Sun Sentinel, March 1, 2020
Bernie Sanders gets facts wrong about Castro’s literacy, health care programs. Let’s set the record straight. | Opinion
By JOHN SUAREZ AND FRANK CALZÓN
SPECIAL TO THE SUN SENTINEL
Before Fidel Castro took power In 1959, Cuba already had decent educational and healthcare systems, according to U.N. statistics, and its rising literacy rates tracked with the rest of Latin America, writes the op-ed authors from the Center for a Free Cuba, in disputing Bernie Sanders' claim that the Castro regime brought "good things" to the Cuban people. (L. Todd Spencer/The Virginian-Pilot)
On the 24th anniversary of the February 24, 1996, Brothers to the Rescue shootdown when Fidel Castro’s MIG’s destroyed two civilian aircraft in international airspace engaged in the search for Cuban refugees killing four Americans, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, argued in a CBS 60 Minutes interview that there were good things about the Castro regime: “It is unfair to simply say everything is bad. When Fidel Castro came into office you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.”
He was doubling down on statements that he had made in the 1980s when he claimed in recorded interviews that Cubans did not rise up and help the U.S. overthrow Cuba’s dictatorship because he “educated the kids, gave them healthcare, and totally transformed the society.”
The facts indicate otherwise. In 1959, the island already had decent educational and healthcare systems, according to U.N. statistics, and its rising literacy rates tracked with the rest of Latin America. Costa Rica achieved the same results without dictatorship and firing squads.
“According to the 1953 Cuba census, out of 4,376,529 inhabitants 10 years of age or older 23.6% were illiterate, a percentage lower than all other Latin American countries except Argentina (13.6%), Chile (19.6%), & Costa Rica (20.6%) ... Factoring only population 15 years of age or older, the rate is lowered to 22.1%.”
This means that 77.9% of Cubans fifteen years and older were literate six years prior to the Communist takeover.
An appraisal of Castro’s literacy efforts should Include the politicization of Cuban education. To this day, teachers and students continue to be expelled from universities due to their ideas. Cubans have been sentenced to prison for reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm and many books are banned. Writers, gays and religious believers were sent to concentration camps until Jean Paul Sartre and other intellectuals denounced the situation.
John Suarez is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. (Courtesy of the Center for a Free Cuba)
Paul Hollander’s “Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society” cites Professor Maurice Halperin, a Castro supporter who came across a “confidential public opinion poll made by the Communist Party in 1987” in Holguin province. "Of those polled (over ten thousand) 87 percent had unfavorable views of the health care they received. Most of the complaints “as summed up in the report concerned ‘lack of attention, negligence and abuse of patients.’”
There were also many complaints “about the chronic absenteeism of both doctors and nurses and about favoritism in the treatment of well-connected patients.”
These were not the reasons Cubans did not overthrow Fidel Castro.
The regime broadcast firing squad executions in a campaign of political terror to consolidate its rule. With the help of the KGB and East Germany’s Stasi, Castro quickly built an effective police state. In the days prior to the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, he rounded up 200,000 disaffected Cubans in Havana alone.
Frank Calzón is a former executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. (Courtesy of Center for a Free Cuba)
Sanders, also ignores the thousands of peasants killed by Castro and Soviet counter insurgency forces between 1959 and 1965. Their rebellion, took place over six years in the Escambray Mountains, with many guerillas who had fought alongside Castro against Batista, now fighting against the new regime. They had supported him to restore democracy, but when the new leader turned to Communism, they revolted.
Unlike Fulgencio Batista, who had to endure an arms embargo from the United States, and its ambassador telling him to leave power in 1958, Castro had the full backing of the Soviet Union and its counter-insurgency forces.
The argument that Sanders made, even if wrong, is morally objectionable. Apologists for Augusto Pinochet credit him for a dynamic economy that lifted millions out of poverty in Chile, but one cannot say that he was “not all bad,” because his regime summarily executed and tortured thousands of political opponents.
John Suarez is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. Frank Calzón is a former executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-suarez-calzon-bernie-sanders-cuba-literacy-health-care-20200301-p3igaqislzh53esd66p5ymqcpq-story.html