>The pleas you're seeing for a calmer and broader conversation are not attempts to exculpate Castro.

Those of us who have been directly affected by Castro's actions feel that justice was never made, his legacy is not something we want celebrated or glorified.

Yes, it was not all black but the black/white ratio of Castros's regime is more 80/20 than 50/50.

Yes. I don't disagree with a single word of that. I took jknoefpler's comment as an invitation to reflect on the fact that Castro, and even H----r, are members of the same species as us, and what that might say about the human condition. Nothing pleasant, surely, but part of the truth of what we are. And this might be a better conversation to have than comforting ourselves by distancing ourselves from these people with unthinking use of labels like "evil".

I could be wrong. There may well be people in this thread actually trying to justify or minimize Castro's actions. In any case, it doesn't look like there's much prospect for a good conversation in this thread at this point. We're still waiting for the solution for how to have good conversations about touchy topics in anonymous internet forums!

I think this is exactly the point!

This is why people often seem to say "he seemed so normal" in bewilderment when someone they knew commits mass murder.

Given that one of the changes that happened under Castro was (supposedly) to make the country have a more just distribution of wealth along racial lines, I find your "white/black" word choice amusing.

Perhaps, given the lack of slave reparations, the nationalizing of American property in Cuba is not the injustice that many in Florida would like us all to believe.

No. And I'm not against objective analysis, however by humanizing such individuals in the name of "objectiveness" you are disregarding the suffering of a lot of people.

Only if you believe that "normal" humans can't be responsible for terrible suffering. Countering that belief is, I think, the OP's point.