umm I'm not playing fast and loose with the truth. You only think I'm doing that because you have a clear ideological bias. You do realise that I couldn't quote every single aspect of the sources mentioned because reddit has a limit in terms of how much content you can place in an OP right? I had to be selective in terms of what I quoted out of the vast information I was reading on the topic. And the things I quoted were in line with the facts of the situation.

So apparently you missed the part where the majority of Cubans supported the Cuban revolution and also.....would protest when Castro pursued lighter sentences during the trials of the Cuban revolution.

Also....the whole reason for the failure of American attempts to overthrow Castro such as the Bay of Pigs was due to popular support that Castro had. The Office of the Historian in the U.S State Department explicitly states as such in their official records when speak about the reasons for why the Cuban embargo had to be put in place.

"Salient considerations respecting the life of the present Government of Cuba are:
1.
The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent).
2.
There is no effective political opposition.
3.
Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban Government espouse or condone communist influence.
4.
Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate.
5.
Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause.
6.
The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.
If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."_Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs Mallory(April 6, 1960 Memorandum)

(i)If you continued reading my OP I do reference the fact that the revolutionaries themselves did want the trial. In fact the section on how historical memory influenced the trials of the Cuban revolution I explicitly speak about how Che Guevara himself did want the trials precisely to prevent a Guatemala like situation from happening. But here is something that you are not contending with in your response

1. Fidel Castro explicitly in the Cuban revolutionary war made a holding those from the Batista era accountable as one of his promises when getting into power. So those trials in that context aren't a surprise
2. You say that its a misleading narrative to say there was public pressure on the revolutionaries. No it isn't. The revolutionaries promised that they would bring trials for those a part of the Batista regime. But as the evidence I brought up demonstrated, there was debate as to whether there should be acquittals or prosecutions as well as whether life in prison vs capital punishment was a sufficient punishment. Now can you tell me precisely why it was that when Castro would halt the trials of the revolution that he faced a backlash from the public? Why were there protests and even riots in provinces in Cuba when the punishments weren't sufficiently harsh enough? Why did Castro have to send his own commanders to calm those disturbances? Those are the factors you aren't considering.

(ii)You seem to have gone into my post history and are saying I am romanticising the Cuban revolution. I'll be straight up. I am someone who admires the achievements of the Cuban revolution when it comes to advances in health care, women's rights, land reform, the abolition of segregation, driving the Mafia out, as well as their contributions to things like Medical Internationalism and the struggle against Apartheid. So yeah......those are things to definitely admire.

At time if you actually read those posts carefully you would know that while admiring the achievements of Castro and Che, I also give criticisms of their autocratic policies. I criticise Marxist Leninism's one party ideology. I criticise the lack of freedom of press. I criticise the banning of freedom of assembly, and I also criticise Castro's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. So that sense Castro and Che are no different from other historical revolutionaries who have major achievements and flaws. George Washington was a slave owner who codified slavery into America's laws. And yet he was a man achieved the building of a new nation and the founding of a democracy. Simon Bolivar, predecessor to Castro and Che, was an autocrat in his rule of Venezuela and set the stage for Latin American military juntas. And yet he had achievements in terms of liberating Latin America from Spanish Imperialism and abolishing slavery. I see Castro and Che as being no different in that historical light.

Lastly what I also do is in terms of pointing out the problems and flaws of the Cuban revolution I provide historical and social context as to what were the factors that drove them to those decisions, even if it's bad ones. So why did Fidel Castro place Missiles in Cuba, even though that was a terrible decision? Because of the threat of an American invasion. Why did Che Guevara support the banning of independent media in Cuba? Because of his experiences in Guatemala and the Cold War of U.S tactics of engaging in information warfare when organising coups. What I am doing here with the trials are no different.

(iii)Sure. Include discussions of Huber Matos and other dissidents. I have no problem with that.

(i)Yes. Cuba isn't a democracy and the source referenced was someone who did come from the Cuban Ministry of Justice. At the same time it is still an important source precisely because of the fact that its the archives of Cuba's Ministry of Justice that contains the relevant information on these cases in the first place.

(ii)No one is denying that Che Guevara wasn't himself ruthless. The point being though is that compared to Fidel Castro Che was much more likely to hear appeals and take them seriously based off the hard evidence that we have.

(iii)What evidence do you have that Jon Lee Anderson is being disingenous? Anderson is a respected scholar when it comes to Cuban History and the history of Latin America itself. It was in fact his biography of Che that played an important role in Cuban and Argentine anthropologists being able to locate Che Guevara's body in the fields of Bolivia 30 years after his execution. So we are speaking about someone with an enormous amount of credibility in the field.

(1)How was Che a coward when he literally put himself in harms way all the time?

(2)Who did Che murder? Che played a role in the 1959 trials of the Cuban Revolution and many scholars and historians agree that the people being tried were Batista war criminals ironically enough who were guilty of torture and murder. Which isn't that different from what the allies did at Nuremberg and Tokyo.

I agree he was ruthless and i radically disagree with him on that as well as his use of capital punishment which I strongly oppose. But how does what he did constitute murder.

So it's interesting. That wasn't actually Castro who said that. It was Che Guevara who said that to Richard Goodwin, Kennedy's aide.

So there's a book written on this subject that I haven't read but i know the summary of it. It's called 'Commandante Che' by Paul Dosal. It establishes that the answer is complicated(I would add yes but complicated). Che when it comes to military campaigns Che was a terrible strategist but a brilliant tactician and soldier. During the Cuban Revolution it was Castro's strategic planning that gave them the edge but Che's tactical genius won them the final decisive battle at Santa Clara despite being outnumbered 10 to 1. What happened though was internationally in places like Congo and Bolivia he could not win the campaigns because he would always be at a strategic disadvantage. This despite the fact that he would win the battles anyways. So he found himself in the position America found itself in Vietnam. Winning every battle but being at a massive disadvantage.

Furthermore it also concludes that Che was not w great commander in chief but he was a brilliant field commander. What I get when reading Ches military escapades is that he is the Hannibal of guerilla warfare. A brilliant tactician who's tactics as well as the strategic disadvantage he found himself in ended up being used against him by his enemies.

So I'm a little strange in the sense of I'm a fan of both the Cuban Revolution and Kennedy. In terms of JFKs veneration a large part of course is his assassination. In this sense ironically he's like Che because Ches death also gave him veneration status.

I would say despite mistakes like the bay of pigs and sending advisors to Vietnam JFK does deserve legitimate praise for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the test ban treaty, his moves on civil rights(late as they were) and other areas. It also should remember that JFKs vietnam policy was actually just a continuation of the Eisenhower policy.

When I talk about leadership I'm not talking about their ideology. But their role in the Cuban political structure.

They are kinda two questions when worded that way but the general gist of my question is do you think Che deserves any credit at all for the Cuban military victory at the Bay of Pigs?

So lets just address this particular claim.

(i)It is true that the Cuban revolution did preside over political trials and executions.

(ii)You're presenting a misleading picture of Che Guevara's role in the trials of the Cuban revolution. Che did preside over some of them but he didn't execute thousands of political prisoners. Research done by official biographies like the one Jon Lee Anderson did in 1997 show he presided over 55 executions. Still not good. But no where near "thousands.

(iii)Distinctions need to be made between Fidel and Raul Castro's roles in the trials of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara's. Because Fidel and Raul Castro(especially the latter) where more prone to summary executions. In the case of Che Guevara it was actually the opposite. Che Guevara actually made sure that there was at least due process in the trials he presided over and even barred those with an ideological bias from presiding over the tribunals. He also acquitted several who were put on trial.

(iv)The context of the trials of the Cuban Revolution is important. The came after the overthrow of the Batista regime. Batista's regime was responsible for the murder of up to 20,000 Cubans and committed both crimes against humanity as well as war crimes during the revolutionary war such as the indiscriminate use of napalm and chemical weapons. When Castro came to power he implemented nation wide a policy called "The Law of the Sierra" which established capital punishment for those guilty of war crimes during the Batista era. It was essentially like what the Allies did in the Nuremberg trials after defeating the Nazis and what happened in the Tokyo trials after WWII.

(v)Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries also presided over those trials because of intense pressure from public opinion. During the revolution Castro had promised to the Cuban public accountability for those guilty of war crimes during the Batista government. Which sets the context for the trials he instituted. These trials of course produced condemnation in America. Now according to research done in the Book "A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counter Insurgent Violence in Latin America's Long Cold War" Castro as a gesture to try and maintain good relations with the U.S actually sought to suspend the trials. This produced a negative reaction among sectors of the Cuban public, particularly families of the victims of the Batista regime who carried pictures of both their dead relatives as well as the officials responsible for their deaths. Many even organised protests over that issue. So the injustice for them was letting those people go.

But to your general point about the developing world having different priorities.....there is actually truth to that and Nelson Mandela himself actually said this in an interview he did on American new networks in 1990. He was questioned about his close relationship with Fidel Castro given his struggle for human rights against apartheid. And he said quite bluntly that we are fighting a struggle against one of the worst racial tyrannies and have no time to spend on the internal affairs of Cuba. The fact of the matter is from the Third World's perspective what they saw is this. The U.S and Western governments backing apartheid and many colonial systems. Cuba fighting against apartheid and the colonial systems dominating them. Regardless of Castro's authoritarianism who are they gonna have a higher regard for?

You kinda missed the boat with this response. I was explaining why the Cuban Revolution was extremely popular in the developing world and what historical events were taking place in the 50s and 60s that increased its popularity.