Fidel Castro and Che Guevara continued their close friendship up until Che's death in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967.
Today, as a direct result of the successes of the Movimiento 26, Julio, Cuba has nearly 100% literacy; no Cubans live on the streets unless they choose to; and the ratio of CEO-pay to worker-pay is one of the lowest on earth.
According to a United Nations study, in the year 2000 Cuba's health care system cost less per citizen than any other country in the world, and it was ranked 37th in the world in quality (the U.S. was ranked 40th); she also has one of the highest rates of home doctor visits in the world and is a net exporter of doctors and medical workers. Cuba's project to deliver free eye surgery to the poor around the world - Operation Milagros - has helped over 2 million patients to date (without cost to the patients or to their countries).
These are (only!) the sorts of achievements that contrast with American realities most directly. No one who has travelled to Cuba and actually seen its form of Communism - in the countryside and in her small towns, not just in Havana or near her playas de turistas - can come away without being affected very positively and very, very deeply.
Which of course brings us to the reason for the continuing American hatred for Cuba and Cubans, a hatred resting on the widespread ignorance of American citizens about Cuba. This ignorance about Cuba has always been the primary consequence of America's prohibiting most travel by non-Cuban Americans to Cuba, a policy part and parcel of America's immoral, illegal, and totally unwarranted prohibition of trade with the island, the infamous embargo of Cuba. The embargo is not only the longest-running embargo of one country by another in written history, America's minion-governments around the world have joined it, as have literally thousands of the world's largest corporations.
In fact, since 1962, the US government has spent more (American taxpayers') money making sure Cubans were suffering from its embargo than it has spent defeating terrorists. And why? The reality is that Cuba is a living example of a successful society organized according to humanistic principles instead of competitive ones, and the US government fears Cuba's continuing socialist example cannot but provide a model for other countries dissatisfied with American hegemony.
One unknown but brilliant lawyer from the largest Caribbean island created a legacy on the doorstep of the United States that rivals the accomplishments of Sparta, Switzerland, Tlaxcala, or even David versus Goliath. The vehicle he used and the people who followed him at that time were known as Movimiento 26, Julio.
* This article was written with the invaluable assistance of John Little.
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