Enrique Padron "American Democrats are pining ever more loudly for socialism these days, for “free” education, “free” health care and much else.
"Let me tell you about socialism as I lived it under the Fidel Castro regime.
"The house where I was born in Communist Cuba had a dirt floor, a bathroom hole-in-the-ground, which we shared with six other families, and a zinc roof that left us unbearably hot in the summer and shivering in the winter.
"We had no running water, no refrigerator and no door in the back of the house. We cooked with charcoal. My mother raised four boys by herself in that “house,” working 12 hours a day to earn 160 Cuban pesos, or approximately $6, a month.
"Why didn’t we fix it? In addition to the meager income, we had no access to hardware stores to buy nails or cement to fix our humble house. In fact, the local member of the National Assembly was the only person authorized to approve whether we could buy a bag of cement or a roll of roof paper — if they were available.
"We couldn’t buy these simple materials without that precious piece of paper. Can you imagine going to your congressional representative to ask for permission to buy a box of nails? Or roof tiles? Or roof paper? It seems unthinkable in the United States. But in Cuba, where we lacked the necessities of life, we had to. And when we complained, the authorities scolded us to be grateful for free education and free health care.
"In Cuba, it is illegal to speak against the government or complain about living conditions. We were prohibited from speaking with local media, but the journalists were state employees and wouldn’t publish our stories anyway. We couldn’t express our unmet needs and were reminded that we shouldn’t complain anyway, because we were promised — you guessed it — free education and free health care." . . .
"Let me tell you about socialism as I lived it under the Fidel Castro regime.
"The house where I was born in Communist Cuba had a dirt floor, a bathroom hole-in-the-ground, which we shared with six other families, and a zinc roof that left us unbearably hot in the summer and shivering in the winter.
"We had no running water, no refrigerator and no door in the back of the house. We cooked with charcoal. My mother raised four boys by herself in that “house,” working 12 hours a day to earn 160 Cuban pesos, or approximately $6, a month."Why didn’t we fix it? In addition to the meager income, we had no access to hardware stores to buy nails or cement to fix our humble house. In fact, the local member of the National Assembly was the only person authorized to approve whether we could buy a bag of cement or a roll of roof paper — if they were available.
"We couldn’t buy these simple materials without that precious piece of paper. Can you imagine going to your congressional representative to ask for permission to buy a box of nails? Or roof tiles? Or roof paper? It seems unthinkable in the United States. But in Cuba, where we lacked the necessities of life, we had to. And when we complained, the authorities scolded us to be grateful for free education and free health care.
"In Cuba, it is illegal to speak against the government or complain about living conditions. We were prohibited from speaking with local media, but the journalists were state employees and wouldn’t publish our stories anyway. We couldn’t express our unmet needs and were reminded that we shouldn’t complain anyway, because we were promised — you guessed it — free education and free health care." . . .
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