How Communism Destroyed My Youth In One Year 

As an 11-year-old boy, along with my 7-year-old brother, I was playing on the beach near Havana, Cuba, where we spent most of the summer every year. Little did we know how quickly life could change under communism. 

A year earlier in 1959, we heard and experienced some minor changes at home and at school when the leader of the Revolution took over the government. Cuba was one of the most advanced countries in the Americas—measured by international organizations, the percentage of persons who read and wrote, the number of telephones and televisions, health of residents, a growing middle class, and more. Of course there were problems: limits on freedom and poverty for many causing dissatisfactions with the government, resulting in demands to change in the government and thus the revolution. 

Back to beach summer vacation… Our parents announced that we were going to Miami, where we had visited several times as tourists, including the summer prior on my way to summer camp in West Virginia. 

Our family often listened to Radio Rebelde, the short-wave radio the broadcast of Fidel Castro rebels from the far of mountains of eastern Cuba, promising a better life for all Cubans and return to democracy. (Much later in my life when I practiced public relations, I remember how good the rebels were in communications.) 

The “vacation” trip to Miami turned out to be permanent. My father—who spent the first months working for the counter revolution to overthrow the Castro regime—had to go back to work to maintain our family, that now included my baby sister. For the first times in their lives, my uncle and father had to work for someone else. In Cuba we owned one of the largest insurance agencies in the country, representing British and Canadian companies. The head of the business, our grandfather, stayed in Havana, fighting to try to save the what they had built. Sadly, the company was taken over by communist rebels as were the businesses of other relatives and friends. In Miami, my uncle and father—after selling insurance—were able to open their own agency with my grandfather later joining them. It grew into one of Florida’s largest, employing family members, including myself, in addition to dozens of others, until it was sold at a big profit a few years ago. Only in America! 

At end of 1958, the U.S. withdrew support for then President Batista, causing him and his supporters to leave the country in the middle of the night, which created a void in government. Fidel Castro and his rebels did not immediately take charge. They cautiously, but methodically, took an eight-day triumphant march from the mountains to Havana, stopping in major cities along the way. 

After their arrival at the capital city, Castro installed a provisional government made of leaders of various segments of the political spectrum, including a new president. He made numerous long speeches—one with white doves on his shoulders, which became his trademark, where he promised free elections. Promptly, he established himself in the new government as prime minister, then got rid of the president and named himself “Líder Maximo” (Maximum Leader). Next came more speeches, continuing his peace messages, proclaiming no need for weapons, and then no need for elections. 

In his many media interviews and a visit to the U.S. he emphatically denied all rumors that he was a communist, but his actions proved otherwise. He first started to confiscate American properties like refineries, telephone company, sugar mills including Hershey’s Chocolate and many more, then major Cuban ones, like sugarcane farms and their mills, banks, and businesses.  

Some of the Cuban population thought “maybe they had too much.” However, the confiscation circle started to expand to include medium-size companies, then smaller ones affecting families, friends, and neighbors. It was too late to stop it.  

Fidel Castro, after his actions clearly stated that he was a dictator and a communist, publicly stated he was a Marxist-Leninist and a communist. 

What has followed, now in 67th year of the regime in 2026, has been the complete destruction of a country and unmitigated suffering to the people remaining in Cuba. Millions have since fled the island. 

After the initial exodus of exiles—like my family in 1960 and programs like Pedro Pan where 14,000 children left without their parents to go the U.S. to avoid the threat that the Cuban government was considering of taking control of the kids from parents, the Freedom Flights where 260,000 Cubans were welcomed to America—once the regime realized that the best educated, professionals, and business owners had rapidly left, they started to prohibit leaving the country. In 1980, the Peruvian embassy residence in Havana was overwhelmed by 10,865 asylum seekers. The crisis prompted Fidel Castro to dare families in Florida to come by boats to the Port of Mariel to pick up their relatives, resulting in 125,000 leaving the island in six months. Afterwards, the only option left was in desperation: take to sea in rickety, homemade rafts constructed of whatever materials were available. While thousands survived the dangerous waters to reach Florida, many other thousands drowned. The last mass exodus occurred between 2017 to 2025 when an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 Cubans crossed the southern border between Mexico and the U.S. after dangerous travel in Central America, most having to pay thousands of dollars (not worthless Cuban pesos) to “coyote” smugglers. 

As you can see, the communist takeover of resulted in misery, hunger, and desperation for everyone in Cuba, which caused people to leave in mass. Please think for just one minute the huge difference between a communist country like Cuba, where its population literally risks death to leave versus a capitalist and free country like our United States of America, where people from all walks of life and all parts of the world want to live. 

Cuba has gone from the previously mentioned status of having an exemplary standard of living to one of the worst of all the Americas. Cuba lacks the basics to survive—food, water, buildings falling apart—combined with a repressive government that jails anyone involved even in minor protest. 

Incredibly, the disastrous economy is controlled by the Castro family through the armed forces company GAESA, of which the “E” ironically stands Entrepreneurial. It controls food, gasoline, hotels, banks, and remittances (which are the American dollars relatives in the U.S. send to their families in Cuba so they can buy food, toiletries, and other bare essentials to avoid starvation…most of these basic foods are only available in stores run by GAESA). Its leaders, the top of the dictatorship, live in luxury inside walled compounds in large homes with air conditioning, electricity always, jets, and yachts. The grandson of Fidel Castro’s brother Raul, while wearing designer clothing, recently bragged that he wished that other Cubans could live as nice as him. 

Meanwhile, those exiles who left, now Cuban Americans, have become very successful in the United States and have achieved the American dream through education and hard work. This success is across multiple areas: the former president of Coca Cola—the most American brand in the world, several U.S. Senators, including now U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, presidents of major universities, and many more other accomplishments. 

A former American president in 2016, while addressing and giving hope to the people of Cuba said, “In the United States, we have a clear monument to what the Cuban people can build—it’s called Miami. Here in Havana, I see the same talent.” In 2026, President Trump said “They’ve been very successful, the Cuban Americans in Miami.” 

As you can see, the same people whose country was destroyed and whose lives were upended by communism have found opportunity and freedom in the United States. Their hard work has resulted in great success, proving that the American dream is very alive and well!