Cuba couldn’t compete with capitalism.
Via NewsBusters:
Appearing as a guest on Friday’s New Day a year after Fidel Castro’s death to promote his film about Castro’s Cuba, film maker Jon Alpert blamed the United States for the economic failures of communism on the island country as he charged that the U.S. ruined the Cuban economy by flooding the sugar market in the 1970s.
After noting that Fidel Castro’s brother Raul is expected to retire next year, host Chris Cuomo asked his guest’s opinion about “whether that place is better off without the Castros, with a real democracy.”
Alpert began by claiming that Fidel Castro made some “useful changes” in the early years after gaining power:
Since we spent 45 years, we look at this under a very, very long line, so if you look at Cuba under Batista and the changes that the Castros initiated, those were useful changes. The real tragedy is the ideas — the things that I agreed with — I think that you might agree with — universal free education, better health care for everybody, the alphabetization of the island — they never really got a chance to put into practice.
He then pushed blame onto the U.S for the failures of communism as he added:
There were some early years back in the ’70s when Fidel bet everything on the sugar crop, sugar prices were at an all-time high, the money was flowing in — they were building schools, hospitals — they were doing the type of stuff that we want to do here in our country, then the United States took — and we dumped our sugar reserves on the world market, crashed the sugar price, blew the bottom out of the Cuban economy, the Soviet Union collapsed, 85 percent shrinkage in their economy. At that particular point, they were out of gas, and they stayed out of gas for a long time.