Before Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, there used to be graveyards all over Cuba’s beaches, especially on the beaches of eastern Cuba.
Before the Revolution, people all over Cuba, but particularly in Eastern Cuba, would go down to the beaches when they got very ill. The reason was because they were hoping to catch a boat that was going to Havana. There were few to no hospitals in rural and eastern Cuba, so the only hope for the sick was to go down to the beach and see if they could hitch a ride on a ship to Havana because the only good hospitals that might be able to cure them were in Havana.
It is true that there were a fair number of doctors in Cuba before the Revolution as the exiles claim. However, they mostly just served the upper and upper middle classes and they practiced fee-based medicine. Only the rich and the well to do could afford to get sick – of course this is the norm for medicine under capitalism – the rich get doctors, the poor get to die. Capitalists think this is completely normal.
In many cases, either no ships came by or they were not able to flag down a ship, so many people simply died on the beaches waiting for a boat to take them to Havana for a possible cure. Nowadays, all over the beaches of Eastern Cuba, you can find these little graveyards.
When Castro came in, he quickly put an end to all of that. He built hospitals and clinics all over Cuba. No one in Cuba, even in the most remote rural areas, is without access to a physician or medical care. Cuba has one of the highest doctor to patient ratios (the most doctors per capita) in the whole world. I believe that the figure is 1 doctor per ~450 citizens. In much of the Third World, it is 1/10,000 or possibly even worse.
So when people say that Communism is a failed system or the Cuban model has failed, or the whole world is turning to “democracy and capitalism” – as if those two things had anything to do with each other, I have to shake my head.
How can we say that the Cuban model has failed when there are no more people dying on the beaches of Eastern Cuba?
When people ask me with baffled expressions why I am a socialist, this is one of the reasons that I might give them. Do you understand now why some of us are socialists? We are not a bunch of crazed idiots pushing a failed model. We have some very real and good reasons for promoting the system that we promote.
I can assure you of one thing: if the exiles ever come back into power, one of the first things they will do is get rid of all of those medical clinics as part of some austerity measure. All over Latin America, rightwing governments have always refused to spend one dime on health care, and capitalist medicine has obviously failed the vast majority of Latin Americans who can’t afford it. In fact, rightwingers have often attacked medical centers around the world, often violently.
