Young people are the catalysts for change

Growing up, I remember hearing Fidel Castro's name in conversations with people, but I was never actually schooled on him or his significance to present-day Cuba. I heard he died last year, and since then my curiosity was intrigued. As part of my research for my stay in Cuba, I have been reading up on his life and importance in Cuban history. The following is my short reflection on Fidel Castro based on what I gathered from internet encyclopedias (i.e. Wikipedia).

From what I'm now beginning to read, Fidel Castro was born to 2 Spanish parents in Biran, Oriente (a province in Cuba) in 1926. That makes him 90 years old at the time of his death last year! He was a young revolutionary that lead the Cuban people to overthrow the right-winged authoritarian government headed by Fulgencio Batista. This dude was 23 when he led this massive revolution, and had a track record of political involvement beginning with his campaign for the presidency of the Federation of University Students on a platform of "honesty, decency, and justice".

In African American history class, we talked about slavery in the Caribbean, and how it differed than slavery in the United States. The professor explained how slavery in the United States was different than any other form of slavery in the Americas because only 5% of all the slaves every transported in the North Atlantic Slave Trade actually went to the US. The ratio of slaves to white people was 13:1 in places like Haiti (hence the effectiveness of the slave revolution in Haiti). Interestingly enough, slavery wasn't abolished in Cuba until 1886, a cool 20 years after the 13th amendment was passed in the United States.
What I'm beginning to understand was a key difference between the slave experience in the states vs. the Caribbean was that there were efforts to combat slavery under the Spanish Crown in Cuba long before the US . The Spanish Crown issued a decree (Codigo Negro Espanol) in 1789 that established standards for the treatment of slaves, including work hour limits, prohibition of child-mother slave separation, and even marriage protection. Slavery in America was what drove much of the Southern US economy. Slavery is a shitty concept altogether, but I'm starting to realize why the professor mentioned that the slave experience in other parts of the Americas more closely resembled to that of the indentured servant, rather than that of the slave experience in the United States, where slaves were an imperative part of the nation's economy.

The average Black Panther was 18-20 years old. Its refreshing to hear that people my age have gone down in history as the real change makers. I wish more young people my age (23) read into our roles in societies around the world (or at least talked about them more).

I found the information in this post on the following websites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Cuba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro