This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 21st, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been 50 years since the Cuban Revolution. What's the record been for Cuba's promise

to deliver an egalitarian state that values all life?

Juan Carlos Adago, the Cato Institute's Project

coordinator for Latin America

has some advice for the Obama administration on re-engaging

of the small island nation.

Cuba was under the rule of an authoritarian government by Fulgenio Batista was a right-wing dictator.

He had a coup d'etat in 1952, and he took power in Cuba.

He was tacitly backed by the US government.

So yes, there was it was an ideal situation, democratic situation in Cuba.

However, economically Cuba was one of the powerhouses in

Latin America and enjoy high levels of living and it was drawing hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe who settled in Cuba because of their high living standards and because it's a high economic situation.

Back in the early 1950s, Fidel Castro starts, who was then a young student leader, a lawyer, started leading a group of fellow

young Cubans into opposing the regime of Fulgenioatista.

He was incarcerated after an attack, a failed attack into a government military command.

And he was then pardoned and sent to Mexico, where he started gathering guns and more people to come back to Cuba, which eventually he did,

and started leading a revolution in the jungles of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba.

This group of young people became really popular

with the population because of their idealistic

background because their promise of bringing a new Cuba,

more freedoms in Cuba, and eventually the group grew bigger and took power in January 1959.

...