Cuban-Americans inspire ‘Victims of Communism Day’ bill
Cuban-American members of the Florida Commission of Victims of Communism were instrumental in introducing a ‘Victims of Communism Day’ bill which was signed into law Monday by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
HB 395, which passed unanimously in the Florida Legislature, requires that all Florida public high schools observe Victims of Communism Day, which will be celebrated each year beginning 2023 on November 7th or the preceding school day.
The purpose of the day will be to honor the 100 million victims of communist regimes, and students will receive 45 minutes of instruction on “topics such as Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet System, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and Nicolás Maduro and the Chavismo movement, and how victims suffered under these regimes through suppression of speech, poverty, starvation, migration, and systemic lethal violence.”
Victims of Communism Day was an effort initially spearheaded by the Florida Commission of Victims of Communism, founded and directed by Cuban-American Armando Ibarra.
Ibarra, who is also president of the Miami Young Republicans, said that his motivation stemmed from his father, who endured "incredible cruelty” as a political prisoner in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
“When we brought the idea for the [Victims of Communism] bill to Rep. David Borrero we wanted to honor the people in our community that had suffered and the people that were lost to the evils of communism,” Ibarra said, according to the Daily Wire.
“As we’ve seen in recent months, Florida is leading the way on establishing a pro-liberty agenda, and I am very enthusiastic about this being a model for other states to also incorporate lessons about the horrors of communist systems into their curricula so we can roll back the influence of socialism in our country,” Ibarra added.
As part of the bill, DeSantis has instructed the Florida State Board of Education to amend its educational materials to include information on the evils of communism.
“We want to make sure that every year folks in Florida, but particularly our students, will learn about the evils of communism, the dictators that have led communist regimes, and the hundreds of millions of individuals who suffered and continue to suffer under the weight of this discredited ideology,” DeSantis said at a press conference.
