Castro sank Cuba into the abyss

Jan. 1 marks the 57th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro.

For the majority of scholars of Cuban history that date marks the beginning of Communist Cuba, but an in-depth analysis of the facts show us a completely different reality. Converting Cuba into a communist state was a later decision of Castro because of his disappointment when, during his trip to the United States, he tried to sell his false revolution to the Eisenhower administration and received a cold reception from the president and was referred to Vice President Richard Nixon.

Fidel Castro, with his revanchist character, decided to sell Cuba, tied hand and foot, to the Soviet Union, plunging his country onto the awful precipice of a shameful and bloody tyranny that has lasted more than half a century.

The first government that emerged after the fall of Fulgencio Batista was composed mostly of people with deep democratic feelings, including Manuel Urrutia Lleó and José Miró Cardona. Castro accused most of the government officials who were publicly recognized for their decisively democratic and anti-communist ideals of being counter-revolutionaries and dismissed them from their positions.

Of the horrors of these 57 years of Communist tyranny, I could write many pages, but the limited space that I have does not allow me to do it. But I do not want to finish without mentioning the more than 1 million exiles, the thousands of extrajudicial executions, the hundreds of thousands who have suffered unfairly as political prisoners and the countless number of Cubans who disappeared in the waters of the Florida Straits.

Fidel Castro promised free elections, freedom of the press and democratic progress. He did not deliver on his promises and sank Cuba into the abyss of the worst tyranny in the continent’s history.

This story was originally published December 31, 2015 at 6:43 PM with the headline "Castro sank Cuba into the abyss."