Jeremy Corbyn, a closet Castroist if ever there was, spoke last week of the improvements made under Fidel in health and literacy. Almost half of Cuba’s population was illiterate during the “capitalist Babylon” of Batista: now only two per cent of Cuban adults are unable to read and write. Trump, probably not a diehard Fidelista, called Castro a “brutal dictator”. Cuba, in his estimation, was nothing but a hell-hole of sugar quotas, bread queues and police surveillance, with labour camps for homosexuals and the occasional implementation of the death penalty. All that is true, but it’s not quite the whole picture. In the meantime I wonder what became of Our Women in Havana and their hard hats; I liked them, they had believed in something. Viva Fidel! Viva Donald?
