As a Boy, He Lived in Cuba. Here’s What Communism Was Like.

Philip Reynolds /

Rafael Diaz has experienced firsthand the oppression of a communist regime. Until the age of 9, he lived in Cuba under the rule of dictator Fidel Castro.

From surprise searches of his home in the wee hours to an education laced with Marxist ideology, Diaz offers a vivid glimpse of the actual manifestations of an ideology that so many Americans not only have become comfortable with but outright support. 

“You’d always get used to the military with their machine guns,” Diaz, who now owns a salon in Brandon, Florida, tells The Daily Signal. “Sometimes at 3 in the morning, 2 in the morning, we would hear this bang on our door. I remember I would get up and [be told,] ‘Go back to bed! Go back to bed!’ And they would be in there with their machine guns, checking all the drawers in our house to see what we had.”

Here, in the video above, is Diaz’s story—and his warning to those who want to drive our nation closer to being a socialist system.

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