At the moment of Castro’s takeover, Cuba’s was among the most affluent, educated populations in Latin America.
Many of those educated middle class people supported Castro’s guerrilla war, often with funds, hoping he would, as he had promised, restore liberal democracy to the nation.
As soon as he seized power, he betrayed those promises and those supporters. Over the course of a year or so, he delayed, then canceled elections, declared himself first a Communist, then supreme leader, and seized and nationalized private property and industry.
It was those people — not Batista supporters, of whom there were few, but betrayed Castro supporters— who started fleeing the island in 1960-61, leaving behind all their property, businesses, etc, and became the anti-Castro exile community in Florida.
Signed, the second credited “story by” writer on “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.”
