Oooh, a propaganda spin, and the author doesn’t even realize it!
The wealthy Cubans who fled the Revolution didn’t escape “communism” or “socialism” in the way Republican talking points frame it. They escaped the end of their own rule. Before 1959, Cuba was a U.S.-backed playground for the rich, run under the Batista dictatorship, where U.S. corporations and a tiny Cuban elite owned most of the land, businesses, and sugar profits. Ordinary Cubans lived in deep poverty, while this elite class grew fat off their labor.
When the Revolution came, that wealth was nationalized, land was redistributed, and healthcare and education became rights. To the poor, that was liberation. To the rich, that was “oppression.” They didn’t flee authoritarianism, they fled accountability for decades of exploitation. They were like today’s billionaire class, except with a tropical climate and more casinos.
The tragedy is that U.S. propaganda turned their loss of privilege into a morality tale about “escaping communism”, a story that still gets recycled to scare working people here into defending the same kind of elite that exploits them.
One can only hope Trump’s destruction of the American empire can motivate Americans to do a real revolution, and force the billionaires to escape to another country.
Oooh, a propaganda spin, and the author doesn’t even realize it!
The wealthy Cubans who fled the Revolution didn’t escape “communism” or “socialism” in the way Republican talking points frame it. They escaped the end of their own rule. Before 1959, Cuba was a U.S.-backed playground for the rich, run under the Batista dictatorship, where U.S. corporations and a tiny Cuban elite owned most of the land, businesses, and sugar profits. Ordinary Cubans lived in deep poverty, while this elite class grew fat off their labor.
When the Revolution came, that wealth was nationalized, land was redistributed, and healthcare and education became rights. To the poor, that was liberation. To the rich, that was “oppression.” They didn’t flee authoritarianism, they fled accountability for decades of exploitation. They were like today’s billionaire class, except with a tropical climate and more casinos.
The tragedy is that U.S. propaganda turned their loss of privilege into a morality tale about “escaping communism”, a story that still gets recycled to scare working people here into defending the same kind of elite that exploits them.
One can only hope Trump’s destruction of the American empire can motivate Americans to do a real revolution, and force the billionaires to escape to another country.