He's prolly gonna say something like "lies, all lies, it's capatilist propaganda, only the weekly socialist worker prints the trooooooth"
Here's a piece of trivia about the great man:
"During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro's mistaken belief in Soviet nuclear superiority led him to write a remarkable letter to Moscow urging the Soviet Union to use a preemptive strike against the United States. He was enraged by the eventual Soviet withdrawal, calling Nikita Khrushchev "son of a bitch... bastard... asshole... no cojones [balls]..."
The sick freak wanted to start World War Three and kill HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, ending the world as we know it....now that's a great man for you. What a doosh marauder is for talking him up.....I guess a communist can be forgiven anything.
Originally posted by lebowskiHere's some real information not relying on bogus "averages":
Here's one of many threads describing Cuba before Castro came to power, and how wonderful things became after he took over.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18739
INCOME
Did the Cuban people benefit as a result of unfettered US capital investments and development on the island?
Counterrevolutionary propagandists boast that Cuba held the highest per capita income in Latin America, often citing the figure of 336 pesos (336 US$) for 1956.
The problem with this figure is that it does not constitute a realistic comparison of economic relations on the island with the rest of the Latin continent (except, perhaps, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica). First of all, Cubans were forced to import nearly all consumer products from the US in exchange for the guarantee of selling all sugar in the American market.
They imported most of their food. To name a few basic items, nearly all rice, eggs, poultry came from abroad and half of all beans and meat (though much of the land on the island is grass and pasture). The sole utility providers (telephone and electricity) were US-owned companies.
Nearly all medicines, clothing, automobiles, and all other motorized means of land sea and air transportation came from the US.
Nearly all motion pictures were also imported from the US as well as radio, TV, and all electronic equipment. The Cuban baseball teams were in essence winter farm teams of the US major leagues were Cuban players were paid to play at a rate comparable to their American counterparts. In short Cuban workers were forced to lead a life consuming US products at higher prices than most Americans paid for them.
Given that economic life in Cuba in the 50’s was an exact replica of the US model (with the exception of restraints and guarantees imposed upon it by the American working class), the per capita income of $336 can not be compared to Latin America. Instead, a more accurate comparison is the US, specifically the state of Mississippi which reported a per capita income of $829 in 1956, the lowest in the country. The per capita income of Cubans in 1956 represented 18% of the per capita income of American workers, or roughly one third of the income in the state of Mississippi. While the incomes of Cuban workers were far inferior to the incomes of American workers, most prices in Cuba during the 50’s were double US prices and hours worked by Cuban workers were less than half of their American counterparts.
Secondly, the per capita income brought on by the US economic model in Cuba did not produce what is most important for the working class: a measure of social justice. Instead, (and as some American scholars are willing to concede) the figures concealed shocking disparities in the distribution of wealth between the upper classes and the working class, between Havana and the countryside and between whites and blacks. Furthermore, the per capita income only represents a average of income among the population. Thus, only a small fraction of the population in 1956 earned $540 while most rural families survived on $7 per month.
Third, as the table below shows, Cuba became proof of Engel’s observation that as capitalism develops the condition of the proletariat worsens. From 1945 to the 50’s, the per capita real income of Cuban workers decreased by half. ().
Year Per Capita income
at current prices Per capita income
at 1945 prices
1945 228 228.0
1951 344 134.7
1952 354 159.5
1953 301 161.8
1954 304 107.1
1955 312 112.4
1956 336 120.9
During the dictatorship of Batista the pay of blue collar and white collar workers declined by 2/3 and after the record sugar crop of 1952, the pay of agricultural workers was reduced by 6% - along with railroad workers and henequeros.
Although the income of urban workers in pre-Revolutionary Cuba met the minimum legal wage guidelines and exceeded the income of agricultural workers, it was not enough to meet the demands of life in urban centers of Cuba. ().
In fact, it was not enough to sustain life anywhere and double minimum wage earnings were incapable of sustaining a family. Yet, it was not enforced by the government. In 1953 half the workforce -workers between the ages of 14 and 24- earned the lowest wages ().
A 1955 study of 1365 families in Havana revealed that most workers in that city lived in abject poverty. This was evident even to those residents who didn’t read statistics.
It was a constant reminder to all who witnessed the horror of the enormous and ever increasing shanty town of Las Yaguas in the midst of metropolitan Havana.
w1.1559.telia.com/~u155900388/forsvar.htm
AGRICULTURAL WORKERS
The majority lacked land or a permanent job during the year. A survey conducted in 1956-57 revealed that in 126 municipalities, where 400,000 agricultural workers lived, biweekly earnings were half the minimum wage.
Working families spent 69.3% of their earnings on food. Earnings were partly paid with coupons redeemable at company stores. Eleven percent of working families consumed milk, 4% meat, 2% eggs. In 1957 the deficiency of calories in diets was 1000. One survey of more than 2,000 working class children across 18 municipalities showed that they were suffering from insufficient calories, vitamins A and D, slow development and an elevated mortality rate ().
Another source reported: “Only 4% of all rural families consumed meat regularly; rice furnished 24% of the average diet, kidney beans 23% and root crops, 22%.” ().
UNEMPLOYMENT
Before the revolution, chronic, seasonal and cyclical unemployment was the whip of the Cuban working class. 25% of the adult population and 20% of working-age workers were consistently unemployed ().
The nature of sugar production involving 100 days of harvest and 23% of the work force shaped the employment figures. Since the majority of sugar workers were only employed during the harvest, up to 2/3 of the Cuban working class were fully and partially unemployed during the year.
Prior to 1920 the sugar harvest would last for four months. US investments introduced mechanization in the harvest, yielding record crops in half the time. As sugar production increased to the exclusion of any other products, chronic unemployment became a fixed characteristic of Cuban society.
Climatic factors also contributed to worsen the unemployment problem.
The Zafra (sugar harvest) coincided with the coffee, potato, yucca and lima bean harvests. Even the tourist season in April coincided with the same schedule.
As a virtually exclusive source of income for the island, sugar dominated almost all economic activity and employment in Cuba. Unemployment affected low paid as well as high paid workers. Similarly, but distinctly affected by unemployment, were women, youth and blacks.
Among young workers who annually entered the ranks of the workforce, over 100,000 were unemployed (RR). In nearly every respect, Cuba was a vast, foreign-owned, sugar latifundia where life depended on the sale of sugar to the US, offering no political independence for the country nor economic security to the Cuban worker.
There's plenty more on the site regarding Cuban unemployment, poverty, lack of access to health care and education, etc. The numbers in the article given in the first post are misleading like per capita income because they are based on averages; Cuba had a privileged wealthy elite and a small professional class that brought the "average" up but the vast majority of Cubans lived at or far below the poverty level.
Originally posted by lebowski"Yet within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro's firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba's jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to "liberating" Cuba."
Here's one of many threads describing Cuba before Castro came to power, and how wonderful things became after he took over.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18739
Guatanamo?
All the bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Anyone?
The blatant hypcrisy is actually quite sickening. Nor does this form any sort of picture of Cuba before the revolution.
The problem with getting good information on the internet about Cuba is that the WWW is flooded by information from Miami based anti-Castro groups.
To get a proper picture one should delve into encylopedia's, etc.
From Wikipedea:
The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. When it became apparent that Batista had no chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army and of the Communists, as a “provisional president” for the next two years. In 1954, under pressure from the U.S., he agreed to elections. The Partido Auténtico put forward ex-President Grau as their candidate, but he withdrew amid allegations that Batista was rigging the elections in advance. Batista could now claim to be an elected President. His regime was marked by severe corruption and poverty. Batista's police force was well-known for their harsh tactics and violence against the population.
And this says nothing about the rich-life in Havana and the abuse of children to suit the them.
Originally posted by shavixmirThose Miami based anti-Castro groups are former Cubans...
"Yet within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro's firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba's jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to "liberating" Cuba."
Guatanamo?
All the bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Anyone?
The blatant hypc ...[text shortened]... s says nothing about the rich-life in Havana and the abuse of children to suit the them.