Cubans talk of Fidel Castro as a father figure: Dr. Denise Baden

The majority of Cubans around the world had a very favorable view of their country’s late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, despite the recent media coverage in the West that appeared to show Cuban Americans in Florida celebrating his death, a British academic says.

Dr. Denise Baden, an associate professor at the University of Southampton, said that based on her interviews with Cubans living inside the country and in Europe, she realized they have a significantly different view of Castro than the Cubans living in places like Miami, Florida.

“The way we see Fidel Castro -- for example in the UK, in the US -- is some kind of brutal dictator who rules over his people with a rod of iron, but when I talk to ordinary Cubans, that has not been the image that’s come across,” Baden told Press TV on Tuesday.

“They talk of him as a father figure, they talk of him as a man of integrity, someone they trust, someone who’s a hero of the revolution,” she added.

Though some Cubans experienced economic hardship while living in the country, many blamed it on US sanctions, not on Castro, Baden said. “I never found that sense of hatred [that] we’re told Cubans feel towards Castro; I didn’t find any of that.”

During an interview with the BBC on Saturday, Baden dismissed the news anchor’s assertion that Castro was a brutal tyrant who was loathed by most Cubans. The interview went viral on social media, because she stood her ground despite the anchor's loaded questions about Castro. 

“I think we have got an unbalanced view of the leader and that was one thing I tried to put right in my interview,” Baden told Press TV about her exchange with the BBC. “I got the feeling that the media prefers a very divisive name-calling approach rather than trying to find any genuine understanding of the Cuban experience.”

Castro died on Friday, November 25, in Havana at the age of 90. He had inspired anti-imperialist movements across the world for several decades.

Commemoration services have been organized in several countries including Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico where mourners pledged to follow his revolutionary path.

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 and placed an official embargo against the country in 1962.

The two countries became ideological foes soon after the 1959 revolution in Cuba, which brought Castro to power, and their ties remained hostile even after the end of the Cold War.

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