They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Castro’s remark is a polemical reversal: instead of accepting the Cold War-era charge that socialism “failed,” he asks why capitalism should be judged successful when much of the Global South remains marked by poverty, dependency, and unequal development. The question implies that capitalism’s defenders measure success by the prosperity of wealthy industrial states while discounting outcomes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—regions shaped by colonial extraction, postcolonial debt, and unequal trade. In this framing, socialism is presented not as a utopia but as a rival development model whose shortcomings must be weighed against capitalism’s record in the periphery. The line functions rhetorically to shift the burden of proof and to universalize the standard of evaluation.