Hurricanes Shine Some Light on Cuba

“Fidel 1, Ivan 0” (editorial, Sept. 25) contains more positive details about Cuba and Fidel Castro than have appeared in The Times in some time. Like TV weathermen who try to avoid uttering the word “Cuba” while hurricanes do the Samba across their Caribbean wall maps, The Times grudgingly allows that Castro’s society yet survives. Yet perhaps your writer was moved to special anti-commie snootiness by Fidel’s impulsive refusal of U.S. aid.

You mention the hundreds who have died on other Caribbean islands during storms, but not the irony of their largely impoverished “freedom.” There is nothing “ghoulish” about Cuba’s response, although there is deadliness aplenty in our decades of economic sanctions.

Alvin Lawson

Garden Grove

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Can’t we give credit where credit is due? Nobody died in Cuba because of great organization by and for its people. Have you looked at Haiti? They can’t even distribute food and water, not to mention the thousands who died. Didn’t the U.S. back the overthrow of Haiti’s elected leader earlier this year, leaving them with this chaos? We have nothing to be smug about.

Barbara Tarbuck

Los Angeles