A liberal democracy and a prosperous modern society such as you and I are blessed with in North America are a huge benefit to anyone, Old Guy, but such alternatives have never been offered to people in many parts of the world. They have never had the option. And if someone offered it to them, they might not handle it successfully. The reasons for that go way, way back. All of Latin America is suffering the collective legacy of having been under tyrranical colonial rule by either the Spanish or the Portuguese for centuries...those were nations which were ruled by autocratic kings...absolute dictators. The societies now in Latin America came out of that legacy and were forged in the flames of violent revolution against colonial rule...amidst terrible poverty. The revolutionaries did not come out of a society benefiting from English common law and relative prosperity...which was the condition in the 13 colonies in the American revolution.

Having never experienced anything but autocratic rule from a tiny elite, most of the Latin American societies soon reverted to similarly autocratic rule by rich landowners soon after they threw out their colonial masters. Their attempts at democracy were generally pretty short-lived...or were badly compromised by the general lack of education and corruption in the political parties that arose. In Mexico, for example, there were brief periods of attempted reform by some leaders. Benito Juarez was one such. He was an idealist. But the rapid return to corruption and domination of society by a small number of wealthy families was seemingly inevitable.

You cannot just compare life in Cuba to life in the USA as if they started out on an equal playing field in history. They did not. People make this same error in regards to Russia. The Russians have also experienced a bitter history of autocratic, iron-fisted rule. To expect them at ANY point to suddenly, instantly, convert to the same type of open modern society we have, with all the rights and freedoms that we have in the English-speaking countries or in western Europe is just hopelessly naive. It can't be done, and it won't be done. There has to be a very gradual transition.

You can't look at what Castro did in Cuba and put it on the same level as if he had done those things in South Dakota or Ohio. He wasn't in South Dakota or Ohio. The situation was radically different.

He was in a country which threw off Spanish rule in 1898 after years of bloody revolution...which finally succeeded because the USA went to war with Spain. The USA went to war primarily because it saw easy strategic gains (deep water ports in the Caribbean and the Pacific to be taken for its new navy, and valuable lands to be taken in Cuba and the Phillipines). The propaganda reason given for the war was to avenge the sinking of the USS Maine and to prevent Spanish atrocities against the Cuban people. Believe me when I tell you that the US government didn't give a tinker's damn about Spanish atrocities against Cubans...but they saw a golden opportunity to scavenge some valuable stuff off a dying empire, and turn themselves into a transoceanic power.

At any rate, the Cubans (who may have sunk the Maine themselves...or maybe it exploded due to a smouldering coal fire in its bunkers) expected the Americans to leave after the Spanish were beaten. The Americans didn't leave. Surprise! ;-)

Cuba made a few sporadic attempts at liberal multi-party democracy over the years. All of those attempts failed, and were quickly replaced by authoritarian local governments of a despotic sort. Batista's was the last of the old style governments. If you read books about Castro's youth you would find it very interesting. He was the son of a wealthy family, part of the elite. He had seemingly nothing to gain by opposing the elite that ruled Cuba...and everything to lose...but he became a revolutionary anyway. His courage and his idealism in those days was utterly extraordinary. The fact that he won his revolution was extraordinary. It's a simply incredible story. It rivals anything that happened in the American revolution, and it took people with very similar ideals and the same amount of guts to do it.

I don't believe Castro could have created the kind of free multi-party society you and I enjoy in North America. Not with the best will in the world. If he had tried to, it would have fallen apart in 3 years or less, and been replaced by another dictatorship.

I think he was a pragmatist. He did what he believed would succeed, and that's what you must do in any country. You have to know the ground you're fighting on in order to win a battle.

After visiting Cuba, I became interested in their history. I read several books about it in the years following that visit. Cuba is a land filled with the passion of revolution, but it is not a land that seems to know how to settle down once the fighting is over...unless it does so under a very heavy hand. When you have a multiplicity of views expressed openly there you soon have a chaotic situation that becomes another revolution...or you shut it down...like putting a lid on a boiling pot...and it simmers quietly, waiting for someone to remove the lid.

Same deal in Russia. Putin can handle Russia, because he's tough enough to. He's willing to be ruthless. Gorbachev couldn't handle it. He gave them their freedom and they turned it into a total chaotic mess. Yeltsin pandered to the people's superficial appetites and expectations (which he could not fulfill), got drunk, and the mess deepened. They needed a strong man again, and now they've got one.

I'm telling you that if Castro had tried to be the kind of democratic be-nice-to-everyone guy you think he should be in Cuba...his government would have fallen very soon and it would have been replaced by something far worse.

Cuba is not Kansas.

You and I were lucky to be born in societies with a liberal-democratic, British common law tradition. It is to that that we owe our present freedoms...not to American capitalism or to socialism either, but to our common British tradition of law and open parliamentary society with elected officials. We are the sons of some of the most fortunate generations the world has ever known.

People in Latin America do not have that tradition to stand upon.