The End Of Racism: Why White Cubans Hated Fidel Castro

​The Cuban Revolution, which brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, is one of the most polarizing events of the 20th century. While it was hailed by many poor and marginalized Afro-Cubans as a victory against racial and economic injustice, it was met with intense hatred and a mass exodus by a majority of the island's white, wealthy, and middle-class citizens. For these Cubans, the Revolution was not a liberation but a complete dispossession—a radical destruction of their way of life, economic power, and political freedom.

​The Seizure of Wealth: Economic Dispossession 
​The most immediate and profound source of hatred came from Castro's sweeping socialist reforms, which systematically targeted the economic assets of the elite and middle classes.
• ​Nationalization of Private Property: Castro's government quickly nationalized all major industries, banks, and businesses, many of which were owned by Cuban families or American investors. This action annihilated the wealth of the Cuban elite and effectively ended private enterprise.
• ​Agrarian Reform Laws: These laws limited the size of landholdings and expropriated large estates without adequate compensation, destroying the power base of the wealthy landowning families.
• ​Loss of the Middle Class: It was not only the ultra-rich who fled. The professional and entrepreneurial middle class—who were predominantly white—saw their savings, small businesses, and professional autonomy vanish overnight as the state took control of the entire economy. A typical early exile was a white, older executive or professional whose entire economic status was vaporized by the new regime.
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​The Death of Democracy: Political Tyranny
​For many who initially supported the overthrow of the corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista, the quick turn to a one-party communist state was a profound betrayal of the promise of democracy.
• ​Suppression of Dissent: Castro rapidly consolidated power, silencing all opposition from within and outside his government. Independent newspapers were shut down or placed under state control, and freedom of speech was abolished.
• ​Political Persecution: Those who spoke out against the socialist shift or the growing authoritarianism were labeled as "counter-revolutionaries" and faced imprisonment, torture, or execution. This suppression of political freedom was cited by early exiles as the main reason for their flight.
• ​Fear of Communism: The formal alliance with the Soviet Union and the adoption of Marxist-Leninist ideology—the great enemy of the United States and the Western world—instilled a deep fear in the conservative, anti-communist Cuban population.
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​The Exodus: Creating the Miami-Cuban Identity
​The mass departure of these dispossessed and politically alienated Cubans fundamentally reshaped both Cuba and the United States. The first waves of the Cuban exodus were overwhelmingly white and financially stable—the exact class that was targeted by the Revolution's economic policies.
• ​By allowing this opposition to leave, Castro's government arguably stabilized the Revolution by exporting its most powerful and vocal domestic critics to Miami.
• ​The resulting, highly motivated Miami-Cuban exile community was founded on an unrelenting hatred for Castro and a commitment to overthrowing his regime, an animosity that has defined the political and cultural landscape of South Florida for over sixty years.
​In essence, white Cubans hated Castro because the Revolution took everything from them: their land, their businesses, their money, their political voice, and their deeply held beliefs in a capitalist, Western-aligned Cuba.