RIP Fidel Castro August 13, 1926 – November 25, 2016

[butchersapron]

Either or both would do. I am actually interested.

I hope I have already been clear though, that it's not my case that Casto has nothing to answer for, just that your claim that he would kill or lock up anyone who disagreed with him doesn't strike me as perfectly fair and balanced. Happy to eat my words if it turns out to be accurate.

He both locked up and killed people in all the groups that i mentioned for all the activities i mentioned. Sometimes in the body of one person. You literally want me to give you a name of someone executed for opposing the regime. Ok. You know the firing squad is very famous in castro's cuba right? And you need a specific name rather than the thousands of accounts of the incarceration, the labour camps, the punishment beatings, the 'apology' from castro for the treatment of homosexuals until recent decades and so on. You need one specific name? Ok, how about Owen Delgado Temprana - 15 years old beaten to death after taking refuge in an Ecuadorean embassy (yes, there's an easy joke here).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Unfortunately Latin America has it's own form of kneejerk 'anti-imperialism'. It relies on the deeply ahistorical idea that Europe and the US are the colonial powers and Latin American nations are their victims, who must band together to fight the imperial powers.
Even otherwise sound lefties in LA often buy into this in some form or other. Subject for another thread really, but you only have to look at it from the perspective of indigenous people to see what a load of simplistic old bollocks it is.

You say unfortunately, but there is some truth behind it. The Europeans were kicked out (by forces led by local elites of European descent!) and as soon as they were gone, the US stepped in to meddle and control. I'd agree that the official stories told of independence are wildly one-sided and ahistorical, but the neo-colonialist meddling of the US in Latin American affairs is historical enough.

ETA:
And nowhere has that been more keenly felt than in Cuba, clearly, right back to their wars of independence, when Martí warned against the danger from the north.

 

[Ole]

What did he do that was a "very good thing"

 

[Brainaddict]

You say unfortunately, but there is some truth behind it. The Europeans were kicked out (by forces led by local elites of European descent!) and as soon as they were gone, the US stepped in to meddle and control. I'd agree that the official stories told of independence are wildly one-sided and ahistorical, but the neo-colonialist meddling of the US in Latin American affairs is historical enough.

Sure, I'm not quibbling about the role of the US or anything, but to a certain extent the Latin American states still are the colonial powers themselves. In countries like Colombia the elites never really changed, but even places that had revolutions usually only changed the (often Euro-descended) personnel at the top, while keeping the European form of the state.

Anyway, for those who want to know more about Castro's atrocities, I found this (disclaimer: no idea who is behind it): The Project – Cuba Archive

 

[bi0boy]

Well? Any dictator can do the schools and hospitals if it suits them.

Any role he played in the ending of the apartheid regime in South Africa was just a side effect of his desire to join the cold war games in Angola

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well? Any dictator can do the schools and hospitals if it suits them.

Any role he played in the ending of the apartheid regime in South Africa was just a side effect of his desire to join the cold war games in Angola

And he sent thousands of conscripts to their deaths in Angola. Castro sacrificed their lives in the name of his political hubris. Treated veterans very badly also.

 

[Ole]

Well? Any dictator can do the schools and hospitals if it suits them.

Any role he played in the ending of the apartheid regime in South Africa was just a side effect of his desire to join the cold war games in Angola

Sure.

You realise you've just listed good things you earlier denied the existence of, conveniently wrapping them in malicious intentions?

 

[charlie mowbray]

Cuba: interview with Octavio Alberola

 

[Idris2002]

"In 1948, Mr. Castro was attending a student congress in Bogota when fierce rioting broke out after the assassination of a popular politician. “I see there is a revolution erupting,” he later told an interviewer, “and I decide to be part of it.” He got himself a gun, fashioned a uniform, exhorted soldiers to join the revolution and gave tactical advice to sympathetic police."

This seems a little. . . improbable.

Fidel Castro, 1926-2016: The 20th century bears his indelible stamp

 

[Idris2002]

And he sent thousands of conscripts to their deaths in Angola. Castro sacrificed their lives in the name of his political hubris. Treated veterans very badly also.

Hmmm. I think you've got a point here, but the victory at Cuito Cuanavale really was a kick in the teeth for the Apartheid regime. Interesting piece by Jeremy Harding here:

LRB · Jeremy Harding · Apartheid’s Last Stand

 

[a_chap]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hmmm. I think you've got a point here, but the victory at Cuito Cuanavale really was a kick in the teeth for the Apartheid regime. Interesting piece by Jeremy Harding here:

LRB · Jeremy Harding · Apartheid’s Last Stand

Hard to attempt a counterfactual here. What if Castro hadn't intervened? What would have happened? I don't know. But at the same time that he was dedicating resources to this, he was neglecting the boring stuff at home. Stuff like maintaining roads, renovating dangerous housing, fixing gas supplies, small stuff that actually really matters. I hate to think how many Cubans are killed or maimed every year by exploding gas supplies. His regime neglected these things during a period when they had resources to do more.

Just looked up Cuba's military expenditure and during the Angola years it was around 10 per cent GDP. Even if every soldier in Angola had been there out of free choice (which they weren't), this is an enormous sum that could have gone elsewhere. One of Castro's legacies is a crumbling country where little works.

 

[Raheem]

He both locked up and killed people in all the groups that i mentioned for all the activities i mentioned. Sometimes in the body of one person. You literally want me to give you a name of someone executed for opposing the regime. Ok. You know the firing squad is very famous in castro's cuba right? And you need a specific name rather than the thousands of accounts of the incarceration, the labour camps, the punishment beatings, the 'apology' from castro for the treatment of homosexuals until recent decades and so on. You need one specific name? Ok, how about Owen Delgado Temprana - 15 years old beaten to death after taking refuge in an Ecuadorean embassy (yes, there's an easy joke here).

That's a really tragic story, but it has to be said it seems like a case of a death from police brutality. Of course it is not to be excused, and it wouldn't be surprising if it went unpunished. But it doesn't really provide good evidence that Castro presided over a regime characterised by widespread, systematic political murder. As far as I can tell from the evidence, Castro wasn't Pinochet in this regard. I'm not sure if he was even Erdogan.

Of course, this doesn't excuse any of the genuine oppression and injustice that can be talked about. I just think a little perspective wouldn't hurt.

 

[phillm]

People try to say his repression was in response to the US trying to undermine him. A bit of truth to it I'm sure, but he spent a lot of time persecuting internal political enemies nobody really suspected of having US links. He also persecuted gay people just because he didn't like gay people.

I'd recommend Before Night Falls by Arenas for an account of a gay writer in Castro's Cuba (and a very good read). You could say it isn't 'objective', but it's hard to be objective when all your friends are dead or in prison.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004FLJ6NW/

To be fair to the man he seems to have deeply regretted his homophobic past.

LGBT rights in Cuba - Wikipedia

Fidel Castro takes responsibility
In his autobiography My Life, Fidel Castro criticized the machismo culture of Cuba and urged for the acceptance of homosexuality. He has made several speeches to the public regarding discrimination against homosexuals.

In a 2010 interview with Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Castro called the persecution of homosexuals while he was in power "a great injustice, great injustice!" Taking responsibility for the persecution, he said, "If anyone is responsible, it's me.... We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death. In those moments, I was not able to deal with that matter [of homosexuals]. I found myself immersed, principally, in the Crisis of October, in the war, in policy questions." Castro personally said that the negative treatment of gays in Cuba arose out of the country's pre-revolutionary attitudes toward homosexuality.[46]

 

[butchersapron]

Wow, that deeply.

 

[butchersapron]

Castro personally said that the negative treatment of gays in Cuba arose out of the country's pre-revolutionary attitudes toward homosexuality.[46]

Not the laws and policies he adopted and pursued for near 50 years.

 

[Idris2002]

Hard to attempt a counterfactual here. What if Castro hadn't intervened? What would have happened? I don't know. But at the same time that he was dedicating resources to this, he was neglecting the boring stuff at home. Stuff like maintaining roads, renovating dangerous housing, fixing gas supplies, small stuff that actually really matters. I hate to think how many Cubans are killed or maimed every year by exploding gas supplies. His regime neglected these things during a period when they had resources to do more.

Just looked up Cuba's military expenditure and during the Angola years it was around 10 per cent GDP. Even if every soldier in Angola had been there out of free choice (which they weren't), this is an enormous sum that could have gone elsewhere. One of Castro's legacies is a crumbling country where little works.

What's your take on the case of General Ochoa?

 

[butchersapron]

What's your take on the case of General Ochoa?

He had the dirt. They killed him.

 

[Diamond]

Fascinating first window on to Trump's foreign policy approach.

Tweet led and robust.

Does not bode well.

 

[phillm]

For me when in doubt I turn to Chomsky for analysis and insight - big fish in a big pond and all that - he has never disappointed me yet.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/11/03/an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-on-cuba/

Noam Chomsky: Well, Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. Since 1959 Cuba has been under attack from the hemispheric superpower. It has been invaded, subjected to more terror than maybe the rest of the world combined–certainly any other country that I can think of–and it’s under an economic stranglehold that has been ruled completely illegal by every relevant international body, It has been at the receiving end of terrorism, repression and denunciation, but it survives.

....

So, for example, let’s take Cuba’s role in the liberation of Africa. It’s an astonishing achievement that has almost been totally suppressed. Now you can read about it in scholarship, but the contribution that Cuba made to the self-liberation of Africa is fantastic. And that was against the entire concentrated power of the world. All the imperialist powers were trying to block it. It finally worked and Cuba’s contribution was unique. That’s another reason why Cuba is hated. Just the plain fact that black soldiers from Cuba were able to beat back a South African invasion of Angola sent shock waves throughout the continent. The black movements were inspired by it. The white South Africans were psychologically crushed by the fact that South African forces could be defeated by a black army. The United States were infuriated. If you look at the next couple of years, the terrorist attacks on Cuba got much worse.

 

[butchersapron]

What is the point of posting that?

 

[Pickman's model]

Hard to attempt a counterfactual here. What if Castro hadn't intervened? What would have happened? I don't know. But at the same time that he was dedicating resources to this, he was neglecting the boring stuff at home. Stuff like maintaining roads, renovating dangerous housing, fixing gas supplies, small stuff that actually really matters. I hate to think how many Cubans are killed or maimed every year by exploding gas supplies. His regime neglected these things during a period when they had resources to do more.

Just looked up Cuba's military expenditure and during the Angola years it was around 10 per cent GDP. Even if every soldier in Angola had been there out of free choice (which they weren't), this is an enormous sum that could have gone elsewhere. One of Castro's legacies is a crumbling country where little works.

Yeh cos it's not like they had any hostile neighbours is it

 

[phillm]

What is the point of posting that?

Chomsky's words I would have thought that was obvious in the context of analysing Castro's legacy.

 

[butchersapron]

Chomsky's words I would have thought that was obvious in the context of analysing Castro's legacy.

In what way does chopping a singular action - wrenching it free of domestic context, emptying it of any content (who was sent there for example) - and saying that you like the person saying it help any substantial analysis of Castro's legacy?

Of course, this says more about Chomsky's state centred perspective than anything else. A man lost in the cold war. Made clear when he says "independent of what it does," gives the game away.

 

[Idris2002]

What is the point of posting that?

CHOMSKY IS LOVE CHOMSKY IS LIFE

 

[seventh bullet]

Go suck Batista's putrefied cock.

You can be better than this. And the same for the stuff yesterday about the USSR, minimising Stalinist terror.

 

[hipipol]

All of you here who seem to hate him
Do you heave the tiniest sliver of understanding how fucked his country had been by the USA allowing murderous Gangster exploitation?
Fools
He was and is a beacon of sense still while the USA continues to carry out murder via drone all over the planet
Praise him and remember those others he helped

 

[butchersapron]

Jesus. You're the one posting about batty men and posting buju vids. Yeah. Fits.

 

[hipipol]

You say unfortunately, but there is some truth behind it. The Europeans were kicked out (by forces led by local elites of European descent!) and as soon as they were gone, the US stepped in to meddle and control. I'd agree that the official stories told of independence are wildly one-sided and ahistorical, but the neo-colonialist meddling of the US in Latin American affairs is historical enough.

ETA:
And nowhere has that been more keenly felt than in Cuba, clearly, right back to their wars of independence, when Martí warned against the danger from the north.

It was the same European elite that the USA had to lead them to "freedom" and mass murder of the indigenous inhabitants
The stinking Yanks have yet to apologise
Cuba did so
The USA has now elected a would be scourge of Hispanics
A fucking Hero has passed
A talking Turd in a wig will seek to capitalize
Burn Humvee Burn

 

[hipipol]

Jesus. You're the one posting about batty men and posting buju vids. Yeah. Fits.

EH?
You don't understand me?
So surprised
put me back on ignore
We can never agree