COMMUNISM: THE IDEOLOGY THAT PROMISES JUSTICE AND BUILDS PRISONS

A Promise That Needs an Enemy

Communism begins by promising justice for the poor. To gain support, it divides society into victims and perpetrators: the poor against the rich, workers against employers, revolutionaries against counterrevolutionaries. It does not need to prove that every accused person has committed a crime. It is enough simply to place them in a category considered to be the enemy.

The businessman becomes an exploiter. The property owner, a thief. The independent journalist, a mercenary. The critical artist, a criminal. The homosexual, a degenerate. The religious person, an ideological threat. The one who leaves the country, a traitor. The one who protests, a foreign agent.

Once a citizen has been turned into an enemy, taking away his property, his job, his freedom, or his life can be presented as an act of justice. That is one of the most perverse mechanisms of this ideology: first, it dehumanizes the victim, and then it turns his punishment into a revolutionary virtue.

Lenin, Stalin, and Mao: When Utopia Began Counting Corpses

Violence did not arise by accident after the communist revolution. It was present from the very beginning of its systems of power.

Under Lenin, a one-party system was established, opponents were persecuted, the political police were created, and the Red Terror was used as an instrument of control. The revolution that claimed to liberate the working class began by prohibiting workers from freely choosing who should govern them. Stalin perfected that machinery.

The purges, executions, deportations, forced collectivization, and Gulag camps turned the Soviet Union into a place where a single word, a denunciation, or a mere suspicion could destroy an entire family. During the Great Purge alone, from 1936 to 1938, historical estimates place the death toll between hundreds of thousands and more than one million, depending on the criteria and documents used.

In addition to these victims are those who died in labor camps, during deportations, and as a result of famines linked to Soviet policies. The exact figures remain a subject of debate, but no statistical debate can obscure the scale of the crime.

Mao Zedong took another promise of social transformation to even more devastating extremes. The so-called Great Leap Forward, a campaign of industrialization and collectivization imposed by the government, contributed to one of the greatest famines in history. Estimates vary widely, ranging from around fifteen million to several tens of millions of deaths. These were not mere administrative errors.

When a government controls the land, production, information, and the right to challenge it, a wrong decision can no longer be corrected. No one dares to tell the leader that he is destroying the country. Statistics are falsified, subordinates lie to survive, and the population dies while those in power continue to celebrate their victories.

Communism never acknowledges its failure

When a company fails, it may go out of business. When a family mismanages its money, it must cut back on expenses. When communism fails, it blames an enemy. There is always an external explanation.

Imperialism. Businessmen. Counterrevolutionaries. Peasants who didn’t cooperate. Intellectuals who sowed doubt. Foreign countries. The weather. The economic war. The embargo. Everything can be to blame—except the system. That is why communism never admits that it has failed. It claims that it needs more control, more surveillance, more sacrifice, and more time.

Citizens must wait for a wonderful future that never comes. Meanwhile, the leader lives in conditions that the people can never attain.

Cuba: The Island Turned into a Prison

Fidel Castro was proclaimed liberator and ended up building a state in which criticizing the liberator could land you in jail. He promised to return Cuba to the Cuban people, but he confiscated businesses, land, and property. Private enterprise was destroyed or brought under state control. The free press disappeared. Labor unions ceased to represent workers and instead began to represent the government. Schools became venues for political indoctrination.

The revolution didn’t stop at governing the country. It sought to create a new kind of Cuban. From childhood on, we were taught who the hero was, who the enemy was, and what we were supposed to think. The books depicted guerrillas, militiamen, martyrs, and children ready to defend the leader and the flag against the United States. That was not education. It was doctrine.

Education means teaching a person how to think. Indoctrination means teaching them what they can think without being punished. Fidel It also rewrote national history. The Republic prior to 1959 was reduced to a caricature of corruption, poverty, and subordination. The achievements, institutions, and figures that did not serve the revolutionary narrative were downplayed or reinterpreted.

History ceased to belong to the country. It came to belong to those in power.

I was imprisoned for painting

My criticism isn't based solely on a historical perspective. I was imprisoned for painting. When I was starting out as a cartoonist, my political satire was destroyed. The police would come into my home to inspect what I was creating. They called me a criminal for being an artist. I hadn’t committed a crime. I had used an image to express an idea.

In a free society, a cartoon may offend the president. In a dictatorship, the president can destroy the cartoonist. That experience explains communism better than many political treatises. A system that claims to represent the people fears a drawing made by one of its citizens.

He fears it because a single image can reveal in seconds what propaganda has tried to hide for decades.

The Che Who Doesn't Appear on T-Shirts

It is hard to understand that there are still young people in the West who are capable of taking the Che Guevara printed on their chests as a symbol of freedom. They do so from expensive universities, with state-of-the-art cell phones, the freedom to protest, and the ability to openly criticize their governments.

They condemn the capitalism while enjoying the comforts, rights, and opportunities that that same system affords them. They have not gone hungry while relying on a ration card. They have not seen the police enter their home to inspect a painting. They have not been imprisoned for expressing an opinion. They have not had to take to the sea to flee their country. For them, the communism It's a T-shirt. For millions of people, it has been a prison.

Che He wasn’t just the romantic young man in a photograph. He was an advocate of revolutionary violence, participated in the creation of the new repressive apparatus, and held positions of responsibility at La Cabaña during the trials and executions that followed the revolutionary victory. He also promoted the idea of the “new man”: an individual whose conscience, desires, and behavior had to be subordinated to the needs of the revolution.

The statement often attributed to Che about sending gay men to cut sugarcane to “make them men” requires a reliable primary source before it can be quoted verbatim. But there is no need to rely on a dubious quote to demonstrate the repressive nature of the system he helped build.

The UMAPs: Shaping Men Through Punishment

Between 1965 and 1968, the following operated in Cuba: Military Units for Production Assistance, known as UMAP.

The bureaucratic name was intended to conceal the reality: labor camps where homosexuals, religious figures, conscientious objectors, and people labeled as antisocial or politically undesirable were interned. There, among other tasks, they were forced to work cutting sugarcane. Discipline, isolation, and physical labor were intended to reform those who did not fit the model of the revolutionary man.

Che had left Cuba by the time the UMAPs formally began operating. That is why we should not falsely attribute their direct administration to him. However, he had advocated for disciplinary labor and participated in the creation of the Guanahacabibes camp, a precursor to revolutionary labor punishment.

The UMAPs were proposed under Fidel Castro and implemented under the military structure led by Raúl Castro. Decades later, Fidel himself acknowledged the injustice committed during the persecution of homosexuals.

That is why it is particularly grotesque to see Che’s face on T-shirts used as a symbol of sexual liberation. Anyone who wears a symbol should know what that symbol helped to represent.

The Exodus: A Cemetery Without Graves

¿How many Cuban families were stranded in the Florida Straits?? There is no single figure that can account for all those who disappeared on rafts, makeshift boats, or during escape attempts that were never recorded. Each number represents a family that waited for a call that never came.

No one sets out to sea with their children into dangerous waters just because they live in a paradise. Cubans left because they couldn’t decide their own future. They left because of hunger, persecution, a lack of opportunities, and political oppression. Some made it. Others were lost at sea. The regime called them traitors and worms.

Then he began to desperately need their money.

The “worms” that sustain the revolution

For years, the regime’s propaganda vilified those who left Cuba. It confiscated their property, separated them from their families, and portrayed them as enemies of the homeland. But one of the great ironies of the Castro regime is that the Cuban economy ended up depending on remittances, medicines, food, and care packages sent by those very same exiles.

The exile works in the United States, Canada, or Europe. He sends money to his family. The family must use state-controlled channels and businesses. Foreign currency flows back into state or military structures, while the Cuban worker continues to be paid in a weakened currency. The so-called “worms” feed the island that the revolution promised to turn into a paradise.

Cuba has not survived because of the success of communism. It has survived, in large part, thanks to the sacrifice of those who fled from it.

U.S. chicken and the alleged total embargo

Seizure and Blockade They are not the same thing. The United States maintains an embargo that restricts commercial and financial transactions with Cuba. That embargo exists, has real consequences, and should not be denied. But Cuba has not been completely cut off from the rest of the world. It has traded with Canada, Spain, China, Mexico, Russia, Venezuela, and numerous other countries. It has also purchased food from the United States under permitted exemptions.

A significant portion of the chicken consumed in Cuba has come from the U.S. market. However, some of the imported food ends up in hotels, tourist facilities, or state-run stores that require foreign currency. Workers receive their wages in pesos, but they must obtain foreign currency to buy products imported by the very same government that controls their economy.

The chicken flies the American flag until it reaches the Cuban's table. Then the propaganda starts calling it a blockade again. The Seizure restricts economic relations with the United States. The Blockade The Castro regime prevents Cubans from producing, prospering, importing, investing, and making decisions freely.

Oil received, shortages for the people

For decades, Cuba received oil from the Soviet Union, Russia, Venezuela, and Mexico. For years, Venezuela maintained an oil-for-services exchange with Cuba. Mexico also sent considerable quantities of crude oil and petroleum products. Despite this, the people have suffered power outages, fuel shortages, and a transportation system at a standstill.

There are allegations of embezzlement, triangulation, or resale of resources, but each case must be documented before it can be presented as fact. What is indisputable is the lack of transparency: Cuban citizens cannot verify how much oil enters the country, who manages it, where it ends up, or who reaps the benefits.

The question is entirely legitimate: ¿Where did all the funds received over so many years end up??

A country that defaulted on its debt

He Cuban communism It confiscated companies and properties, accumulated debt, and gradually lost the confidence of creditors and investors. A reliable economy cannot be built if the rules depend on the whims of those in power, if property can be confiscated, and if financial obligations are postponed indefinitely.

Disputes over Cuban debt have even reached the courts in London. The problem is not just the U.S. embargo. It is also the reputation of a country that, for decades, has faced enormous difficulties in paying what it owes.

A country does not become isolated simply because someone imposes sanctions on it. It can also become isolated because it ceases to be trustworthy.

The Spread of the Virus

Fidel Castro wasn't content with transforming Cuba. He tried to export the revolution to the continent.

The Castro regime supported guerrilla movements, trained fighters, developed intelligence networks, and promoted a narrative capable of captivating generations: the leader as savior, the United States as the enemy, private property as a sin, and all opposition as treason.

Nicaragua

Cuba supported the Sandinista Front both before and after it came to power in 1979. This cooperation included training, advisors, intelligence, education, and health care.

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ended up establishing a recognizable system: the concentration of power within the family, the persecution of opponents, the elimination of pluralism, and the suppression of protests.

The revolution that promised to liberate Nicaragua ended up needing to silence the Nicaraguan people.

Venezuela

With Hugo Chávez, Castroism found oil, money, and an immensely wealthy country.

The relationship was presented as medical and social cooperation, but it extended into strategic areas of the state. For years, the presence of Cuban advisers in security, intelligence, and government organizations has been documented.

Cuba shared its expertise on how to retain power. Venezuela provided resources that helped sustain the Cuban regime.

The result was another impoverished country, weakened institutions, a persecuted opposition, and millions of people forced to emigrate.

Cuba could not export prosperity because it never managed to produce it. It exported mechanisms of control: the cult of the leader, the creation of enemies, dependence on the state, censorship, and fear.

Why does it always end badly?

Communism fails time and again because it is based on a flawed conception of power. To impose economic equality, it must concentrate extraordinary authority in the state. But that state is run by people, and people who are given absolute power rarely relinquish it voluntarily.

First, they control businesses to prevent exploitation. Next, they control the press to protect the revolution. Then, they control schools to shape the “new man.” Later, they control art to prevent ideological deviation.

Ultimately, they control every aspect of life because any individual freedom could threaten the system.

The result is not a classless society. It is a new privileged class: the revolutionary bureaucracy, the military, the leaders, and their families. The people lose their property. Those in power take over the country.

Communism is destruction

Communism promises to create a new man, but it begins by destroying the man who already exists.

It destroys their independence.

Destroy his property.

Destroy his memory.

It destroys their right to dissent.

It destroys trust among neighbors, because anyone can become an informant.

It destroys the family, because it forces some to leave and others to stay.

It destroys creation, because a free artist will always be dangerous to a government that needs to control reality.

Almost seven decades of indoctrination have passed in Cuba, and still only a few dare to speak out without fear. That fear does not demonstrate the strength of the revolution. It demonstrates the size of the prison. Communism It did not fail due to a lack of time. It did not fail because it was not implemented correctly. It did not fail solely because of the United States.

It failed because, in order to impose its utopia, it had to strip citizens of their property, their thoughts, their voice, and their freedom.

I'm not writing this because someone told me about it. I’m writing this because I was imprisoned for painting. I’m writing this because of my destroyed works, because of the police breaking into my home, because of families torn apart, because of gay people sent to labor camps, because of those who were shot, because of those who died at sea, and because of those who are still afraid to speak a basic truth:

Communism does not liberate the poor. It turns them into the property of the state.