“There were a lot of folks in Cuba at that point who were illiterate. He formed the literacy brigade,” Sanders said. “(Castro) went out and they helped people learn to read and write. You know what, I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.”
He added: “I have been extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world including Cuba, including Nicaragua, including Saudi Arabia, including China, including Russia. I happen to believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.”
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“You may recall way back in, when was it,1961 they invaded Cuba and the, everybody was totally convinced the Castro was the worst guy in the world. All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro,” Sanders said, discussing the logic behind the Kennedy administration’s failed Bay of Pigs coup. “They had forgotten that he educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.”
“You know, not to say that Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect, they are certainly not,” he said. “But just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say that the people in their own nations feel the same way.”
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“The revolution (in Cuba) is far deeper and more profound than I had understood it to be” and encompassed more than economic policy. “It is a revolution of values in which people, instead of working for their own personal wealth, work for the common good.”
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“President Kennedy was elected while I was at the University of Chicago, that was 1960. I remember being physically nauseated by his speech and that doesn’t happen often. He debated Nixon on Cuba. And their hatred for the Cuban Revolution, both of them, was so strong,” Sanders said. “Kennedy was young and appealing and ostensibly liberal, but I think at that point, seeing through Kennedy, and what liberalism was, was probably a significant step for me to understand that conventional politics or liberalism was not what was relevant.”
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Sanders in the 1980s said Ortega had the right, as the leader of his country, to meet with the Soviets and offered a review of the Nicaraguan government under Ortega that echoed his comments on Castro’s Cuba.
“Is it a totalitarian country? No, it is not a totalitarian country. Are there civil liberties. Yeah, there are civil liberties. Is it a perfectly free country? No, it most certainly is not. Is it freer than of the most of the countries in Central America? Yeah, it is,” Sanders said. “Within the context of the misery and the lack of democracy in Central America, it holds up reasonably well. Is the Nicaraguan government always right? The answer is absolutely not. Have they made mistakes? Sure they have.”
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“What surprised me about the trip to the Soviet Union was the strong degree of friendship and openness that both Soviet officials and ordinary officials have to us both is Yaroslavl and the other cities,” Sanders said. “Both the officials and the people were extremely generous and warm and I was very surprised by the degree in fact they like Americans and admire Americans.”
He attributed the ostensibly open conversation to his own willingness to speak directly about issues facing his own country, with specific mentions of the expensive housing and the outsized cost of medical care in the US.
“The other observation that I would make is that I was surprised to the degree of self-criticism, which Soviet officials were prepared to make about their own society,” Sanders said of the notoriously closed and violent Soviet government. “Frankly, I thought they would be there to tell us that everything is wonderful and that certainly was not the case. For example, they are absolutely open in acknowledging that they are not a democratic society.”
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