Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Cuba’s Unforgivable Crime of Independence

The U.S. has painted Fidel Castro as the ultimate boogeyman for over half a century. And any mention of his name still gets Cuban exiles in Miami foaming at the mouth. U.S. politicians have enjoyed scoring cheap applause by tossing in a jab at “the dictator Castro.”

Like most of Washington’s villain list, the real story doesn’t fit neatly with the propaganda.

Castro didn’t rise out of nowhere as some tyrant. He was radicalized the old-fashioned way, by watching his country get gutted, looted, and treated like a back-alley plantation for foreign powers, all under the eye of a “friendly” U.S.-backed government.

The same kind we’ve seen pop up time and time again in the developing world, and the same kind that the U.S. has been trying to impose upon Venezuela now for decades.