Fidel Castro is dead, but his repression, abuses live on

Even in death, the life and legacy of Fidel Castro cast a long and powerful shadow over his country of 11 million people and over relations with its fiercest Western Hemisphere adversary, the United States.

The fiery Castro, who died Friday at age 90, symbolized for more than five decades the Communist island nation’s stern and oftentimes callous regime. Even after he relinquished the reins of the presidency after 47 years to his younger brother, Raul, in 2008, Fidel remained an overarching ex-officio figurehead of the dictatorial and iron-fisted brand of governance that the cigar-loving revolutionary established after his 1959 overthrow of the pro-American government of Fulgencio Batista.

Throughout his tenure of repression and human-rights abuses, Castro often found himself at loggerheads with 10 American presidents. Nonetheless, he brushed aside assassination attempts, invasions, embargoes and contemptuous and cold diplomatic relations to reign largely impervious to change.

Only in the recent years of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has Cuba moved ever so slowly toward rapprochement with America and the West.

Beginning in his first year in office, Obama reversed some of the restrictions on travel to Cuba set by his predecessor, George W. Bush. By 2014, the president announced that the two nations would restore full diplomatic ties, a first since the tense era of the Cuban missile crisis five decades earlier. That came on the heels of a prisoner swap mediated in part by Pope Francis.

Then last March, Obama made a historic visit to Cuba, best remembered by many by the limp and awkward handshake he shared with Raul Castro.

We noted then and we will reinforce now that just like that contorted handshake, the future of Cuban-American ties and their expansion lacks any guarantees of firmness.

As a result, the American government should tread cautiously and not treat the passing of Fidel Castro as akin to a wicked old witch dying in the land of Oz.

Yes, the father of one of the few remaining Marxist-Leninist Communist states on the planet is dead. But much of the evil and pain he created there over 60 years – repression of political dissent, human-rights abuses and tight-fisted control of the economy – remain very much alive.

According to the 2016 Report of Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government continues to repress dissent and discourage public criticism. It now relies less on long-term prison sentences to punish its critics, but short-term arbitrary arrests of human-rights defenders, independent journalists, and others have increased dramatically in recent years. Other repressive tactics employed by the government include beatings, public acts of shaming, and the termination of employment, HRW reports.

The U.S. Commerce Department reports that the Cuban government detained more than 8,600 political activists in 2015 and made about 9,000 such arrests in 2014.

In addition, the state-controlled economy allows poverty to run rampant. Wages average 8 cents per hour or about $25 per month, according to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics.

OBAMA, TRUMP STRIKE SIMILAR CHORDS

Clearly, Cuba has a long, long, long way to go to measure up to commonly accepted socioeconomic standards of living, decency and liberty for citizens in a free society.

In their official responses to the death of nonagenarian Castro over the weekend, both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump appeared to recognize as much.

Both focus less on the history of strained relations with Castro and his ilk and more on hopes for a brighter future for the ill-treated populace of Cuba.

In his statement, Obama noted, “Cubans should use the occasion to recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”

Trump responsibly struck a similar chord in his official reaction: “While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

Aides to Trump wisely reinforced his message Sunday by noting the new president will tie more open relations with Cuba to its commitment to more liberty and less repression for its citizenry.

From our perspective, that would be a fair trade-off toward enhancing the quality of life for Cubans, ending a 54-year-old economic embargo and eventually allowing Cuba back into the fold of true American allies.