Castro's Revolution a Failure

The largest export of Cuba is Cubans. 

This has been the end result of the glorious Communist vision of Fidel Castro. The people who are left on the island are glad to see the others go not because they view them as traitors to the Revolution but that by leaving their backward, impoverished island nation they know there will be fewer people to compete for the limited resources they need to sustain themselves.

After all this time, the only thing Fidel Castro and his Revolutionaries have to trumpet about is the glories of an empty island in the sun that doesn’t look like it’s progressed a day beyond that first day of January 1959 when Castro and his merry band of brothers road into Havana and time, for the Cuban people at least, stopped.

Yes, the Cuban revolution managed to throw out American business interests. And THEN what happened? Nothing! Such is the extent of the success of the revolution.Oh, they tried to get Russia interested in a missile base and they managed to train some decent boxers but that's about it. 

Although it hasn't been good to anyone else in particular, the revolution has been good to the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul. They get to rule over a fiefdom that never ever actually accomplished anything but throw out the American Capitalists. For the time being anyway. And then there is that thing about the mass exodus of it's people from the workers paradise.  

Never having anything to offer people born with ambition, for we are all born with ambition, the hardly educated Castro just let them go so he could go on being the Dictator rather than actually attempt to build a culture, educate the people, build a shining city or even a road for that matter. 

After all, being King was all he was ever good at. A fighter can lead a revolt but they can never lead a peace. Mao couldn’t do it, Stalin couldn’t do it and although Castro’s death counts hasn’t noticeably come near that of those two, he has killed his share. He knows no other way to hold onto power. A killer can never be anything else.

But soon El Captain will shed his mortal coil and although Raul, part of the Communist youth movement at a spry 85 years old and the rest of the now geriatric placeholders will try to keep Castro’s “Vision” alive, not knowing what that ever was and the hands of time will once again hand over Cuba to people who actually want a quality life and who want to own stuff.

And to think that there are people, mostly privileged people who have been allowed to travel to Cuba despite the U.S. ban, who think opening up the country to trade will somehow RUIN the country and its people. Can you believe it? How backward can you get? They are already ruined, now they must be resurrected. 

How would YOU like to live everyday like its 1959? And I’m not talking about Soc Hops, souped up hot rods, chics in poodle skirts and Buddy Holly on the jukebox at the soda shop kind of 1959. No no, Cuba today is the 1959 where X-Rays were just coming into fashion, a time where there was no such thing as a pacemaker, high blood pressure medicine, blood thinners or coronary bypass surgery. All gasoline sold had LEAD as an octane boosting additive, automobiles didn't have either seat belts or head rests never mind airbags and "Smoking isn't bad for you at all." said your doctor while puffing on an unfiltered Camel cigarette in the examination room! 

Some phones still had a crank on them and "party lines", where the whole community was on the same phone line, still were prevalent outside of the big cities IF the phone company decided to run a wire to your town at all. Most of the TVs were still black & white and there actually WERE roads like Mayberry RFD (for Rural Farm Drive) and nothing was open on Sunday EVER. Plus you could go to jail for a year for possession of one joint in many states. Yes, THAT 1959. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t know what you were missing but guess what? You DO know what you’re missing. And so do the Cuban people. People are people everywhere in that they want to enjoy the fruits of their own labor and to provide for their families. They want a goal to work towards and to achieve things in their working lives. They may not all get to where they want to go but it’s in the chance to achieve these things that the Castro Regime has kept from them. Look at the way Castro’s “Children of the Revolution” are living. Then look at the masses that have risked everything to get the hell out of there. Let’s face it, it is a total act of desperation to get on an old car tire inner tube and try to paddle your ass to Florida. But that’s just what these people are doing.There are many Cubans on the bottom of the Florida Straits. 

Castro won the revolution alright but he will leave his nation worse off than when he “saved” it and in reality he didn't save it from anybody, he only saved it for himself. Cuba is a land that time has left behind and like North Korea, will have a huge learning curve when civilization finally catches up to them. And it will. It always does.

Now in his twilight, we can look at Castro's reign over Cuba with clarity and so with clarity can declare that he has failed Cuba. Castro failed Cuba and its long suffering people with his selfish small thinking. He never had a plan after victory. He never accomplished a thing beyond the revolution. A revolution he relived in his mind everyday and never stopped talking about. But what he always spoke so fervently about was in the past. And now it's the distant past. 

Castro never took a step beyond that one victory, 57 years ago, to develop a country that could exemplify that his way was the better way. He could never show that to the world because he couldn't do it. In this Castro failed like the other despots before him who espoused a Communist ideal that they could never conjure and despite all his grand talk of freedom for the working people, he was just another short-sighted man who could only lead with a gun. 

The sooner history forgets him, the better.