Cuba, Then and Now

1958

A Havana casino.

Image: Francis Miller/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images

"We suspect that overall health-care outcomes would not have been much different given the remarkably low levels of infant mortality in Republican Cuba."
"Since current living standards appear to be below the levels of the late republic, it is hard to visualize any scenario where the republic would not have out-performed the revolutionary economy by a considerable margin in terms of living standards."
Marianne Ward-Peradoza, John Devereux, researchers

By the late 1950s, Cuban drove American cars, owned TVs, watched Hollywood movies and shopped at Woolworth's Department Store [Cuba today]. All the while, though, a revolution brewed. Teresa Eng

These [above] two researchers put together a comprehension picture of social development for Cuba after the Cuban revolution, using data relating to Costa Rica and Argentina for comparison. They calculated that consumption levels in 2000 for Cuba were 52 percent of 1955 levels at a time when Cuba was reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union and suffered a significant loss of support, as a result. Cuba's per-capita consumption by 2007 arrived at 72 percent of its 1955 pre-revolution level.

Cuba was known to be close to the top of development in its geographic region before the revolution. It, in fact, led the region in low infant mortality from 1953 to 1958, according to data gathered by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba specialist and professor emeritus, University of Pittsburgh. As for life expectancy, Cuba was in fourth place in the mid-1950s, advancing to third place from 2005 to 2007. Literacy was high; in the 1950s it stood in fourth place, advancing to second place from 2005 to 2007.

"Cuba probably has the best-educated population in the region, but the considerable investment in human resources is partly lost due to the low wages paid and lack of incentives that force professionals to emigrate or stay but abandon their state work and shift to private non-professional activities that allow them to survive", wrote Mesa-Lago.

Published in the Journal of Economic History in 2012, a research paper found that Cuba lagged significantly behind its counterparts in the region during the rule of Fidel Castro. Roads, railways and hotels were built with U.S. investments, pre-revolution. The per capita income in 1955 was between 50 to 60 percent of western European levels, roughly equal to Italy's per capita income at the time. As a share of gross domestic product, Cuba's consumption was rated fairly high.

September 1958

President Batista's palace in Havana.

Image: Central Press/Getty Images

Income and wealth gaps between the rich and the poor after the revolution were narrowed. There was an expansion, not a new introduction, of free national public education and the same held true for the already-existing free public-health system with the number of rural hospitals increasing from one to 62, a substantial improvement. Cubans enjoy opportunities for regular health check-ups thanks to the emphasis that the Cuban health-care system places on preventive medicine.

But capital formation, industrial production and key measures such as cars per person, for example, saw Cuba falling from the top ranks to last place in terms of GDP, post-revolution. Cuban hospitals are ill-equipped and pharmacies have sparse stock, with antibiotics available only through the black market. Reality reflects that Cuba's revolutionary education and health care were already well established before Fidel Castro came to power. Greater access has been given to the poor.

But another reality that cannot be overlooked is that without resorting to dictatorship or communism, other Latin American countries succeeded in establishing even more dramatic improvements in their societies in the past six decades. Overall living standards, measured by GDP, calorie consumption and allied measures declined notably under Cuba's communist rule.

1944

A cane cutter and his family standing in front of their home.

Image: George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Polarized Similarities and Comradeship

"Since 1980 Cuba has become the most thoroughly militarized nation on earth. According to the authoritative London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Cuban regular army numbers 145,000 men, most of them conscripted privates who serve for three years. They are backed up by at least 110,000 ready reserves, who are trained forty-five days or more annually. This force has been lavishly armed by the Soviet Union and boasts an astonishing 300 T-62 and 650 T-54/55 main battle tanks (MBTs). By way of comparison, Canada, with two and a half times the population, infinitely more wealth, and serious NATO commitments, relies upon a regular army of only 22,500, with 114 antiquated MBTs. Cuba's army also has 1,400 major artillery pieces, 60 light and amphibious tanks, and 650 other armored vehicles, as well as 600 anti-tank guns."
"The Cuban Navy, with 12,000 men, maintains three submarines, two modern guided-missile frigates, and a large number of patrol craft and minesweepers. Canada makes do with an equal number of submarines and twenty-three assorted anti-submarine-warfare vessels; its navy has only 10,000 men. The Cuban Air Force (whose previous chief, General Rafael del Pino, defected to the United States in 1987) is a very potent one. Its strength is 18,500 men(including the Air Defense Command), with 250 combat aircraft, mostly MiG-21, -23, and -27 models. Significantly, it possesses only seven troop-carrying Tupolev TU-154 transports, severely restricting Castro's ability to intervene on his own. Canada, with 23,050 airmen, has only three fighter squadrons, or roughly forty-five planes, to defend its skies. The Cuban military machine is considerably more powerful than that of any other Latin American nation-including Brazil, which has a population of 142 million, fourteen times Cuba's."
John Hoyt Williams, The Atlantic, 1988

"Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation." 
"While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for "el Comandante."
"I know my father was very proud to call him a friend ..."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Montreal Gazette-Pierre Obendrauf    Justin Trudeau gets a hug from Cuban President Fidel Castro at the arrival in front of Notre Dame Church prior to the funeral of Pierre Trudeau.

"El Comandante", that benevolent tyrant, didn't mind imposing economic hardships on his beloved Cubans. Cuba was and remains a fairly impoverished nation, but when it came to lavishing state funds on arms and a huge standing army disproportionate both to its population and its treasury, there was no question that was the priority in decision-making. Justin Trudeau loves describing himself as a liberal-progressive, his beaming countenance speaks of himself as a dedicated feminist, he argues on behalf of the LGBTQ2 community, he plans to legalize marijuana in Canada, he is a flower-power poster child.

But this man whose experience as a private school drama coach and a lecturer on snowboarding, both of which certainly prepared him to administer the affairs of a nation, a man who demanded lavish fees from charitable organizations as a public speaker coasting on his father's name-recognition burnishing his aura of the dauphin of a royal family, comes by his attraction to power in any guise in which it presents itself fairly naturally. He has in the past expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party government's ability to turn its economy "on a dime". As for the Iranian theocracy, there is the matter of moral relativism.

He and his brother view the Castro dynasty as a gift to the world.

Where Canada's previous, Conservative-led government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper diplomatically condemned Russia for its Ukraine-Crimea outrages, and Iran for its terrorism affiliation and nuclear aspirations, Mr. Trudeau, spurred by his great store of global wisdom and his belief that "sunny ways" can win over the most grudging, malevolent tyrant, is opening doors to renewing diplomatic relations with Iran, with China, with Russia to restore them to Canada's good graces and trade opportunism.

Castro visits Vietnam.

Fidel Castro may be Justin Trudeau's idea of a great man, a revolutionary of distinction, a leader of sturdy idealism, a romantic personage and an orator unmatched but by U.S. President Barack Obama, his other very good friend on the opposite spectrum more closely aligned to Trudeau's own, but that Castro was an unrepentant tyrant who turned his countrymen into guns-for-hire was undeniable. Cuba is famous for its doctors sent abroad to give medical aid anywhere it is needed, but the polar opposite was also true, that the Cuban military was busy in Africa and the Middle East, training and fighting  and doing what Castro defined to himself as a world of good.

A Cuban tank crew in Angola in 1987. Tens of thousands of Castro’s soldiers fought in that country’s civil war during the 1970s and 80s

Castro dispatched a Cuban mission to Ghana in 1961, and two years later its military forces were in Algeria. African nations became the stage for a thousand soldiers and military advisers by 1966 to strut the Cuban expertise in guerrilla warfare. Cuban combat units fought in Guinea-Bissau against Portuguese colonial rule. Eritrean rebels in their secessionist war against Ethiopia warranted training instructors among them. South Yemen saw the appearance of hundreds of Cuban military, and Dhofai guerrillas destabilizing Oman were also trained by the Cuban military.

Hundreds of Cuban tank crews took part in the 1973 Arab Israel War.

Castro send 500 Cuban tank commanders to Syria where they died fighting the Yom Kippur War launched by combined Arab states against Israel. Castro must have viewed it as an imperative that its combat troops not disappoint their oppressed Arab friends in the Middle East when Syria and Egypt plotted that very special surprise for Israel, an attack invasion in 1973, fighting alongside Iraq, Morocco, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. Why station Cuban troops in the Middle East in support of Arabs fighting colonialism and ignore the presence of a Western intruder, after all? Which required that 4,000 combat troops along with tank commanders, helicopter crews be co-located with those battling that symbol of Western imperialism.

Castro and Hafez al-Assad pictured attending a 1979 Non-Aligned Countries Summit meeting [Getty]

What, in all of this history, is there not to elicit the most profound admiration and gratitude for the presence in Cuba of a dedicated revolutionary, a protector of the underdog, an unerring guide to the future of the Cuban people, where education, medicine, and a society equal in its desperate need for the most basic goods to help make a life of general privation tolerable, worshipped its leader who sent off his conscripts to all parts of the world languishing in need of the Cuban military to define their futures.

And, of course, led countless tens of thousands of other Cubans to set off in whatever would float, to abandon their beloved country to Castro and his minions, while they either drowned in the effort, or made a new life for themselves and their families in the United States which gave them safe harbor. Miami is Cuba, Cuba is not Miami. Contenders for the presidential election were represented by Cuban-Americans. Castro and all that he represented was scorned and hated by Cuban-Americans; how very unreasonable of them, but there is simply no accounting the manner in which people make their peculiar alliances....