Fidel Castro celebrates the 45th anniversary of the coup that ousted the Batista Regime and installed him as "el comandante en jefe", a term by which he is still known with affection within Cuba and a term to which I was to become familiar during my stay in Cuba. Sporting a Castro-esque beard during my stay, it was not uncommon, of an evening, to have Cuban men informing me in drunken spanish that I looked exactly like "el comandante en jefe". It means commander-in-chief for you spanish illiterates.

The revolution had such huge potential, the Batista regime was corrupt and exploitation of the working classes was appalling. Little, however, of that potential has been realised. As Lord Acton so sagely observed

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

and so it was with the Castro regime. Free and fair elections, which was a major plank in the revolutionaries platform began to loose significance once the regime held power. Elections were something that held appeal when they were trying to attain power. When they had it, elections were seen as a destabilising threat and in the 45 years there has not been one election. People who were regarded as "enemies of the state" were arrested and held without trial, presumably many were ultimately executed because they eventually disappeared.

The socialist ideal has, like Havana's buildings, been slowly decaying in the hot tropical sun for the last 45 years. A country that could be a tropical paradise with a vibrant economy sinks each year further into squalor and apathy. The Cuban public believe Castro's assertion that the US embargo of Cubas is responsible for Cuba's ills. It is a fallacy however, as dominant as the US is, it is still only 22% of the global economy. That leaves 78% of the worlds economy for Cuba to trade with, more than enough for a small tropical country to prosper on.

Castro has succeeded in making most people equal in exactly the wrong way. Instead of raising the standard of living for the poor he has reduced the standard of living of the middle classes. Old men befriend tourists to cadge food to supplement the US$4 a month they receive in pension, teenage girls prostitute themselves to get money or to get out. It is a depressing place to visit unless you take a packaged trip to one of the big resorts where you are shielded from the reality of Cuba in 2004.