Before 1959, if you were rich and white in Cuba, you were likely doing very well. Even if white and middle-class, with not much ownership in anything, you would have been faring far better than nonwhite Cubans and immigrants who came from China, Mexico, or any other country represented in Cuba’s history, to work the fields. Despite chattel slavery being abolished in 1886, indentured servitude was introduced by Spain in response to the abolition of slavery, and segregation, brought to the island by the U.S., persisted until the Revolution led by Fidel Castro.
That Revolution would not have been possible without the support of the vast majority of the Cuban population, the U.S., which allegedly denied the then-dictator Fulgencio Batista weapons to fight back, and even some wealthy elites, such as the Bacardi family. While the Cuban people maintained their support for Cuba’s new government, the Bacardi family and the United States would inevitably turn on Castro when he began returning Cuba’s assets to its people.
Despite the talk of “stealing” private assets, Cuba has settled with every foreign nation whose citizens’ assets were seized after nationalizing its resources, except the United States, despite all its efforts to do so for more than 60 years. The U.S. and the corporate interests it represents have for decades rejected any offers by Cuba to settle the dispute. Instead, the U.S. passed the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, allowing Cuban Americans to sue Cuba for “seized” property.
The Revolution also ended segregation and exploitative labor practices, but it failed for many years to properly address racial issues. Castro admitted as much in 2000. There were many things Cuba’s revolutionary government got wrong at its onset. But Cuba has been ever-evolving, and after elections in the last decade that were regarded as “remarkably democratic,” it now boasts rights for marginalized groups, seniors, and children that you don’t see in many countries, including the United States.
“I am not claiming that our country is a perfect model of equality and justice,” said Fidel Castro in 2000. “We believed at the beginning that when we established the fullest equality before the law and complete intolerance for any demonstration of sexual discrimination in the case of women, or racial discrimination in the case of ethnic minorities, these phenomena would vanish from our society,” continued Castro. “It was some time before we discovered that marginality and racial discrimination with it are not something that one gets rid of with a law or even with ten laws, and we have not managed to eliminate them completely in 40 years.”
Under Batista’s government, and the many before his, indentured servitude was a major issue on the island. Black, mixed-race, and Chinese Cubans were subjected to massive debts owed to their employers in various sectors, leaving them to live in squalor on the fringes of society. The little money they made during harvest season was offset by insurmountable debts accrued during the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the country’s wealth was hoarded by a handful of wealthy white landowners and various criminal organizations.
The Trafficante family from Florida, Sam Giancana and Tony Accardo from Chicago, and the Genovese and Luciano families from New York were all part of illicit operations coordinated by Meyer Lansky, the “Mob’s Accountant.” The group became known as the Havana Mob and operated with impunity. Lansky, the architect of their operations, maintained a friendship with Batista and managed the island’s luxury hotel-casinos and its gambling, money laundering, drug smuggling, and sex trafficking operations.
The culture of corruption extended to the military, police, the courts, and political positions at every level of government. But it didn’t start there. The mafia control of the island was the result of decades of U.S. interference surrounding elections, the corporate exploitation of labor, and the allocation of resource ownership, robbing the island nation of its wealth. Every president before Castro was either installed by the United States or it meddled in elections to ensure its preferred candidate would win, much like Trump is doing now in Latin America.
No, Castro wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But he wasn’t the murderous and exploitative dictator Batista was. The Revolution made healthcare, education, and housing a human right while freeing nonwhite Cubans from lives in bondage to rich, racist white men who saw themselves as superior to the majority of the population. The Revolution marked, for the first time in hundreds of years, that neither Spain nor the United States controlled Cuba.
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Definir (o hacerse eco de una opinión que define) como “extraordinariamente democráticas” las elecciones de partido único de Cuba, donde los ciudadanos de a pie no pueden votar directamente por los diputados (ya que el cargo de presidente ni siquiera está en juego) describe a la perfección la bazofia partidista que es este artículo. Por cierto, no se citan fuentes. ¿”Consideradas extraordinariamente democráticas”…por quién? ¿Por el Partido Comunista?
El intento de presentar como buena y justa la propuesta de indemnización de Cuba al gobierno estadounidense (por expropiaciones y nacionalizaciones que en principio son controversiales) sin explicar en qué consistió específicamente esa propuesta, subraya la dimensión de panfleto ideologizante del texto.
Y después le llaman a esto periodismo serio.
Hay bastante fuentes citadas.