Fidel Castro is dead. Yes, the communist sultan finally expired yesterday evening, November 25, 2016. The news was ushered with an excellent editorial by the Miami Herald that argues Fidel Castro (photo, left) had become irrelevant. The editorial is a concise recapitulation of his life and influence for seven decades. But the truth is that despite having become irrelevant, Fidel leaves behind a twisted legacy of communist tyranny and evil personal dictatorship that cost at least 40,000 lives in Cuba alone, and millions of other countless victims of wars, deprivation, and suffering throughout Latin America and Africa. He converted one to the happiest, freest, and most prosperous nations in Latin America to one of the poorest, desolate, and enslaved countries in the world. His revolution was romanticized by the media and American sympathizers, and he was hailed as a great agrarian reformer by the U.S. press. This false acclamation carried him to victory and communism “in our own backyard.”
And still today the contrast in views attest to his charisma, or rather to his legacy of evil. Recognition on one side; self-deception on the other. The Cuban-Americans in freedom are celebrating his death in Miami; the enslaved people of Cuba are getting ready to mourn him, voluntarily or not, ordered by his brother and present ruler, Raul. President-Elect Donald Trump called Fidel “a brutal dictator” and hopes the Cuban people will eventually be free. Lame-duck President Obama, who ushered in the normalization of relations with Raul and his dictatorship, claims that history is still to judge Fidel and his impact on the world — as if there was any doubt as to the wasteland, the desolation, and the suffering of the Cuban people for nearly 70 years!
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