Read Part I.

Truth today is not measured by justice but by geopolitical convenience. Nations are told who to admire and who to despise, and the contradictions are suffocating.

Castro vs. Mandela: Contradictory Legacies

Fidel Castro: After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the U.S. imposed an embargo in 1960, later tightened in 1962. Its original intent, according to declassified CIA documents, was to “bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the Castro government.”¹ Despite Cuba’s achievements in literacy and healthcare, Castro was vilified as a dictator. Yet in Havana in December 1975, he declared:

“We shall defend Angola and Africa! The imperialists seek to prevent us from aiding our Angolan brothers. But we must tell the Yankees to bear in mind that we are a Latin-American nation and a Latin-African nation as well. African blood flows freely through our veins.”²

Nelson Mandela: Once branded a terrorist by the U.S. and UK, Mandela was later celebrated as a saint. After his release in 1990, he toured America, raising funds and political support. President George H.W. Bush welcomed him, and Congress honored him.³ Yet Mandela himself testified to Cuba’s decisive role:

“The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces [in Angola] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor. The defeat of the apartheid army served as an inspiration to the struggling people of South Africa.”

In Havana in July 1991, Mandela proclaimed:

“What other country has such a history of selfless behavior as Cuba has shown for the people of Africa?”⁴

This selective framing reveals that sainthood or villainy is often assigned not by moral struggle but by political utility. The Cubans who perished in Angola and Namibia—the young flowers of Cuba—remain largely unhonored in Western narratives, even though Mandela himself acknowledged their blood as part of his liberation.

The Cry of Mourning

The hundreds of Cuban youth who died in Southern Africa were not mercenaries but volunteers. Between 1975 and 1991, over 425,000 Cubans served in Angola at the request of the Angolan government, fighting apartheid South Africa’s invasions.⁵ Their sacrifice was immense, yet in American and Western press, Castro was demonized while Mandela was canonized.

This is the contradiction that burns: the Cubans died for Mandela’s freedom, but their names are erased from the saintly narrative. The U.S. celebrated Mandela while continuing to suffocate Cuba with embargoes condemned by the UN for 33 consecutive years.⁶

A World Choking on Contradictions

We celebrate human ingenuity while tolerating human cruelty. We canonize certain leaders while vilifying others, not on the basis of truth but on the convenience of empire. We reach for the stars but fail to reach for each other.

If there is “no truth in the world,” it is because truth has been suffocated by propaganda, selective memory, and the machinery of war. The challenge is not only to expose these contradictions but to demand a new direction—one where the genius of humanity is harnessed for life rather than death, for cohabitation rather than domination.

Until that shift occurs, the world will continue to choke. And the cry for truth will remain the most urgent, unanswered call of our time.

Endnotes:

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.