Dictators Aren't Just Born Overnight

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Juan Williams the liberal/conservative pundit admonishes the U.S. to continue to oppose Fidel Castro and Cuba's joining of the Summit of the Americas because democracies shouldn't do business with dictatorships.
The Fox News contributor tells the story of how he was born in Panama but moved at the age of four with his mother and siblings to the United States to avoid the tyranny of Arnulfo Arias.
Williams writes:

Panama has less poverty than most Latin nations. But even here economic hopelessness has a history of being a breeding ground for dictators playing to the frustrations of the poor.
[...]
The reason my father insisted that my mother take the children out of Panama in the 1950s was fear of a Castro-like, populist dictator, Arnulfo Arias. A Nazi supporter during World War II, Arias later took businesses away from U.S. and European investors by insisting on Panamanian ownership. He profited from stoking racial antagonism against Asian and black immigrants who built the canal and made Panama a center of international trade. Arias even tried to divest black West Indians, such as my father, of Panamanian citizenship.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/dictators_arent_just_born_overnight.html#ixzz1zvp62Wie