I will say there’s a lot of misinformation out there about Cuba and the Castros.
The majority of ppl who fled Cuba were wealthy people, many of whom literally owned slaves, who fled as they didn’t want their land taken away from them.
The hunger in Cuba nowadays is caused almost exclusively by US embargoes.
Cuba, with exception to a short two year period close to the establishment of the communist regime (and, it could be argued, even then) has been more open to LGBTQ+ ppl than the US (for example, gender affirmation surgeries are covered by the state in Cuba). It has a longer life expectancy
and better medical system than the US, and those things would likely be even better should the country not be under embargo.
While Castro did some bad things (like killing political opponents), a lot of ppl who aren’t aware of Cuba and its history tend to pin the large amount of Cubans in the US now as proof that Castro was a bad person when in reality those people are descended from, or were, wealthy people who exploited the poor and left cuz they wanted to continue exploiting.
So, I don’t believe that Castro has a past worthy of exclusion from Civ. obviously that’s my personal view, but he’s no Stalin or Mao, who did such abominous things that he should be excluded from the game.
I think you are partially right, I would love to see Castro for a "Cuba civ" (He IS the face of Cuba). And even if he did his wrong doings and we all agree that Cuba's regime is not a democracy ... I think it could work.
After all, pretty much all the characters and civs on the game could be view with a very negative point of view. No one is absolute evil or good. It also depends from the point of views.
I mean, Castro is evil for all the proamericans that supported the regimes after Spanish rule. That means, the people that escaped the island because they were against the revolution.
Castro was good for many people living in Cuba ... in fact, when I went there to meet my Cuban / Spanish friend's family, I was very surprised by the good perception they had for Fidel. The biggest supporters were the 2 grandparents, that lived during Batista regime. They told us pretty spooky histories about how the regime dealt with dissidents.
Here is important to say that both grandparents have money, to Cuban standards, and flight regularly to see their daughter and grandchildren (my friend). They are very exposed to spanish culture and have access to info about what happened in Cuba.
Knowing everything, they think Castro was a good leader and the majority of the problems came from the USA and Batista regime. Their son has the same mindset, even having visited many times Europe and knowing what happened in the Island. The exception being their daughter, that came to live in Spain wanting to scape the island, but it was after having problems with the regime (she worked for the goverment).
So Elites during Batista regime = Castro Bad, Batista good
Elites during Castro regime = Batista Bad, Casto Good
We could argue that they are educated inside the system (educational system for example) and they are brainwashing them... but as we are too ... Castro may be worst to our eyes as we share the USA point of view that Castro's regime is a monstrosity, and that they loved to eat babies for lunch. A part must be true for sure, but a lot is propaganda too.
The same the other way around, for Cubans, the USA's are monsters that want them to starve thanks to a blockade. Maybe a part is founded on reality, but greatly exaggerated. I do not think the people form USA want the suffering of Cubans.
No vision is totally true nor false.
Why Castro should be worse than Napoleon, Victoria, Philip II, GENGHIS KHAN !, Basil II, and so on?
Because the regime still in place? Well then, we should remove China.
Because what they did has repercussion even today? Then remove Victoria.
At the end of the day, I think every character should be allowed except, maybe, when they performed genocide and is too soon (I just remembered ... maybe we had to remove Ottomans too) like Hitler.
But I really doubt Fidel Castro could enter this category (Che Guevara, for example could be more complicated)... for a lot of people the Cuban revolution seems to have been necessary to gain their independence from USA. True that they fell as a colonial territory for the URSS, but maybe USA had a big role on that ...
And at the end, maybe the guy did a lot of bad things (as a lot of the roster), but he had a charisma out of the charts. A far greater charisma that any other possible Cuban leaders, except maybe Antonio Maceo.