Fidel Castro is dead

 That is what the Latin American bourgeois tried to do, they wanted to liberate themselves from the domination of the US bourgeoisie too, and that was the main purpose of Hugo Chavez and the so called Bolivarian revolution tried to do,  including Brazil and Argentina. Instead of the US giving military coup like in the old days,  they are giving  parliamentary coups like they did in Brazil. As one of the SPGB article said that Fidel Castro was not a mere puppet of the Soviets or Eastern EuropeThey created the Bank of South America, the Mercosur ( South America Trade Cartel ) and their version of the EU, all those cartels and trust were financed and controlled by the Latin American bourgeois calling itself socialist. In the name of socialism they are carrying their own agenda, at the beginning they  were using Marx name until they discovered the letter that Marx wrote against Simon Bolivar The Russia were able to do in Latin America what they never did when they were the Soviet Union and during the cold war period,  they performed  military exercise with the Russian navy and the Venezuelan  military forces, and instead of buying weapons from the US, they purchased them from Russia, and they launched their own satellite, and their own television .The Iran and Spanish capitalists  and Israel have also large investrment in Latin America including factory to produce weaponsThe Soviets did not support all the guerrillas groups of Latin America, because they did not support the Che Guevara when he went to Bolivia, and the Communist Party of Bolivia did not support him either, and Cuba did not support the guerrillas of Alberto Caamano, and Castro knew that it was going to be a failure, even more, Caamano guerrillas group was infiltrated by CIA agents.The FARC from Colombia is supported by Cuba, but originally they were formed by Maoists, and most Maoist groups in Latin America they did not support the so called Cuban revolution, and they did not support the government of Salvador Allende, and in the Dominican Republic Castroism was rejected completely and it wa replaced by Maoism, or a hybridThe Socialist Party has described all those situations in a few articles, much better than the thousands of articles written in others newspapers and journals. It also shows  Why we are different to others groups

I was always absurdly pleased that this article had been picked up by Cuban Social Democrat dissidents:https://web.archive.org/web/20080102151255/http://www.psrdc.org/archivo/notas75.htm 

 Some so called Communists are celebrating catholic  masses for Fidel Castro, and the secretary of one Communist Party is going to read one versicle of the Bible in the mass for Saint Fidel Castro  They are lighting candles for him, and they expect miraclesIn front of one of the Cuban Embassy in the Caribbean they have a picture of Fidel Castro with candles, and rosary on the sides. He went to heaven to join Saint Ernesto Che Guevara.There is a temple dedicated to Saint Ernesto Guevarahttp://www.lanacion.com.ar/950576-san-ernesto-la-ultima-leyenda-del-che-guevara

The Cuban elite sent troops to Africa to defend the expansionist interests of the Soviet elite and to stay as member of the Russian. Comecon It is based on the Che's  Blanquist concep of creating several. Vietnam.After the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the incursion of Cuba in Africa, a group of General considered as heroes of the revolution they were acused of drug trafficking with Colombia, and they were shot.They never said that they were dealing with diamonds and ivory from Africa as the Soviets were also doing  tooOthers sources as the MLPUSA indicated many years ago that those Generals and specially Ochoa, they  were followers of the Russian Perestroika and Glasnot, and that was the main reason why they were shot

Yes, although in many ways Zimbabwe and SOuth Africa Struggles were classical nationalist ones, tehre was also a real democratic issue, and, of course, the Southern African workers played an immense part in their own liberation, but the military rule of the colonialists would have been much harder to break without the Cuban assistance.  I don't for a second think this exonerates Castro, or means he was worthy of support, but in strict historical assesment, it is somethign worth mentioning.

 Did anyone see this one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WApT5wYHSCg

I went there several years ago on holiday, flight only finding our accommodation whilst we were out there, and did travel around a bit. In fact it was in march 2011 as the Fukushimathing happened whilst we were out there we were out there. I think I can agree with much of the comments of that youtube; it didn’t appear to be in anyway a police state and in fact the police seemed to be as rare as hen’s teeth. We actually met a rabid anti Castro guy in a bar who seemed to be in no fear of ranting on against the regime. He said he had a son who was abroad and he ran an anti Castro webb site; that did checkout as we looked at it when we got back. They had internet café’s etc that didn’t seem to have any obvious restrictions then but I believe that kind of thing was opened up quite recently then. I logged onto various sites that I suspected would be a problem if there was any restrictions and there wasn’t. They were very nice people and seem chilled out enough and I felt unusually safe wandering about like you do in downtown Havana. I have travelled around quite a bit and am a bit of a nervous Nelly when it comes to the ‘thieving Johnny foreigners’ prejudices. Not to say there weren’t plenty of street entrepreneurs looking for the opportunity to lighten the load of conspicuously rich tourists, which we weren’t as in an ‘honest’ deal. There was a nice touch I thought which encapsulated the whole thing. They have a dual currency system in operation or a hard currency that circulates called CUC’s for the tourists but it also circulates amongst the Cubans themselves in the cities and towns etc. But the other stuff is used elsewhere etc. We got on the Matanzas to Havana train as below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_Electric_Railway Except that it doesn’t look anything like that; it is was a real bone shaking heap of crap that rattles along at 10 miles an hour. But it is mostly single line and had to pull in and wait for the train going the other way to pass. So one of us gets out to buy some station food from a local vendor peddling his wares form a bicycle with tow truck.  It was biscuits with some kind of jam on them; quite OK really as it turned out. And offers up a 20 Cuc note, it wasn’t me, which produced guffaws of laughter from the locals. I suppose it was bit like trying to buy a hotdog with an American Express Platinum card or something. Anyway another local bod on the train bought a big bag of the stuff for us, in sympathy, with his peso money and left us to it. We found a one Cuc note and found him again which he protested was too much ;we are talking about 1$ I think.  Anyway we got off the train to pick up the pleb non CUC, peso ticket only, ferry across the bay to Havana. He bailed us out again and paid for our tickets; and probably made $0.50 out of the end transaction and no doubt considered it a happy day. On economic sanctions I got attacked by midges whilst staying in a bit of a cheap flea pit and needed anti histamines, which is a pretty bog standard medication. The pharmacies didn’t have that due to the sanctions and recommended going to one of the swanky hotels that have there own in house pharmacies for dealing with those kind of ‘difficulties’. What I was left with is if everything goes belly-up these guys in a ‘self sustaining’ economy would weather the storm and just carry on.  I liked the horse and cart taxis.