Logo: Fidel Castro

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Question SA-2. Here is the text reference (p. 208/5 & 6):

On the positive side Castro can point with pride to the fact that the Revolution removed the class and social barriers that had been maintained since colonial days. Education, health and welfare benefits were for the first time available to all Cubans and were basically free. The corruption symbolized by the casinos, bars and houses of prostitution had disappeared. Cuba was a military power to be respected in the Caribbean, and for a considerable period of time its alliance with the Warsaw Pact checkmated U.S. military attempts to bring his regime down. Finally, Latin Americans of all political stripes acknowledged, and many admired, the way he had stood up to U.S. pressures ranging from plots to invasions to blockades.

On the negative side there have restrictions on freedoms and human rights under a regime whose control is far more totalitarian than the dictatorship that preceded it. Shortages and long waits for basic necessities abound. The average Cuban may not see extremes of rich and poor, but the overall feeling is one of hardship and sacrifice for an ideology which has been abandoned by most of the formerly Marxist states in the world. The respect that many Latin Americans have for Fidel is tinged by bitterness over the attempts that the Cuban government made to export its revolution to other nations via subversion and guerrilla warfare. There is also the reality that many of Cuba's most intelligent, educated and promising citizens have been forced to live outside their own country in a long and seemingly permanent exile.
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