The death of Fidel Castro

With the death of Fidel Castro another part of the jigsaw of events which started with the Russian Revolution and the advent of communist ideology comes to a close.

Fast forward through the Leninist/Stalinist years to the period after the Second World War when communism really became an international force with communist sympathies
emerging all over the world. China, Vietnam, Korea countries in Africa and countries in South America where uprisings by colourful revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro defeated the local dictatorship and created pockets of communist rational amongst the myriad poor in that stricken continent. Even today we see the pitiful contrast between the rich and the poor in Brazil, although carefully scripted, it was impossible not to see the Favala rising up the slopes of the hillsides around Rio de Janeiro.
Having grown up 'to the sound of a distant drum' be it in Eastern Europe, Asia, or Latin America, the conflict was always the West against Communism. Underlying the politics was the clash between Capitalism, 'a free wheeling use of financial resources' and the concept of a centralised "planned economy" where government controlled everything.
Even today I have friends who wistfully look back on the days of the USSR and miss the paternalism of those years. For us growing up in that era there was always conflict, always the clarion call to the barricades to shore up defences. Always the spectre of the bogeyman, the hidden force destined to do evil.
Castro was the charismatic, cigar chomping persona behind the that other way of doing business. John F Kennedy the urban youthful, good-looking dynamic versus the camouflaged battle dress, wild man of Cuba.
Today Havana is slowly recovering decades of under investment and repair. It's baroque style, it's flamboyant music, it's dance and the physicality of it young people all tell a tale of its unwillingness to concede. With all the financial weight the USA threw at him Castro succeeded in holding his people together using the tried and tested method of educating and protecting his people when they became ill. The youth of Cuba were amongst the most highly educated in the world, doctorates by the bucket load. The health service although creaking under the strain of embargo was a marvel.
It's interesting to reflect that in this country with all the opportunities to trade and provide an economic platform for the people, only a lessening proportion of the population are gaining any advantage as our education system is dissolving at only a slightly lesser pace than our health system. It is, as it always was a question of priorities.
Castro has his people's plight in his sights. Not globalised markets or special cabals with protection ensured. Not the obsession of the free market, still less the liberalisation of all markets so that regulation, designed to protect the weak is thrown out with an eye to ensuring only the strong succeed.
The Americans hated him, fed by the venom of rich Cubans who had fled to Florida when he overthrew President Batista they have fought their fellow countrymen for decades and only under Obama has the recognition, that this tiny island state has a right to exist emerged.
Castro lived to see the day, only just. The CIA made many attempts on his life but were not quite as accomplished as the KGB or for that matter MOSAD in this clandestine business and so he survived.
Revolutionaries paid homage to him whilst the Establishment reviled him, perhaps there is no more fitting epitaph !!!