At the opening of the International Parliamentary Conference 'Russia-Latin America', the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, praised several Latin American controversial socialist political figures from the 20th century.
According to Putin, Latin America has always been a place aspiring to freedom and independence, and he particularly remembered the campaign of the Venezuelan liberator, Simón Bolívar.
However, the Russian president, after mentioning Bolívar's exploits, decided to pay tribute to the communist tyrant Fidel Castro, who condemned Cuba to misery; to the guerrilla Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, a confessed murderer; and Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende, who led his country to economic ruin.
Putin haciendo apología del comunismo bananero y asesino en Iberoamérica, y del exterminador de españoles Simon Bolivar cuya historia genocida se puede leer en este artículo de el @eldebate_com 👇👇https://t.co/HDySTmtodx pic.twitter.com/LfG3gX9NSB
— Ricardo Chamorro Delmo (@rchamode) October 2, 2023
According to Putin, these three characters were “selfless fighters for justice and social equality.”
Regarding Castro, Putin went further and said that "he was simply a colossus. A man who thought about the people every second, and not only about the Cubans. He also thought about all of Latin America, and about all the people on the planet."
The bloody legacy of Fidel Castro
While Putin is full of praise for the late Fidel Castro, his legacy in Cuba speaks for itself.
First, Cuba is a country where political dissidence was trampled by the Castro regime for several decades under the yoke of Fidel and his successors.
Although there are no precise figures, in 2016, the organization Archivo Cuba reported that in more than half a century of communist dictatorship, 3,116 people were shot and 1,166 were extrajudicially executed.
Many survivors also recount their lives full of vile torture as prisoners of the regime.
In fact, the Cuban regime's torture methods even crossed borders, as they are applied in countries with allied regimes such as Venezuela.
Right now, according to non-governmental organizations, there are more than 1,000 political prisoners on the island, 700 of whom participated in the historic protests of July 11, 2021.
In addition to the systematic persecution of the opposition, Cuba is a country that has suffered firsthand the consequences of socialist policies: shortages, a health system in decline (despite the propaganda of Castroism), poverty levels exceeding 80% of the population and an economic crisis that caused a migratory exodus, especially towards the United States.
