Preferable to Batista's Cuba where the people were neither free nor educated. They were starving and could not get basic medical help, and would resort to dying when faced with sickness.

He's now as dead as real Marxism.

Yes that's true.

I thought he died awhile ago. huh

Preferable to Batista in much the same way that a punch to the face may be considered preferable to a kick in the bollocks. One can't but compare Cuba's transition from right wing lunatic to Communist dictatorship with similar American nations that managed to establish the bedrock of democracy, and Cuba compares pretty badly.

To his credit he managed to step down from office without causing widespread bloodshed and chaos, which puts him above most dictators. He also maintained a good beard. Can't think of any other good things off hand...

Honestly, I don't see much difference between him and Democrats. From CNN:

"But Castro's defenders in Cuba point to what they see as social progress, including racial integration, universal education and health care."

CNN's obituary: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/26/americas/fidel-castro-obit/

VIVA FIDEL
R.I.P.

Wow yeah leon1122 what a horrible thing universial education is. Education should only be available to the rich, right? Gotta keep the poor in their place!

No intelligent person could possibly come to the conclusion that the revolution ultimately benefitted Cuba. The reforms that the Castro government implemented following the success of the revolution in 1959 left one of the most advanced and successful economies in Latin America in absolute ruins for decades. Truly, one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century.

^ nonsense. Cuba was a corrupt US gambling den when the revolutionaries took power. Cuba went on to establish the best healthcare and education systems in Latin America despite decades of imperialist US blockade attempting to stifle them.

Pathetic. The Cuban people were certainly not politically free, but they had one of the most vibrant economies in Latin America prior to the Revolution. They certainly had problems, they still had high levels of poverty for instance, but they were 5th in the hemisphere in per capita income, 3rd in life expectancy and 2nd in per capita income. This was also in an environment conducive to economic freedom, despite the lack of any political freedom amongst the population at large.

They came out of the revolution with a very limited expansion of political freedom (for some), without any semblance of economic freedom and an economy in ruins. Even despite the limited openings to markets in the last two decades, Cuba still remains one of the poorest nations in the world.

Describing someone who does not agree with you as "pathetic" and "not intelligent" is a great way to persuade them to listen to your points. Well done.

I said that your argument is pathetic. I did not say that you are pathetic. I also did not call you unintelligent, I said that any intelligent person can look at the facts and come to a reasonable conclusion that the policies enacted in Cuba, post revolution, had a devastating impact on the country.

@ civwarbuff: On what basis do you claim Cuba is "one of the poorest nations" ?

If you're going by GDP per capita, according to World Bank figures, Cuba's GDP per capita in 2013 was $20,649, ranked 58th out of 183 countries, placing it ahead of most other Latin / South American countries, including Venezuela (ranked 62nd), Mexico (67th), Costa Rica (74th), Brazil (75th), Colombia (84th), Peru (89th), and Ecuador (93rd).

In Nominal GDP per capita, Cuba is currently ranked 77th in the world per the World Bank.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?year_high_desc=true

Also, remember, that doesn't account for median income levels or wages and that is not scaled via purchasing power. There is no doubt that Cuba has made enormous strides over the last two decades in gradually moving away from the totalitarian social economy that they had established in Cuba, but they remain a very poor country.

^ that dataset does not appear to contain full data for Cuba.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

Cuba is ranked 67th and compares well to a lot of other Latin American and Caribbean states such as Costa Rica (69th), Mexico (74th), Brazil (75th), Colombia (97th), Jamaica (99th), Nicaragua (125th), and Guatemala (128th) amonst others. The only two comparable states with significantly better scores are Chile and Argentina; and once you exclude the low pop tax havens from the Caribbean; only Trinidad and Tobago does better than Cuba, too.

Certainly its progress has stalled in recent years- probably because of this *opening the narket* nonsense, but its healthcare is renowned as some of the best in the world - better than either America or Britain. And all that was achieved despite the economically crippling US embargo. Imagine what could've been achieved without it.

"Certainly its progress has stalled in recent years- probably because of this *opening the narket* (sic) nonsense."

Well, let's see. Here is a graph of Cuba's per capita GDP by year as compared to other Latin American countries, prior to and after the opening to markets in Cuba in the early 1990's.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/GDP-Caribbean.png

Can anyone help knows about these things give a quick explanation as to why Cuba's per capita GDP varies so wildly between posts in this thread?

who knows* bloody phones

@Octavious: Well, civwarbuff linked to a dataset that doesn't contain data for Cuba so I don't know what he's on about. I used the World Bank's figures for GDP per capita. Hellenic Riot is using Human Development Index, not GDP. Interestingly though, it shows that for both GDP per capita, and Humand Development Index, Cuba is ahead of Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil etc by somewhat similar margins in terms of places in the world ranking.

For transparency I used World Bank data on GDP per capita adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, here:
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD&country=

... they have great old cars...

Of course the World Bank data contains Cuba.

The link that I provided is to the World Bank and the dataset contains Cuba. Jamiet is making things up.

Here are the numbers again in U.S. dollars. You have to look at the country's pages to see GDP figures.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
Here is the same information:
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD&country=

Sweet! That means I can get a free Cuba Libre at the Cuban restaurant in town!

Oh, I don't think Jamie is making things up this time. I've had a quick gander at google and seen wildly differing figures from various sources which are all more or less reputable. There is some bias in people choosing statistics that match their world view, but none of the statistics themselves are obviously dodgy.