![\"Luchar](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/c\/c7\/Luchar_contra_lo_imposible.jpg\/1280px-Luchar_contra_lo_imposible.jpg\" "\\"By")
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There has a lot of talk about Fidel Castro this week after his death.\u00a0 What you think about him and his legacy seems to depend on which side of the political spectrum you lie…\u00a0 No one is all bad and living in Cuba seems to have its pluses as well as a large number of minuses.\u00a0 I will try to cut across the two in an even handed way.<\/p>\n
The first thing to say that Castro was a dictator.\u00a0 He like so many others before (and to come) of the right and left promised to introduce democracy and didn’t.\u00a0 We have to face the fact that if you opposed his regime at the very least you would get in a degree of trouble.\u00a0 More recently his oppression of lesbian and gays has come to light.\u00a0 In addition the economy has never done very well and there is even under communism a lot of poverty in Cuba.\u00a0 Added to this as I remember Castro got involved in a lot of wars in a lot of other places including in Angola where up to 30,000 Cubans came into conflict with amongst others South African troops.\u00a0 For many on the left this is OK since its not yankee imperialism.\u00a0\u00a0 And of course by accepting nuclear missiles on his territory he brought the world to the brink of nuclear war*.\u00a0 He could not have been ignorant of what he was doing.<\/p>\n
However there are some plus points which many on the right also seem to find difficult.\u00a0 Firstly the regime that Castro ousted (that of the aptly named Batista) was a terrible one that oppressed the poor and had links to the mob.\u00a0 Castro at the very least was no worse, just different, or at least no more despotic.\u00a0 Castro also invested heavily in Health and Education.\u00a0 The health service was very good.\u00a0 So good that many other countries drew on it.\u00a0 It also had a pharmaceutical development arm and developed a vaccine against Meningitis B before anyone else.\u00a0 Where I previously worked we had a Cuban on secondment from one the pharmaceutical companies.\u00a0 She was very competent but just didn’t want to talk about politics.\u00a0 A 100% literacy rate is not to be sniffed at either and these services were free, bizarrely in many communist countries they aren’t.<\/p>\n
What is of most interest in the transition movement and this blog is what happened in the early 1990’s.\u00a0 Cuba had a peak oil moment.\u00a0 Cuba was massively propped up by the Soviet Union.\u00a0 This included oil of which Cuba has no indigenous production.\u00a0 The taps were turned off almost overnight.\u00a0 Cuba had been given the oil and could not afford to import it.\u00a0 Unfortunately what happened next works best in a dictatorship.\u00a0 Readers of this blog know that almost all of modern life including agriculture is heavily dependent on oil.\u00a0 No oil no food.\u00a0 There was a danger of starvation.\u00a0 So the Cuban government ordered food to be grown everywhere including in cities.\u00a0 BBC “Gardeners World” went to have a look and at least on documentary film has been made about it.\u00a0 Given the ruinous state of the economy many city buildings (many very beautiful) are shells and are being used to grow food in.\u00a0 The food is organic (no pesticides).\u00a0 The Cubans have done a remarkable job in showing it is possible to live without much oil for agriculture and that for all Cuba’s problems and Castro’s shortcomings is a real legacy<\/p>\n
Neil<\/p>\n
* One astounding fact that came to light this week was the tension was diffused by Robert Kennedy and the Soviet ambassador having a meeting at New York restaurant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There has a lot of talk about Fidel Castro this week after his death.\u00a0 What you think about him and his legacy seems to depend on which side of the political spectrum you lie…\u00a0 No one is all bad and … Continue reading