Fidel Castro, with his brother Raul seated next to him, at his first press conference in Havana July 27, since resuming the duties of Prime Minister of Cuba.
Credit: AP Photo. It was the beginning of 57 years of rule. But these changes came at an overwhelming price. Private business became a thing of the past. Public protest, the free press, and political opposition were brutally suppressed.
And free elections became a distant memory. As the years went on and Fidel aligned himself more and more closely with the Soviet Union, Cuba became not only economically dependent on the fate of the USSR, but embargoed and shunned by its enemies, like the United States. The U. Over 1, were taken prisoner, and another were killed in the conflict, which lasted less than 24 hours.
The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly results in nuclear war. Meanwhile, Fidel was using his relationship with the Soviet Union to bolster his military. In , an American spy plane caught sight of a Soviet nuclear missile being installed on the island. After a tense, two-week-long standoff, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove nukes from the island in an exchange for a promise that the U.
In private, the nations also agreed that the U. When you think that the wall fell in '89, that the Soviet Union unraveled 25 years ago, and the Cubans went through a very tough time, that special period when they didn't have that financial support that kept Castro in power for such a very long period of time.
How did he do it? It's an island. You know, they could control an enormous amount because it was an island. I think for that. I think the power of his personality was a big part of it. But as Bill said, also, that he did — you know, they did make some pretty significant changes socially, so there were a lot of true believers there for a long time.
I will tell you the last time I was there, which was the last time they let me in, which was the mid-'90s, there was an awful lot of people who had been believers in the revolution who finally said, "Enough is enough. And so, would I have predicted 20 years hence that they would still be in power? That is pretty surprising. Bill, what about that. What do we know what the Cuban people think right now about the Castro regime?
The older generation, people over 60, who remember the old regime and who grew up in the s and even in the '70s, when there was a lot of enthusiasm for the revolution and when the economy was doing better, they tend to have a lot of affection still for Fidel Castro and Raul Castro.
And in the few public opinion polls that have been done on the island by outsiders, that generation is still supportive. But the younger generation is badly disaffected. These are people who grew up in the special period when the economy was a disaster. And for them, the revolution means privation. And a lot of them don't see a lot of future for themselves in Cuba, and that's why so many of them are leaving. Carla, you know, it's remarkable to me, this was a man who was the longest in power of any 20th century ruler, except for monarchs.
And I think my question to you is then, what do you think his legacy may be now, beyond his ability to stay in power? He said in April in his farewell address that he says, "Cuban communism's legacy will live on. I think that's sort of delusional.
Eventually, it will unravel. I mean, in the world of the Internet, even being an island, you cannot be that separated. And as Bill said, this generation, they want out. They want it to be over with.
They don't want that level of privation. And they certainly don't want to be cut off from the rest of the world there. You know, there were changes that took place — educational changes, health care changes — you know, it's a different country, certainly, than it was under Batista. But, you know, the joke went on for too long. Even as Castro launched drives that were unprecedented in Latin America to rapidly improve literacy and to train thousands of doctors, his rule distinguished itself as a repressive system that punished virtually all forms of opposition, they say.
Castro signaled his determination to brook no dissent almost immediately after taking power in He eliminated hundreds of members of the toppled government of Fulgencio Batista in a series of show trials and summary executions. When faced with an international outcry over the executions, Castro gave an uncompromising public answer. We are executing murderers and they deserve it. Over the following decades, Castro devised a system in which executions for political activity were rare but imprisonment, harassment, and intimidation were commonplace.
HRW says that in , during a period of heightened repression, 75 human rights activists and other critics of the government were tried behind closed doors and accused of being "mercenaries" of the United States -- Castro's declared archenemy. According to a report by HRW , thousands of dissidents continue to be jailed in Cuba each year. The report says that the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an independent human rights group that the government views as illegal, received more than 6, reports of arbitrary detentions from January through October The large number of dissidents who are routinely detained or jailed comes despite some highly visible prisoner releases in recent years.
One notable release was agreed in December , when a detente was announced between Havana and Washington. In response to U. President Barack Obama's call for greater political freedom on Cuba, Raul Castro gave conditional release to 53 dissidents.
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