Education:
The information-hungry populace in the Batista era was well-educated, as it remains. Student registration at primary schools in 1955 was 1,032 students per 10,000 inhabitants, higher than the figures for 1990 of 842. The registration rate for higher education was an impressive 38 per 10,000, about the same as it was 10 years later (34 per 10,000) and 15 years later (41 per 10,000). The country, in fact, had a long history of high literacy levels: At the turn of the 20th century, only 28% of those 10 and over couldn't read or write, not that different from the current figure, 100 years later, of 16%.
Economy:
“In the late 1950s, Cuba had a political problem, not a socioeconomic one. Overall, Cuba was rich, her people healthy and well-educated. The Cuban peso was always on par with the U.S. dollar. Cuba’s gold reserves covered its monetary reserves to the last penny. But that’s only half the story, because Cuban labor laws were among the most advanced in the world. Cuban labor got a higher percentage of the national GNP than in Switzerland at the time.
From Humberto Fontova's FIDEL: Hollywod's Favourite Tyrant
Infant Mortality:
in 1957, Cuba’s infant mortality rate was the lowest in Latin America and the thirteenth lowest in the world, for heaven’s sake! Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal in that department. Now (and using Castro’s own inflated figures) it’s twenty-fourth in the world. And this with 60.4 percent of Cuba’s pregnancies ending in abortion (which skews infant mortality rates downward). In 1957, Cuba had twice as many physicians and teachers in relation to population as the U.S. It ranked first in Latin America in national income invested in education and its literacy rate was 80 percent. In 1958, Cuba even had more female college graduates (to scale) than the U.S. “Before Fidel, Cubans were already among the healthiest and best-educated people in the world—and it didn’t require Hitler-level political executions and Stalin-level gulags to achieve.
From Humberto Fontova's FIDEL: Hollywod's Favourite Tyrant
Race Relations:
Castro’s regime replaced a government where Cuban blacks served as president of the senate, minister of agriculture, chief of the army, and as head of state. 8 Nowadays Cuba’s jail population is 80 percent black, its governmental hierarchy 100 percent white. Only 10 percent of the Communist Party’s central committee is black (and Cuba’s most prominent political prisoner, Oscar Biscet, is black). In April 2003, three black Cubans “hijacked” a ferry and tried to escape to Florida. They were captured, given a summary trial, and executed by firing squads. Castro responded to the outrage of Cuban exiles with, “What’s all this fuss about me shooting three little negritos?” 9
From Humberto Fontova's FIDEL: Hollywod's Favourite Tyrant
Middle Class:
Before Castro, Cuba had a huge middle class—36 percent of Cuba’s population in 1957, according to the United Nations. Most who fled Cuba from 1959 to 1966 were middle class white-collar professionals.
From Humberto Fontova's FIDEL: Hollywod's Favourite Tyrant
Health Care:
Before Castro seized power in his 1959 Revolution, Cuba had one of the world's best medical systems, its ratio of one physician per 960 patients ranked 10th by the World Health Organization (England, in contrast, had one physician per 1,200 people, Mexico one physician per 2,400 people). Cuba had Latin America's lowest infant mortality rate, comparable to Canada's and better than France's, Japan's and Italy's. Its population was well fed, with a per capita food consumption that was the third highest in Latin America.
