Tragic Cuba a dark lesson of the failure of Communism: This is hell

Cuba just endured a nationwide blackout of the electric grid, lasting for days — the third such disaster in six months.The population has succumbed to despair.“There are no words to describe this,” a young Cuban YouTuber exclaimed.

“This is hell.”Yet the blackout scarcely made the news.Journalists and intellectuals have fallen out of love with Cuba, so nobody is asking the obvious question: How can any government allow such a humanitarian horror to continue?Let me try to answer that question.I was born on the island long ago, when it was a happier place.

My childhood was spent in a subtropical garden ringed by the best beaches in the world.Havana, my hometown, boasted magnificent colonial buildings from the time when the Spanish treasure fleet would rendezvous in the city’s protected harbor before sailing to Seville.The island, though not wealthy, was prospering.Hard as it is to believe, at the time of my birth Cuba’s GDP per capita exceeded that of Japan.The Cuban people, then as now, were pushy, loud, friendly and funny.

I am reminded of the type whenever I visit Israel — only Cuba, back then, had better food and way better music than Israel ever did.This picture of paradise was spoiled by a tragic flaw all too familiar to those who have lived in Latin America: Politics swallowed and destroyed everything else.Cuban democracy was shaky and corrupt — but it turned out to be infinitely preferable to the succeeding alternatives.In 1952, the military, led by Fulgencio Batista, overthrew the elected government.Since that fatal event, the Cuban people have remained unfree.On New Year’s Day of 1958, Batista took his family, friends and bags of money on a plane and fled to the Dominican Republic.

A motley crew of revolutionaries with big beards and olive-green fatigues, commanded by the 33-year-old Fidel Castro, was now in charge.Castro fought Batista as a democrat but ruled Cuba for 50 years as a Marxist-Leninist “maximum leader.”And here is a ...