For the decades leading up to the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Cuba was little more than a playground for wealthy US bankers, corporations and tourists who thrived off the unrestricted access to alcohol, drug-trafficking, gambling and prostitution.
However, after Fidel Castro and his rebel army overthrew the US-Batista regime amidst a wave of popular national revolt all that changed.
Cuba Before the Revolution
Prior to Fidel Castro taking power, life for the masses of Cubans was a misery. 600,000 Cubans were without work. Half-a-million farmers lived in Dickensian shacks. Most worked four months of the year and starved the rest.
The 400,000 or so industrial workers owned by the Capitalist classes faced pay reductions or dismissal. The average annual income was $91.25. Life expectancy for the average Cuban was only 59 years whilst infant mortality stood at 60 per 1,000 live deaths.
Whilst foreign millionaires lapped up sybaritic and schmancy lifestyles in the capital Havana, only 11% of rural Cubans drank milk, 2% had running water, 14% had tuberculosis and 43% were illiterate. Fidel Castro would soon change that.
Cuba From 1959 to the Special Period
Soon after the Revolution the new government sought to improve living conditions for the ordinary Cuban people.
One of the first things Fidel Castro did as President was to slash medicine prices and commence a road building programme.
Casinos were also taken over and used for schools whilst in March 1959, the Cuban Telephone Company, a lackey of the US company ITT, was taken over and rates reduced.
State education was immeasurably expanded and a literacy campaign was launched. So successful was it that within one year illiteracy was eradicated in Cuba.
In May 1959, the First Agrarian Reform Laws were launched and Castro’s policy redistributed land owned by US companies to small farmers and landless rural workers.
In earnest, Castro sought to end decades of imperialist and economic domination by ridding Cuba of underdevelopment and building the revolution.
Castro Seeks Support of the Soviet Union
After the Revolution the United States cancelled Cuba’s sugar quota, enforced a blockade and openly threatened Fidel Castro with assassination.
In response Fidel Castro aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union. Oil for sugar was exchanged and the Soviets provided weapons and technical as well as military assistance to the small island.
This would prove inimical in later years as throughout the 1960s Cuba supported a myriad array of national movements throughout Africa.
These included Tanzania, Sierra Leone and the national liberation movement in Namibia where Castro is considered a hero.
In 1975, Fidel Castro famously sent Cuban troops to support the MPLA government of Agostinho Neto and ended US imperialist (backed by apartheid South Africa) hopes of military domination in the South of the continent.
In 1979 Fidel Castro also called for the cancellation of Third World debt – one of the first leaders in the world to do so.
Women in Cuba
Before the revolution women in Cuba made up only 9.8% of the workforce. Many were prostitutes, abortion was illegal and contraception barely existed.
In the wake of this, Fidel Castro set up The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). In addition, the Family Code, 1975, enshrined equality between men and women in law.
Today women in Cuba constitute almost 50% of the workforce and 62% of Cuban technical, medical and scientific professionals are women.
Furthermore, the number of women in the National Assembly has risen exponentially from 22.8% in 2001 to 26% in 2007.
Cuban Healthcare
As Michael Moore’s documentary ‘Sicko’ proved, Cuba has a healthcare system alongside the very best in the world.
In fact, the average Cuban today will live longer than the average American. According to the World Health Organization (2006), Cuba has a doctor to patient ratio of 1 to 170; which as of 2008, was the second best on the planet.
In 1998, Fidel Castro himself won the Health For All award from the WHO for his achievements in healthcare.
Cuba’s Internationalism and Foreign Aid
Cuba also sends tens and thousands of health professionals to nearly 70 countries the world over.
When a catastrophic earthquake hit Pakistan in October 2005, killing 75,000 Pakistanis, thousands of Cuban doctors were deployed and able to treat over one million patients.
So touched was he by this that the normally stoic then US-backed Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff declared that Cuba and Fidel Castro were “in Pakistan’s hearts”.
Cuba Today
Whilst in power, Fidel Castro has also championed HIV/AID awareness, gay rights, sustainable green development, reforestation, opposition to biofuels, the closure of Guantanamo Bay, anti-imperialism and an end to world hunger.
Even in sport significant leaps were made. Cuba ranked ninth at the 2000 Sydney Olympics league tables having amassed11 golds, 11 silvers and seven bronzes.
An achievement indeed for a Third World Country and having taken the reigns in 2008, Raul Castro affirmed that he wished to build upon Fidel Castro’s achievements over 50 years.
Readers may also want to read: A Complete Biography of Fidel Castro
Sources Used:
Rock Around The Blockade, (2008) Revolutionary Cuba: The Streets Are Ours (Larkin Publications).
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