La atroz obra de Fidel Castro, en su centenario

Since 1959, Fidel Castro's communist dictatorship in Cuba has brought oppression and misery to the nation. The centennial of Castro's birth in 1926 marks a critical juncture, as the brutal regime may be nearing its end due to the will of the Cuban people. Initially, Castro promised free elections, freedom of the press, and restoration of the 1940 Constitution. However, within just two years of his triumph in Havana, he proclaimed a socialist revolution and nationalized the entire Cuban economy by 1968.

The Marxist ideology inherently leads to two outcomes: political dictatorship and economic misery. Silvio Rodríguez, a famous Cuban singer, has expressed his desire for a gun to defend Cuba from imperialist aggression, a common patriotic excuse Castro and his followers have used to mask their excesses. Carlos Malamud of Clarín in Buenos Aires laments that at almost 80 years old, Rodríguez, instead of advocating for the rights of young people suffering under bureaucratic and inefficient management, now calls for a gun to defend the revolutionary gerontocracy.

The idealized revolution was, in fact, a brutal repression and widespread poverty in a country that led the world in well-being indicators before 1959. The blame for this deterioration lies squarely on the shoulders of Castro's regime, not the U.S. embargo. Although the embargo does not affect a large portion of Cuba's economy, it is still detrimental as any interference in free trade is harmful.

Vincent Geloso, a professor at George Mason University, quantified this effect, concluding that the embargo is merely a scapegoat responsible for only 10% of Cuba's economic precarity.

As repression and misery intensify, Cubans are finally reacting. In July 2021, thousands of young Cubans took to the streets demanding freedom with the cry of "Country or death!" In response, the regime unleashed brutal repression, but this time it only fueled the largest exodus in the country's history. Between 2022 and 2023, Cuba lost 20% of its population.

Gina Montaner explains that the novelty is not the regime's willingness to change, but rather that they are at the end of a dead-end road with no exit. With no foreign aid, primarily from Russia and Venezuela, and with nearly 90% of the population living in extreme poverty, Cuba's parasitic state has no one left to feed off of. Gina Montaner writes in El Mundo: "Cuban state vampirism has run out of prey; there are groans in the dead of night, and fires are set by a people who can take it no longer."