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As probably most people know Fidel Castro passed away and I find the reactions to his death interesting. Perhaps evenmore interesting then that are the reactions to the reactions. Lets just say I think it provides an interesting time to comment on the difficulties we as contemporaries have in objectively judging certain polarizing public figures and by just about any standard Castro fits that shoe all too well.
Lets face it. He was absolutely hated by the United States, both for nationalizing Cuban resources that the US made a lot of money from during the preceeding Bautista regime, and for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The CIA tried to kill him, Kennedy sponsored an invasion against him, and US immigration policy is well, lets just say "special" where Cuba is concerned. His human rights record is dismal, and the Cuban economy is not booming by any standard.
And yet its possibly to see why he's held in high regard. In an era of Imperial America he was not only willing to stand up to the US, but he was able to do so successfully. Education and health care for Cubans rose in ways that likely would have been unthinkable under a pro-US regime, and his use of health care assistance as a foreign policy tool made Cuba an attractive friend to many places that found themselves on the wrong side of the US. The fact his Cuba was able to do it under an embargo that was of questionable merits in the past few decades only enhanced that stature.
So, how should historians see him? I think he will not be seen as hero or villain but rather as a complex man of a complex time, where things are not easily seen in the terms of black and white that people demand. I also don't think the people of my generation and older will get the whole picture as well because his final chapters have not yet been written. Raoul Castro is still alive, and even were he to die tomorrow the post Castro era would be a time of complexities and shades of grey to rival the times of their lives.
We should let that era come to pass and play out before we judge.
Lets face it. He was absolutely hated by the United States, both for nationalizing Cuban resources that the US made a lot of money from during the preceeding Bautista regime, and for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The CIA tried to kill him, Kennedy sponsored an invasion against him, and US immigration policy is well, lets just say "special" where Cuba is concerned. His human rights record is dismal, and the Cuban economy is not booming by any standard.
And yet its possibly to see why he's held in high regard. In an era of Imperial America he was not only willing to stand up to the US, but he was able to do so successfully. Education and health care for Cubans rose in ways that likely would have been unthinkable under a pro-US regime, and his use of health care assistance as a foreign policy tool made Cuba an attractive friend to many places that found themselves on the wrong side of the US. The fact his Cuba was able to do it under an embargo that was of questionable merits in the past few decades only enhanced that stature.
So, how should historians see him? I think he will not be seen as hero or villain but rather as a complex man of a complex time, where things are not easily seen in the terms of black and white that people demand. I also don't think the people of my generation and older will get the whole picture as well because his final chapters have not yet been written. Raoul Castro is still alive, and even were he to die tomorrow the post Castro era would be a time of complexities and shades of grey to rival the times of their lives.
We should let that era come to pass and play out before we judge.
