Fidel Castro did a good job

It seems that Fidel Castro's government did a good job in Cuba. If one compares Cuba with other large independent countries in the Caribbean, one notes that Cuba is doing better in most ways. A comparison with developed countries or the territories of developed countries would not be fair. However, Cuba beats Puerto Rico (a territory of the US) in many categories and it even manages to beat the US in infant mortality, literacy and some other categories. This is all despite the US embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union. All this makes Cuba seem like a socialist success story.

I'm amazed by how some people, especially Americans, attack Castro and Cuba. It seems like an irrational hatred of "communism" and attachment to democracy. The government works. It's like those people value the ability to complain about the government more than the performance of the government. One has to consider what has happened to other countries in the region to get a realistic picture of the alternatives. Haiti and the Dominican Republic have had democratic elections but also coups and other violence. It would probably be unreasonable to imagine that Cuba would have been a stable democracy (like the US or Western Europe) all this time if it wasn't for Castro.

Finally here's some information from the CIA World Factbook. Remember, this comes from the US government. It is not "communist propaganda". The country names link to the pages for that country at the CIA site.

	Cuba	Jamaica	Dominican Republic	Haiti	Puerto Rico	USA
Life expectancy	77.08	73.12	73.07	57.03	78.54	78
Infant mortality	6.04	15.73	27.94	63.83	7.81	6.37
Literacy	99.8%	87.9%	87%	52.9%	94.1%	99%
Unemployment rate	1.9%	10.2%	15.5%	widespread	12%	4.6%
GDP per capita	$4500	$4800	$9200	$1900	$19600	$46000
GDP real growth	7.0%	1.5%	7.2%	3.5%	-1.2%	2.2%
Public debt % of GDP	37.2%	134.3%	40.4%			36.8%