Dealing With Cuba, Castro

In response to “Castro’s Revolution at 30,” by Jorge G. Castaneda, Op-Ed Page, Dec. 29:

While a group of distinguished intellectuals and artists that include Federico Fellini, Yves Montand and Jack Nicholson has written an open letter to Cuba’s Fidel Castro requesting a public referendum, similar to the one that recently took place in Chile, Castaneda laments a revolution that’s gone out of fashion.

It’s simply cruel and outrageous to read that “the accounts of a Cuban gulag were greatly exaggerated.” How perverse this thought can be!

Castaneda ignores the accounts of hundreds of Cubans who have suffered prison and torture. Men like Alberto Fibla and Ricardo Bofill whose stories have been printed in The Times; books written by Armando Valladares and Jorge Valls who tell us of the horrors of the Cuban prisons; movies by Nestor Almendros with countless interviews of ex-political prisoners.

I am currently working on a play based on the life of Alberto Fibla, and I have had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Fibla and hear firsthand about the atrocities perpetrated by Castro and his men.

On the other hand, Castaneda relishes the achievements of the Cuban Revolution as if Cuba before 1959 were a country living in the Stone Age. He would do well to come out of his cocoon and review the United Nations records as well as the 1959 Encyclopedia Britanica. In 1959 Cuba, a country of 6 million people, had a doctor for each 980 persons (second place in the Western Hemisphere); a dentist for each 2,978 persons (third place); a radio for each 5 persons (second place); a TV for each 18 persons (second place); a refrigerator for each 19 persons (third place); a telephone for each 28 persons (third place).

This is not to say that Cubans did not suffer under the right-wing dictatorship of Batista and fight hard at a cost of many lives to bring democracy to the island. Things had to be changed, a lot had to be improved. But Castro betrayed every promise made, jailed all his opponents and transformed Cuba in a gigantic concentration camp.

Thirty years is a long time and Castaneda, if he really loved justice and democracy, should know better.

RAUL DE CARDENAS

Los Angeles