I am always creeped out by the people who associated with Fidel Castro and ;didn’t know” he was a red. They are either mendacious or stupid; neither is cause for acclaim. I am also very leery of people who refer to Batista as a brutal dictator; what then, is the description of Castro?
Castro actually received a ticker-tape parade in NYC. He was promoted by the press as a hero and Batista was portrayed as a beast. Batista was a moderate socialist himself, but had actually been fairly good for Cuba, which was prosperous and moving ahead (it had the third highest literacy rate in the hemisphere, for example). But Castro was the press’ 1968 dreamboat: he was a young university student revolutionary from an upper class family, good looking in his fatigues, cute when photographed holding a gun, and he made them swoon.
It was only later that it became so obvious that he was a vicious Marxist with a bloodlust and visions of personal power that even the press couldn’t cover for him anymore.