Fidel Castro was the Cuban dictator since the1959, after he overthrew the previous dictator Fulgencio Batista! While Batista was a truly corrupt ruler, it wasn't until Fidel Castro took over when thousands upon thousands of Cubans ran for their lives. Most of them escaped to the USA (being that Florida was only 90 miles away) while others escaped to Spain, Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries.
Fidel Castro came with the agenda of ending class inequality, but it came with massive confiscations of private property. Those who disagreed (even those who were former supporters) were tortured and killed!
From the article published in the Miami Herald right after his death
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article117191773.html
The history of Latin America is replete with the names of dictators who ruled by fear and violence, including some of Castro’s contemporaries, from Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay to Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. But Fidel Castro outdid them all because his regime was the most oppressive — and most enduring. Petty tyrants like Peru’s Alberto Fujimori and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez came and went. Castro endured.The painful price that his suffocating tyranny exacted on the Cuban people is impossible to measure, but safe to say that there is hardly a single freedom recognized by civilized countries around the world that Fidel Castro did not violate.In one of the great paradoxes of the era, Castro successfully posed as a champion of the downtrodden around the world, even as he trampled on the rights of downtrodden Cubans. His many admirers abroad chose to ignore, and illogically justify, his denial of freedom to the people of Cuba even as they fought for the right to enjoy civil liberties and freedoms at home.Revolutionary violence and human-rights abuses were there from the start. First came the summary executions of those who supported the Fulgencio Batista regime that Castro overthrew — and later of counter-revolutionaries, many of whom had fought against Batista at Castro’s side. Castro’s firing squads executed upwards of 18,000 Cubans. Others were sent to unendurably wretched prisons to serve 20-plus years.This laid the groundwork for the regime’s machinery of repression. Its diabolical aim: to instill absolute obedience through fear. Gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, outspoken Catholics and those deemed anti-social for disagreeing with Castro doctrine were sent to labor camps for “reeducation.’’Later, mobs known as Rapid Response Brigades berated, hurled rocks at and assaulted Cubans leaving during the Mariel boatlift. They did the same to regime critics. State security agents infiltrated, divided and destroyed dissident organizations. They psychologically and physically tortured countless individuals who had been denounced as threats to the regime.From the beginning, many Cubans chose to flee rather than to tolerate the lack of freedom as Castro effectively turned Cuba from a nation of grateful immigrants into a country of desperate emigrants. In Miami-Dade County alone, the population either born in Cuba or descended from Cuban immigrants in 2010 was 856,000, with some estimates of the worldwide diaspora at 3 million. In effect, Castro changed the face of our community forever.
Because Fidel Castro talked a good game about ending socio-economic equality, many left-wingers around the world thought he was a hero! They thought of him as a "guy who stood to the American empire", even though he was just a proxy of the Soviet empire!
He talked about bringing racial equality to Cuban nevermind that he overthrew the previous dictator who was partly of African ancestry. Castro was a son of Spanish immigrants. So in other words, a descendant of European immigrants replaced a leader with some African ancestry! Doesn't that sound like Donald Trump replacing Barack Obama!
Yes, Fidel Castro sent troops and moral support to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa! But it seemed that Castro's support was more to do with Cold War politics than anything else! Sadly, the USA supported any government claiming to be anti-communist, desperate for allies against the communist Soviet empire. So the USA supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, as well as supported ruthless dictators in Chile, Philippines, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and more -- all in the name of "fighting communism". Because the anti-apartheid movement was going against the ally of the US, Fidel Castro saw a public relations opportunity and supported the African National Congress (ANC), an anti-apartheid organization. But because ANC accepted the support of Fidel Castro, many hard-line foreign policy hawks in the USA (ie. Dick Cheney, Jesse Helms) viewed the ANC as "communists". Well, after apartheid ended, the ANC's leader Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, and didn't rule like a communist at all! The country was still open to capitalism, and more importantly, became a land of political freedom for all!
Meahwhile, some left-wingers claim that Castro increased literacy rates and health care in Cuba.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/stop-praising-castro-for-health-and-education-advances/article/2608334?custom_click=rss
And to the question of Cuban healthcare, it's actually quite good – if you're lucky enough to get it.
There are three tiers to Cuba's healthcare system, according to National Review's Jay Nordlinger.
"The first is for foreigners who come to Cuba specifically for medical care. This is known as "medical tourism." The tourists pay in hard currency, which provides oxygen to the regime. And the facilities in which they are treated are First World: clean, well supplied, state-of-the-art," he wrote, citing Jaime Suchlicki of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
Nordlinger continued:
The foreigners-only facilities do a big business in what you might call vanity treatments: Botox, liposuction, and breast implants. Remember, too, that there are many separate, or segregated, facilities on Cuba. People speak of "tourism apartheid." For example, there are separate hotels, separate beaches, separate restaurants — separate everything. As you can well imagine, this causes widespread resentment in the general population. The second health-care system is for Cuban elites — the Party, the military, official artists and writers, and so on. In the Soviet Union, these people were called the "nomenklatura."'
And their system, like the one for medical tourists, is top-notch. Then there is the real Cuban system, the one that ordinary people must use — and it is wretched. Testimony and documentation on the subject are vast. Hospitals and clinics are crumbling. Conditions are so unsanitary, patients may be better off at home, whatever home is. If they do have to go to the hospital, they must bring their own bedsheets, soap, towels, food, light bulbs — even toilet paper. And basic medications are scarce. In Sicko, even sophisticated medications are plentiful and cheap. In the real Cuba, finding an aspirin can be a chore. And an antibiotic will fetch a fortune on the black market.
[…]
The equipment that doctors have to work with is either antiquated or nonexistent. Doctors have been known to reuse latex gloves — there is no choice. When they travel to the island, on errands of mercy, American doctors make sure to take as much equipment and as many supplies as they can carry. One told the Associated Press, "The [Cuban] doctors are pretty well trained, but they have nothing to work with. It's like operating with knives and spoons."
