Castro Quotes

“So if the ending of apartheid is now universally agreed to be a good thing, and Cuba played such a central role, how is it still possible to have such differing views of Castro and Mandela and of Cuba and South Africa? The short answer is that the mainstream media has been so successful in distorting basic historical facts that many are so blinded by Cold War hangovers that they are entirely incapable of critical thought, but the other answer is rather more Machiavellian. The reality is that apartheid did not die, and thus the reason so many white conservatives now love Mandela is essentially that he let their cronies "get away with it". The hypocritical worship of black freedom fighters once they are no longer seen to pose a danger or are safely dead - Martin Luther King might be the best example of this - is one of the key ways of maintaining a liberal veneer over what in reality is brutal intent.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“My response to those who still try to justify Castro’s tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity.”
― Armando Valladares, Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag

“While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.”
― Brin-Jonathan Butler, The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba

“He wants their sexuality to be an equalizer; he wants to focus on the discrimination they face in common. But Simon can conceal his sexuality. Robert can’t conceal his blackness, and almost everyone in the Castro is white.”
― Chloe Benjamin, The Immortalists

“In consequence, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims before America:

the right of peasants to land;

the right of the worker to the fruit of his labor;

the right of children to receive education;

the right of the sick to receive medical and hospital care;

the right of the young to work;

the right of students to receive free instruction, practical and scientific;

the right of Negroes and Indians to 'a full measure of human dignity';

the right of woman to civil, social and political equality;

the right of the aged to secure old age;

the right of intellectuals, artists and scientists to fight through their work for a better world;

the right of States to nationalize imperialist monopolies as a means of recovering national wealth and resources;

the right of countries to engage freely in trade with all other countries of the world;

the right of nations to full sovereignty;

the right of people to convert their fortresses into schools and to arm their workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Negroes, Indians, women, the young, the old, all the oppressed and exploited; that they may better defend, with their own hands, their rights and their future.

”
― Fidel Castro, The Declarations of Havana

“Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.”
― Brin-Jonathan Butler, The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba

“Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.”
― Armando Valladares, Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag

“Operation Pedro Pan
It was like a raging wildfire that the Radio Swan story spread throughout Cuba! Many affluent Cubans, convinced that their children would actually be sent to Moscow for political indoctrination, panicked and sent their children to Florida. In all, as many as 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to Miami, under a program named “Operation Peter Pan.” During the next two years, British Airways, under charter, flew many of the children to the United States by way of Kingston, Jamaica.
The unaccompanied children started arriving in Miami in October of 1960. They arrived in waves, with the children of the more affluent families coming first. Their parents trusted their friends and family in the United States to take care of their children. Since the Castro régime was having economic difficulties very few people thought that it would last as long as it did. Most of them still believed that Castro was just a passing phenomenon until a counter-revolution would depose him.”
― Captain Hank Bracker

“But this is how it is with most of the men in the Castro – men suspended in time as if in amber, men who don’t want to look back.”
― Chloe Benjamin, The Immortalists

“Many intellectuals in the Western world defended the half-century (1959–2008) dictatorship of Fidel Castro of Cuba by noting, for example, under Castro’s rule the literacy rate in Cuba rose to a hundred percent. However, Cubans were not allowed to read anything forbidden by the communist regime. In the view of Castro’s defenders, it is better to be unfree and literate than to be free and illiterate. The Torah’s view, however, would seem to be the opposite; it is better to be free and illiterate, just as it is better to eat a poor man’s food and be free than to eat a rich man’s food as a slave.
Furthermore, the very concept of freedom carries with it the possibility of improvement of one’s circumstances. The illiterate are free to learn to read; the poor are free to work, retain the fruits of their labors, and improve their lot in life—perhaps even become wealthy, as so many have in the freedom of the Western, Bible-based world.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“6) The National General Assembly of the people of Cuba - confident that it is expressing the general opinion of the peoples of Latin America - affirms that democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy; with discrimination against the Negro; with disturbances by the Ku Klux Klan; nor with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenbergs to their death against the protests of a shocked world including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII.”
― Fidel Castro, The Declarations of Havana

“The ruling classes are entrenched in all positions of state power. They monopolize the teaching field. They dominate all means of mass communication. They have infinite financial resources. Theirs is a power which the monopolies and the ruling few will defend by blood and fire with the strength of their police and their armies.”
― Fidel Castro, The Declarations of Havana

“By the time the Freedom Flights, to use the US description, came to an end, more than 260,000 Cubans had been airlifted to the United States, every one of them registered by the Swiss before they left Cuba.”
― Clare O'Dea, The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths

“January 8, 1959; Castro enters Havana
On January 8, 1959, Fidel made his grand entrance into Havana. With his son Fidelito at his side, he rode on top of a Sherman tank to Camp Columbia, where he gave the first of his long, rambling, difficult-to-endure speeches. It was broadcast on radio and television for the entire world to witness. For the Cubans it was what they had waited for! During the speech, smiling Castro asked Camilo Cienfuegos, “How am I doing?” and the catch phrase “Voy bien, Camilo” was born.”
― Captain Hank Bracker

“Attempts on Castro’s Life
According to Castro’s former bodyguard, Fabián Escalante, and Ramiro Valdés, head of the Cuban G-2 secret service, there were a total of 638 attempts to kill the Cuban leader, including the attempt by Marita Lorenz when she concealed the poison capsules in a jar of cold cream, before bringing them into her hotel room. Another time a fungus-impregnated scuba outfit was prepared, expecting that Fidel would wear it. This was followed by an exploding cigar attempt. Still another time, the CIA supposedly impregnated some of Castro’s favorite cigars with botulin, but they never got to him. Cigars as a vehicle to kill Castro were abandoned, when he gave up smoking in 1985.”
― Captain Hank Bracker

“There is now a museum near Havana, commemorating the “Campaña Nacional de Alphabetization en Cuba” in La Ciudad Libertad or the “City of Liberty.” This museum is situated in Fulgencio Batista’s former office, in the western suburbs of Havana. The museum contains many thank-you letters that were sent to Fidel Castro with gratitude. These letters were also used by UNESCO to gauge the success of the 1961 literacy campaign. Many of these letters are now on display and can be seen along with photographs, taken around the island during that year. Additional materials including the records of all 100,000 volunteers are also proudly kept on file here.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"

“Nelson Mandela was already a name synonymous with freedom and wisdom, justice and principle, by the time I took my first steps. However, it was not until over a decade later, when in my late teens I started to do a little reading and research of my own, that I even heard mention of Cuba's contribution to anti-apartheid. This obvious omission, along with the simplistic narratives that surrounded Mandela and Castro, was a valuable lesson to me about how the powerful craft history and news media to their own ends.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“No existe ninguna obligación moral de respaldar a alguien que está haciendo del mundo un lugar peor. Todo lo contrario.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“Many political and religious doctrines have followed one another throughout history, but the modus operandi with which new dictators take and maintain power remains esentially the same: to terrorize the people and keep them in the dark.”
― Romain Gagnon, SO MAN CREATED GOD IN HIS OWN IMAGE: The Science of Happiness

“According to Transparency International's 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, Chavez's Bolivarian revolution created a country that ranked 164th out of the 178 nations surveyed -placing Venezuela below Haiti in perceptions of corruption. Unfairness in the Venezuelan public sector was at the level of Congo, Guinea, and Kyrgyzstan. Unfairness, of course, is the precise opposite of equality.”
― Avi Tuschman, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us