DSA’s ‘Solidarity’ With Cuba Looks a Lot Like Solidarity With Castro

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) claim that “Marco Rubio is leading a genocide” against Cuba, with a “genocidal blockade,” so the secretary of state should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity,” and so on. As the proclamation confirms, “genocide” applies to anything the DSA doesn’t like. The real whopper is the claim that DSA “has a long history of solidarity with the Cuban people.”

The DSA proclamation came on August 13, birthday of Fidel Castro. The white Stalinist dictator, one generation out of Spain, ruled Cuba from 1959 to 2008, nearly five decades. Like all Communists, Castro was an economic crackpot who drove Cuba into abject poverty. In 1962, the Castro dictatorship launched food rationing, which continues into current times. In a totalitarian state, the people get only what the dictatorship wants them to have, and that in meager quantities.

True solidarity with the people of Cuba would demand their liberation from the current regime.

The Castro dictatorship seized property and allowed no political opposition. Castro jailed dissenters who became known as plantados. One of them, Eusebio Peñalver, became the longest serving black political prisoner in modern history.

Peñalver served time on the Isla de Pinos, which in 1978 the Castro regime renamed, Isla de la Juventud. Cubans call it the Isla de la Esclavitud, the “Island of Slavery.” That applies to all of Cuba, where the totalitarian government controls everything.

Castro also sent male homosexuals into forced labor camps. Cuban cinematographer Nestor Almendros (Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, Days of Heaven) documented that campaign in Improper Conduct. Armando Valladares chronicled Castro’s torture of political prisoners in Against All Hope.

The struggles of the Cuban artists and intellectuals emerge in Heberto Padilla’s Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden. Paul Hollander’s Political Pilgrims documented glowing accounts of the Cuban regime by foreign intellectuals. That too seems to have escaped the notice of the DSA, and apologists of the Castro regime such as Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, a frequent visitor during the Castro Era.

A potential rival to Fidel was General Arnaldo Ochoa, a member of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party. When he returned from combat in Africa, Castro staged a show trial and executed the general. See 8A, by Cuban filmmaker Orlando Jimenez Leal.

Fidel Castro’s Communist regime was so oppressive that, at first opportunity, thousands of Cubans fled in anything that would float. Many perished at sea but those who succeeded, like all those who fled the regime, can bear witness to the deprivations inflicted by the Communist dictatorship.

The Democratic Socialists of America claim “Fidel was an organizer, a fighter, and endures as a stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination for the Global South.” For all but the willfully blind, DSA solidarity is with this Sado-Stalinist and his Communist successors. If willful ignorance in support of tyranny is not depravity, it’s hard to know what to call it.

True solidarity with the people of Cuba would demand their liberation from the current regime. Marco Rubio recognizes the “unimaginable hardships” of the Cuban people. He calls for “a new Cuba where you have a real opportunity to choose who governs your country and vote to replace them if they are not doing a good job.” Currently “the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.” See this link for the entire speech, in Spanish.

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Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.