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And something similar happened in Venezuela.They actually embraced Hispanidad (because they knew those mainstream ideologies whether left or right were always irrelevant and temporary), and even Primo de Rivera (who was betrayed by Franco) hoped it would spread to Spain's former colonies. Falangism is literally rooted in Catholicism (their Lebanese counterpart even allied with Israel against Palestinians during the Lebanese Civil War).
The Spanish Falange and its affiliates in Latin America wanted to unite diverse people from California to Patagonia to Manila, all under the same banner with allegiance to the King of Spain and "One True Faith". Their best asset was opportunism.
Castro hated the US for taking Cuba from Spain (Castro's father fought against the US during the Spanish-American War). He was an admirer of Falange during his youth. He even made the revolution flag red and black because of the Falange flag.
He was politically educated mostly by Nationalist Spanish academics promoting Franco's doctrines such as autarky. He only formally became "Communist" because that was the dominant political alternative to Spain's liberalism at the time.
Franco even kept Fulgencio Batista in Spain without executing him or sending him back to Cuba. Batista presided over a functioning economy and tolerated the local Marxist parties, which Castro violently purged upon taking office.
"The Spanish Miracle" was created by pressure from the USA and IMF to actually open Spain's economy to free trade and Franco subsequently booting out the original fascists and replacing them with liberals (Manuel Fraga, Mariano Navarro Rubio, Alberto Ullastres and so on). Ullastres and Navarro modernised the economy to make European integration easier, Fraga understood the potential of tourism industry before anyone else.
Any economic prosperity Spain had was from mimicking what democratic nations were doing and, of course, accepting billions of dollars in financial aid from the United States.
In Chile, Christian Democratic Party (PDC) which is basically a Chilean Falange with pro-free market economics sided with Pinochet, although he was in bed with American big business.
Even in Colombia, despite being sons of a prominent Franco-supporter right-winger, Juan Manuel and his brother Enrique Santos turned their backs on their father and became leftist water-carriers for Fidel Castro and his mission to enslave Latin America with communism and to extend the reach of the Cuban empire by trying to lead Colombia down the path of communism. Thus he has worked tirelessly to infiltrate renowned political parties in Colombia in order to make a name for himself to eventually run for president, which he accomplished through Alvaro Uribe and the trust received from him.
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