Quote:
Originally Posted by molson
The issue isn't Castro v. Batista. It's that the Florida's huge Cuban population is specifically there, separated from their families forever, because they, or their parents, fled Castro. First it anyone who had to do with Batista, then it was the middle class professionals after Castro gutted their livelihood, then it was thousands of unaccompanied minors whose parents didn't want them shipped off for re-education. Praise of Castro is understandably offensive to them. Anybody whose life improved through Castro is still in Cuba.
The comments - and the types of economic systems and revolutions Sanders admires -also touch a fear held by some non-Cubans that Sanders is willing to throw the middle class out with the bathwater if he can burn everything down in the process. (The comments and rhetoric about how only rich people rely on the stock market show you were his line of the "rich" really is.)
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I get it. I just don't think he said all that much in praise of Castro. Nothing more than what Obama said. It was incredibly tame and I wonder how many people actually listened to the clip.
The literacy thing gets brought up because it mirrors what happened in our own country. Slaveholders forbid slaves from learning because it would empower them. Remember that Batista literally had a nation filled with slaves like the old South. American companies used this slave labor gleefully (also some lingering hatred toward Cuba is from when they turned that spiggot of slave labor off to American corporations).
With that said, I just find it weird we focus on him. Considering this country's love affair with brutal dictators past and present, I'd put Castro far down on the list. Mubarik was a much more brutal ruler just died. Hillary called him a "family friend".