UNAS CUANTAS VERDADES sobre la Cuba "revolucionaria" a propósito de la película La ciudad perdida, de Andy García (una película buenísima, que os recomiendo ver si no lo habéis hecho hasta ahora):

I’ll try to dispel the fantasies of pre-Castro Cuba still cherished by America’s most prestigious academics and its most learned film critics. Even better, I’ll use a source generally esteemed by liberal highbrow types, the United Nations.

Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class,” it starts. “Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage than in the U.S.”
 
In 1958, Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950’s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco.
 
The Anti-Batista rebellion (not revolution) was staffed and led overwhelmingly by college students and professionals. Unemployed lawyers were prominent (take Fidel Castro himself). Here’s the makeup of the “peasant revolution’s” first cabinet, drawn from the leaders in the Anti-Batista fight: 7 lawyers, 2 University professors, 3 University students, 1 doctor, 1 engineer, 1 architect, 1 former city mayor and a Colonel who defected from the Batista Army. A notoriously “bourgeois” bunch as Che himself might have put it.
 
By 1961 however, workers and campesinos (country folk)-made up the overwhelming bulk of the anti-Castroite rebels, especially the guerrillas in the Escambray mountains. That (genuine) guerrilla war would REALLY make for an action-packed and gut-wrenching war movie. Hear that, Messieurs Soderbergh and del Toro?
 
If by some miracle such a movie ever got made, you can bet these learned critics would pan it too. Who ever heard of poor country-folk fighting against their benefactors Fidel and Che?
 
The New York Times‘ Stephen Holden also sneers at Garcia’s implication that “life sure was peachy before Fidel Castro came to town and ruined everything.”  In fact, Mr. Holden, before Castro “came to town,” Cuba took in more immigrants (primarily from Europe) as a percentage of population than the U.S.,  And at a time when Cubans could get a U.S visa for the mere asking and emigrate with all their property, family, etc., more Americans lived in Cuba than Cubans in the U.S.  Furthermore, inner tubes were used in truck tires, oil drums for oil, and Styrofoam for insulation. None were cherished black market items for use as flotation devices to flee the glorious liberation while fighting off hammerheads and tiger sharks.

Leedlo entero.