AP File Photo — Cuban President Fidel Castro holds a Cuban flag at the beginning of his speech in this Saturday July 26, 2003 file photo in Santiago de Cuba, eastern Cuba.It is perhaps fortunate for Fidel Castro that his new two-volume “memoirs” cover only the years of his life prior to his becoming dictator of Communist Cuba. News accounts say the memoirs cover from his childhood through 1958, just before the communists took power.
It is the misery Castro helped inflict on the Cuban people from 1959 on for which he is best known, and those years will not be covered by his “memoirs.” Cuba today is a land of massive deprivation, with even highly skilled workers able to earn only a few dollars per month. The Marxist principles on which modern Cuba was founded have created shortages of even basic goods.
Moreover, ordinary Cubans who dissent are subjected to harsh imprisonment and to torture and death in some cases.
Sadly, it is doubtful Castro’s books will shed an accurate light on even his early life, let alone on his dreadful decades in power.