A teary farewell for Fidel who commanded great affection
Loving a dictator from the safety of a distant democracy means you never have to say sorry.
Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, Twitter, yesterday:
Fidel Castro liberated Cuba from corruption, exploitation. From opposing apartheid to bringing healthcare to Third World, he inspired so many.
Among them, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, November 26:
A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation. While a controversial figure, both Mr Castro’s supporters and detractors recognised his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”.
The fear deep inside. Lydia Bell, UK Telegraph, November 26:
There is an ingrained, chronic fear at the heart of the Cuban national psyche, which means that whatever people are saying or feeling, it takes place behind closed doors. Even people who are open about their political views would never dream of uttering them in the public area, and they self-censor, depending on who they think they are talking to. It’s what the Cubans call “la policia a dentro” — the police inside.
Justice, after a fashion. Nigel Jones, The Telegraph, January 2009:
We know from Ernest Hemingway — then a Cuban resident — what Che (Castro’s fellow revolutionary) was up to. Hemingway, who had looked kindly on leftist revolutions since the Spanish Civil War, invited his friend George Plimpton, editor of The Paris Review, to witness the shooting of prisoners condemned by the tribunals under Guevara’s control. They watched as the men were trucked in, unloaded, shot, and taken away. As a result, Plimpton later refused to publish Guevara’s memoir, The Motorcycle Diaries. There have been some 16,000 such executions since the Castro brothers, Guevara and their merry men swept into Havana in January 1959.
Paul Kengor, The American Spectator, July 2015:
(Herbert) Matthews’ page-one, three-part series on Castro first appeared in The New York Times on February 24, 1957 ... Matthews upheld Castro to the American public (and wider world) as a sort of blessed hybrid of George Washington and FDR. Castro, according to Matthews, offered “a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist.” He framed Fidel as not just a democrat and anti-communist, but a constitutionalist, a beacon of liberty, an advocate of freedom and free elections, an anti-colonialist, an anti-imperialist, a champion of social justice … and an extraordinarily eloquent one at that. Wrote Matthews: “ ... (Castro’s) is a political mind rather than a military one. He has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution, to hold elections … Above all,” he said, “we are fighting for a democratic Cuba and an end to the dictatorship.” … “(Our soldiers) will serve a free ... Cuba.”
The Perfect Latin American Idiot, Mendoza et al, 2000:
“ ... (the idiot) will still gyrate in excitement like a dog seeing a bone if during a visit to Cuba he finds before him the hand and the bearded, exuberant and monumental presence of the “Maximum Leader”. And, naturally, being a perfect idiot, he will find plausible explanations for the worst disasters created by Castro. If there is hunger on the island, the cruel US embargo is to blame; if there are exiles, it’s because they are incapable of understanding the revolutionary process; if there are prostitutes, it isn’t due to the poverty on the island but rather because Cubans now have the freedom to use their bodies as they wish.”