I was amazed to read your AP article on Fidel Castro in the Mustang Daily dated August 3 to 9. It quoted a Cuban-American in Florida whose family fled Cuba in 1960: “My hope for Cuba would be for it to grow as the power it used to be . . . I want my parents to see Cuba . . . the way it was when they left – the beautiful beaches, the growing economy and the happy people.” Be advised that under President Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s “beautiful beaches” and “growing economy” existed only for a handful of bourgeois Cuban families, who lived the good life at the expense of Cuba’s miserably impoverished people. These families fled to the United States when Castro overthrew Batista, and it is these families and their descendents who hate Castro for bringing their good thing to an end. Their illusions of pre-Castro Cuba are based solely on their experience as members of a privileged oligarchy. The only others who enjoyed the good life in Cuba were American gangsters drawn to the gambling and bordellos in Havana. Please be reminded that Castro came into power on the tide of a national revolt of the people against Batista. I can’t let the stargazing sentiments of these reactionary Cuban-Americans pass for fact.
Judith Barnes
English graduate student