A long time ago, a reporter friend in South Florida told me that the City of Miami has for decades maintained a “Castro Dies” plan, filed away next to the municipal plans to deal with hurricanes, etc., to govern the outburst of civic joy expected in reaction to the death of Fidel Castro. Presumably, that plan has been dusted off and put into action:
Most of us Floridians — Cuban-Americans and non-Cuban-Americans alike — don’t remember a time when Castro wasn’t lurking 90 miles off our coast, serving as a useful foil for American politicians and vice versa. He endured 11 American presidents, from Eisenhower to Obama.
Hatred of Castro has been such a unifying political force in South Florida that one wonders what, if anything, will replace it. There was a joke down here about Castro receiving a tortoise as a 75th birthday present and, upon being told that the tortoise has a 150-year life expectancy, lamenting that just when you get attached to a pet, it dies on you. From the Miami Herald:
Now, after surviving countless assassination attempts, communism’s bankruptcy, economic collapse, his failed revolution, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz has passed into history.
This is a moment to celebrate the prospect of a future without Fidel Castro. He should be remembered as the cynical dictator who nearly destroyed Cuba for the gratification of his own ego. Building a free, open and prosperous democracy would be the Cuban people’s greatest, most satisfying payback.
The totalitarian dictator is dead. May his police state and inhumanity be buried along with him.
We’ll see if Castro’s death changes anything in Cuba. My guess is it won’t, at least not right away. Eighty-five-year-old little bro Raúl appears to be firmly in charge. But the party will go on in Miami.
Jack Canuck
Hey look, here’s a passage that they can dust off in the aftermath of the Trump regime: “He should be remembered as the cynical dictator who nearly destroyed [the USA] for the gratification of his own ego. Building a free, open and prosperous democracy would be the [American] people’s greatest, most satisfying payback.”
As for Castro, yes he is certainly responsible for a full share of repression, crimes, denials of human rights, etc under what was undeniably a dictatorship. On the other hand, there were some countries that were a lot worse that the US and other Western countries didn’t mind at all. And his regime did achieve near-universal literacy and a very decent standard of universal health care (perhaps among other positives, but I’m not an expert on Castro’s Cuba by any stretch).
hellslittlestangel
At last, the CIA plot to kill Castro has succeeded!
CarolDuhart2
His army broke the back of the South African apartheid by defeating it in Namibia. He ended the Mafia corruption and exploitation of his country-and countrymen. Near universal literacy and an unprecedented lifespan for Cubans of 90. His walk through Harlem was the first time that a national leader had given respect to African Americans, and he was a supporter of the struggle.
The bad news was the repression and the support of outmoded ideas of how to reform society, and the encouragement (passively) of more violent radicals of the 60’s as t hey tried to emulate the Cuban revolution without realizing there was a reason why Cuba had to go that route instead of more democratic and peaceful means.
Applejinx
@Jack Canuck: This. I’ve now lived to see American Capitalism in America, and then American Capitalism in Russia after the fall of the Wall and Soviet Communism. I’m not at all convinced Fidel Castro fucked up that much worse than we have.
I mean, if you ask American doctors or lawyers, they’ll obviously be all like OHHH FUCK NOOO because under a Castro they’d be fucked over very harshly, but given that in the American system they’re the ones with all the fucking capital, damn straight they shouldn’t be lording it over the rest of us that much. It’s like trying to argue for American health insurance companies, or over-leveraged banks.
Castro didn’t preside over THAT shit. Pick your poison I guess. Not being a doctor or a lawyer or an over-leveraged bank, and not ever going to be a doctor or a lawyer or an over-leveraged bank, I’m super skeptical when I’m supposed to be full of moral outrage over Castro’s outrages.
Capital’s deeply fucked, and insanely powerful. If anyone has clever ideas for harnessing it and bringing it to heel with no such outrages, I’m sure that would be very useful to know, especially now under President Trump. How is this not a vindication of at least part of Castro’s brutality? Look where trusting capital has got US.
CarolDuhart2
When Castro came to Harlem:
When Castro Came To Harlem
ThresherK (GPad)
Waiting for the first non-ironic Thanks Trump! about this.
If Morning Joe were on I’d guess there.
crawdad
Castro was a murderous dictator who is better off dead.
Jack Canuck
@crawdad: It’s that kind of substantive, content-rich reply that is always so convincing to me! Maybe it’s the way it engages with the complex real-world circumstances of Castro and his regime that I find so compelling. Or perhaps it’s the demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the nuances of Cuba since the revolution. Or the way it responds thoughtfully to the idea that the real issue America had with Castro is that he wasn’t their son of a bitch (as FDR allegedly commented about Somoza). That’s the kind of thought and analysis that I come here for!
CarolDuhart2
Yes, he was. But the misfortune of his critics was that he lived in a time of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, the Argentinian junta, and others far more brutal and far more I-want-to conquer the world leaders. Also Castro was blessed with enemies that were far more interested in bringing back the conditions that led to the revolution and far more about revenge than actually taking Cuba forward. If a non-racist, inclusive and truly participatory democratic opposition had appeared, perhaps things would have changed sooner.
droog
Simple litmus test: Would you have chosen to live in Castro’s Cuba? Would you live there now? I wouldn’t, and I come from a background and nationality which is very similar to that of Cubans in terms of culture and economics.
(I’ll leave my other opinions out to keep this concise).
raven
@CarolDuhart2: Non racist? Right.
CarolDuhart2
@CarolDuhart2: Also by focusing on the person of Castro was a way to delegitimize the real complaints that less-fortunate Cubans had about Cuba before the revolution. Face it, revolutions are rare, and even more rarely succeed. The fact that this one did is something to think about.
raven
@droog: Why be concise, that’s not why some people come here?
p.a.
This just in,
Generalissimo Francisco…Fidel Castro still dead…raven
@p.a.: If you are not going to write 500 words just don’t write anything at all.
Mustang Bobby
Of course all the Miami TV stations are all over it, and it will be interesting to see what it’s like at work where my boss, my boss’s boss, and a lot of my co-workers are either exiles themselves or children of them.
Most if not all of the Cubans I know are in favor of lifting the embargo and cheered when President Obama restored diplomatic relations. They saw it as a barrier to both social and economic progress in Cuba (and were quick to take advantage of the new open door by going back to visit family and drop off a lot of groceries).
As for the man himself, I’ll quote Mark Twain: “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I did send a letter saying I approved of it.”
Brachiator
@CarolDuhart2:
A very fair point. I’ve known Cubans who have absolutely hated Castro, and Cubans who respected him for rooting out most of the corruption and exploitation, and some (but not all) of the racism. This still left problems, including rancid homophobia. And I have no patience for those who say that the Cuban system was not that bad, but who would not voluntarily live under such a system in a billion years.
CarolDuhart2
The big damage to the American left from Castro was what I call the “Romance of Revolution”. Castro looked like a big f-u to the staid squares who upheld all of the repressive stuff-and the appeal was that everything would get overturned at once instead of going to those boring Democratic Party meetings. Jill Stein is his legacy, so is Bernie Sanders. Who cares about counting votes, talking to farmers, or actually running for office compared to that stuff?
Hal
Thanks Obama! But really, wasn’t the inevitable death of the Castro brothers part of Obama’s point in changing Cuban policy? Raul might have a few years left, but he isn’t going to be around for much longer either. Also, president Trump can use his position to make a shit ton of money on a Trump hotel and Casino. Maybe Rubio can run it.
PaulWartenberg2016
This does shift the dynamic in Latino politics.
While Raul would likely try to keep going on his brother’s path as a legacy, he’s been the one presiding over the “openness” move to end the US sanctions. With Fidel dead, however, the personal identity of the Cuban Revolution kind of dies with him, and Raul has an opportunity here to negotiate with the remaining dissents in Cuba to work out a peaceful transition away from one-party rule.
If OBAMA jumps on this moment to help Cuba end the political conflict and help set up open elections, he could help guarantee that the biggest argument the Far Right (both Republicans and Cuban Exiles) has against the current Cuban regime goes away, freeing up the next step – the argument over property/ownership rights of exiles and corporations – of getting normalized relations confirmed.
Obama better do it because I don’t trust the incoming Trump regime at all.
Sam Dobermann
Prior to Castro was evil dictator Batista who madr life hell for the poor but very very good for the rich.
It was the abortion spot for the entire east coast -Miami women were lucky. Beautiful hospital for tourists and los ricos, nada por los pobres.
The rich got rich on the backs of the poor and ran and belly ached about their losses for more than 50 years. Of course they were Republicans.
Castro dif an incredible amount of good: universal literacy and great health care, medical research, and teaching doctors who were a.mong the best and were sent out around the world. Training was free and Americans go there to be trained.
Yeah, I would have lived there. It was good at first. Maybe if he wasn’t under attack so much he wouldn’t have gotten so paranoid.
germy
Interesting LGM comment:
JMG
The original exiles are either dead or as/almost as old as Raul Castro. I’m sure sentiments in those crowds were sincere, but how much of it was pro forma sincerity as a means on honoring ancestors? If you’ve lived in Miami for almost 60 years, or even 30 years, your life is there. I doubt many would pull up stakes for the old country even if it becomes possible. What the hell for? They can always visit.
debbie
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Baby Doc Trump would prefer nothing change, if only because it gives him a target to rail against.
rikyrah
RIP Fidel.
Chris
As much beef as I have with Miami exile politics, I’m glad the fucker’s dead.
Chris
@Jack Canuck:
True. The rejoinder to every right winger calling for the liberation of the Cuban people is that Castro’s was probably the only dictatorship in the entire Western Hemisphere that America ever had a problem with.
And the people cheering Pinochet weren’t coked out college radicals. They were Reagan’s cabinet members.
Srv
The embargo worked. Castro was starved out. After 55 plus years.
Pangloss
@Srv: Was it the embargo (53+ years) or the REMOVAL of the embargo (May 29, 2015) that killed Castro?
Betty Cracker
@Pangloss: Maybe once he saw American democracy fatally undermined earlier this month, he decided he could die in peace?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
One just has to love the willful ignorance of Cuban history and our role in it. Yes, Cuba was all sunshine and Jeffersonian Democracy, entirely mob free before Castor just like Russia was before Lenin and Germany before Hitler.
Brachiator
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Obama does not have time to do it, nor would the GOP give him the opportunity to do anything substantive.
This will fall to the Trump administration. Perhaps a major opportunity at foreign policy. We will see how he handles or bungles the challenge.
rachel
@Brachiator: At least Cuba doesn’t have nukes, so this’ll be a bit safer challenge for us than the other ones.
Brachiator
@Chris:
What?
The US has invaded Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic just since the 1960s. I had a family member who became very involved politically because he was in the Army during the Dominican Republic invasion, and saw the bullshit first hand. And the US had previously occupied that country from 1916 to 1924.
As for reacting to the liberation of people, the US feared that the Haitian revolution might give hope to enslaved people in America and as a result the US tried to throttle that country from the moment of its emergence.
And of course we had a little war with Mexico.
The US has always felt free to interfere with other nations in this hemisphere. Hell, they thought that they could invade Canada during the war of 1812 and turn it into a US territory.
Were you trying for irony?
Citizen_X
@Pangloss:
Thanks, Obama.
Arclite
Huh, somehow I got the idea that he’d passed away already a year ago or more.
Shalimar
@Brachiator: His point was that the U.S. prefers dictators as long as they are pro-U.S., because they keep their citizens under control. It wasn’t Castro’s control and egotism that bothered us, it was that he said negative things about us.
Guatemala in 1954 is the foremost example of what you’re saying. We deposed a democratically-elected president because he nationalized some of United Fruit’s unused land and gave it to farmers to grow food on. A cardinal sin against the United States, that was.
TF79
I always appreciated the fact that “he outlasted 11 US presidents” can serve as an indictment of BOTH Cuban and US policies.
The US and Cuban people are like cousins that haven’t seen each other for years because their parents are assholes
Applejinx
@Betty Cracker: Pff. Thread won ;)
I think the mess we’re in provides retroactive explanation for why Castro was the way he was. Around about now, I’m questioning whether there can be any peaceful negotiation with the hyper-rich. Man, you treat people like gods of privilege and power for just a few years and all of a sudden they’ll never back down and the only thing you CAN do is get cozy with their boot-heels or go to fucking war.
Fucking war sounds nice. The strangest part is, electing Trump was basically a first shot. Maybe he did as well as he did because he was so B&T, such an unwelcome pretender, so Not Our Sort. It’s like the worse he was the better he was or something.
J R in WV
When I was stationed in Key West, closest fortress of the USA to the evil Commie fortress of CUBA, there were revetments stashed around in the un-built-up sections of Key West with missile bases inside. You used to be able to google images of them, don’t know if you still can.
When we went back to Key West (You can’t go home again!) a couple of winters ago, they seemed to be all gone, used up as commercial space for the most part. I found a web site way back that was someone exploring one of the bases after it was abandoned, before it was commercialized as a car rental agency or whatever.
I’m not sure if they were nuclear armed or not, seems like a waste to have the forward missile bases armed with conventional weapons in an attack from the dread Commies, but I was just a swabbie at the time. They were certainly scary, I remember that!
J R in WV
@rachel:
So you are sure Cuba doesn’t have nukes? Secrets can be kept, sometimes.
J R in WV
@TF79:
We once got back with cousins we hadn’t seen for years because their parents fell out with my parents and other family. Other cousin we’re close to invited them to visit while we were there.
Turns out he has a restraining order from every woman he ever dated, and she has been married 7 times. Haven’t gone back to that well in a long time, although they both seem nice over a short visit with several people in the room.
Their mom, my aunt, always was nice to me, sorry I never visited her before she died. I know she had screws loose, on the other hand, so do we all.
Wonder how bad they get with just one other person and not getting their way?
Brachiator
@Shalimar:
You could just as easily say this about Honduras. From the Wiki:
Military intervention became so regular that the Marines, most often used for invasions, developed a standard manual for these operations.
And in Haiti, the Southern officer corps which comprised a large component of the military, added a strong element of racism which is still downplayed by some historians who prefer to emphasize the economic aspect of these invasions.
I could easily see Trump returning to the policies of Teddy Roosevelt, but expanding them to cover the entire globe.
Tehanu
@Brachiator:
Handles OR bungles? I’d laugh, but it would hurt too much. BTW, I’ve got a black marker on the kitchen table now so I don’t have to look at his smarmy, smirking, howling face in the newspaper (yes, we still get the dead tree…) every morning. Even putting a mustache and swastika on it wasn’t enough, so now I just block it out completely.
SWMBO
During the Elian incident there were several articles in the news about how Castro came to power. He started with 84 men and overthrew the government of 10-11 million people. He was terrible after a few years but by then he was established. He went to the US asking for help and Eisenhower basically pissed on his head and called it hair tonic. When Castro went to Moscow for help and got it, that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs. Much pants shitting and excitement. Castro got worse after a few years of Russian influence. He became more authoritarian and brutal. We are just starting our years of Russian influence. It will be “interesting” to see if it plays out the same here.
One other thing about Elian. It was reported by the media that before his mother died on the trip here, he asked her for milk. He had a reasonable assumption that it would be there. There was nothing in his experience to lead him to believe that it wouldn’t be there. Even at the height of the food stamps program, there are very few children in this country that expect milk whenever they want it.
PIGL
@crawdad: fuck you. Fuck you a hundred thousand times, and fuck the USA for supporting every murdeous torture / deathsquad regime in the Western Hemisphere. You dare not FOR SHAME speak of Cuba.
PIGL
@droog: depends on my options. I suspect you want to compare Cuba to the life of a middle-class Americans . The comparison on the table for most of Latin America was between the death squads of El Salvador or The grinding poverty of Mexican farmers forced from their land by US corn. In that light, I’d say Castro’s is Cuba looks pretty damn good.
PIGL
@Pangloss: he was 90. What killed Castro? I’m thinking it was old age.
middlelee
@Sam Dobermann:
Thank you!
Villago Delenda Est
Interesting that the dipshits at the Herald continue to serve as mouthpieces for the actual tyrants of pre-Castro Cuba who were pissed that they were stripped of their haciendas and peasants by the brute, which was the actual issue, not the welfare of the Cuban people.
Applejinx
@Villago Delenda Est: I think you mean ‘predictable’. Lotta people living like… maybe it’s all the more satisfying living like temporarily embarrassed aristocrats deprived of your rightful wealth and privilege, when you figure you LITERALLY ARE aristocrats deprived of your rightful wealth and privilege?
I’ve been so not impressed by displaced upper class Cubans, other than their ability at noblesse oblige. It’s a little less charming when you see that they really are aristocrats born to rightfully lord it over shit-tier peasants, though. The niceness palls slightly when you whiff the unthinking contempt.
SWMBO
@Applejinx: And the grift. Jeebus Christmas. For a while every goddamn scandal in Miami was about some Cuban exile committing fraud in some contract. From not using the specified materials (going with cheaper/not as acceptable) to paying off people to look the other way.. And the arrogance of the ones that were on top compared to where they had to start here in this country. They could take privilege to a whole new level.
moderateindy
This is where my disdain for the Electoral College began. How a fairly small group of cuban Americans were able to completely control our foreign policy always amazed me. The fact that Florida has been so close for the last 30 or so years that neither party could afford to lose the Cuban vote for many Pres, and Senate races meant national leaders had to toe the line on Cuba, even after the Fall of the Soviet union. Picking up those electoral votes were way more important to our national leaders than intelligent pragmatic relations with another country. China, we have no problem with, but Cuba was a bridge too far apparently. So we continued to injure the Cuban people with our sanctions, while mildly inconveniencing the Castro brothers. All so we didn’t displease a small minority of Cuban Americans that could affect an election every now and again. No electoral college would have meant no reason to pander to that tiny minority, and probably meant normalizing relations with Cuba after the fall of the USSR. How much better would the lives of the Cuban people have been if not for the sanctions?
Big Picture Pathologist
@Brachiator:
Here you go: Assuming that I’d not be able to leave the country in which I was born, I’d much rather live there than in the other poverty-stricken areas in that part (or other parts) of the world. Good enough for you? Not all the alternatives realistically are Sweden or the U.S…
Big Picture Pathologist
@Sam Dobermann: Well put. William Blum had an article where he recounted the numerous alleged-yet-if-true-shameful attempts by the U.S. to undermine his rule.
droog
@PIGL:
Like I said, I don’t come from middle-class USA. I come from a place quite close to Cuba in culture and economy. Dominican Republic to be precise. You don’t have to be from middle-class USA or Western Europe to look at Cuba and decide you’ll try your luck elsewhere. The DR ain’t a paradise by any metric worth tracking, and yet net migration is still from Cuba to the DR, not the other way around.
This can get long-winded but whilst I agree that Castro and Cuba’s history and situation is…more complex than the State Department would have you believe, it is not really a place people want to go to. Haiti, Bolivia, El Salvador…these are the poorest nations in Latin America and yet their citizens choose other places when they decide to migrate. Poor farmers losing out in LatAm because of Free Trade and US corn subsidies seem to never say “Screw this, I’m moving to Cuba”.
Stan
@droog: Whether you would choose to live in Castro’s Cuba surely depends on what the other choices are.
Would I leave the USA to live there? Hell no. But would I choose pre-revolutionary Cuba instead? no. Guatemala in the 1980s? I’d take Cuba any day…..etc.
droog
@Stan:
You may have chosen Cuba over Guatemala in the 1980s, but you didn’t have to. People who had to make the choice (Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Colombians, etc) would always choose an imperfect liberal democracy in the area. People fled to Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, etc to improve their lives.
Cuba played an important part as a contrarian to the global establishment in cases like Angola and so on. Acknowledging this latter aspect of Cuba is the one where my opinion gets complex. But on a basic economic and social rights level Cuba was never a destination of sorts for people, not even for people in worse conditions in LatAm. It wasn’t even people’s Plan B.
So: middle class citizens in the US and western Europe find no reason to move there. We don’t even see trends amongst those who wouldn’t need to bridge the language gap such as Spaniards and bilingual Hispanic Americans. And then we see no clear trend of migration from the horribly oppressed Spanish-speaking nations in LatAm (which also contain people from all economic levels). We do see, however, people in the former group arguing that people in the latter group would have had it better in Cuba. Why should we accept that argument when the historical trends never materialised? Why argue for them (I mean us) when you can just observe what they (us) chose to do?