What Bernie doesn’t know

Or maybe he does…

When the candidate for the presidency of the world’s most powerful country, Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” points out that the social welfare programs introduced under Castro’s regime were “redeeming” and that “teaching people to read and write is a good thing” (…) he may not know or care what the Cuban people suffered in return.

Perhaps no one has told Bernie about the political imprisonment, torture and human rights violations committed by the Castro regime, that amounts to 38,254 people.

Perhaps no one has told Bernie that although it is very difficult to know the exact numbers, the Miami-based organization Cuba Archive points out that in the more than half century of “Revolution” 3,116 people were shot, another 1,166 were executed extrajudicially, and more than 2,000 people were sent to prison or to forced labor camps because they were homosexuals.

Perhaps no one has told Bernie about the multiple human rights violations during the years of the Castro regime and that if great advances were made in medicine, it was because they experimented with human beings.

Applauding Fidel Castro’s Cuban regime for its health care system is EXACTLY the same as applauding the Nazi regime for its medical advances. Wasn’t it the Nazis who brought conditions like “Asperger’s Syndrome” to the light of science? Or how about “Wegner’s Granulomatosis”, or “Reiter’s Syndrome”? To name a few.

Perhaps Mr. Sanders, who praises the health and literacy glories of Castro’s Cuba, has forgotten, doesn’t know or no one has told him about Fidel Castro’s firing squads, Fidel Castro’s killing of Cuban women and children, Fidel Castro’s shooting down of a U.S. civilian airplane, Fidel Castro’s Cuban political prisoners, Fidel Castro’s Cuban labor camps, also known as UMAPs, about Fidel Castro’s religious repression against Cubans, about Fidel Castro’s constant aggression, torture, imprisonment and violence against homosexuals, about how Fidel Castro restricted the movement of Cubans on the island, about Fidel Castro’s foreign interventions throughout Latin America, about Fidel Castro’s spy networks and of course… let’s not forget how Fidel Castro’s “revolution” separated thousands of Cuban families.

For The Yucatan Times
José E. Urioste Palomeque
Merida Yucatan, Mexico.
February 25, 2020