In February of 2008, Fidel Castro stepped down from power as Cuban leader, due to failing health, after forty-nine years in office. In a farewell address to delegates at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (“CPC”) in April of 2016, Castro expressed his personal belief that the enduring “ideas of Cuban communists” lent proof to the proposition that, with dedicated hard work, the Cuban government “can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need.” He advised the delegates to “fight without truce to obtain” these goods for citizens. Those material and cultural goods citizens need for a good life that, as a matter of human rights rather than privilege, their leaders must fight tirelessly to provide for them, form the focus of this Article.
Philip C. Aka