TJ, as much as I can judge having spent some 21 years there it wasn’t a communist state. Totalitarian? Are we talking about the same place? You sure we are?
A head of the ruling party running the country, formal opposition in existence (as of 1952 IIRC), moral opposition in the form of the catholic Church (given, not as free as elsewhere but nonetheless). Kind of similar to the UK at present, don’t you think?
In communist there is NO PRIVATE ownership of goods, NO PRIVATE land, NO PRIVATE business. We did have it, not everywhere and not all the time, but we did. Propaganda clearly did its job.