Fidel had appeal, because people wanted to love someone else more than they hate their neighbours.

Even the best of us get fooled by a 90 year-old dictator, right?

It's funny that Americans give people credibility by
 association. If Fidel Castro deserves admiration 
for his meeting with American sports icon 
Muhammad Ali, then so does Zairian dictator 
Mobutu Sese Seko and notorious 
racist Elijah Muhammad. (Twitter)

It shouldn't make sense, but it does. I can personally attest to being enchanted by communism in general, and the Cuban Revolution in particular growing up. They made a convincing argument that the Third World needed a philosophy that would take care of all citizens, especially the poorest, by distributing resources equally. The symbolism of Che Guevera and Fidel entering La Habana and ousting Batista in 1959 had a certain risque shine to it.

It's ironic though that these communist "revolutionaries" succeeded in embodying the most classic of pitfalls of market capitalism: false advertising.

So whether you're a con artist masquerading as a civil rights leader (Jesse Jackson), the princely privileged Prime Minister of Canada (Justin Trudeau), a 90s alternative musician (Tom Morrello) or a has-been QB for the San Francisco 49ers (Colin Kaepernick), it's never too late to discover why your excuses for buying the Castro deception just don't hold water anymore. So here are several of the "myths and facts" about Fidel. This is not to say that NONE of his virtues are true, but a lot of those that are true are simply exaggerated or blown out of proportion.

Myth: Fidel Castro liberated Cuba from American-backed tyranny with his 1959 revolution.

Truth: He would go on to repeat the worst abuses that Batista had committed, just with different help, and the revolution ended up being about him.
The Revolution that the Casto Bros. Fidel, Raúl, and Ramón Castro as well as Che Guevara and lesser-known icons like Celia Sánchez and Camilo Cienfuegos brought to Cuba has always been romanticized as dethroning an American-backed dictator. So what was the Cuba that needed a revolution?

First concerning US meddling in Cuba: Since its capture from Spain in 1898 Cuba had truly been hampered by a designed co-dependency on the United States as enshrined in the 1901 Platt Amendment. This piece of legislation was an obnoxious imposition of conditions on the emerging nation that included an acceptance of laws and acts imposed by the US military occupation since 1898. The Platt Amendment was only a way to crowbar Cuba away from outright annexation of the island as had already been prohibitid by the 1898 Teller Amendment.
Throughout the next few decades, the USA would intervene in Cuba in order to both impose stability there and preserve its interests.The first president Tomás Estrada Palma (1902-1906), fell from power due to allegations of electoral fraud, and the USA came back from 1906 to 1909 for a second occupation. From 1917 through 1922 US Marines participated in a de facto military occupation of parts of Cuba known as the Sugar Intervention. This was the colonial era worldwide, and most of the European powers and Japan and Russia were perpetrating this type of imperialist behaviour and worse worldwide. In fact, the USA was doing the same in countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic as well.

Castro's predecessor Fulgencio Batista
was  a brutal dictator, but not to the
degree of Castro himself. 

Fulgencio Batista is remembered today as an ogre, but he follows the same pattern that preceded him: Cuban rebels that became authoritarian and engendered their own resistance. In 1933 former Cuban independence soldier Gerardo Machado was president, and he was embroiled in a violent imbroglio with numerous opposition groups, and with the help of US Ambassador Sumner Welles he was removed by what is known as the ¨Sergeants´Revolt¨, led by among others Batista as the head of the armed forces. Following this event Cuba actually suffered from a lack of authority, and Batista gradually rose to be Chief of Staff under Frederico Brú, and eventually won the election of 1940 against Ramón Grau San Martín after the passage of a new constitution. In 1944 Batista yielded power to Grau after he won the next election.

In 1952 Batista seized power in a coup against Carlos Prío Socarrás, one of Grau's allies and invalidated the Constitution of 1940. It was this event that directly led to the July 26, 1953 assault by Castro and others on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, a failed attempt to overthrow Batista's military regime and restore the constitutional rule from 1940. Batista would imprison Fidel briefly and then released him in 1955. Castro proceeded then to raise a small rag-tag group of guerrillas in Mexico and lead the improbable revolution from 1956-59. During his rule, Batista was reviled as a corrupt, crude, authoritarian and pawn of both the US government, corporate interests and organized criminals like Salvatore Giancana that ran Havana's casinos and other vice operations in that era. The number of his victims is not known, and like Fidel he was the subject of several attempts on his life by students and other opponents disgruntled with his dictatorial rule. In April 1956 Batista survived once such military coup and imprisoned many of its officer leaders.

So did Fidel really end tyranny in Cuba?

The flight of Batista news headline
on a  revolutionary mural in one of
Cuba's dedicated museums. In reality
Cubans traded an abusive dictator
for a much worse megalomaniac.

• If his intention was in 1953 to restore the Constitution of 1940, Cubans are still waiting.
• Brutal and corrupt as he was, Batista was at one point democratically elected, and yielded power peacefully in 1944 to Grau. Castro never held a free election, and he yielded power to his loyal brother Raúl in 2008. 
• Batista ruled directly for a total of 12 years, far less than Castro's 49 years directly in power. Cuba was by no means a "free country" under him, but its liberal economy was much more prosperous than Castro's communist system, and there was freedom to travel abroad.
• Fidel also undermined his own system of government in order to eliminate rivals: In 1959 he served under the figurehead Pres. Manuel Urrutia Lleó as his prime minister, a position he created in Cuba and which held the real power. Urrutia was rapidly bullied out of office and replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, a Castro puppet.
• Batista may have been installed with US support, but the Americans in the end did not lift a finger to defend him, and the Cuban Army that Castro faced may have had an advantage but it was far from the military juggernaut he would build with Soviet support.

Verdict: Castro replaced a tin-pot dictatorship with a Soviet-styled one.

 Myth: Castro's revolutionary movement was a triumph of the popular will of the peasants and workers

Truth: Many peasants objected to his socialist land reform, and even among his own revolutionaries Castro soon wore out their patience.

Camilo Cienfuegos is revered under
the Cuban regime. He died under
suspicious circumstances in 1959 shortly
following Castro's rise to power.

Supporters of the Castro legacy would have you believe that Fidel's opponents were mercenary renegade Cubans paid either by Batista or the CIA, while the revolutionaries themselves represented the peasants and workers. The reality is that Castro's regime has had to rely on the memories of dead guerrilla martyrs like Frank País and Camilo Cienfuegos that preceded the taking of power, because so many of the original revolutionary guerrillas abandoned him due to his dictatorial ambitions. Why is it that Castro had murals erected of the dead Argentine comrade of his Ernesto "Che" Guevara, thereby creating a cultural phenomenon? The majority of Cuban revolutionaries including the Castro brothers were by no means rich, but they also were not peasants.

Castro's July 26th Movement (M26J) did seize power with popular support due to Batista's abusive and corrupt government, but at that time they were a rag-tag group of hundreds of guerrillas. Immediately they began to fray into factions supportive of ties with the USSR led by Fidel's brother Raúl Castro, and those that believed it would be a betrayal, such as military commander Huber Matos who would eventually flee to Miami. Another M26J militant who was involved in the Moncada Barracks attack was Gustavo Arcos became Fidel's ambassador to Belgium, and would later be imprisoned multiple times before dying in 2009. The new regime had to dedicate forces almost immediately to the "War against the Bandits", a counterinsurgency against opponents of farm confiscations. In it, William A. Morgan, an American volunteer that had been part of M26J was killed by Castro's forces while fighting against Fidel's regime in 1961. This insurgency would be eventually crushed in 1965. This rebellion in the Escambray Mountains was actually composed of disgruntled peasants, ex-M26J militants, and Batista loyalists. This is far less famous than Castro's repelling of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Guevara was appointed Minister of Finance by Castro soon after the assumption of power and wreaked havoc on the Cuban economy. Castro's stylish supporters tend to believe that Che was an inspiration to Cubans during his turn as a government official, but in reality he presided over kangaroo courts at La Cabaña Fortress, where he executed thousands and his pro-soviet

To be fair, there is also a misconception promoted among Castro's opponents that in Cuba he was loathed by all. In reality, Castro was able to organize his supporters and create his own institutionalized regime thanks to both Soviet material aid, and the appreciation of certain sectors that did benefit immediately from his rise to power. Like all violent assumptions of power, the Cuban Revolution suffered from divisions and betrayals. This happened in Russia (Stalin vs. Trotsky), China (Mao Ze-Dong vs. Liu Shao-qi) and in Cuba.

Verdict: Like every revolution, in Cuba the aftermath was greeted with both confusion and opposition from large sectors of society. The claim that it was a popular peasant and worker revolution is a complete fabrication though as neither Castro, Guevara, or any of the other leaders hailed from those sectors, and many of the M26J veterans immediately broke with Castro.


 Myth: Che Guevara exported the revolution as had been accomplished in Cuba abroad and is a symbol of popular resistance to tyranny and oppression. He was a valuable resource to Fidel

Che was a mercurial figure, but to
make him into the hero like has been
done worldwide is one of the biggest PR
lies of all time. Here he is looking like
Sean Connery after shaving before
going undercover in the Congo.

Truth: Guevara was complicit with some of the early abuses and failures of the revolution that caused it to be opposed so vehemently, and is actually the opposite of that portrayal.


There are a lot of people that will go even farther and say that Che was a monster of a person for a variety of reasons including some of the not very humanist things I'm about to list. I'm just going to go out there and say that, monster or not, many of these so-called social justice campaigners would be very chagrined if they knew what this person who appears on their t-shirts really spent his life doing. 

Guevara was an idealistic medical student from Argentina as well-documented in The Motorcycle Diaries and other accounts of his early life. But this is the man in his own words and according to the image in his head. If you would ask his first wife Hilda Gadea of Perú, you would probably discover that Guevara was a headstrong, idealistic person, but in the end he abandoned her and their daughter for another woman. 

Does that suddenly transform him into an evil demon? No, but we're talking in the end about a human person with flaws. Many of the nonsensical ways that he's been lionized posthumously are easily refuted by assessing actions he took, or statements concerning them. Here are some of the deeds he committed in his short life that a lot these progressive supporters would probably find abhorrent in an American leader.

Nice wall mural to whoever did this in Wicker Park, Chicago,
but Gandhi and Che were about as far apart in tactical
philosophy as you could get. While they were at it
they should have added the Notorious BIG or someone
else with no connection to communism. That would have
made about as much sense as putting Gandhi in.

• Death penalty: Under Guevara's direct leadership the new Cuban government carried out kangaroo court trials in the La Cabaña fortress prison and elsewhere that resulted in the execution of hundreds of Batista-era "war criminals". Jon Anderson's biography of Che includes this quote from a letter to a friend in Argentina: "The executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people."
• Fanaticism: Some progressives would call this "dedication", but the fact is that Guevara's straight-faced subscription to explicitly communist beliefs and his admiration of Maoist China very likely guided Fidel Castro closer to the communist orbit and away from participatory democracy. We're not talking about progressive "democratic socialism", but the most hard-line uncompromising form of this philosophy. Again from Anderson's bio: "I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated. [Referring to the United Fruit Company of Guatemala]"
• Belief in violence: Guevara was no pacifist, and he was proud to reject non-violence as a measure. It was his decision to live a life of armed struggle, and there's no reason to sugarcoat it by lumping him in with non-violent civil rights leaders like MLK and Gandhi, or even more confrontational militant ones like Malcolm X. He wrote this to his mother in 1956 according to Anderson: "I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ.... I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don't get nailed to a cross or any other place." With other leaders like Nelson Mandela it may be possible to talk about non-violence, because they would come to renounce it, but Guevara was a man of war and violence in both life and in death.
• Respect for human life: Guevara in one entry from his Sierra Maestra diary (Diario de un combatiente) in January 1957 tells nonchalantly of executing an enemy spy during the guerrilla war and then plundering his body of his belongings including his watch. Maybe a typical scene of warfare, but not necessarily fitting to the popular image of a humanitarian fighting for the dignity of all people.
• Vision: One of the first positions that Che Guevara occupied under Fidel was as his finance minister and national bank chair, an odd choice for someone with no such experience. He immediately moved to implement his belief in El Nuevo Hombre, a new breed of non-racial, classless (as in social class), anti-imperialist, gender blind people. One of the practical changes he made was to nationalize factories and agricultural holdings in Cuba. Workers in both the industrial and agricultural sectors were subject to mandatory quotas with no incentive for surpassing them. Immediately foreign commercial ties with the island state were switched from the USA and other neighbouring states in the Americas to being heavily slanted towards the USSR and other Soviet bloc states. According to one of his lieutenants Ernesto Betancourt, Che was "ignorant of the most basic economic principles".
  
  Instead of creating the New Man, Che's economic policies just led to the preponderance of absentee workers. If not for his alienating policies that isolated the country economically, and Fidel's obstinate refusal to attempt a rapprochement with successive US administrations and exiled opponents after his death, the economic stagnation that is now symbolic of Cuba may have never happened. In this respect, Guevara was being fully consistent with progressive principles; it's just that like everywhere else they were a colossal failure.
• Nuclear armageddon vs. world peace: Guevara had no qualms about initiating a nuclear conflict between the USA and the USSR, and was quoted in the Daily Worker (UK) as saying that had Soviet missiles reached Cuba and been under the control of him and his government, they would have used them: "If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a peaceful coexistence."
• Martyred hero: Che may have succeeded in participating in the Cuban Revolution, and  died attempting to export it to Bolivia, but he also abandoned other revolutions such as the one in Guatemala where he'd been an economist and the Congo rebellion against the tyrant Mobutu Sese Seko where he simply had a falling out with the locals.
  
  There is also the issue of why he left the Cuban government to begin with: After sinking the island nation squarely in the Soviet camp and embroiling it in a nuclear confrontation, Che began to sympathize with the Chinese communist regime after its split with the post-Stalin USSR. He also criticized certain capitalist tendencies of the Soviet economy. As China was not even close to being a world power in the mid-1960s, Fidel began to realize that Che would be an embarrassment that would jeopardize his regime. It is very possible that if he had not departed Cuba a confrontation between the two revolutionary icons would have come to a violent end.
• Ironically Che was critical of academics, which in the USA are some his biggest fans: "The university cannot be an ivory tower, far away from the society, removed from the practical accomplishments of the Revolution. If such an attitude is maintained, the university will continue giving our society lawyers that we do not need."  What Guevara stated in 1959 in criticism of the stodgy conservative school administrations of his time, is ironically what conservative pundits say about universities in 2016. So maybe he's right about something, huh?

Verdict: I guess if you're comfortable wearing that shirt, go ahead, but the real Che was a failure at some of the principles that YOU attribute to him in myth, and in many of the true details he was only partially successful. And as for being useful for Fidel, maybe at one point that was true but over time Che turned out to be more trouble than he was worth.

Myth: Castro was a dedicated and principled opponent of apartheid.
Truth: Cuba did fight in wars against the South African regime, but for more selfish motives just as in other conflicts the goals were not as noble.

Cuban forces were integral to Soviet military strategy in Africa
in the 1970s. 

The reason that some single minded admirers of Castro, particularly black Americans and celebrity idiots like Colin Kapernick, think that he was an apartheid fighter is that Cuba fought directly against South Africa in the Angolan Civil War, a proxy conflict that began in 1975 when that country won its independence from Portugal. Like the rest of the Soviet bloc, Castro supported one faction of the independence freedom fighters, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). There were two other factions, the FNLA supported by Zaire, as well as UNITA, supported initially by China. During the 1980s China withdrew its support for UNITA and they eventually fell under the American and South African orbit.

One of many forgotten wars,
the Ogaden conflict (seen here
in a booklet concerning air
war performance), was Castro's
other foray into bloody African
Cold War conflicts. It had
nothing to do with apartheid.
(Tom Cooper)

OK so Cuba opposed the apartheid regime in Angola, but so did the USSR and East Germany, two regimes that never get the romantic tributes from stylish celebrities that Castro receives by default. And Castro did commit tens of thousands of his troops to the bloody African conflict, where at one point more land mines were deployed than anywhere else. Except rather than the conflict being about racial equality, like many others it was centered on the need by the Soviets to maintain the country's oil reserves and other mining deposits for their use during a time when they had few oil-producing allies. What ended up happening was that Cuban forces were lured into a massive long-term battle at Cuito Cuanavale, a southeastern linchpin in the UNITA defense. Over seven months in 1987-88, the Cuban and Agolan forces were fought to a stalemate by South African and UNITA opponents until a mutual withdrawal occurred. This eventually led to the end of foreign military involvement in Angola by 1989. Eventually in 1994 South Africa would grant independence to Namibia and end its own apartheid policies after a protracted negotiation between government and black African representatives.

But what about the other wars on the continent? Simultaneous to the Angola conflict was the Mozambican Civil War. Neither Cuba, nor any other eastern bloc state, sent troops to support the Marxist government forces against the RENAMO rebels armed by South Africa and its apartheid ally Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). Unlike Angola however Mozambique has no known petroleum or diamond reserves and only modest ones of other minerals the majority only discovered recently. 
Where did they send troops besides Angola? To the Ogaden War. This was a forgotten war between two brutally oppressive regimes, Ethiopia and Somalia, both at one time Soviet client states. By siding with Ethiopia and sending approximately 15,000 Cuban troops, Castro was effectively securing Soviet interests in the Horn of Africa, after the Russians decided that Ethiopia was the more valuable ally. This had nothing to do with apartheid. According to Ethiopian author Gebru Tareke the Cubans lost 400 men in this ultimately meaningless conflict between two socialist states that was based on latent Somali nationalism.

This photo shows Fidel and Raúl Castro with Ethiopian
communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, today living
in forced exile in Zimbabwe having been convicted in absentia
for creating punitive famines in his country. But it's OK
because Fidel opposed apartheid.
(The New Statesman)

The Angolan conflict itself is considered by many to be Africa's Vietnam War. Ultimately the Soviet-backed government won, but its system did not, as Angola began dumping communism in the 1990s in favour of a liberal economy. According to two former Soviet advisors, the Cuban sacrifice for this war that tangentially related to apartheid was as many as 2,300 dead and a total casualty roll of 13,000.

Verdict: It's undeniable that Castro's rhetoric against apartheid was backed up by the Cuban troop commitment to the fight in Angola against the South Africans, but the motives are more complicated than that, as shown by his lack of action in the equally threatened Mozambique, but Cuba's large commitment to the war in Ethiopia.

Addendum: More significantly, Castro never had anything to say when the Ethiopian regime he backed oversaw a forced famine in order to curb insurgencies. This government-caused genocide is never brought up by leftist historians when talking about war crimes, because there are no gringos, British, or Jews involved. That's despite the fact that it is the tragedy that provoked Live Aid, pompous British celebrity Bob Geldof's posh celebrity campaign to benefit Ethiopia, which in reality was exposed by the music-oriented Spin magazine to have later squandered the raised money by handing it over in many cases to government bureaucrats loyal to dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the very ones perpetuating the famine.


Myth: Revolutionary Cuba has eliminated anti-black (Afro-Cuban) racism to a greater degree than the United States' own issues with eliminating racial prejudice. Cuban opponents of Castro are mostly white Cubans with racist beliefs of their own.


Fact: Racism exists very much in Cuba although not in the same way as here. Many Afro-Cubans have fled Cuba and despise Castro, though racism is not the issue; freedom of speech is!

I watched Tariq Nasheed go off on this topic yesterday full-on believing that Cuban exile opponents of Fidel are racist white Cubans, and it's honestly sad and pathetic that people believe this. So here goes:

Was soul singer La Lupe one
of the racist white Cubans
that Tariq Nasheed was
complaining about? (NPR)

• Let's talk about identity politics for a brief moment. Fidel and Raúl Castro Ruz were born to a Spanish-descended family in Cuba's Oriente province, and grew up living a middle class lifestyle. Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar, the tyrant that he deposed, is known to have been of Spanish, African, Chinese, and Indian descent. So is it racist that Castro took a job from a member of 3 "minorities"? Whatever, let's drop it? 
• Cuba is known worldwide in the music world as the birthplace of a number of Latin music styles derived mostly from music brought there by slaves from Africa. Many of these artists such as Celia Cruz and her husband Pedro Knight fled Cuba after the Revolution and never turned back. Why did these Afro-Cubans decide to ditch Havana, the epicenter of salsa, and Afro-Cuban jazz? The answer is that according to La Lupe, the Queen of Latin Soul, "Castro take my club, my money, my car". But don't just listen to decadent celebrities. . .
• Cuban baseball players have for years been banned by their government from playing in Major League Baseball, a policy that may change soon due to the thaw in US-Cuba relations. Such all-time greats as Livan and Orlando Hernandez have had to make a treacherous journey to defect to the USA facing imprisonment and extortion by smugglers in order to reach the USA and the big leagues. But I'll bet Nasheed and Kaepernick have much to say about the great health and education benefited them. No? So I will

• What about the lives of everyday Afro-Cubans? Let's not pass judgment. Racism isn't a charge that I throw around casually, at least not seriously. There's not way to quantify whether modern day Cuba is better or worse than the USA in this regard. However, in 2013 Afro-Cuban writer and publisher Roberto Zurbano claimed in the New York Times that racism is alive and well in Cuba, alleging that professionally the black Cubans remained far behind in the new second sector of the economy (tourism, run using a parallel currency), that the government lies about the number of Afro-Cubans in censuses, and that discussion of racial issues is discouraged there. Within two weeks Zurbano was fired by the publishing house that he worked for in Cuba, and proceeded to lash out to the NY Times on the phone for distorting his headline. The Wall Street Journal then proceeded to use the dispute to make hay of the NY Times' troubles.

Is sacked publisher and music critic Roberto Zurbano
black enough to pass muster for Tariq Nasheed?

• And let's address the issue of racial identity. In Latin America, the range of races is so vast that "black" and "white" are virtually irrelevant terms, as proven by the example of Batista.

 The verdict: Anyone who claims that the isle of Cuba is blessed with racial harmony should probably take stock of the situation: We don't know enough to say whether it is more racist, or less. It's probably more racist than the Castros would have you believe. As for Castro's opponents in Miami being a bunch of "white" Cubans. 

 Myth: The Castro regime provided healthcare for all in a system that is the envy of even first wold states like the USA.

Truth: Cuban hospitals and clinics vary in quality by region. They are far from having a model system.

In 2007 rising healthcare premiums in the USA along with other political topics were dragging the Bush Administration's approval ratings down, and justifiably. Bush had done very little to reform the health care insurance market, and as president had worked hand in hand with Wall St. cronies. In doing so he didn't only divide Americans by left and right as well as the right against itself, but that's a different issue. The health care debate however quickly became the marquee issue of the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign aside from the ongoing Iraq War. One of the people that amplified the issue was filmmaker Michael Moore who has made a career out of appearing to be a rebel against the establishment, taking on the automotive (Roger & Me), firearms(Bowling for Columbine), and capital defense industries (Canadian Bacon).

Michael Moore failed
to acknowledge that the
nice attributes of the Cuban healthcare
system are not available to most
Cubans, but are readily available for
health tourists.
(By Impawards.com, Fair use,)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/i
ndex.php?curid=11349968

That year he took on healthcare by producing Sicko in which he visited Cuba among other countries with some chronically ill 9/11 first responders that could not afford to have procedures done in the USA, or were not eligible for insurance coverage. Moore's visit came to imply that healthcare was cheaper, more readily available, and of overall better quality in Cuba than in the United States.

The reality is much more complicated than Moore and others portray it to be. True, under the socialized system as practiced in Cuba the procedures, treatments, and pharmaceuticals in question are heavily subsidized and therefore cheaper for the patient. Pointing out the flaws in either system should not be used as an occasion to wag fingers. . .

• . . . But sometimes it's so obvious you can't ignore it. About a year ago, a Canadian coworker of mine stated very accurately that there are benefits and flaws to both the US and Canadian system. On his doorpost though was an article lamenting that there was only one PET scanner in all of Ontario, a province 1.5 times the size of Texas. This is a piece of medical imaging equipment that is integral to the modern treatment programs of many forms of cancer.
• Continuing on the above point however, no matter how subsidized Cuba's healthcare is the embargo itself did limit the technological potential of Cuba, at least as far as medical imaging. Most of that equipment is either developed or manufactured in the United States by corporations such as GE, Philips, and Siemens, and in any event Cuba lacked for many years the funding to purchase these very costly devices. The glowing descriptions of Cuba's medical research industry themselves describe the country's need to resolver (fix by improvisation) the lack of certain technologies.
• Personal testimonies from hospitals closed to "health tourists" show facilities that are poorly equipped, staffed with inexperienced doctors, lacking basic ambulance services, and that even require patients to bring their own bedding for lack of adequate accommodations. There are even reports of disposable equipment such as syringes having to be reused for lack of supplies.
• Some statistics cited by fans of the Cuban system are misleading, the most obvious of which is the low infant mortality rate. Unlike in the USA, if an infant dies on its birthday the death is not recorded in Cuba. 

Guillermo Fariñas fights against Castro's tyranny, receives
the EU's Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, and goes
on a hunger strike, only to see EU politicians like Juncker
and Adams praise Castro on his death. Surreal anyone?
(Associated Press)

The Fidel admiration machine numbers among its personalities world leaders (Justin Trudeau), professional athletes (Kaepernick), lauded musicians (Tom Morello), and plain old dumb celebrities (Taraji P. Henson and Russel Brand). Some of the reactions to his death define the cliched concept of "cognitive dissonance". The best was the confluence of two long-time leaders in Europe: Irish Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who thanked Fidel for his support of the H Block hunger strikers, and EU Chief Jean-Claude Juncker who praised him saying: "With the death of Fidel Castro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many." This September a Cuban psychologist hunger striker (he happens to be a very obviously BLACK Cuban, Mr. Tariq Nasheed) named Guillermo "Coco" Fariñas ended his hunger strike against the Cuban regime and its repression of freedom. What better person to illustrate the truth that these idiots refuse to believe?

 Verdict: The supposition made by universal healthcare advocates that Cuba is a model system belies numerous points of both problems of necessity such as the embargo, outright misinformation (the infant mortality statistic), and particularly the existence of a two-tiered system for tourists as opposed to citizens in Cuba's healthcare industry.