From monthlyreview
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, this beautiful island in the Caribbean has aroused passions everywhere in the Americas. Since its inception, the revolution has had a profound impact on the popular classes throughout Latin America and haunted the political elites and wealthy classes in the United States and oligarchies elsewhere in the hemisphere. Admirers have often praised Cuba as the model for the future; its detractors have portrayed it as an oppressive regime. In reality, Cuba is neither heaven nor hell.Instead, the revolution is a bold social experiment to find a way out of the underdevelopment that centuries of colonialism and neo-colonialism have imposed on Cuba, an effort to open a path toward a more just society than was possible under its pre-revolutionary domination by the United States. It is this quest that has brought on it the untiring enmity of U.S. governments for nearly a half-century now.
For forty-five years, ten U.S. administrations have sought to end the "threat" of a good example by subversion, sabotage, invasion, assassination, diplomatic isolation, economic embargo, propaganda, etc. The embargo -- which Cubans call a blockade because it also seeks to prevent other countries from trading with Cuba -- has cost the Cuban people well over $72 billion to date. The Bay of Pigs invasion and the numerous acts of terror, launched mostly from U.S. soil, have taken 3,478 lives, making this a kind of slow-motion 9/11 (the proportional impact of which, given Cuba's small population, exceeds that of U.S. casualties in both the Korean and Vietnam wars). This little country has paid a heavy price for its independence.
