Who is Fidel Castro, in light of “sentiments of particular respect and consideration”?

Since it now seems that Fidel Castro, a brutal and repressive murderer motivated, in the words of his chief protege’ and ally Che Guevara, “by pure hate,” is worthy of “particular respect and consideration” by the highest authority of Holy Mother Church, I thought it might be helpful to share a brief compendium of some of Fidel Castro’s greatest atrocities and crimes, via the Cuban expatriate Babalu blog.  Given that Cuba has been under Castro a rigidly authoritarian society governed in a militarist command style, trying to claim that Castro was simply unaware of, or uninvolved in, these atrocities is simply false.  Whatever his personal knowledge and involvement in these crimes – and there is great evidence that he had a direct hand in many of them – he created and maintained by sheer force of his own personal will the system that made them possible.  As Supreme Leader of the Cuban Revolution and government, the one indispensable man, he bears a moral responsibility for each and every one of these atrocities.

So, the list:

1. Fidel Castro’s firing squads in Cuba – Cuba has executed at least 5,000 political opponents through firing squad and extrajudicial killings.  This is only the number that has been confirmed by evidence, the actual number is certainly much, much higher.  The trials that result in these killings are a farce of justice with the outcome predetermined. Note, the reported numbers only include those avowedly killed for political reasons, Cubans have been killed by their government for other alleged crimes, as well, including killing a cow to eat it (which constituted treason against the party, all livestock being owned by the people Communist Party).
2. Fidel Castro sank the 13 de Marzo tugboat killing Cuban women and children – a boat fleeing the starvation prevalent in Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union was deliberately sunk by attacking government craft.  41 of 72 on board were killed.
3. Fidel Castro’s shoot down of American civilian aircraft killing 4 people including 3 American citizens – This occurred in 1996. Aircraft flying in international airspace were attacked by Cuban air force MiGs and shot down in an unprovoked attack.
4. Fidel Castro’s Cuban political prisoners – hundreds of thousands to millions have been imprisoned for supposed “anti-revolutionary activities” – which might include complaining over lack of stock in a government run grocery – with many languishing in prison for years.  Political activism or simply expression of humanitarian concern for fellow Cubans which is critical of the ruling junta (which has become fabulously rich during its period of rule while ordinary Cubans endure an endless nightmare of deprivation and want) leads almost inevitably to a long and close familiarity with the Cuban prison system.
5. Fidel Castro’s Cuban forced labor camps, the UMAPs – tens of thousands of lesser dissidents not consigned to long prison terms were inducted into forced labor camps
6. Fidel Castro’s religious repression against Cubans – ongoing still today even during the Pope’s visit.  Leaders of a Catholic movement for the rights of the Church have been blocked from meeting with Pope Francis by the Cuban government.  They have been detained in prison.
7. Fidel Castro separates Cuban families
8. Fidel Castro restricts the movement of Cubans – well duh.  You have to get a difficult to obtain pass to move from one part of Cuba to another.  Even foreign tourists run into problems with this system.  For ordinary Cubans, movement in the country is looked up with deep suspicion by the government and thus difficult to obtain.
9. Fidel Castro’s foreign interventions resulting in thousands of deaths – this occurred principally in Angola, but also in Grenada and other parts of Africa.  Castro tried to export revolution throughout Latin America and had a fair amount of success.  The “Sandinista revolution” in Nicaragua and the civil war in El Salvador could not have been successfully conducted without massive Cuban support.  In Angola alone, Cuban intervention in a civil war there in favor of an illegitimate communist government prolonged the fighting and led to tens of thousands of deaths, including at least 10,000 Cuban military fatalities.  These Cold War struggles were fought with an impressively equipped Cuban military while ordinary Cubans starved and had little if any productive work.
10. Fidel Castro’s espionage – too long to go into, and it continues to this day.

I’ll add another item to the list.  Castro was instrumental in fostering the Cuban Missile Crisis and was such an absolutely deranged communist that he actually WANTED the Soviets to engage in first-use of nuclear weapons (insanely, with even the mildest provocation), knowing that doing so would lead to the total destruction of Cuba, because he thought it would help bring about “world revolution” and the collapse of capitalism.

Castro was truly deranged, because there was probably no time during the entirety of the Cold War that the US enjoyed a more massive strategic superiority over the Soviet Union than late 1962.  There were probably 50-50 odds that if the US had conducted a decapitating first strike, the Soviet Union would have been utterly destroyed without a single Soviet nuclear warhead reaching US territory.  Not that the Kennedy Administration would have been unhinged enough to do such a thing (in fact, their exorbitant fear of Soviet capabilities helped precipitate the crisis), I simply bring that up to emphasize the degree of superiority in offensive and defensive armament the US possessed at that time.  Castro must have been completely fooled by Khrushchev’s bluster, because that’s about all it was – a handful of ICBMs that took hours if not days to get ready to launch, less than 100 bombers that could only be sent on one-way suicide missions, and a handful of very creaky, unworkable ballistic missile submarines.

One final note: it is odd that Pope Francis, when speaking in a communist state that has left its people mired in repression and the direst poverty for decades (OH, but the free medical care!  Yeah……not that great.) suddenly finds virtue in poverty, while his previous statements in many lands where the communist ideal is less fully realized found poverty there to be very nearly an intrinsic evil that must always be stamped out (and also someone else’s fault).  Change in environment facilitates a change in viewpoint?