I saw many socialist experiments in Latin -America and the results were not beautiful.
If Americans want to see how much socialism works, they don’t have to go far. Starting with Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1959, socialism has a gloomy history of failure in this hemisphere. While socialist revolutionaries came to power by concentrating on real problems of poverty and corruption, they often hide their goal to fully take over the economy.
A man walks past empty shelves in a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, on March 9, 2017. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)
Castro appeared on “Meet the Press” of NBC during a visit to the US in April 1959, months after seizing power during the Cuban Revolution.
“I am not communism. I disagree with communism,” said Castro.
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That was a lie. In short order, Castro wiped all the opposition, socialized the entire economy and once forced Cuba’s powerful business to escape Miami en masse.
Data from 2023 shows that extreme poverty in Cuba has reached 88% and will probably be worse by now. A similar pattern of events followed in other Latin countries.
A vintage car in Havana, the capital in Cuba. (Istock)
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Venezuela, once blessed with huge oil reserves and a lively middle class, saw a large reversal of fortune under the socialist buddy of Castro, Hugo Chavez. For years, Venezuelans live with hyperinflation, which in 2018 peaked at 63,000%. It is now due to a still miserable 225%.
“They took our ownership away. They destroyed our industry through price checks, through rules, by high taxation, and they changed what should really be one of the richest countries in the world in one of the world’s poorest,” said Daniel Di Martino, a Manhatan Institute Fellow and Venezuelan immigrant.
Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) talks to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) during their visit to the unknown soldier monument in Campo Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela, on October 29, 2000. (Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty images)
Yet there was a kind of equality that came in these countries. Everyone except the party elite became poor.
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It is also important to note that the economic figures for Cuba and Venezuela are estimates because these countries are not at all transparent with their data, but it is probably at least as bad as what was suggested in that report.
