While presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has created a storm of criticism in the U.S. after his recent comments on Fidel Castro, there is a place where the Vermont senator has become front-page news, and in a positive light.
That place is Havana, where the newspaper of the Communist Party prominently displayed a report about Sanders and his praise of "some of the social programs implemented by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro."
"US Senator Bernie Sanders, today one of the strongest candidates for the nomination of the Democratic Party to the November presidential elections, recognized Cuba's role in sending doctors worldwide," Granma said.
The newspaper said Sanders seemed "unstoppable" in his move toward the nomination.
Granma and several state media outlets also reported the comments made by Sanders in an interview with Anderson Cooper for "60 Minutes" on Sunday, in which the senator said it was "unfair" to say that "everything is bad" in Cuba, and praised the literacy campaign implemented by Castro shortly after he rose to power in 1959.
Castro died in late 2016. His brother Raul currently leads the Communist Party.
But in another example of how the Communist Party censors state media, all outlets left out the senator's reference to "the authoritarian nature of Cuba."
Granma, which has published several reports bashing President Donald Trump, highlighted that Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, supported the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba under Barack Obama and has called for the elimination of the embargo.
The report also mentions that Sanders had recognized the role of Cuba in sending "doctors all over the world," another Castro initiative, but incorrectly attributed these comments, made during a debate in the 2016 elections, to the interview with Cooper.
"As expected," Granma wrote, "his comments sparked the anger of the most extremist sector of Cuban-Americans in South Florida, who oppose any rapprochement with the Caribbean island."
Sanders' comments angered many Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans who pointed out on social media that the literacy program carried out by Castro after coming to power in 1959 was highly politicized and the senator was selective in avoiding references to the repression on the island, or the executions that Castro organized at the beginning of the revolution.
But the adverse reactions came not only from Cuban exiles or Republican politicians but from Democratic members of Congress as well as several political analysts and party advisers.
"If you want Cuban Americans to respect your views on Cuba, you cannot sound dismissive of their pain and lived experience," said Ric Herrero, who advised the Obama administration on Cuba policy, and is currently the executive director of the Cuba Study Group. "Doing so triggers the same wounds that have shaped their identities for decades. And it just makes the change more difficult."
Some of the harshest criticisms came from his Democratic rivals in the race for the nomination.
"Fidel Castro left a dark legacy of forced labor camps, religious repression, widespread poverty, firing squads, and the murder of thousands of his own people," Mike Bloomberg said in a tweet Monday. "But sure, Bernie, let's talk about his literacy program."
Also on Twitter, Pete Buttigieg asked for donations to his campaign "if you don't want to have to defend Fidel Castro."
"I don't want, as a Democrat, I don't want to be explaining why our nominee is encouraging people to look on the bright side of the Castro regime when we are going into the elections of our lives," Buttigieg said in a CNN town hall in South Carolina on Monday.
Sanders had an opportunity to respond to the criticism in that same forum, but although he said he has been "extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world including Cuba," he repeated the praise of Castro's literacy program.
"He formed the literacy brigade ... He went out, and they helped people learn to read and write. You know what? I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing," he said. "The truth is the truth. And that's what happened in the first years of Castro's regime."
