https://www.quora.com/How-many-deaths-was-Fidel-Castro-responsible-for

How many deaths was Fidel Castro responsible for?

As with any government, totalitarian regimes especially, much sensitive information is not readily available for public scrutiny. Even after their downfall, exactly how many deaths often remains unknown. Cuba’s dictatorial regime, under Fidel Castro, is no exception in this regard. Cuba has no Freedom of Information Act and its renowned Constitution of 1940 has remained suspended throughout Fidel Castro’s totalitarian reign.

Like with many of the other dictator-attributed death figures, scholarly estimates will often remain the only sources currently accessible. Scholars often differ, somewhat, on the specifics and thus figures may vary. With some forthright effort, one can, nevertheless, arrive at an estimate consensus.

Accredited author, Mario Lazo in his book Dagger in the Heart : American Policy Failures in Cuba, placed his, now dated, 1968 estimate at 50,000 deaths. For some to cavalierly disregard such death toll estimates as “lunatic estimates from the exile community” is beyond callousness.

Miguel A. Faria’s book, Cuba in Revolution (2002), op. cit., pp. 415-416, states the following: “Since Fidel Castro took over the island in 1959, the best figures that we can glean is that between 30,000 to 40,000 people either have been executed en los paredones de fusilamiento (in the firing squad wall) or have died in the hands of their communist jailers. Mr. Faria also estimates: “The best conservative estimate is that between 30,000 to 40,000 Cubans have perished attempting to flee Castro’s regime, mostly succumbing in the treacherous waters of the Florida Straits. My figures for death at sea are consistent with Juan Clark’s” Cuba: Mito y Realidad, “who estimated that more than 16,000 Cubans had made it to freedom since 1959 up to the time of the publication of the book in 1992. Clark estimated that figure represented only one out of three Cubans who attempted to make it to freedom. Countless thousands of others have died indirectly as a result of Fidel Castro’s collectivist policies, unspeakable privations, malnutrition, and the general desolation of a once more prosperous island.”

These deaths-at-sea figures could be debated in total. I would argue that the Fidel Castro regime came to power as a result of a revolution that unequivocally promised prompt, free, and fair elections with a speedy return to its democratic principles and its preexisting Constitution of 1940. This point is uncontested and well documented by Fidel Castro in his own words, both in print and on film. Unlike many politicians who fail to keep their political promises, an egregious lie such as this one by Castro must, in this specific regard, be held accountable. For 56 years Castro also has not allowed Cubans the freedom to travel abroad for fear of defection and mass exodus. On this point, the Castro regime must therefore also be held responsible for the deaths of those who succumbed risking life and limb in near-suicidal attempts to escape Castro’s subsequent 57-year prelapsarian vespiary.

In January of 2003, Mr. Castro also had the ‘distinction’, along with: Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo, of being tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Belgium. Trials proceedings were suspended, in June of that year, only after the Brussels appeals court ruling of ‘functional immunity’ for all world leaders. Belgium’s then Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said he supported a change to the country’s indemnification-law for senior state-officials in order to then allow the prosecution of such world leaders to proceed. It is my perfervid hope these cases will be reopened. In excess of half million Cubans have been processed into Fidel’s political prisons since 1959 (as substantiated by Freedom House), and Cuba’s overall, shameful human-rights record is legion and has been well-reported by ‘Human Rights Watch International.’

Please see: http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99….

The Harvard-trained scholar Armando Lago, in his book The Black Book of Communism, first published in French, (1997) then in English 1999, made an attempt to list Castro’s deaths since 1959. So far the deaths of 97,000 persons have been named, each confirmed by at least two sources. Some 30,000 executed by firing squad, 2,000 extra-judicial assassinations, 5,000 deaths in prison due to beating by guards and denial of medical care and 60,000 deaths while trying to escape Cuba by sea. According to Dr. Lago’s and his ongoing-research partner, Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau, 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. Another estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel’s revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency. Their 2005 total ranges between 90,827 and 102,722 deaths. The estimates of Cubans killed range from 35,000 to 141,000 (1959-1987) according to and available on the site of R. J. Rummel-University of Hawaii, “Power Kills.”

Other estimates may differ on the breakdown but they result in similar death-toll figures: The “Truth Recovery Archive on Cuba” published its updated Jan. 1, 1959 to March 25, 2005 data on Non-combat Victims of the Castro Regime: a total of 87,073 deaths. The ‘Truth Recovery’ notes their total exclusion of “documented deaths of civilians – both Cuban and otherwise – resulting from international military incursions, sabotage, or support for international subversion sponsored by Cuba [on several continents]”

See: http://www.cubaarchive.org/downl….

“The Revolution’s Toll” is a project to list each person killed for and against the Cuban revolution by name and date is underway, but it struggles to garner the funding it needs to complete its mission. At 31,173, the tally of ‘documented cases’ keeps growing, and includes: 5,728 killed by Castro firing squads, 1,207 extrajudicial killings after Castro took power 1,216 deaths in prison.

I suggest a 100,000 deaths figure (as of 2005) in an effort to avoid the accusation of exaggeration in this lamentable area of human atrocity. While some less ‘modest’ death-toll figures far exceed those of the Castor’s regime, given Cuba’s relatively small population, it is a very ‘respectable’ per-capita number, comparable to, or even exceeding Stalin’s per-capita statistics.

Finally, as I stated at the onset, the currently ‘non-documentable’ death-toll may never fully be revealed, but the unfortunate death of those additional thousands is nonetheless real and will someday also be subject to an even more-verifiable accounting. I do remain convinced, however, that the figure of attributable deaths to Fidel Castro’s regime is, tragically, far greater.