The most surprising claim of some sympathizers of the Cuban system is that it is democratic. This is argued in spite of the dictatorial one-party state and the repression that State Security carries out on a routine basis to maintain the regime in power, and that many of its most important decisions, such as the agrarian reform in 1959 were mainly carried out from above and not from below.
The Cuban exile community has lost another one of its greats. The courageous Roberto Perdomo spent 25 years in a Castro gulag, suffering torture and beatings, but he never gave in to his communist captors. He was one of the famous "plantados," Cuban political prisoners who refused to wear prison uniforms like the common criminals