ABSTRACT
Improving the quality of health, education and sport in Cuba was not even all that difficult since the starting point was so high when Castro took control. Another recurring argument in support of Castroism points to conditions in pre-revolutionary Cuba portrayed as an abject combination of the poverty of Haiti, the barbaric gangsterism of the Chicago of the 1930s, and the corruption and prostitution of Shanghai. The Cuban case is no longer an isolated political phenomenon on an island in the Caribbean that turned into a universal moral dilemma. The Cuba, for whose redemption Fray Betto prays, has a standing army of 325,000 men, an implacable secret police force 75,000 strong, and various types of militia of more than a million conscripts. Cuba's healthy, educated, and athletic young people are contrasted with Brazil's hungry children who are gunned down by the police for the simple crime of sleeping in the streets.
