The Truth about Cuba

But soon afterwards, other dissenters and opponents of the turn towards socialism became political prisoners and were regularly tortured to make them confess to imaginary crimes, or simply because Castro saw torture as justified extra punishment. One follower of Castro was shocked. Franqui raised the issue of the moral degradation torture implies, Castro told him that it ''annihilates the enemy'' and hence was necessary.

Eventually Franqui left Cuba and moved first to Italy and later to Puerto Rico, where he became one of the leading Cuban opponents of the regime he once served. It looks like you've previously blocked notifications. If you'd like to receive them, please update your browser permissions. So long as that base remained seemingly impregnable, however, and the class struggle was not acute, he sought to clothe his rule in at least the forms of democracy.

In preparation for assuming the presidency himself, he had a constitution drawn up that even recognized the right of the people to revolt against a despotic government. He had already managed to give his brass a "New Deal" shine, achieving this partly by cultivating Roosevelt's friendly patronage and partly by legislation that could be read as quite pro-labor.

An expensive campaign helped give Batista the majority of the votes in the election. Under his presidency the war boom that ended the depression in the United States also gave Cuba a measure of prosperity and the class struggle became relatively quiescent. In the elections, Batista decided to run a puppet, Carlos Saladrigas. The opposition ran Grau San Martin. The Cubans took the election seriously and Grau won by a landslide. He took office October 10 amid celebrations from one end of the island to the other. The hope was that Grau would now convert the forms of democracy into genuine substance.

Batista's departure to live in Florida seemed to make this hope even more realistic. Grau did do a few startling things such as seizing the American-owned Havana Electric Railway; but his regime quickly settled down to the main preoccupation of bourgeois politicians in Cuba — self-enrichment. Fraud and corruption flourished as before. The sinister army, too, remained as before. Grau dismissed some of the most notorious Batista supporters among the officer caste but he altered nothing essential.

As the decisive means of rule, the military machine remained intact. Upon the outbreak of the cold war in and the launching of the witch hunt shortly thereafter in the United States, Grau veered from "New Dealism" to "anti-Communism. Prio initiated repressive measures against the Communist party and then in campaigned for the presidency on an "anti-Communist" platform. His victory on such a platform was ominous for the future of Cuban politics.

Even more ominous was the victory of Batista as a senator although he still lived in Florida. Truman's "anti-Communism" paved the way in the United States for the rise to prominence of the fascist-minded Senator McCarthy and the worst wave of witch-hunting in the history of the country. In Cuba the "anti-Communism" of Prio Socarras paved the way for Batista's return to power and a regime worse than anything yet seen.

Batista was running as a poor third in the presidential elections in When polls indicated that Ignacio Agramonte of the Ortodoxo party was quite certain to win on election day June 1, Batista moved. With their support he announced March 10 that he had taken power in order to forestall a coup d'etat by Prio Socarras. The incumbent president took refuge in the Mexican Embassy as Batista declared over the radio, "I have been forced to carry out this coup because of my love for the people. At the same time he announced that if the United States were attacked by or involved in a war with the Soviet Union, Washington could count on his support.

He also promised, naturally, to protect American investments. In a couple of weeks, March 27 to be exact, he received U. Thus began the bloodiest chapter in Cuba's unhappy history. The total number of victims in the next seven years is estimated at around 20, But business, especially American business, never had it so good in Cuba. Batista, in addition, initiated the most ambitious construction program in all Latin America, including highways, tunnels, office buildings, apartment houses, hospitals and orphanages.

The outpouring of capital and cement did not reach their earth-floored huts. They still ate less than their stomachs craved, their roads remained potholed and flooded, their school buildings jerry-built or in disrepair, their hospitals only paper promises. The dictator himself piled up a fortune estimated at million dollars. A minister of the treasury, debt-ridden when he took office, became a multimillionaire in a matter of weeks. Hundreds of other fortunes — large and small — were made as the government steadily robbed the people.

One senator, Rolando Masferrer, maintained a private army of more than men. How the Wall Street financiers made out in this rain of dollars is indicated by Carleton Beals in a recent issue of Liberation:. According to documents found in the office of Edmund Chester, Batista's public relations adviser, this arrangement was achieved by the persuasive outlay of three million dollars. Our latest ambassador, Philip W. Bonsai, was for years a top official of this same telephone company.

Little was overlooked that might serve to line a pocket with pesos. According to an authoritative Cuban estimate in , nearly 27, persons lived on the take from gambling, and 11, on prostitution. Havana swarmed with American tourists attracted by the daiquiris, the gambling casinos and lurid burlesque shows. Ten thousand slot machines were under the personal control of Batista's brother-in-law. In similar fashion Havana's parking meters were operated by the family of the mayor.

Batista could maintain himself in power only by the most brutal force. To supplement the army and the police, he shaped his secret service SIM along the lines of Hitler's Gestapo. As under Machado, sadistic murderers were recruited from the underworld to serve as professional butchers in uniform. Political opposition was met with the submachine gun. Virtually every police station had its torture room.

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The Havana police thought she knew where rebel arms were hidden. They arrested her in the middle of the night, and she tells how she was violated with a soldering iron in Havana's XII District police station on February 24, A physician's certificate confirms her assertion. This instance was not exceptional. The police often gouged out eyes and castrated their Victims before bashing in their heads. The bodies were commonly thrown in the streets or dumped in wells. Dicke y Chapelle reports a typical experience:.

Nine Cuban youths had taken political asylum in the Haitian Embassy where, according to international law, they could not be touched. While the Haitian ambassador was out to lunch, General Salas Canizares, Chief of the National Police, raided the embassy and shot down all the young political exiles. One of them, dying, managed to draw a pistol and shoot the police chief in the lower abdomen. Cuba's head cop was taken to the hospital.

Ernestina was ordered out. Then she heard the siren of an ambulance. There was a window in the little room which permitted her to look into the operating room. It was the type of glass through which one can see without being seen from the other side. She watched as two boys were brought in, still alive, although riddled with bullets.

They were dumped onto the operating tables like bags of flour. One lifted his head, stared around, then dropped back. The other was moving his lips.. He lifted his hand and let it fall back. An officer came in. He consulted with one of the orderlies 'Get a doctor for them,' he said.

Ernestina said she would never forget the scene. Americans acquainted to the least degree with the history of their own country should have no difficulty understanding why the Cuban people revolted against the Batista dictatorship. The rebel spirit that animated the Boston Tea Party, the encampment at Valley Forge, the type of fighting seen at Concord and Lexington, inspired comparable actions in Cuba of the 's.

The Cuban revolutionaries felt kinship to the rebels of but their immediate models were their own countrymen who opened the struggle for independence from Spain in and carried it on for thirty years. Today's revolutionaries felt themselves to be the direct heirs of this cause, among other reasons because Batista was not just a Cuban dictator but the representative of a new foreign oppressor — the United States. This may sound strange to Americans who have not studied the role of our country in Cuba; but it happens to be the fact.

In the early Cuban independence fighters, the revolutionaries of the 's found worthy models. Men like Jose Marti were not just nationalists in the narrow sense of the word but partisans of the great ideas of freedom and equality that inspired the American and French revolutions. The young men and women who finally succeeded in toppling Batista provided new examples of self-sacrifice, singleness of purpose, energy and heroism which the youth of the world might well study as they consider taking up the great causes that move humanity forward, such as socialism.

The first important action following Batista's seizure of power was a raid organized by Fidel Castro on the Moncada fortress at Santiago on July 26, It was something like John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in The American abolitionist hoped that his action would serve as a spark to set off a slave rebellion. The Cuban rebel counted on a comparable response.

The immediate consequences for the revolutionaries were similarly tragic. The young Fidel he was not yet 27 escaped death only by sheer accident. Those in his small band of less than who did not lose their lives in the attack were hunted down and implacably slaughtered, some after revolting torture. A few managed to escape but Castro and other main leaders were sentenced to long terms in the penitentiary on the Isle of Pines, Castro being condemned to 15 years.

In a certain sense John Brown succeeded in his raid even though he was hanged. He became an inspiration to the Northern haters of slavery and, as the battle hymn declares, his soul went marching on. The Moncada raid had a similar fate in Cuba; it served to inspire the rebel youth. When Fidel Castro and his comrades were released under an amnesty granted to political prisoners in , Havana's radical-minded students already hailed them as national heroes. Under the title of its closing words, "History will absolve me!

To this day it is well worth studying as an indictment of Batista's tyranny and as a passionate defense of the right of a people to revolt against oppression. On the legal side, the youthful lawyer based his case on the constitution of , which recognizes the right of revolt.

Cuban human rights and the hypocrisy of the media

Under the same constitution, and the penal Code of Social Defense, Batista's seizure of power was clearly illegal and subject to heavy punishment. Proceeding along these lines to accuse Batista and thus turn the defense of the Moncada action into a prosecution of the criminal regime, Castro appealed to the revolutionary will of the people as the final authority in questions of government. This was true, he pointed out, even in ancient times and in the middle ages.

Most of his examples, of course, were taken from modern history. These acts coincided with the birth of liberal political philosophy and provided the ideological foundation for a new social class, which was then struggling to break the bonds of feudalism. He and his comrades were performing their duty as citizens, he said. Not to fulfill that duty is a crime, is treason. Cespedes, Agramonte, Maceo, Gomez and Marti were the first names engraved in our minds.

We were taught that the titan Maceo had said that liberty is not begged hut is won with the blade of a machete. When there are many men without decorum, there are always others who bear in themselves the dignity of many men.

These are the men who rebel with great force against those who steal the people's freedom — that is to say, against those who steal human dignity itself. Perhaps the most eloquent section of Castro's speech before the court was his defense of the martyrs who fell in the Moncada assault. Castro is not the flowery type of orator; his eloquence resides in the marshalling of facts and explanations.

In front of the judges assigned to condemn him, he described the financial sacrifices these young people had made to buy guns, the risks they had accepted to carry out the assault, and the heroism with which they laid down their lives in the cause of freedom and justice. In stark contrast to this he described the corruption, foulness and barbarous acts of Batista and-his butchers.

It was an account that could not but stir the youth of Cuba — and youth everywhere. Castro explained exactly what the attack on the fortress sought to accomplish, exactly how it was organized, who the leaders were and how they intended to proclaim their aims over the radio station that was listed for capture. Today greatest interest attaches to the program he outlined. It included much more than "restoration of public liberties and political democracy. It advocated granting land to the smallholders, making the property "not mortgageable and not transferable.

In addition another series of laws would be promulgated such as "the Agrarian Reform, Integral Reform of Education, nationalization of the Utilities Trust and the Telephone Trust, refund to the people of the illegal excessive rates this company has charged, and payment to the Treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past. The rebel leader outlined in some detail from the prisoner's docket what he considered to be Cuba's six main problems: Land, industrialization, housing, unemployment, education, and health.

Here is a section of his speech that will indicate how he proposed to solve these:. In this present-day world, social problems are not solved by spontaneous generation. First, as the Constitution orders we would establish the maximum amount of land to be held by each type of agricultural enterprise and would acquire the excess acres by: Secondly, we would distribute the remaining land among peasant families with priority given to the larger ones, and would promote agricultural co-operatives with a single technical, professiona.

Finally, we would provide resources, equipment, protection and useful guidance to the peasants. There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every, Cuban. On the other hand, today there are greater than ever possibilities of bringing electricity to the remotest corner of the island. The use of nuclear energy in this field is now a reality and will greatly reduce the cost of producing electricity. When there is an end to rife embezzlement of government funds, when public officials stop taking graft from the large companies who owe taxes to the State, when the enormous resources of the country are brought into full use, when we no longer buy tanks, bombers and guns for this country which has no frontiers to defend and where these instruments of war, now being purchased are used against the people , when there is more interest in educating the people than in killing them — then there will be more than enough money.

The markets should be overflowing with produce, pantries should be full, all hands should be working. This is not an inconceivable thought. What is inconceivable is that the majority of our rural people are now living in worse circumstances than were the Indians Columbus discovered living in the fairest land that human eyes had ever seen. A true man does not seek the path where advantage lies, but rather, the path where duty lies, and this is the only practical man, whose dream of today will be the law of tomorrow, because he who has looked back on the upheavals of history and has seen civilizations going up in flames, crying out in bloody struggle, throughout the centuries, knows that the future well-being of man, without exception, lies on the side of duty.

By Batista appeared impregnable. His army, equipped with the latest American weapons and advised by an American military mission, held the island's political life in a tight net. Police terror kept the Meshes of the net in good repair. Business was booming and the dictator enjoyed the full support of Wall Street and the State Department. It appeared a propitious time to add some democratic camouflage. A presidential election, held November 1, was won handily by Batista after the sole token oppositional candidate, Dr. Ramon Grau San Martin withdrew in despair and disgust. In another step calculated to lower dissatisfaction with his rule, Batista granted a concession after being sworn in as president.

On May 13, , he signed a bill providing a general amnesty of political prisoners.

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Castro had been approached in prison with an offer of freedom in return for modifying his opposition to the dictatorship. He refused such a deal, however; and, upon arriving in Havana May 17, resumed his political attacks on the regime. But Castro found the avenues for democratic expression so meager as to be of little consequence. How serious Castro was in this aim can be gathered from the fact that one of his first efforts was directed at overcoming a weakness which he and his followers felt keenly — their lack of military training.

Castro succeeded in persuading Colonel Alberto Bayo to give a select group of cadres theoretical and practical training in guerrilla warfare. Bayo was well-known in Latin America as an expert in this field, having served in the Spanish forces that fought Abd El Krim in Morocco. The colonel became an admirer of the Moroccan guerrilla fighters and made a study of their tactics, which he sought, unsuccessfully, to place at the disposal of the Republican government of Spain in the civil war against Franco.

Castro himself participated only to a limited degree in this training. As the main political organizer, he spent the greater part of his time among refugee circles in Miami , Key West, Tampa and New York in search of funds and recruits. Cuban refugee circles were divided at the time into many groups and tendencies. Castro was a member of the bourgeois-democratic Ortodoxo party, but soon found himself embroiled with the leadership over what to him was the key question — the necessity for serious preparation and active organization of the armed overthrow of the Batista dictatorship.

Finally on March 19, , disillusioned with the vacillations and compromises of the Ortodoxo chieftains on this issue, he announced the formation of the July 26 Movement as an independent revolutionary organization. The most noteworthy feature of this political formation in the following years was its consistent refusal to compromise on the basic platform on which it stood —active organization of a popular uprising against Batista.

Several attempts were made by leaders of the Autentico and Ortodoxo parties to get Castro to subordinate his aims to a common front in which they would have decisive voice. In each case he refused although he at the same time sought united action, particularly if it would facilitate getting material aid for the rebel forces in Cuba. The year marked a significant turning point in Cuban politics. On April 4 a conspiracy between the "Monte Cristi" group and some lower officers in the army headed by Colonel Ramon Barquin, was discovered.

The officers were courtmartialed and sentenced to the Isle of Pines. The conspiracy was of symptomatic importance, revealing that a section of the officer caste were uneasy over the unpopularity of Batista and thinking of finding a more acceptable figure. On April 29 a small group attempted, in emulation of Castro's Moncada raid, to seize the Goicuria army fortress at Matanzas. The attempt was smashed. Apparently Castro judged that such actions indicated a rise in revolutionary sentiment in Cuba.

On November 15 he announced his intention to invade the island as the first step in leading a popular insurrection. The story of his landing is now well known. On a small yacht, the "Granma," capable of holding a couple of dozen men, Castro set out from Mexico with a force of eighty-two and all the arms and ammunition that could be put on board.

An uprising in Santiago was timed for November 30 to divert attention from the landing. The uprising went through on schedule and was put down. But due to bad weather and engine trouble, the "Granma" was delayed until December 2 and the landing was made at an unfavorable swampy spot where the arms could not easily be unloaded. Batista learned of the landing the same day that it was made and by December 5 the small "invasion" force was surrounded. They suffered a heavy defeat, only twelve men managing to evade the attackers and eventually assemble in a safe place in the Sierra Maestras.

Batista claimed, and apparently believed, that Castro had been killed. For a time it was difficult to obtain evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, this small band of twelve was to swell in less than two years to an army powerful enough to defeat Batista's well-trained and well-equipped forces and topple the dictatorship. The leaders of the July 26 Movement ascribe their final success principally to their tactics.

It must be noted, however, that the best of tactics are of little avail in the absence of favorable social and political conditions. These were quite ripe for revolution as can be judged from the fact that on July 31, , a spontaneous general strike occurred in Santiago and spread swiftly throughout the country. It should be noted, too, that in the political atmosphere generated under Batista another leadership, much like the July 26 Movement in composition and coloration, had formed in Havana. This was the Directorio Revolucionario, a group centered among the university students.

This terroristic action, heroic as it was, proved crippling; some of the best leaders of the group, including Echevarria, were killed and Batista only received a bad scare. As a major tactic, the July 26 Movement sought a base in the Cuban peasantry. Its main appeals were directed to the countryside where it hoped to recruit its fighting forces. The leading slogan was land to the campesinos. Setting up what was in effect a dual government in the Sierra Maestras, Castro sought to give an example to the farmers, sharecroppers and field workers of what they could expect from the July 26 Movement in contrast to Batista's regime in Havana.

The example was quite convincing, for the July 26 Movement was a spartan organization that sought to live according to what it taught. The campesinos began to support it actively and then to join its guerrilla forces in increasing numbers. By the summer of the point of qualitative change was reached — the guerrilla bands became large enough to operate as an army in the field. Batista, like Chiang Kai-shek, sought to crush the guerrillas by an ambitious military drive.

Like Chiang's troops, however, the ranks of Batista's army proved receptive to revolutionary appeals and began to join the rebels. Finally, like the Chinese revolutionary leaders, the Cubans launched a counterattack that brought them to power. On the political side, Castro sought from the beginning to speak for Cuba as a whole. His principal appeal was to end Batista's bloody, dictatorial rule and put a government responsible to the people in power. He received some support from individuals in bourgeois circles but it is worth.

The most powerful ones stuck with Batista. When the dictatorship was collapsing, a "junta" of generals was set up that evidently enjoyed the backing of these interests. They sought to negotiate with Castro, but he refused to deal with them. Having learned from the experience of the Guatemalan revolution that failure to break up the old army is a fatal error, Castro did not intend to walk into that trap. Out of tactical considerations he took the far-reaching measure, upon reaching Havana, of breaking up both Batista's army and Batista's police.

Not even the middle class in the cities appears to have been enthusiastic over Castro's July 26 Movement. The upper petty-bourgeois layers that opposed Batista, including businessmen and manufacturers, tended to support the Autentico or Ortodoxo parties and a clandestine organization, the "Civil Resistance Movement," which included professors, teachers and white-collar workers in its ranks. This Underground action group, centered principally in Havana, had three sections, propaganda, fund-raising and supplies.

The sections were divided into cells of ten persons, each of whom sought to enlist another ten persons to form a new cell. By the beginning of , as the July 26 Movement grew in weight, the Civic Resistance Movement began to note a sharp rise in financial contributions. As for the working class, it was caught without an effective political leadership of its own. The trade unions were dominated by venal officials holding their posts through Batista's favor.

The Communist party was discredited because of its support to Batista in the past. Moreover it had no independent policy. Like the Communist party in the United States, its main concern was to advance the Kremlin's foreign policy of maintaining the status quo. Consequently the Cuban workers tended to favor the July 26 Movement and to support it actively insofar as they could without a dynamic leadership and fighting organizations of their own.

If words could destroy, a single day's production of "hate Cuba" language in the American capitalist press would suffice to make Havana look like Hiroshima on the evening of August 6, Even the staid newspapers, those that believe a public image of dignity pays off best, are at the firing line, bucket in one hand, filth in the other.

Here, for instance, is a sampling of loaded words from a single article by Tad Szulc, special correspondent of the New York Times, datelined from Camaguey, June The Castro regime is without the slightest doubt the most popular government Cuba has ever enjoyed. But we needn't rely on personal impressions, which may be colored or one-sided.

Facts are available that speak so emphatically about the popular attitude that even the most ardent backers of the Batista dictatorship find them difficult to deny. On June 26, , the Cuban magazine Bohemia published a nationwide poll. The rating of the government can be judged from the following: Those were the figures for the country as a whole. In the rural areas the response was even more impressive: The poll included dozens of questions designed to explore attitudes toward all the many fields of activity in which the government is engaged, from the agrarian reform to international relations.

These made it possible to get an accurate picture of shifts in sentiment since the previous poll a year earlier. Here are the conclusions drawn by Bohemia: This decline has been compensated by a slight increase in the intensity of support. And this is compensated by an increase in the working class. Bohemia's survey was confirmed by another one under American auspices published August 1. This survey, based on 1, interviews in Havana and other cities and therefore reflecting urban sentiment, was made in May under the direction of the Institute for International Social Research, of Princeton, N.

Eight percent rate the Castro regime worse than Batista's. Three percent believe the two about equal. And 3 percent refuse to express an opinion. Like the Bohemia survey, the Princeton sampling indicated the class division over the new government. Eighty percent of Castro's opposition is concentrated in the Havana area. In rural Cuba, Castro is supreme.. The other half are 'moderate' supporters.

Only three out of ten expressed any disapproval of the Castro government. Reasons listed for satisfaction with the Castro government included the following:. Educational reform and campaign against illiteracy, 18 percent. Social justice and concern for workers, farmers and the poor, 17 percent. Economic progress and concern over unemployment, 8 percent. Inculcation of nationalism and patriotism among the people, 6 percent.

Safety of the individual with an end to killing and physical abuses by the police, 6 percent. The statistics speak for themselves. They register overwhelming approval of the sweeping measures taken since the revolution toppled the Batista dictatorship. If these measures are borne in mind it is not difficult to understand why enthusiasm is so high. Under Batista Cuba was like a concentration camp. Today the fortresses that housed the dictator's murderous armed forces have been torn down or converted into schools. To most Cubans, this change alone symbolizes what the revolution has accomplished.

But that was only the beginning. For the ordinary person, economic conditions in Cuba in Batista's time were like those of the great depression of the thirties in the USA. As the first installment on their promises, the revolutionary leaders slashed rents, lowered essential food costs, raised starvation wages and began tackling the unemployment problem. Then came the agrarian reform.

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This recovered the fertile land that had been fenced in by giant American corporations and feudal-minded Cuban landholders. Land is now being parcelled out to family farmers. The government at the same time initiated a co-operative movement that holds great promise.

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Cuba's basic labor force, the sugar workers, saw a new future opening up—an indescribably bright future, if it is recalled that - under Batista normal unemployment lasted eight to nine months a year. As America's corporate interests sought to counter such progressive measures by savage economic and political attacks, the Cuban government responded by taking control of many of their holdings.

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Each time this occurred on a dramatic scale as in the case of the oil refineries, the island echoed with shouts of approval. Intervention and nationalization have gone so far that all of Cuba's major industries, including the key plantations and sugar mills are now in government hands. Many prominent Cuban intellectuals, perhaps unsurprisingly, agree that Castro was a towering figure for the advancement of human rights, and that his internationalism helped redefine what human rights meant for the developing world. Juan Valdes Paz, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Havana, argues that any discussion of human rights in Cuba - a former neocolony - has to be seen through the lens of national liberation.

It doesn't make sense to talk about political rights, if citizens are illiterate or if they don't have enough food to guarantee their survival. The Cuban approach is a very third world conception of what human rights are. A journey through Fidel Castro's Cuba. Going online, using a dial-up connection, often revealed a strange disconnect between the daily problems Cubans complained about - low salaries, the high price of basic goods - and what the international press focused on - tourism, dissidents, human rights violations.

But after Castro's death, things ramped up and going online felt like going through the looking-glass: Immediately after Castro died, a lot of coverage from the US focused on reactions from American politicians, such as President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted: A "brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades," said Trump in his statement.

On the ground, reporting from Cuba, also jarred with my experience. In a widely propagated newswire, the Associated Press reported that thousands of people had been "sent in groups by the communist government" to the rally in Havana's Revolution Square that I'd attended, implying that the state had been shunting about a docile population against its will. Yet everyone I spoke to that night insisted they were there voluntarily. When I'd asked two school kids what would happen if they hadn't turned up, they shrugged and said they could perfectly well have stayed at home - just like their friends.

But I found the biggest chasm between Cuban reality and the digital world to be in mainstream editorials. The line taken by the liberal press is epitomised by the Washington Post's editorial: Arguing that Castro was more repressive than his predecessor seems a stretch. As then US senator John F Kennedy stated back in , "Fulgencio Batista murdered 20, Cubans in seven years - a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty.

In , by far the bloodiest year of the revolution, up to people were executed. This editorial, like others in leading American newspapers I've read, doesn't fully consider how US policy towards Cuba may have affected the Cuban state's position on civil liberties. News consumers may or may not agree with such national security arguments - but, in order to make up their minds, they at least need to hear them. The Washington Post does give Castro some credit. But unlike human rights violations, to which extensive column inches are devoted, the editorial is loath to give concrete examples of these, as they dub them in scare quotes, "achievements".

Like most of the mainstream media, the editorial riffs on a "Castro was good for health and education, bad for human rights" motif. Health and education are presented as if they were somehow separate from human rights. During my time in Cuba, I've gleaned other reasons why Western media coverage of human rights in Cuba is so different.

Editorial line plays a big role.