Fidel Castro kicked the mafia out of Cuba. He stopped the bribery of Cuban officials by companies. So what did he do that was wrong?

Question

Fidel Castro kicked the mafia out of Cuba.  He stopped the bribery of Cuban officials by companies.  So what did he do that was wrong?

Answer 1

He made the U.S. mad.  That's basically it.  Except for a week during October, 1962, Castro's Cuba was never a credible threat to us, and even then that was more Khruschev, rather than Castro.  The entire situation between the U.S. and Cuba since 1959 has been the U.S. taking a bad situation and making it worse, mainly  because of stubborn pride.



It's my opinion that if we'd have played it right and not been so needlessly paranoid and ideologically pigheaded over communism, then Castro would have weaned himself from the USSR, become more aligned with the U.S. as something he could at least coexist with if not actually become an ally, and Cuba would indeed be prosperous--and with time, they would have eventually abandoned communism on their own.

Answer 2

He didn't want the competition. 



Like most communist dictators, Castro made himself and his government the 'kingpin' of an international criminal organization backed by legal codes, 'authorized' force and the appearance of legitimacy. There is no greater evil than when law merges with criminality and rules a domain as though it still supports law and justice.



At least we know when the mafia is operating and can distinguish it from law and order, punishing any obvious harm or missteps it takes while seeking to 'recruit' its members into truly legitimate lifestyles. Of course, the goal of the mafia is the same as communism, corrupting all law and legal mechanisms until they are only tools in its hand and no longer a threat as competition. Left unchecked, this is what it will naturally do.



In Cuba, the mafia was being used to transition the people into legitimate capitalism from tribalism, so since the operations were contained to an island and America was already successfully assimilating many of the crime families into legitimate society on its mainland with offers of control over entire business sectors in exchange for government oversight and the end of criminal operations, it was a serious threat to communism to allow them to continue down this path. Cuba was not far away from being a free, law-abiding and prosperous island nation dedicated to capitalist ideals.



Why was it 'bad' for Castro to remove the mafia and install layers of soldiers, government agents, 'secret' police and local police forces and oppress or kill anyone in Cuba who refused to join any of these?



There was no chance of liberty or capitalism advancing in Cuba after that. He was so unyielding that his own people couldn't conduct basic commerce with anyone but other communist nations and much of that commerce was blockaded from reaching them because it required using waters controlled by the free world.



That made for great propaganda against the 'evil capitalist aggressors' but left the Cuban people living in inextricable poverty, using and creatively reusing 1950's technology while only Castro himself and his inner circle lived like royalty on illegally smuggled goods. How was that any different than the mafia, other than the hopelessness of knowing that there was no way to 'transition' to liberty or actual legitimacy or ever join the free world and advance?



Of course, they could cling to the pipe dream of communist world domination finally 'liberating' everyone, making all goods and services 'free' for everyone and all men 'equal' with no crime, suffering or evil capitalists to worry about; that is, once government controlled everything and its leaders suddenly became 'good' people. 



That dream was tougher to sell the weaker communism became, especially after news leaked through the strict Cuban censorship about the fall of the Soviet Union and China's desperate need to begin opening up to capitalist nations just to keep from following the Soviets.

Answer 3

Whatever he did wrong died with him. Our failure to reach out to Cuba is simply stupid foreign policy.

Answer 4

What W.T. Has offered is historically truthful.

Fidel replaced one Mob for another. If you think

what Fidel did was so good. Go to Cuba,

Get up on a soap box and talk about the government. You will be in a Cuban prison

within the hour.

Answer 5

All Castro did was replace the existing mafia with communist mafia and replace corrupt, incompetent Batista officials with corrupt, incompetent Castro officials.  All that plus mass murder and torture under Castro. 

Answer 6

He was a great man and is responsible for making Cuba the industrial giant that it is today. The people of Cuba enjoy the freedoms and privileges that Americans enjoy  all while having first class health care and social benefit programs. The education system in Cuba is second to none and advanced degrees in raft building are in much demand. Everyone wants to be like Cuba where they have cool cars and free concerts on Saturdays. It is an awesome place and that is why Bernie wants the US to become like Cuba. MALC. Make America Like Cuba!

Answer 7

Read on:



Counting victims of the Castro regime: Nearly 11,000 to date



From a 2005 Wall Street Journal article by Mary Anastasia O’Grady “Counting Castro’s Victims”:



The Cuba Archive project (www.cubaarchive.org) has already begun the heavy lifting by attempting to document the loss of life attributable to revolutionary zealotry. The project, based in Chatham, N.J., covers the period from May 1952 — when the constitutional government fell to Gen. Fulgencio Batista — to the present. It has so far verified the names of 9,240 10,723 victims of the Castro regime and the circumstances of their deaths [through 2016]. Archive researchers meticulously insist on confirming stories of official murder from two independent sources.



Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau says the total number of victims could be higher by a factor of 10. Project Vice President Armando Lago, a Harvard-trained economist, has spent years studying the cost of the revolution and he estimates that almost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel’s revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency.Cuba Archive finds that some 5,600 Cubans have died in front of firing squads and another 1,200 in “extrajudicial assassinations.” Che Guevara was a gleeful executioner at the infamous La Cabaña Fortress in 1959 where, under his orders, at least 151 Cubans were lined up and shot. Children have not been spared. Of the 94 minors whose deaths have been documented by Cuba Archive, 22 died by firing squad and 32 in extrajudicial assassinations.



Great huh?

Answer 8

I am sure the thousands of Cuban's living in Florida could give a list of reasons what was so wrong with Fidel, Bernie can kiss Florida good bye in winning that state 

Answer 9

Please tell me this is a joke. It’s not possible you are THAT stupid.

Answer 10

Why not ask all the people that risked their lives to escape?

Answer 11

He overthrew a prosperous nation and threw it into extreme poverty and jailed anyone who dared to speak up about it. Cubans were willing to die on a homemade raft just to escape that hell hole Fidel created.