Batista’s police cut down Frank Pais when Castro and his acolytes betrayed him to them.
The selection of Santiago’s Santa Iphigenia Cemetery as the resting place is more revolting. Why? You ask. Here is why:
St. Iphigenia is the resting place of the heroes of the Ten Years War of Independence (1868-78) and of the War of Independence of 1895-98). Right off the top of my mind, it is the final resting place of Jose Marti, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Vicente Aguilera, the four generals and the crew and expeditionaries of the Virginius, GENERALS Bernabe Varona, Jesus del Sol, George Washington Ryan and Pedro de Cespedes executed by the Spanish Empire, and the resting place of the first freely elected president of Cuba don Estrada Palma, don Facundo Bacardi, don Emilio Bacardi and many other forgotten patriots and Colonel Frank Pais, who firmly believed in human rights and a representative republican government. They died for these ideals. Fidel Castro did not.
The irony and hypocrisy of this event is truly nauseating.
E.T.:
2.)Fidel Castro’s ashes will rest at the Santa Ifiigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. This really makes me angry Because that is the cemeter where my father, my aunt victoria, my cousins silvia, lucia, gladys and their husbands, pedro, and pineiro should have been resting. It is the cemetery where I should be resting when i die. And, because of Fidel Castro none of us can call it our Final Resting Place. None of us can rest in the land where we were born, where our roots were planted and uprooted from because of Fidel Castro. For all of us the continuity of our histories became a cut-off from our homes. But he who stole our land from us, who governed by power and might, he gets to rest his ashes in the cemetery which should have been a long line of continuity in our family’s resting place. This really makes me angry. And yes, while he was born in Oriente Province, and it was Oriente Province that gave him full support while he was in the mountains, he betrayed the mountains, he betrayed the revolution and he betrayed us all. And as they rest his ashes in the Cemetery where Jose Marti rests, they will probably erect a monument to Fidel Castro as well. He, who was so unlike Jose Marti and whose revolution billed and fought to liberate Cuban from the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista ended up being even a more repressive one than the Batista regime.
This really makes me angry.
It is uncanny el poder que tienen las mentiras de germinar, confundir y florecer.: The power of lies to confuse, germinate and flourish is uncanny.
Fidel Castro was nothing more than a bucket of shit and as a bucket of shit his ashes ought to be dumped in the latrine.
What a shameful gusano post! The cockroaches are trying to crawl on a great hero’s grave.
May I add that although Battista’s brothel-keepers, pimps and mobsters lost their native land (as a parasite loses its host), they have received in return the south of Florida. I wonder when Miami will be renamed Mariel.
There are few better examples when people have made great sacrifices in the cause of liberating others than those made by the people of Cuba in Africa. That such a small country found it possible to support the struggles against colonialism and racism in Africa in such a significant way allows us to imagine that a new better world is possible.
Fidel Castro is a giant tree that has resisted the hurricane winds of imperialism.