Book Review of Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise. Reviewed by Otto Scott

Fldel Castro has been the absolute ruler of Cuba for forty-two years, which brings him to the status of the longest ruling Marxist tyrant and most complete living villain in the world.

In the bloody and painful, humiliating course of his criminal career as a lifelong Communist and sadist, his path has been marked by an astounding ability to avoid being struck down, although the numbers of his enemies and opponents have been legion. But his most remarkable achievement has been his ability to outfox the Presidents of the United States by creating a partnership with the various leaders of the Soviet Union and other powerful enemies of this nation, and to inspire the jealousies of various Latin American despots and, even now, provide lessons to unscrupulous newcomers who hope and dream to imitate him.

In Dr. Faria’s book, he tells us who won in Cuba. Don’t expect him to say thank you, for the Cubans will not forget the Bay of Pigs nor the deaths in prison under torture, nor the ruined women and the dead men and the starved sons — or the sleek newspaper “commentators” of New York and Hollywood, or the Marxist professors, or the State Department “experts” who vacation in Havana and who repeat Castro’s lies as if they expect us to believe them too.

Dr. Miguel Faria, a neurosurgeon and editor-in-chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeon is an honest and brilliant historian who leads the campaign to expose the filthy and corrupt despotism of Castro with the same courage as his father fought it in Cuba, before he rescued his young son from Castro’s island paradise at the risk of their lives.

In the midst of these alleged socialist marvels, one searches in vain amid a hundred bookstores looking for true tales of the Castro revolution. Virtually the only real book on Cuba to be located is Dr. Faria’s. It is probably for that reason that it contains what amounts to an encyclopedia of information telling the entire story, beginning with Batista and progressing to the ultimate corruption: From Cuba’s real progress from the best schools, earnings, agricultural advance, and genuine equality with Argentina and other important nations in the Batista period to its reversal and complete collapse under Castro.

In chapter after chapter, Dr. Faria provides us with a detailed history of Castro’s Soviet-style mutilation of Cuba’s society and culture. The wondrous, free health care is a monstrous lie. The health of Cuba’s population is precarious. Only a few years ago the Cubans were assailed with beriberi, a disease often provoked by starvation, which brings blindness.

There is, in a disturbing sense, a resemblance to this blindness among the well-financed and comfortable Americans in the blind acceptance of Cuba’s tyranny. There are “captains of industry … who, in Dr. Faria’s words, “salivate at the thought of profits they may realize by opening trade with Cuba and lifting the embargo.” Among them he mentions Citicorp and Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM).

Dr. Faria relates interesting but not surprising events that took place in 1995 during Castro’s visit to the U.S. to address the United Nations during its fiftieth anniversary celebration:

“It was a visit that was quite telling, as divergent groups came out to embrace him and sing his praises. He was the honored guest of the Rockefeller family and lionized at the prestigious Pratt House, the headquarters for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where a fawning audience of internationalists met him.”

Later, Castro was “feted by publishing magnate, Mortimer Zuckerman (U.S. News and World Report), and other media personalities and opinion molders such as Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, and Mike Wallace.” During that visit, he was also honored at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, and among others praised by U.S. Representatives Nydia M. Velazquez (D-NY), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Jose Serrano (D-NY), members of the extreme left-wing House Progressive Caucus and Democratic Socialists of America.

Dr. Faria further relates: “Members of the Black Caucus have blamed the CIA for pouring drugs in the streets of Los Angeles and other cities and killing black youth. Yet, they embrace Fidel and his brother, Cuban Defense Minister Raúl Castro (and successor to Fidel), who was indicted, along with other high-ranking members of the Cuban nomenklatura, in Miami in 1993 for drug trafficking.” Finally, the Harlem minister consecrated Castro, ” ‘God bless you’ he said, although Fidel is an atheist and Cuba officially is an atheist state where the faithful are prosecuted.”

Like Dr. Faria, we can only hope that the nightmare will end and that one day Cuba is liberated.

Reviewed by Otto Scott
Reprinted from Otto Scott’s Compass, April 1, 2002

Otto Scott is the editor of Otto Scott’s Compass, a monthly commentary on contemporary culture as seen from a historical perspective.