I found Castro's Cuba a very interesting place, primarily because of its independence from American direct influence (and yes, I realise that Cuba has longed been defined by America's influence on it, even in opposing it).
American culture has had a huge effect on the world. To attend an island off the coast of Florida and find it more or less free of that cultural influence was fascinating. Fascinating in that they were even just able to do it.
I didn't see an island prison there. Which is not to whitewash anything. However, I was free to go anywhere I wanted and did. People I met were kind, welcoming and seemed, to my eyes and ears, content.
The view of Fidel as a tyrant is not the view one finds as they travel the world. Neither is he viewed as a saint. He is viewed as someone who achieved something incredible, with all that entails, good and bad.
Someone who held no free nor fair elections for half a century, imprisoned his political opponents after trials presided over by crony judges, completely controlled all the national media and installed his brother as his successor? And that's not a tyrant?
Well, that's a part of the story. And the only part of the story that you have been able to encounter in the American media since the 1950's.
The story is much broader than that. Fidel was also the liberator of his country from a military dictatorship which had sold Cuban casinos to the Mafia [0] and swaths of Cuban agricultural land to the United Fruit Company. [1]
In that context, Castro was certainly not the tyrant.
American culture has had a huge effect on the world. To attend an island off the coast of Florida and find it more or less free of that cultural influence was fascinating. Fascinating in that they were even just able to do it.
I didn't see an island prison there. Which is not to whitewash anything. However, I was free to go anywhere I wanted and did. People I met were kind, welcoming and seemed, to my eyes and ears, content.
The view of Fidel as a tyrant is not the view one finds as they travel the world. Neither is he viewed as a saint. He is viewed as someone who achieved something incredible, with all that entails, good and bad.