Culver City Observer -

Fidel Castro, Dictator of Cuba, died last Friday after over 50 years of death and destruction of Cuba. On Monday Culver City Congresswoman Karen Bass issued the following statement from her Washington D.C. office regarding the passing of Fidel Castro.

“As Cuba begins nine days of mourning, I wish to express my condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Fidel Castro. The passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba. I hope together our two nations will continue on the new path of support and collaboration with one another and continue in the new direction of diplomacy.”

The late Gus Prado, a Culver City business owner who died in 2015 was born in Havana, Cuba in 1941. He immigrated to the United States in 1960 shortly after Castro seized power in Cuba. He was a staunch opponent of the Castro regime and a loyal, patriotic United States citizen.

He owned Prado Signs in downtown Culver City which he sold over a decade ago.

He served as President of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce, the Culver City Lions Club and of Club 25 of Los Angeles, a Cuban-American club. He was appointed by then Gov. George Deukmejian to serve on the state Advisory Council on Refugee Assistance and Services.

Today would be a day he would celebrate.

Many local residents and business owners in Culver City are of Cuban descent.

Cuba in 1959 was a prosperous country that Castro sent into poverty. For many years the regime was propped up financial by the former Soviet Union.

More people immigrated to Cuba than left the small island nation before Castro overthrew the Batista regime. Following the revolution, mass murder, torture and imprisonment reached virtually every family on the island. He filmed executions long before ISIS was ever born. He exported terror around the world especially to Central and South America.

According to published reports over 100,000 Cubans died through executions, machine gunnings, torture and drowning, while another 500,000 have passed through Castro’s prisons.

Castro also recommended a “First Strike Nuclear Attack” to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on the Unites States in October 1962 during the “Cuban Missile Crisis” when the Soviets placed nuclear missiles on Cuba a mere 90 miles for Florida.

It’s not surprising that thousands of Cuban refugees were dancing in the streets celebrating the death of Castro. Those in Cuba were not free to express themselves for fear of death or imprisonment.

The following is individual atrocities according to fathwire.com:

“Fusilado (firing squad execution) it says below the name– one word, but for most visitors to the Cuban Memorial a word loaded with traumatizing flashbacks.

On Christmas Eve 1961, Juana Diaz Figueroa spat in the face of the Castroite executioners who were binding and gagging her. They’d found her guilty of feeding and hiding “bandits.” (Castro and Che’s term for Cuban peasants who took up arms to fight their theft of their land to create Stalinist kolkhozes.) Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba’s kulaks had guns–at first anyway. Then the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact left them defenseless against Soviet tanks, helicopters and flame-throwers. When the blast from Castro’s firing squad demolished Juana Diaz’ face and torso, she was six months pregnant.

Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Castro’s prison guards dragged him from his jail cell, jerked his head back to gag him and started dragging him to the stake. Little “Rigo” pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged, beseeched and finally proven to his “prosecutors” that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn’t possibly have been “a CIA agent planting bombs.”

“Fuego!” and the firing squad volley riddled Rigo’s little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag. “We executive from Revolutionary conviction!” sneered the man whose peaceful death in bed President Obama seems to mourn.

Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the firing squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro’s theft of their humble family farm.”

With Castro’s brother Raul Castro firmly in control of the Cuban Government it is doubtful free elections or freedom for the Cuban people will be come any time soon.