Here is a seductive invitation on which you may have missed out. "Celebrate five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality with the people of Cuba. Witness the stellar achievements of the Revolution first hand," enthuses a Canadian-based advertisement for a 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution Tour. Those who were drawn by its blandishments are at this moment visiting the Marxist island paradise.
"Today millions optimistically follow the course of the Cuban revolution," declaim the promoters, "which despite hardships resulting from sanctions and blockade, is as dynamic as ever." Optimistically is right. Since the revolution, Cuba has progressed from third place out of 11 Latin American countries for per capita daily calorific intake, according to the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, to 11th and last today.
Fidel Castro likes to boast of his country's 70,000 doctors, but admits "tens of thousands" of them have been sent abroad. The last pre-Castro census (1953) recorded one doctor for every 1,000 Cubans; today, outside the regime's showcase clinics for the nomenklatura and foreigners, patients have to bring their own bedding, thread for sutures and even light-bulbs into the country's vermin-infested hospitals.
The US embargo, cited by the tour advertisement as an alibi for economic failure, is virtually irrelevant, since Cuba can trade with almost anywhere else in the world while US-based exiles remit more than $1 billion home. Not everyone has lost out since the revolution: the Maximum Leader's personal fortune is an egalitarian $900 million, sufficient to gain him entry to Forbes magazine.
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