BRICS
How the Chinese are Helping to Transform Cuba, Again
|
24 May 2013
In 1958 a young Chinese Cuban named Armando Choy posed for the camera in front of a drab brick farmhouse in Fomento, a town close to the Escambray Mountains in central Cuba. Choy stiffened almost to attention, his shirt buttoned to the collar, his hands clasping an old rifle by the muzzle. His seven comrades in crumpled fatigues, stranding alongside or squatting before him, smiled through bushy black beards that would become emblematic of Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution.
For Choy, growing up in Cuba had not been easy. The son of a humble Chinese shopkeeper, he suffered from the racism and wretched living conditions that plagued Havana under Fulgencio Batista’s regime. Batista’s brutal social indifference to poorer Cubans was, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. put it, “an open invitation to revolution.”
[DIPLOMATIC COURIER]
Copyright 2006-2012 The Diplomatic Courier™. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
BRIC / Leading Stories
March 7, 2013 China’s villages, which used to be models of communal unity or flashpoints of stormy peasant uprisings, now languish in the...FULL STORY |
March 1, 2013 While the U.S. presidential candidates were slugging it out during the debates on foreign policy, India remained...FULL STORY |
February 6, 2013 When poor farmers in Ningbo, one of China’s oldest and richest cities, barricaded a road near a controversial petrochemical...FULL STORY |
December 5, 2012 Is China moving towards democracy? Seemingly capitalist, seemingly communist, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) frequently...FULL STORY |
November 23, 2012 The India-China border dispute is not only the largest territorial dispute in Asia, but is also one of longest-running...FULL STORY |
October 27, 2012 After over a decade, the British Government in a major policy shift has decided to give up its boycott of the Gujarat...FULL STORY |
September 20, 2012 In early July, the Library of Congress awarded Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil, the Kluge Prize for...FULL STORY |
September 6, 2012 After 90 years, China’s Communist Youth League is still going strong. Much has happened in that time. The nation has...FULL STORY |
July 31, 2012 Is China good for Africa or bad? That seems to be the never-ending debate from international development and investment...FULL STORY |