Fidel Castro – Freedom fighter or autocratic brute?

Fidel Castro has been hailed by many as a bringer of freedom to a Cuba awash with civil unrest under military rule. Is this man a hero of the people or an autocratic dictator who has destroyed the lives of more Cubans than he has helped?

Fidel Castro was the child of uneducated and poor people who were, however, determined that their children would get a good education. Having done well at school, Castro went on to study law. Because he often took on cases of people who were too poor to pay him very well, he was often out of pocket. Castro was angered by the unequal distribution of wealth in Cuba and, having spent much of his early adulthood in pursuit of political changes, he realised that the only way to gain control of the country and free his countrymen from poverty, was to start a guerrilla war. 

His armies were highly outnumbered but unbelievably successful and, during this hard fought war, as Castro’s troops took control of land, they redistributed it amongst peasants which encouraged people to support him. Castro was also known to treat prisoners well which gained him even more popularity over Cuba’s leader, Batista, whose policy was to hang bodies in the street as a warning to others of what would happen if they supported Castro. This just encouraged yet more support for the guerrilla leader.

On January 9, 1959, Castro wrenched power from the militant Batista, who, seven years earlier had taken control of the country with the help of armed forces. By this time many Cubans were seriously disillusioned with the poverty, unemployment and poor education that they were suffering from. Many felt that they were merely working to line the pockets of the Fat Cat North American businessmen who seemed to control the country through Batista. They looked to the charismatic Castro to change this for them.

In the early years of his ruling of Cuba, a great many improvements were made. Castro implemented free education for the whole country at a time when nearly 25% were illiterate; he built 3 new training schools for doctors to train replacements for all those who left when he ordered them to redistribute throughout Cuba, rather than serve only the wealthy in Havana; he redistributed land, including his own, among the poor people in order to share the wealth more evenly; Castro started a free health service and a massive inoculation programme which reduced infant mortality to the lowest in the developing world.

So why was it, then, in this country where everything was being done to create freedom and equality among the people, that so many of them were risking life and limb to get out? Under this veil of positivity was running a current of discontent. America started pulling investment out of Cuba due to the fact that Castro’s policies restricted the manner in which they did business. This lead to the emigration of around 250 000 upper and middle class Cubans, out of a population of only 6 million, who had been living comfortably before the revolution, as they had become financially worse off in the years hence.

Castro refused to be intimidated by America and continued to create policies that were beginning to cause trouble for Cuba. Although most of the people who stayed in the country supported him, Castro did not keep his promise of free and fair elections, stating that competing political parties would destroy the hard fought unity of the country. 

Some of Cuba’s politicians began to disagree with Castro’s policies. He had them arrested and replaced them with people who had proved their loyalty to him. Unfortunately these were often young and inexperienced politicians who had fought with him in the revolution, and who were happy to carry out his every command. Journalists were arrested if they wrote anything that showed Castro or his party in a bad light. He also arrested people who he saw as deviants, such as homosexuals.

This man, who had shown so much promise in creating a politically and economically free country, was turning on anyone who disagreed with him and thus taking away the freedom he had initially fought for. In 1991, due to many poor decisions and bad policies, Cuba suffered economic crisis and, in 1994, Castro suffered great embarrassment when his own daughter sought asylum in the USA.

Castro had given Cuba a glimpse of freedom from the stranglehold of military rule under which many people suffered, but he whipped it away just as quickly when he chose political autocracy over true freedom for his countrymen. Though there are many who still claim that Castro has given the people of Cuba all they could ask for with free education, low unemployment, free health service and low infant mortality, without free speech and the freedom to make their own choices, the people are not free.