I could not help myself when I heard of the passing of Fidel Castro.
“Hell just got more crowded,” I told my wife.
“You can’t say that,” she cautioned. “You aren’t the judge.”
I first heard the name of the Cuban “leader” in 1962, when I was seven.
My stepmom rushed into the kitchen to find me hiding under the table. “Why are you under there?” she asked. I don’t remember my exact answer, but she put it together quickly enough, considering the news on our black and white television; nuclear missiles were in Cuba, aimed at my home, and I was afraid - very afraid.
I do remember her response, however. She laughed slightly, but her face then took on a face of concern, almost crying. She pulled me from under the table, hugged me, and assured me everything was alright. President Kennedy was taking care of it, life would go on.
Dot was right. The Russians, and “President” (many in the media still mistakenly use that term) Castro, backed down. The missiles disappeared, and an economic embargo began against the Communist nation 90 miles off our shores.
Fast forward to 2016; our “progressive” president Obama has decided to let bygones be bygones and ended the embargo that quarantined Fidel, brother Raul, and Soviet-style tyranny for more than half a century. Good news, perhaps, for the sugar, tourism, and cigar industry, but little else.
The “historic” move by Obama did not end the lack of freedom, of life, of liberty. The oppression maintains its grip on the island nation and there still isn’t enough toilet paper to clean up what the dictator and brother Raul have forced on the residents of an otherwise beautiful island nation.
Now, with Fidel’s death, Cubans in Miami rejoice with parties, car horns, and banging pots. Remembering the horrors, some have reportedly said “Fidel, you tyrant, take your brother too.”
President Obama released a statement offering condolences to the dictator’s family and offered a “hand of friendship” to the Cuban people. But no word of criticism for the thousands of deaths and economic destruction caused by the dictator who lived in luxury in the middle of paradise-turned-hell.
Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both of Cuban descent, have urged Obama to send no one to the funeral. Their families had their fill of the evil decades ago.
Still, some “journalists” such as the disgraced Brian Williams have soft-walked the ending of Fidel Castro. Williams praised the medical care and sports figures of the people, ignoring the overwhelming tyranny, saying the island will not wake up desiring “Jeffersonian democracy.”
I suppose it should be no surprise that some in the media think such.
Fidel himself admitted in 1959 when he pinned an award on a reporter with the New York Times, Cuba’s revolution “never would have succeeded” without the Time’s coverage.
Or was it a lack of coverage?
According to Humberto Fontova, in his book “The Longest Romance, the mainstream media and Fidel Castro,” the Cuban dictator murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six.
At Castro’s side were such fellow travelers as Cue Guevara, a brutal, murdering, sociopath who took pleasure in lining up victims before the firing squads.
Thousands more Cubans were imprisoned, tortured, and/or killed; thousands of common criminals were freed from jails and sent to the U.S. in 1980; small aircraft were shot down while simply dropping flowers in remembrance over the watery graves of those who died trying to escape hell of Cuba after the revolution.
Castro’s own daughter and sister fled the island.
Such details, unfortunately for the most part, are lost to history.
Fidel Castro is now lost to the judgment of history, and the judgment of an all-seeing God who knows all details, both the good and the evil.
My wife was right, I am not the judge - but if I were a betting man, I believe I would be rich today and Fidel will have no problem lighting that ever-present cigar.
Mike Chambers
Lookout Mountain