By Christopher Foulds

For a few years, I worked with a reporter who was born in what was then East Germany.

His family managed to escape the satellite Soviet Union country and settle in Canada.

During my years working with him, the reporter would remind one and all of the death and destruction caused in the name of communism.

He was particularly vocal every time condemnation of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco was the topic of discussion.

No, he was not a fan of any fascist dictator. In fact, like most of us, he abhorred the brutal legacies of such madmen.

But, he would always be quick to remind us of the death and destruction caused by madmen of the left — Joseph Stalin in particular.

The reporter was adamant — and his argument is solid — that communist dictatorships have killed far more innocent people than have fascist dictatorships.

In such cases, there is hardly a lesser of two evils — when the bodies on both sides are stacked into the millions, does it really matter who wins in the cadaver count?

I can only imagine what my newsroom friend would have thought had he walked into the Irving Barber Centre for Learning at Thompson Rivers University a week ago today, where Cuban ambassador to Canada Julio Garmendia Pena and first secretary Miraly Gonzalez Gonzalez spoke to a crowd of 55.

True, when an event is organized and presented by the TRU Socialist Club, you know what you are getting into by walking through the door.

Still, I imagine the iconic portrait of Che Guevera, looming as large as a national flag above all the auditorium, would have had my East German friend listing the reasons why Ernesto Lynch (the given name of the Argentinian-born Cuban legend who never did become a Cuban citizen) was a terrorist and not a freedom fighter or martyr.

He would point to Guevera, Fidel Castro, the Chinese communist regime and the successive Soviet administrations as examples of butchery.

Then again, my friend from the old country may indeed have been swayed by the words of the Cuban ambassador, who was blunt in his assessment of the dire situation in Cuba and self-deprecating when explaining why things don’t change all that quickly on the Caribbean island.

It is no secret the Cuban economy collapsed when the Soviet Union died and took with it the subsidies it had been granting the island country.

While Pena noted a strengthened post-Soviet U.S. economic blockade and low sugar and nickel prices contributed to the financial crisis, he admitted culpability among the Castro regime.

“We are not perfect. We have committed mistakes,” he said. “We have been inefficient in productivity.”

To remedy that, Pena said, Cuba has granted permission for some forms of self-employment, has given local government control over investment decisions and is courting foreign investment.

If that sounds like the revolution is giving way to capitalism — and it does — Pena will object.

“We are not called reformists because that would be a change in the model,” Pena told KTW.

“We are updating the model.”

One suspects the Cuban people will increasingly like the freedom to make more money and venture to other lands with that cash as the country shifts more and more toward a free-market, capitalist system.

Sooner or later, it happens in all communist countries.