Having reportedly survived six hundred attempts on his life from the CIA, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader famous for spearheading the nation’s socialist revolution in 1959, passed away on Nov. 25, at the age of 90. In death, as in life, he was a deeply polarizing figure. With his death, Cuba announced a nine-day period of mourning; the streets of Havana were reported to be quiet and subdued. A somber mood enveloped the Caribbean nation, as citizens paid their respects to Castro’s life and legacy.
By contrast, news of Castro’s death sparked a very different response on the streets of Miami, home to a large Cuban American diasporic community. Many of them had escaped Castro’s regime to settle in the United States. The atmosphere was jubilant in Florida, as spontaneous celebrations broke out in Miami’s Little Havana.
Condolences for Castro that flowed in from across the world immediately after his death portrayed him as an iconic political leader of the twentieth century. Leaders from across Latin America, including those who had maintained close ties with Cuba during Castro’s life, released statements after his death. Statements of condolence also came from a wide array of prominent political leaders from other parts of the world, including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Xi Jinping of China, President Francois Hollande of France, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition British Labour Party also voiced their condolences. Some of these statements alluded to the more controversial aspects of Castro’s legacy, while others acknowledged the successes of the Cuban Revolution.
By contrast to the mixed, but rather more positive responses in the rest of the world, reactions to Castro’s death in the United States were especially celebratory. President-elect Donald Trump declared emphatically on his infamous Twitter feed, “Fidel Castro is dead!” before releasing a longer statement in which he referred to Castro as a “brutal dictator” who had oppressed his nation’s people. This viewpoint was shared by other leaders in the Republican Party, including Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom are descended from Cuban émigrés who left the island in the wake of Castro’s revolution. Cubans in the United States, who are heavily concentrated in Florida, have largely supported the Republican Party for decades because of its especially hard line rhetoric against communism more generally, and Castro in particular. However, both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have essentially pursued similar policies towards the island.
Negative views of Castro in the United States are also a consequence of the especially contentious relationship between the tiny Caribbean nation and the superpower of the contemporary world. The United States has maintained an embargo on Cuba for over fifty years because of events that took place in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. In 1962, Cuba was at the forefront of a near nuclear apocalypse during the height of Cold War confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Following the revolution on the island, in which Castro overthrew the U.S.-supported authoritarian regime of President Batista, Cuba allied itself with the Soviet Union. The Kennedy administration in the United States at the time had supported Cuban exiles in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, which Castro’s forces successfully repelled. These events of the early 1960s pitted Fidel Castro against successive United States governments for generations as a bête noir of 10 United States presidents until he passed on the baton of leadership to his brother, Raul Castro, the current Cuban leader.Today, the United States trade blockade against Cuba remains despite nearly universal unfavorable international public opinion. However, President Barack Obama has been gradually normalizing relations with Cuba, culminating in the re-establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 2015, and President Obama’s successful visit to the island earlier this year. President Obama released an especially diplomatic statement on Castro’s death, extending a “hand of friendship to the Cuban people” and acknowledging the “powerful emotions” of Cubans, apparently referring to the raw feelings of both the supporters and the detractors of the deceased leader.
For those on the radical left across the world who oppose imperialism and global capitalism, Castro remains an especially inspirational figure, alongside his compatriot Che Guevara, whose nearly universal image captures an idealistic sense of rebellion and disillusionment with mainstream political thought. Under Castro’s rule, Cuba achieved the enormous feat of near universal coverage of quality healthcare and education, something that remains a struggle for the rest of the Global South, where basic public goods are beyond the grasp of impoverished millions. While the West supported the racist apartheid regime of South Africa, Castro voiced strong opposition, even supporting rebels in the African continent who fought against apartheid and colonialism. Castro also fiercely maintained his island nation’s autonomy, despite the odds of opposing the world’s only superpower, something that became especially difficult after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Having accepted Castro’s achievements, it is also important to recognize his failures on various fronts. Cuba’s revolution was a bloody episode in its history that separated individual Cubans from each other, including members of their own family, based on differences in political ideology. Even within Castro’s own family, his sister, a resident of Miami, has remained his critic. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans escaped the island because of a sense of exclusion from Castro’s vision of the island nation. Despite Castro’s strident anti-racism, structural racism remains, with Afro-Cubans and those of mixed race disadvantaged. Further, although homelessness and extreme poverty of the sort that exists in the rest of the Global South is almost non-existent in Cuba, which is an important achievement, daily life remains challenging for ordinary Cubans. This is partly because of the embargo, but also because of the limitations of Castro’s own policies. There is a lack of consumer goods available, and remittances from Cuban emigrants in the United States keeps the island’s economy afloat. Further, Cuba remains a one party state, and there are constraints on freedom of thought and political expression.
Fidel Castro was a multifaceted political and historical figure with diverging and even contradictory legacies. As a man who evokes deep passions among both his supporters and detractors, it is difficult to assess his legacy objectively and dispassionately. As Cuba attempts to negotiate its place in the world, only time will tell how Castro, someone who has been both demonized and romanticized, will be viewed in the future. Nevertheless, whether reviled or celebrated, Fidel Castro will be remembered as a figure who influenced the lives of millions. •
