Bacardi is the world's largest privately held, family-owned spirits company; a producer of rums, including Bacardi Superior and Bacardi 151. The company sells in excess of 200 million bottles per year in 200 countries.[2] The business is the fourth largest spirits company in the world: sales in 2004 were $3.3 billion USD, up from $2.7 billion USD in 2000. A number of planned stock market flotations have collapsed, the last in 2000. In 2007 the company acquired Martini & Rossi.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Opposition to Castro
* 3 Bacardi and Cuba today
* 4 Trivia
* 5 Products
* 6 References
* 7 External links
[edit] History
Originally founded by Don Facundo Bacardí Massó on February 4, 1862, Bacardi is headquartered today in Hamilton, Bermuda. The Bacardi company also owns several other brands including Grey Goose vodka, Dewar's scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Eristoff vodka, Martini & Rossi vermouth, Cazadores tequila, and the U.S. version of Havana Club.
Don Facundo Bacardí Massó, a wine merchant, emigrated from Spain to Cuba in the early 19th century. During this period, rum was cheaply made and not considered a refined drink, one rarely sold in upscale taverns. Don Facundo began attempting to "tame" rum. After experimenting with several techniques he hit upon filtering the rum through charcoal, which removed impurities. In addition to this, Facundo aged the rum in oak barrels, which had the effect of "mellowing" the drink. The final product was the first clear, or "white" rum in the world.
Moving from the experimental stage to a more commercial endeavor, he and his brother José set up shop in a small distillery on February 4, 1862. Their first copper and cast iron still produced 35 barrels of fermented molasses per day. In the rafters of this building lived fruit bats. Hence, the Bacardi bat logo[3].
The 1890s were turbulent times for the company. Emilio Bacardi, eldest son of Don Facundo, was exiled from Cuba for having fought in the rebel army against Spain in the Cuban Independence War. Emilio's brothers, Facundo and José, and his brother-in-law Henri Schueg, remained in Cuba with the difficult task of sustaining the company during a period of war. The women in the family were refugees in Kingston, Jamaica. After the Cuban War of Independence, and the American occupation of Cuba, "The Original Cuba Libre" and the Daiquiri cocktail were both born with Bacardi rum. In 1899, US- General Leonard Wood appointed Emilio Bacardi Mayor of Santiago de Cuba.
In 1912, Emilio Bacardi traveled to Egypt where he purchased a mummy for the future Emilio Bacardi Moreau Municipal Museum in Santiago de Cuba (still on display). In Santiago, his brother Facundo M. Bacardi continued to manage the company along with Henri Schueg, who began the company's international expansion by opening new bottling plants in Barcelona and New York City. The New York plant was soon shut down due to Prohibition, yet during this time Cuba became a hotspot for US tourists.
In the 1920s, Emilio opened a new distillery in Santiago. During this decade, the art deco Bacardi building was built in Havana and the third generation of the Bacardi family was entering the business. Facundo Bacardi was known to have invited US-Americans (still subject to Prohibition) to "Come to Cuba and bathe in Bacardi rum." A new product was introduced: Hatuey beer.
The 1930s brought a new bottling plant in Mexico City and a new distillery in Puerto Rico under the leadership of Ron Bacardi. (Which is the name of the rum, not a person). Several trademark disputes went to court during this time regarding uses of the Bacardi name on rum produced outside of Cuba. The company's leadership then fell to Henri Schueg, who managed to keep the family name on the bottles coming from Puerto Rico. Another case was won by Bacardi which allowed that "…a Bacardi Cocktail is only a Bacardi Cocktail when made with Bacardi rum."
During the World War II years the company was led by Henri's son-in-law Jose Pepin Bosch. Pepin founded Bacardi Imports in New York City, and was named Cuba's Minister of the Treasury in 1949.
Ernest Hemingway mentions Hatuey beer in two of his works: To Have and Have Not and The Old Man and the Sea. In 1956, Bacardi held a festival in honor of Hemingway's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Bacardi has made several acquisitions to diversify away from the eponymous Bacardi rum brand. In 1992 Bacardi acquired Martini & Rossi S.p.A. the famous Italian producer of Martini vermouth and sparkling wines. In 1998, the company acquired Dewar's scotch and Bombay gin for $2 billion. In 2001, the Cazadores tequila brand and in 2004 Grey Goose, a French made vodka, from Sidney Frank for $2 billion. In 2006, Bacardi purchased New Zealand vodka brand 42 Below. Other associated brands include Drambuie Scotch whisky liqueur, DiSaronno Amaretto, and B&B and Benedictine liqueurs.
[edit] Opposition to Castro
Main article: Opposition to Fidel Castro
The Bacardi family (and hence, the company) maintained a fierce opposition to Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba in the 1960s. In his book, 'Bacardi, The Hidden War', Hernando Calvo Ospina outlines the political element to the family's money. Ospina describes how the Bacardi family and company left Cuba after it became clear that Castro was serious about his pledges for change. However, the exit had started a few years prior to the revolution; the company moved the all important Bacardi international trademarks out of the country to the Bahamas prior to the revolution. The revolutionary government nationalised all Bacardi assets in the country, and like many American businesses, Bacardi declined the settlement offered.
Ospina also explains the close ties Bacardi family members had to the US political elite, as well as organizations of state such as the CIA. It is also known that the Bacardi family funded various Cuban exile organizations based in such as CANF
Embittered Bacardi helmsman Jose Pepin Bosch bought a surplus B-26 bomber with the hopes of bombing his ex-pal Fidel’s oil refineries (the bold plan was foiled when a picture of the bomber appeared on the front page of New York Times). He was also allegedly involved in the CIA plot to assassinate Castro : documents uncovered during congressional investigations into Kennedy's death bring to light a message outlining how he had plans to assassinate Castro, his brother (Raúl Castro) and Che Guevara. The RECE (Cuban Representation in Exile) also receives funding from Bacardi family members.
More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba.[1] In 1999 Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi Rum, drafted section 211 of the 1999 Omnibus appropriations act, a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to Cuban businesses products expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by the Bacardi family. The act was aimed primarily at Havana Club brand in America, which had been registered by the Cuban government.[2] Section 211 has been challenged un-successfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in US courts, however, has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The American Congress has yet to re-examine the matter. Bacardi's political activities have lead to the creation of a 'Boycott Bacardi'[3] campaign in the UK, which has been unsuccessful.
[edit] Bacardi and Cuba today
Bacardi drinks are not found in Cuba today. The main brand of rum in Cuba is called Havana Club a formally private company expropriated by the government. Havana Club was not a Bacardi brand, though Bacardi later bought the brand from the original owners, the Arechabala family, who had it seized from them by Castro's government after the revolution without compensation. [4][5] In partnership with French company Pernod Ricard, Havana Club is sold all over the world, except for the United States and its territories.
The top of the Bacardi Building in Havana, Cuba.
The top of the Bacardi Building in Havana, Cuba.
Bacardi, despite having no business tie (in terms of production) to Cuba today, have decided to re-emphasize their Cuban heritage in recent years. This is mainly due to commercial reasons; facing increased competition in the Rum market from the now international brand Havana Club, the company concluded that it was important for sales to associate their rum with Cuba. TV adverts with slogans of 'Welcome to the Latin Quarter' are but one example of this. In 1998, under the distinctive bat logo, the phrase "company founded in Santiago de Cuba in 1862" was added.
Bacardi has faced criticism and legal problems for supposedly attempting to falsely convince consumers they were purchasing rum made in Cuba rather than just marking its heritage. Bacardi adverts in Spain, since 1966, had described a popular combination of rum and coke as "rum and coke". However, after 1998, it began to describe the drink as Cuba Libre - literally translated as "free Cuba" which is the original name of the drink and how it's mostly called in Latin America. In this instance, Bacardi faced a legal ruling from the Spanish Association of Advertising Users which forced the company to stop the advert. They concluded that it could "mislead the viewer as to the true nature of the product" as the advert contained so many pieces of Caribbean imagery, one might conclude it came from Cuba (Ospina, p79). Bacardi continues to fight a war in the courts with the Cuban government of the rights to trademarks around the world.
The Bacardi legacy lives on in Santiago and Havana through their grand buildings and historic significance. The Bacardi Building (Edificio Bacardi) in Old Havana is regarded as one of the finest art deco buildings in Latin America.
[edit] Trivia
* Today the company has a 16-member board of directors led by the original founder's great-great grandson, Facundo L. Bacardi.
* Bacardi is the "secret ingredient" in a milkshake given to Sarah Brown by Sky Masterson in the musical "Guys and Dolls"
* Luis F. Bacardi created the Lubee Bat Conservancy, an organization dedicated to the conservation and research of Old World fruit bats and nectavores.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro, the illegitimate son of a successful Creole sugar plantation owner, was born in Cuba in 1926. He was a rebellious boy and at the age of thirteen helped to organize a strike of sugar workers on his father's plantation.
Both his parents were illiterate but they were determined that their children should receive a good education and Fidel was sent to a Jesuit boarding school. Although he disliked the strict discipline of the school, Fidel soon showed that he was extremely intelligent. However, except for history, he preferred sports to academic subjects. Fidel was good at running, soccer and baseball, and in 1944 was awarded the prize as Cuba's best all-round school athlete.
After he had finished his education Castro became a lawyer in Havana. As he tended to take the cases of poor people who could not afford to pay him, Castro was constantly short of money. Castro's experience as a lawyer made him extremely critical of the great inequalities in wealth that existed in Cuba. Like many other Cubans, Castro resented the wealth and power of the American businessmen who appeared to control the country.
In 1947 Castro joined the Cuban People's Party. He was attracted to this new party's campaign against corruption, injustice, poverty, unemployment and low wages. The Cuban People's Party accused government ministers of taking bribes and running the country for the benefit of the large United States corporations that had factories and offices in Cuba.
In 1952 Fidel Castro became a candidate for Congress for the Cuban People's Party. He was a superb public speaker and soon built up a strong following amongst the young members of the party. The Cuban People's Party was expected to win the election but during the campaign. General Fulgencio Batista, with the support of the armed forces, took control of the country.
Castro came to the conclusion that revolution was the only way that the Cuban People's Party would gain power. In 1953, Castro, with an armed group of 123 men and women, attacked the Moncada Army Barracks. The plan to overthrow Batista ended in disaster and although only eight were killed in the fighting, another eighty were murdered by the army after they were captured. Castro was lucky that the lieutenant who arrested him ignored orders to have him executed and instead delivered him to the nearest civilian prison.
Castro also came close to death in prison. Captain Pelletier was instructed to put poison in Castro's food. The man refused and instead revealed his orders to the Cuban people. Pelletier was court-martialed but, concerned about world opinion, Batista decided not to have Castro killed.
Castro was put on trial charged with organising an armed uprising. He used this opportunity to make a speech about the problems of Cuba and how they could be solved. His speech later became a book entitled History Will Absolve Me. Castro was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The trial and the publication of the book made Castro famous in Cuba. His attempted revolution had considerable support in the country. After all, the party he represented would probably have won the election in 1952 had it been allowed to take place. Following considerable pressure from the Cuban population, Fulgencio Batista decided to release Castro after he had served only two years of his sentence. Batista also promised elections but when it became clear that they would not take place, Castro left for Mexico where he began to plan another attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.
After building up a stock of guns and ammunition, Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida, and eighty other rebels arrived in Cuba in 1956. This group became known as the July 26 Movement (the date that Castro had attacked the Moncada barracks). Their plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro's guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.
When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista's soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro's army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.
In an effort to find out information about Castro's army people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining Castro. The behaviour of Batista's forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes.
Fulgencio Batista responded to this by sending more troops to the Sierra Maestra. He now had 10,000 men hunting for Castro and his 300-strong army. Although outnumbered, Castro's guerrillas were able to inflict defeat after defeat on the government's troops. In the summer of 1958 over a thousand of Batista's soldiers were killed or wounded and many more were captured. Unlike Batista's soldiers, Castro's troops had developed a reputation for behaving well towards prisoners. This encouraged Batista's troops to surrender to Castro when things went badly in battle. Complete military units began to join the guerrillas.
The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships and tanks, but the advantage of using the latest technology such as napalm failed to win them victory against the guerrillas. In March 1958, the United States government, disillusioned with Batista's performance, suggested he held elections. This he did, but the people showed their dissatisfaction with his government by refusing to vote. Over 75 per cent of the voters in the capital Havana boycotted the polls. In some areas, such as Santiago, it was as high as 98 per cent.
Castro was now confident he could beat Batista in a head-on battle. Leaving the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro's troops began to march on the main towns. After consultations with the United States government, Batista decided to flee Cuba. Senior Generals left behind attempted to set up another military government. Castro's reaction was to call for a general strike. The workers came out on strike and the military were forced to accept the people's desire for change. Castro marched into Havana on January 9,1959, and became Cuba's new leader.
In its first hundred days in office Castro's government passed several new laws. Rents were cut by up to 50 per cent for low wage earners; property owned by Batista and his ministers was confiscated; the telephone company was nationalized and the rates were reduced by 50 per cent; land was redistributed amongst the peasants (including the land owned by the Castro family); separate facilities for blacks and whites (swimming pools, beaches, hotels, cemeteries etc.) were abolished.
Castro had strong views on morality. He considered that alcohol, drugs, gambling, homosexuality and prostitution were major evils. He saw the casinos and night-clubs as sources of temptation and corruption and he passed laws closing them down. Members of the Mafia, who had been heavily involved in running these places, were forced to leave the country.
Castro believed strongly in education. Before the revolution 23.6 per cent of the Cuban population were illiterate. In rural areas over half the population could not read or write and 61 per cent of the children did not go to school. Castro asked young students in the cities to travel to the countryside and teach the people to read and write. Cuba adopted the slogan: "If you don't know, learn. If you know, teach." Eventually free education was made available to all citizens and illiteracy in Cuba became a thing of the past.
The new Cuban government also set about the problem of health care. Before the revolution Cuba had 6,000 doctors. Of these, 64 per cent worked in Havana where most of the rich people lived. When Castro ordered that doctors had to be redistributed throughout the country, over half decided to leave Cuba. To replace them Cuba built three new training schools for doctors.
The death of young children from disease was a major problem in Cuba. Infant mortality was 60 per 1,000 live births in 1959. To help deal with this Cuba introduced a free health-service and started a massive inoculation program. By 1980 infant mortality had fallen to 15 per 1,000. This figure is now the best in the developing world and is in fact better than many areas of the United States.
It has been estimated that in his seven-year reign, Batista's regime had murdered over 20,000 Cubans. Those involved in the murders had not expected to lose power and had kept records, including photographs of the people they had tortured and murdered. Castro established public tribunals to try the people responsible and an estimated 600 people were executed. Although this pleased the relatives of the people murdered by Batista's government, these executions shocked world opinion.
Some of Castro's new laws also upset the United States. Much of the land given to the peasants was owned by United States corporations. So also was the telephone company that was nationalized. The United States government responded by telling Castro they would no longer be willing to supply the technology and technicians needed to run Cuba's economy. When this failed to change Castro's policies they reduced their orders for Cuban sugar.
Castro refused to be intimidated by the United States and adopted even more aggressive policies towards them. In the summer of 1960 Castro nationalized United States property worth $850 million. He also negotiated a deal where by the Soviet Union and other communist countries in Eastern Europe agreed to purchase the sugar that the United States had refused to take. The Soviet Union also agreed to supply the weapons, technicians and machinery denied to Cuba by the United States.
President Dwight Eisenhower was in a difficult situation. The more he attempted to punish Castro the closer he became to the Soviet Union. His main fear was that Cuba could eventually become a Soviet military base. To change course and attempt to win Castro's friendship with favourable trade deals was likely to be interpreted as a humiliating defeat for the United States. Instead Eisenhower announced that he would not buy any more sugar from Cuba.
In March I960, Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train "a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action." The strategy was organised by Richard Bissell and Richard Helms. An estimated 400 CIA officers were employed full-time to carry out what became known as Operation Mongoose. Edward Lansdale became project leader whereas William Harvey became head of what became known as Task Force W. The JM WAVE station served as operational headquarters for Operation Mongoose.
Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA Technical Services Division was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro's popularity with the Cuban people. Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.
These schemes were rejected and instead Bissell decided to arrange the assassination of Castro. In September 1960, Richard Bissell and Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), initiated talks with two leading figures of the Mafia, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana. Later, other crime bosses such as Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky became involved in this plot against Castro.
Robert Maheu, a veteran of CIA counter-espionage activities, was instructed to offer the Mafia $150,000 to kill Fidel Castro. The advantage of employing the Mafia for this work is that it provided CIA with a credible cover story. The Mafia were known to be angry with Castro for closing down their profitable brothels and casinos in Cuba. If the assassins were killed or captured the media would accept that the Mafia were working on their own.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had to be brought into this plan as part of the deal involved protection against investigations against the Mafia in the United States. Castro was later to complain that there were twenty ClA-sponsered attempts on his life. Eventually Johnny Roselli and his friends became convinced that the Cuban revolution could not be reversed by simply removing its leader. However, they continued to play along with this CIA plot in order to prevent them being prosecuted for criminal offences committed in the United States.
In 1961 Eisenhower retired and the problem of dealing with Castro was passed on to the new president, John F. Kennedy. The new president continued with Eisenhower's policy of trying to assassinate Castro. This became known as Operation Freedom and was placed under the control of Robert Kennedy.
In the three years that followed the revolution, 250,000 Cubans out of a population of six million left the country. Most of these were from the upper and middle-classes who were financially worse off as a result of Castro's policies.
Of those who stayed, 90 per cent of the population, according to public opinion polls, supported Castro. However, Castro did not keep his promise of holding free elections. Castro claimed the national unity that had been created would be destroyed by the competing political parties in an election.
Castro was also becoming less tolerant towards people who disagreed with him. Ministers who questioned the wisdom of his policies were sacked and replaced by people who had proved their loyalty to him. These people were often young, inexperienced politicians who had fought with him in the Sierra Maestra.
Politicians who publicly disagreed with him faced the possibility of being arrested. Writers who expressed dissenting views and people he considered deviants such as homosexuals were also imprisoned.
When John F. Kennedy replaced Dwight Eisenhower as president of the United States he was told about the CIA plan to invade Cuba. Kennedy had doubts about the venture but he was afraid he would be seen as soft on communism if he refused permission for it to go ahead. Kennedy's advisers convinced him that Castro was an unpopular leader and that once the invasion started the Cuban people would support the ClA-trained forces.
On April 14, 1961, B-26 planes began bombing Cuba's airfields. After the raids Cuba was left with only eight planes and seven pilots. Two days later five merchant ships carrying 1,400 Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay of Pigs. The attack was a total failure. Two of the ships were sunk, including the ship that was carrying most of the supplies. Two of the planes that were attempting to give air-cover were also shot down. Within seventy-two hours all the invading troops had been killed, wounded or had surrendered.
Bay of Pigs: Part 1
Bay of Pigs: Part 2
At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving in Cuba which the United States government feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President John Kennedy complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered to be defensive) in Cuba.
As the Cubans now had SAM installations they were in a position to shoot down U-2 spy-planes. Kennedy was in a difficult situation. Elections were to take place for the United States Congress in two month's time. The public opinion polls showed that his own ratings had fallen to their lowest point since he became president.
In his first two years of office a combination of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats in Congress had blocked much of Kennedy's proposed legislation. The polls suggested that after the elections he would have even less support in Congress. Kennedy feared that any trouble over Cuba would lose the Democratic Party even more votes, as it would remind voters of the Bay of Pigs disaster where the CIA had tried to oust Castro from power. One poll showed that over 62 per cent of the population were unhappy with his policies on Cuba. Understandably, the Republicans attempted to make Cuba the main issue in the campaign.
This was probably in Kennedy's mind when he decided to restrict the flights of the U-2 planes over Cuba . Pilots were also told to avoid flying the whole length of the island. Kennedy hoped this would ensure that a U-2 plane would not be shot down, and would prevent Cuba becoming a major issue during the election campaign.
On September 27, a CIA agent in Cuba overheard Castro's personal pilot tell another man in a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons. U-2 spy-plane photographs also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal. However, it was not until October 15 that photographs were taken that revealed that the Soviet Union was placing long range missiles in Cuba.
President Kennedy's first reaction to the information about the missiles in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be done. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military leaders, experts on Latin America, representatives of the CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy valued. This group became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Over the next few days they were to meet several times.
At the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy decided to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The committee was now so divided that a firm decision could not be made.
The Executive Committee of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favour of a bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee gradually began to favour a naval blockade of Cuba.
Kennedy accepted their decision and instructed Theodore Sorensen, a member of the committee, to write a speech in which Kennedy would explain to the world why it was necessary to impose a naval blockade of Cuba.
As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites.
The world waited anxiously. A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides. There were angry demonstrations outside the American Embassy in London as people protested about the possibility of nuclear war. Demonstrations also took place in other cities in Europe. However, in the United States, polls suggested that the vast majority supported Kennedy's action.
On October 24, President John F. Kennedy was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Nikita Khrushchev sent an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help the Democratic Party win the forthcoming election.
On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey.
While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter.
Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters in Congress for his policies.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of the Cold War.
Castro remained dependent on the support of the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power on 15th October, 1964, but his successors, including Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev provided aid to his government. However, after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 this economic help came to an end.
In 1991 Cuba suffered an economic crisis. Its outdated and unrepaired equipment meant that sugar and tobacco production fell. At the same time Cuba could no longer rely on former countries in Eastern Europe to buy its goods. Castro suffered great embarrassment when his own daughter sough asylum in the United States in 1994.
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(A1) Fidel Castro was at Belen College between 1942-45. When he left they wrote a report on him.
Fidel distinguished himself in all subjects... He was also an outstanding athlete, always courageously and proudly defending the school's colours. He has won the admiration and affection of all. We are sure that, after his law studies, he will make a brilliant name for himself. Fidel has what it takes and will make something of his life.
(A2) Teresa Casuso was a Cuban actress who met Castro in Mexico in 1956. She later allowed her house to be used as a hiding place for-the weapons that Castro was buying.
He looked eminently serene, and inspired confidence and a sense of security. His voice was quiet, his expression grave, his manner calm, gentle... He struck me as being a man who would never underestimate the value of anyone; everybody was important to him.
(A3) Melba Hernandez, a lawyer, met Fidel Castro for the first time in 1952. Later she participated in the attack on Moncada.
From the moment you shake hands with Fidel, you are impressed. His personality is so powerful. When I gave my hand to this young man I felt very secure. I felt I had found the way. When this young man began to talk, all I could do was listen.
(A4) In 1953, Fidel Castro complained about Cuba's economic relationship with the United States.
With the exception of a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be a producer of raw materials. We export sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import ploughs.
(A5) Orlando de Cardenas helped Fidel Castro buy weapons in Mexico.
Fidel rarely tolerates any kind of dissent from his own views... Fidel's compulsive urge for personal control of whatever undertaking struck his fancy was not motivated by a mere lust for power but by the conviction that he was especially endowed with the wisdom for fulfilling the mission.
(A6) As a representative of the United States government, Peter Bourne met Fidel Castro in 1979.
Very few who meet him are not seduced by his personal charm, even those who violently disagree with him on ideological grounds. He has a special quality shared by few politicians, of giving his undivided attention to anyone speaking to him, no matter how lowly he is or how insignificant his comments. He also has the capacity to pick the brains of his visitors in a way that is flattering to them and at the same time of immense value to him.
(A7) After Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union met Fidel Castro in New York in 1960 he told a colleague what he thought of him.
Castro is like a young horse that hasn't been broken. He needs some training, but he's very spirited - so we will have to be careful.
(A8) In his book The Perfect Failure, Trumbull Higgins argues that John F. Kennedy had a strong dislike of Fidel Castro and had been discussing his removal even before he became president.
As early as October 1960 Kennedy had discussed with his conservative friend Senator George Smathers of Florida the likely reaction of the American public to an attempt to assassinate Castro. Alternatively, Kennedy and Smathers had considered provoking a Cuban assault upon the base at Guantanamo to provide an excuse for a U.S. invasion of the island.
(A9) After the bombing raid on 14th April 1961, Fidel Castro made a speech to the Cuban people.
The imperialists plan the crime, organize the crime, furnish the criminals with weapons for the crime, pay the criminals, and then those criminals come here and murder the sons of seven honest workers. Why are they doing this? They can't forgive our being right under their very noses, seeing how we have made a revolution, a socialist revolution. Comrades, workers and peasants, this is a socialist and democratic revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor, we are ready to give our lives.
(A10) On February 4,1962 Fidel Castro made a speech in Havana where he considered the motivations behind the Bay of Pigs invasion.
What is hidden behind the Yankee's hatred of the Cuban Revolution... a small country of only seven million people, economically underdeveloped, without financial or military means to threaten the security or economy of any other country? What explains it is fear. Not fear of the Cuban Revolution but fear of the Latin American Revolution.
(A11) After the Bay of Pigs, Philip Bonsol, the United States Ambassador in Cuba, wrote about the consequences of the failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.
The Bay of Pigs was a serious setback for the United States... It consolidated Castro's regime and was a determining factor in giving it the long life it has enjoyed... It became clear to all concerned in Washington, in Havana and in Moscow that for the time being the Castro regime could be overthrown only through an overt application of American power.
(A12) Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's foreign secretary, book Through Russian Eyes: President Kennedy's 1036 Days was published in 1973. In the book Gromyko wrote about the background to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The United States over several years had established offensive military bases around the socialist countries and, primarily, near the USSR borders... the placement of medium-range effective Soviet missiles in Cuba was undertaken only after the United States ruling circles continually rejected proposals to remove American military bases, including missile sites, on foreign territory.
(A13) In 1984 Fidel Castro was interviewed by the American journalist, Tad Szulc. The journalist asked Castro why he was willing to allow Soviet missiles to be placed in Cuba.
It was necessary to make it clear to the United States that an invasion of Cuba would imply a war with the Soviet Union. It was then that they proposed the missiles... We preferred the risks, whatever they were, of a great tension, a great crisis, to the risks of the impotence of having to await a United States invasion of Cuba.
(A14) James Daniel and John Hubbell are two historians who wrote a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In their book, Strike in the West, they comment on why they believed the missiles were placed in Cuba.
The United States anticipated that by the mid-sixties they would have in the neighbourhood of 1,500 ballistic missiles... The total number of Soviet missiles which could reach targets in the United States was about 125... But by moving medium and intermediate-range missiles to Cuba, deep in the Western Hemisphere, Russia was rapidly narrowing the gap... The presence of Russian missiles in Cuba had drastically altered the balance of world power.
(A15) Mario Lazo, a Cuban lawyer was a supporter of the Batista regime that was overthrown by Castro. After the Cuban revolution he fled to the United States. In 1968 he wrote a book called Dagger in the Heart: American Failures in Cuba.
The accounts of the crisis did not make clear that it was a power confrontation, that the power of the USA was incomparably superior to that of the USSR, and that the leaders of both nations knew this to be a fact. The United States, it is worth repeating, could have erased every important Soviet military installation and population centre in two or three hours while the strike capability of the USSR was negligible. Although Kennedy held the trump cards, he granted the Communist Empire a privileged sanctuary in the Caribbean by means of the "no invasion" pledge.
(A16) I. F. Stone, a journalist, wrote an article on John F. Kennedy after he was assassinated in 1963.
What if the Russians had refused to back down and remove their missiles from Cuba? What if they had called our bluff and war had begun, and escalated? How would the historians of mankind, if a fragment survived, have regarded the events of October?... Since this is the kind of bluff that can easily be played once too often, and that his successors
may feel urged to imitate, it would be well to think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy as an apostle of peace.
(A17) Fidel Castro, speech in Kuala Lumpur (3rd March, 2003)
These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United States president declared: "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world." That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States army."
That statement was not made by the government of a small and weak nation, but by the leader of the richest and mightiest military power that has ever existed, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to obliterate the world's population several times over - and other terrifying conventional military systems and weapons of mass destruction.
That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception some have of the third world nations. Never before had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.
There is nothing like full independence, fair treatment on an equal footing or national security for any of us; none is a permanent member of the UN security council with a veto right; none has any possibility of being involved in the decisions of the international financial institutions; none can keep its best talents; none can protect itself from capital flight or the destruction of nature and the environment caused by the squandering, selfish and insatiable consumerism of the economically developed countries.
After the last global carnage in the 1940s, we were promised a world of peace, a reduction of the gap between the rich and poor and the assistance of the highly developed to the less developed countries. It was all a huge lie. We had imposed on us an unsustainable and unbearable world order.
The world is being driven into a dead end. Within hardly 150 years, the oil and gas it took the planet 300 million years to accumulate will have been depleted. In just 100 years, the world population has grown from 1.5 billion to over 6 billion people, who will have to depend on energy sources that are still to be researched and developed. Poverty continues to grow while old and new diseases threaten whole nations with annihilation. The world's soil is being eroded and losing its fertility; the climate is changing; the air that we breathe, drinking water and the seas are increasingly contaminated.
Authority is being wrenched away from the United Nations, its established procedures are being obstructed and the organisation itself destroyed; development assistance is being reduced; there are continuous demands on the third world countries to pay a $2.5 trillion debt that cannot be paid under the present circumstances, while $1 trillion dollars are spent in ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons. Why and for what?
A similar amount is spent on commercial advertising, sowing consumerist longings that cannot be satisfied in the minds of billions of people. Why and for what? For the first time the human species is running a real risk of extinction due to the insane behaviour of the very same human beings, who are thus becoming the victims of this "civilisation".
However, no one will fight for us, that is, for the overwhelming majority, only we will do it. Only we can save humanity ourselves with the support of millions of manual and intellectual workers from the developed nations who are conscious of the catastrophes befalling their peoples. Only we can do it by sowing ideas, building awareness and mobilising global and North American public opinion. No one needs to be told this. You know it very well. Our most sacred duty is to fight, and fight we will.
(A18) BBC News Website (1st July, 2007)
Cuban President Fidel Castro has said recent CIA admissions of illicit Cold War activities disguise the fact the US is using such "brutal" tactics today.
Last week the CIA published documents called the "Family Jewels", revealing spy plots and assassination attempts.
The documents included plans to use Mafia help to kill Fidel Castro.
Mr Castro, still recovering after surgery last year, said in the official media the US was trying to pretend the tactics belonged to another era.
"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States," President Castro wrote.
In an editorial called the Killing Machine, he wrote: "Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction."
One of the key revelations of the documents was that the CIA tried to persuade mobster Johnny Roselli in 1960 to plot the assassination of the Cuban leader.
The plan was for poisoned pills to be put in Mr Castro's food, but it was shelved after the US-sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs failed a year later.
Mr Castro has long accused the US, including President George W Bush, of plotting to kill him.
In his editorial, Mr Castro also refers to the assassination of John F Kennedy, saying the US president was the victim of the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
Mr Castro says Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in killing the president.
"You lose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second," Mr Castro, himself an expert marksman, says.
(A19) Fidel Castro, The Killing Machine (30th June, 2007)
It was announced that the CIA would be declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal actions that included plans to eliminate the leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the publication is halted and it is delayed one day. No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps someone in the White House looked over the material.
The first package of declassified documents goes by the name of "The Family Jewels"; it consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been deleted. It deals with actions that were not authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings to control their minds, spying on civil activists and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.
The documents began to be gathered together 14 years after the first of the events took place, when then CIA director, James Schlesinger became alarmed about what the press was writing, especially all the articles by Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington Post, already mentioned in the "Manifesto to the People of Cuba". The agency was being accused of promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.
In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was demanding that "all the main operative officials of this agency must immediately inform me on any ongoing or past activity that might be outside of the constituting charter of this agency". Schlesinger, later appointed Head of the Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. Colby was referring to the documents as "skeletons hiding in a closet". New press revelations forced Colby to admit the existence of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups. The law that created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.
That "was just the tip of the iceberg", said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger himself warned that "blood would flow" if other actions were known, and he immediately added: "For example, that Robert Kennedy personally controlled the operation for the assassination of Fidel Castro". The President's brother was then Attorney General of the United States. He was later murdered as he was running for President in the 1968 elections, which facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case is that apparently he had reached the conviction that Jack Kennedy had been victim of a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots and other circumstances surrounding the death of the President, reached the conclusion that there had been at least three shooters. Solitary Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have been the only shooter. I found that rather striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate turned me into a shooting instructor with a telescopic sight for all the Granma expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and teaching, every day; even though the target is a stationary one it disappears from view with each shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.
Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to the USSR. He had already been there before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our country's embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him there so he wasn't authorized. They wanted to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack Ruby, – a man openly linked to the Mafia – unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full of police agents.
Subsequently, in international functions or on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would greet me respectfully. The former president's son, who was a very small child when his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.
The young man, in the prime of his life, and well brought up, tragically died in an airplane accident on a stormy night as he was flying to Martha's Vineyard with his wife. I never touched on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that if the president-elect had then been Nixon instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster we would have been attacked by the land and sea forces escorting the mercenary expedition, and both countries would have paid a high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to saying that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by Eisenhower's military reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.
I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful spot outside of the capital with French journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was bringing a message from President Kennedy. He said to me that in essence he had told him: "You are going to see Castro. I would like to know what he thinks about the terrible danger we just experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see you again as soon as you get back." "Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a political machine", he added, and we were not able to continue talking as someone rushed in with the news of what had just happened. We turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.
Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both the weakest part and the one that would take the first strike, but we did not agree with the concessions that were made to the United States. I have already spoken of this before.
Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater authority. He came to recognize the enormous sacrifices of human lives and material wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism. The worst of the relations between the United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by April 1961. When he hadn't resigned himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and other bloody occurrences began under the administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.
After the Missile Crisis we would have not refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never severed relations with the USSR as it had been asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had been aware of what a war could be using weapons of mass destruction they would have ended the Cold War earlier and differently. At least that’s how we felt then, when there was still no talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much more time to reach, through science and conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.
President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. "We do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it", he said.
As a result of the Commission's investigations that were led by Senator Frank Church, President Ford signed an executive order which expressly prohibited the participation of American officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.
The documents published now disclose information about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.
Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, for which the CIA created a special squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to investigate "the international activities of radicals and black militants". The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.
According to The New York Times, President Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War movement was controlled and funded by Communist governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.
The documents recognize, furthermore, that the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia University. It also searched homes and carried out tests on American citizens to determine the reactions of human beings to certain drugs.
In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: "I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don't know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case".
The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of "jewels". The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.
A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project called OFTEN which would collect "information about dangerous drugs in American companies", until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. In another memo there are reports that manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed" drugs to the CIA which had been "refused due to adverse secondary effects".
As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given LSD and other psycho-active drugs to people without their knowledge. According to another document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.
CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS – the operation that carried out surveillance on American opposition to the war in Vietnam and other political dissidents – expressed "a high level of resentment" for having been ordered to carry out such missions.
Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting matters revealed in these documents, such as the high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.
The technique used today by the CIA to avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.
For The New York Times, large censored sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the skeletons in its closets, and many activities developed in operations abroad, checked over years ago by journalists, congressional investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.
Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, makes a summary of the "jewels" compiled by his office. He lists eight cases – including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro – but they crossed out the document that is in the number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and a half pages.
"The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must be very good, especially since the second one is the list for the program concerning the assassination of Castro by Roselli," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive who requested the declassification of "The Family Jewels" 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use. When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: "The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency."
Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States.
The New York Times wrote that intelligence experts consulted expressed that the revelation of the documents is an attempt to distract attention from recent controversies and scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.
The declassification could also be an attempt at showing, in the early stages of the electoral process that the Democratic administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush's.
In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:
"In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the objective of determining whether the Security Office had agents who could help in a confidential mission that required gangster-style action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.
"Given the extreme confidentiality of the mission, the project was known only to a small group of people. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, but all the details were deliberately concealed from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though some officials of Communications (Commo) and the Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission's purpose.
"Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed in general terms about the project, and he was asked to evaluate whether he could get access to gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.
"Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him informally through clients, but he had been told that he was a member of the upper echelons of the 'syndicate' and that he was controlling all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.
"Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who knew that Maheu was a public relations executive looking after national and foreign accounts, and tell him that recently he had been contracted by a client who represented several international business companies, which were suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were convinced that the elimination of Castro would be a solution to their problem and they were ready to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know anything, about this operation.
"This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but after Maheu's persuasive efforts he agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew "some Cubans". Roselli made it clear that he didn't want any money for his part in all this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.
"During the week of September 25, Maheu was introduced to Sam who was living at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe – who was introduced as courier operating between Havana and Miami – that he saw photos of these two individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on the Attorney General's list of the ten most wanted. The former was described as the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this office upon learning this information.
"After analyzing the possible methods to carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they not resort to firearms but that, if they could get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be put into Castro's food or drink, this would be a much more effective operation. Sam indicated that he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.
"The TSD (Technical Services Division) was requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.
"Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful."
Everything that was said in the numerous paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear readers, the methods that were already being used by the United States to rule the world.
I remember that during the early years of the Revolution, in the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man working there with me whose name was Orta, who had been linked to the anti-Batista political forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, it could only be him. The decades have gone by and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I can't lay my hands on information to immediately prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.
The empire has created a veritable killing machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures, and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to this reality.
"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time", said Lincoln.
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Both his parents were illiterate but they were determined that their children should receive a good education and Fidel was sent to a Jesuit boarding school. Although he disliked the strict discipline of the school, Fidel soon showed that he was extremely intelligent. However, except for history, he preferred sports to academic subjects. Fidel was good at running, soccer and baseball, and in 1944 was awarded the prize as Cuba's best all-round school athlete.
After he had finished his education Castro became a lawyer in Havana. As he tended to take the cases of poor people who could not afford to pay him, Castro was constantly short of money. Castro's experience as a lawyer made him extremely critical of the great inequalities in wealth that existed in Cuba. Like many other Cubans, Castro resented the wealth and power of the American businessmen who appeared to control the country.
In 1947 Castro joined the Cuban People's Party. He was attracted to this new party's campaign against corruption, injustice, poverty, unemployment and low wages. The Cuban People's Party accused government ministers of taking bribes and running the country for the benefit of the large United States corporations that had factories and offices in Cuba.
In 1952 Fidel Castro became a candidate for Congress for the Cuban People's Party. He was a superb public speaker and soon built up a strong following amongst the young members of the party. The Cuban People's Party was expected to win the election but during the campaign. General Fulgencio Batista, with the support of the armed forces, took control of the country.
Castro came to the conclusion that revolution was the only way that the Cuban People's Party would gain power. In 1953, Castro, with an armed group of 123 men and women, attacked the Moncada Army Barracks. The plan to overthrow Batista ended in disaster and although only eight were killed in the fighting, another eighty were murdered by the army after they were captured. Castro was lucky that the lieutenant who arrested him ignored orders to have him executed and instead delivered him to the nearest civilian prison.
Castro also came close to death in prison. Captain Pelletier was instructed to put poison in Castro's food. The man refused and instead revealed his orders to the Cuban people. Pelletier was court-martialed but, concerned about world opinion, Batista decided not to have Castro killed.
Castro was put on trial charged with organising an armed uprising. He used this opportunity to make a speech about the problems of Cuba and how they could be solved. His speech later became a book entitled History Will Absolve Me. Castro was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The trial and the publication of the book made Castro famous in Cuba. His attempted revolution had considerable support in the country. After all, the party he represented would probably have won the election in 1952 had it been allowed to take place. Following considerable pressure from the Cuban population, Fulgencio Batista decided to release Castro after he had served only two years of his sentence. Batista also promised elections but when it became clear that they would not take place, Castro left for Mexico where he began to plan another attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.
After building up a stock of guns and ammunition, Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida, and eighty other rebels arrived in Cuba in 1956. This group became known as the July 26 Movement (the date that Castro had attacked the Moncada barracks). Their plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro's guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.
When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista's soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro's army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.
In an effort to find out information about Castro's army people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining Castro. The behaviour of Batista's forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes.
Fulgencio Batista responded to this by sending more troops to the Sierra Maestra. He now had 10,000 men hunting for Castro and his 300-strong army. Although outnumbered, Castro's guerrillas were able to inflict defeat after defeat on the government's troops. In the summer of 1958 over a thousand of Batista's soldiers were killed or wounded and many more were captured. Unlike Batista's soldiers, Castro's troops had developed a reputation for behaving well towards prisoners. This encouraged Batista's troops to surrender to Castro when things went badly in battle. Complete military units began to join the guerrillas.
The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships and tanks, but the advantage of using the latest technology such as napalm failed to win them victory against the guerrillas. In March 1958, the United States government, disillusioned with Batista's performance, suggested he held elections. This he did, but the people showed their dissatisfaction with his government by refusing to vote. Over 75 per cent of the voters in the capital Havana boycotted the polls. In some areas, such as Santiago, it was as high as 98 per cent.
Castro was now confident he could beat Batista in a head-on battle. Leaving the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro's troops began to march on the main towns. After consultations with the United States government, Batista decided to flee Cuba. Senior Generals left behind attempted to set up another military government. Castro's reaction was to call for a general strike. The workers came out on strike and the military were forced to accept the people's desire for change. Castro marched into Havana on January 9,1959, and became Cuba's new leader.
In its first hundred days in office Castro's government passed several new laws. Rents were cut by up to 50 per cent for low wage earners; property owned by Batista and his ministers was confiscated; the telephone company was nationalized and the rates were reduced by 50 per cent; land was redistributed amongst the peasants (including the land owned by the Castro family); separate facilities for blacks and whites (swimming pools, beaches, hotels, cemeteries etc.) were abolished.
Castro had strong views on morality. He considered that alcohol, drugs, gambling, homosexuality and prostitution were major evils. He saw the casinos and night-clubs as sources of temptation and corruption and he passed laws closing them down. Members of the Mafia, who had been heavily involved in running these places, were forced to leave the country.
Castro believed strongly in education. Before the revolution 23.6 per cent of the Cuban population were illiterate. In rural areas over half the population could not read or write and 61 per cent of the children did not go to school. Castro asked young students in the cities to travel to the countryside and teach the people to read and write. Cuba adopted the slogan: "If you don't know, learn. If you know, teach." Eventually free education was made available to all citizens and illiteracy in Cuba became a thing of the past.
The new Cuban government also set about the problem of health care. Before the revolution Cuba had 6,000 doctors. Of these, 64 per cent worked in Havana where most of the rich people lived. When Castro ordered that doctors had to be redistributed throughout the country, over half decided to leave Cuba. To replace them Cuba built three new training schools for doctors.
The death of young children from disease was a major problem in Cuba. Infant mortality was 60 per 1,000 live births in 1959. To help deal with this Cuba introduced a free health-service and started a massive inoculation program. By 1980 infant mortality had fallen to 15 per 1,000. This figure is now the best in the developing world and is in fact better than many areas of the United States.
It has been estimated that in his seven-year reign, Batista's regime had murdered over 20,000 Cubans. Those involved in the murders had not expected to lose power and had kept records, including photographs of the people they had tortured and murdered. Castro established public tribunals to try the people responsible and an estimated 600 people were executed. Although this pleased the relatives of the people murdered by Batista's government, these executions shocked world opinion.
Some of Castro's new laws also upset the United States. Much of the land given to the peasants was owned by United States corporations. So also was the telephone company that was nationalized. The United States government responded by telling Castro they would no longer be willing to supply the technology and technicians needed to run Cuba's economy. When this failed to change Castro's policies they reduced their orders for Cuban sugar.
Castro refused to be intimidated by the United States and adopted even more aggressive policies towards them. In the summer of 1960 Castro nationalized United States property worth $850 million. He also negotiated a deal where by the Soviet Union and other communist countries in Eastern Europe agreed to purchase the sugar that the United States had refused to take. The Soviet Union also agreed to supply the weapons, technicians and machinery denied to Cuba by the United States.
President Dwight Eisenhower was in a difficult situation. The more he attempted to punish Castro the closer he became to the Soviet Union. His main fear was that Cuba could eventually become a Soviet military base. To change course and attempt to win Castro's friendship with favourable trade deals was likely to be interpreted as a humiliating defeat for the United States. Instead Eisenhower announced that he would not buy any more sugar from Cuba.
In March I960, Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train "a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action." The strategy was organised by Richard Bissell and Richard Helms. An estimated 400 CIA officers were employed full-time to carry out what became known as Operation Mongoose. Edward Lansdale became project leader whereas William Harvey became head of what became known as Task Force W. The JM WAVE station served as operational headquarters for Operation Mongoose.
Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA Technical Services Division was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro's popularity with the Cuban people. Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.
These schemes were rejected and instead Bissell decided to arrange the assassination of Castro. In September 1960, Richard Bissell and Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), initiated talks with two leading figures of the Mafia, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana. Later, other crime bosses such as Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky became involved in this plot against Castro.
Robert Maheu, a veteran of CIA counter-espionage activities, was instructed to offer the Mafia $150,000 to kill Fidel Castro. The advantage of employing the Mafia for this work is that it provided CIA with a credible cover story. The Mafia were known to be angry with Castro for closing down their profitable brothels and casinos in Cuba. If the assassins were killed or captured the media would accept that the Mafia were working on their own.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had to be brought into this plan as part of the deal involved protection against investigations against the Mafia in the United States. Castro was later to complain that there were twenty ClA-sponsered attempts on his life. Eventually Johnny Roselli and his friends became convinced that the Cuban revolution could not be reversed by simply removing its leader. However, they continued to play along with this CIA plot in order to prevent them being prosecuted for criminal offences committed in the United States.
In 1961 Eisenhower retired and the problem of dealing with Castro was passed on to the new president, John F. Kennedy. The new president continued with Eisenhower's policy of trying to assassinate Castro. This became known as Operation Freedom and was placed under the control of Robert Kennedy.
In the three years that followed the revolution, 250,000 Cubans out of a population of six million left the country. Most of these were from the upper and middle-classes who were financially worse off as a result of Castro's policies.
Of those who stayed, 90 per cent of the population, according to public opinion polls, supported Castro. However, Castro did not keep his promise of holding free elections. Castro claimed the national unity that had been created would be destroyed by the competing political parties in an election.
Castro was also becoming less tolerant towards people who disagreed with him. Ministers who questioned the wisdom of his policies were sacked and replaced by people who had proved their loyalty to him. These people were often young, inexperienced politicians who had fought with him in the Sierra Maestra.
Politicians who publicly disagreed with him faced the possibility of being arrested. Writers who expressed dissenting views and people he considered deviants such as homosexuals were also imprisoned.
When John F. Kennedy replaced Dwight Eisenhower as president of the United States he was told about the CIA plan to invade Cuba. Kennedy had doubts about the venture but he was afraid he would be seen as soft on communism if he refused permission for it to go ahead. Kennedy's advisers convinced him that Castro was an unpopular leader and that once the invasion started the Cuban people would support the ClA-trained forces.
On April 14, 1961, B-26 planes began bombing Cuba's airfields. After the raids Cuba was left with only eight planes and seven pilots. Two days later five merchant ships carrying 1,400 Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay of Pigs. The attack was a total failure. Two of the ships were sunk, including the ship that was carrying most of the supplies. Two of the planes that were attempting to give air-cover were also shot down. Within seventy-two hours all the invading troops had been killed, wounded or had surrendered.
Bay of Pigs: Part 1
Bay of Pigs: Part 2
At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving in Cuba which the United States government feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President John Kennedy complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered to be defensive) in Cuba.
As the Cubans now had SAM installations they were in a position to shoot down U-2 spy-planes. Kennedy was in a difficult situation. Elections were to take place for the United States Congress in two month's time. The public opinion polls showed that his own ratings had fallen to their lowest point since he became president.
In his first two years of office a combination of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats in Congress had blocked much of Kennedy's proposed legislation. The polls suggested that after the elections he would have even less support in Congress. Kennedy feared that any trouble over Cuba would lose the Democratic Party even more votes, as it would remind voters of the Bay of Pigs disaster where the CIA had tried to oust Castro from power. One poll showed that over 62 per cent of the population were unhappy with his policies on Cuba. Understandably, the Republicans attempted to make Cuba the main issue in the campaign.
This was probably in Kennedy's mind when he decided to restrict the flights of the U-2 planes over Cuba . Pilots were also told to avoid flying the whole length of the island. Kennedy hoped this would ensure that a U-2 plane would not be shot down, and would prevent Cuba becoming a major issue during the election campaign.
On September 27, a CIA agent in Cuba overheard Castro's personal pilot tell another man in a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons. U-2 spy-plane photographs also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal. However, it was not until October 15 that photographs were taken that revealed that the Soviet Union was placing long range missiles in Cuba.
President Kennedy's first reaction to the information about the missiles in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be done. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military leaders, experts on Latin America, representatives of the CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy valued. This group became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Over the next few days they were to meet several times.
At the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy decided to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The committee was now so divided that a firm decision could not be made.
The Executive Committee of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favour of a bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee gradually began to favour a naval blockade of Cuba.
Kennedy accepted their decision and instructed Theodore Sorensen, a member of the committee, to write a speech in which Kennedy would explain to the world why it was necessary to impose a naval blockade of Cuba.
As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites.
The world waited anxiously. A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides. There were angry demonstrations outside the American Embassy in London as people protested about the possibility of nuclear war. Demonstrations also took place in other cities in Europe. However, in the United States, polls suggested that the vast majority supported Kennedy's action.
On October 24, President John F. Kennedy was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Nikita Khrushchev sent an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help the Democratic Party win the forthcoming election.
On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey.
While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter.
Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters in Congress for his policies.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of the Cold War.
Castro remained dependent on the support of the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power on 15th October, 1964, but his successors, including Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev provided aid to his government. However, after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 this economic help came to an end.
In 1991 Cuba suffered an economic crisis. Its outdated and unrepaired equipment meant that sugar and tobacco production fell. At the same time Cuba could no longer rely on former countries in Eastern Europe to buy its goods. Castro suffered great embarrassment when his own daughter sough asylum in the United States in 1994.
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(A1) Fidel Castro was at Belen College between 1942-45. When he left they wrote a report on him.
Fidel distinguished himself in all subjects... He was also an outstanding athlete, always courageously and proudly defending the school's colours. He has won the admiration and affection of all. We are sure that, after his law studies, he will make a brilliant name for himself. Fidel has what it takes and will make something of his life.
(A2) Teresa Casuso was a Cuban actress who met Castro in Mexico in 1956. She later allowed her house to be used as a hiding place for-the weapons that Castro was buying.
He looked eminently serene, and inspired confidence and a sense of security. His voice was quiet, his expression grave, his manner calm, gentle... He struck me as being a man who would never underestimate the value of anyone; everybody was important to him.
(A3) Melba Hernandez, a lawyer, met Fidel Castro for the first time in 1952. Later she participated in the attack on Moncada.
From the moment you shake hands with Fidel, you are impressed. His personality is so powerful. When I gave my hand to this young man I felt very secure. I felt I had found the way. When this young man began to talk, all I could do was listen.
(A4) In 1953, Fidel Castro complained about Cuba's economic relationship with the United States.
With the exception of a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be a producer of raw materials. We export sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import ploughs.
(A5) Orlando de Cardenas helped Fidel Castro buy weapons in Mexico.
Fidel rarely tolerates any kind of dissent from his own views... Fidel's compulsive urge for personal control of whatever undertaking struck his fancy was not motivated by a mere lust for power but by the conviction that he was especially endowed with the wisdom for fulfilling the mission.
(A6) As a representative of the United States government, Peter Bourne met Fidel Castro in 1979.
Very few who meet him are not seduced by his personal charm, even those who violently disagree with him on ideological grounds. He has a special quality shared by few politicians, of giving his undivided attention to anyone speaking to him, no matter how lowly he is or how insignificant his comments. He also has the capacity to pick the brains of his visitors in a way that is flattering to them and at the same time of immense value to him.
(A7) After Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union met Fidel Castro in New York in 1960 he told a colleague what he thought of him.
Castro is like a young horse that hasn't been broken. He needs some training, but he's very spirited - so we will have to be careful.
(A8) In his book The Perfect Failure, Trumbull Higgins argues that John F. Kennedy had a strong dislike of Fidel Castro and had been discussing his removal even before he became president.
As early as October 1960 Kennedy had discussed with his conservative friend Senator George Smathers of Florida the likely reaction of the American public to an attempt to assassinate Castro. Alternatively, Kennedy and Smathers had considered provoking a Cuban assault upon the base at Guantanamo to provide an excuse for a U.S. invasion of the island.
(A9) After the bombing raid on 14th April 1961, Fidel Castro made a speech to the Cuban people.
The imperialists plan the crime, organize the crime, furnish the criminals with weapons for the crime, pay the criminals, and then those criminals come here and murder the sons of seven honest workers. Why are they doing this? They can't forgive our being right under their very noses, seeing how we have made a revolution, a socialist revolution. Comrades, workers and peasants, this is a socialist and democratic revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor, we are ready to give our lives.
(A10) On February 4,1962 Fidel Castro made a speech in Havana where he considered the motivations behind the Bay of Pigs invasion.
What is hidden behind the Yankee's hatred of the Cuban Revolution... a small country of only seven million people, economically underdeveloped, without financial or military means to threaten the security or economy of any other country? What explains it is fear. Not fear of the Cuban Revolution but fear of the Latin American Revolution.
(A11) After the Bay of Pigs, Philip Bonsol, the United States Ambassador in Cuba, wrote about the consequences of the failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.
The Bay of Pigs was a serious setback for the United States... It consolidated Castro's regime and was a determining factor in giving it the long life it has enjoyed... It became clear to all concerned in Washington, in Havana and in Moscow that for the time being the Castro regime could be overthrown only through an overt application of American power.
(A12) Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's foreign secretary, book Through Russian Eyes: President Kennedy's 1036 Days was published in 1973. In the book Gromyko wrote about the background to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The United States over several years had established offensive military bases around the socialist countries and, primarily, near the USSR borders... the placement of medium-range effective Soviet missiles in Cuba was undertaken only after the United States ruling circles continually rejected proposals to remove American military bases, including missile sites, on foreign territory.
(A13) In 1984 Fidel Castro was interviewed by the American journalist, Tad Szulc. The journalist asked Castro why he was willing to allow Soviet missiles to be placed in Cuba.
It was necessary to make it clear to the United States that an invasion of Cuba would imply a war with the Soviet Union. It was then that they proposed the missiles... We preferred the risks, whatever they were, of a great tension, a great crisis, to the risks of the impotence of having to await a United States invasion of Cuba.
(A14) James Daniel and John Hubbell are two historians who wrote a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In their book, Strike in the West, they comment on why they believed the missiles were placed in Cuba.
The United States anticipated that by the mid-sixties they would have in the neighbourhood of 1,500 ballistic missiles... The total number of Soviet missiles which could reach targets in the United States was about 125... But by moving medium and intermediate-range missiles to Cuba, deep in the Western Hemisphere, Russia was rapidly narrowing the gap... The presence of Russian missiles in Cuba had drastically altered the balance of world power.
(A15) Mario Lazo, a Cuban lawyer was a supporter of the Batista regime that was overthrown by Castro. After the Cuban revolution he fled to the United States. In 1968 he wrote a book called Dagger in the Heart: American Failures in Cuba.
The accounts of the crisis did not make clear that it was a power confrontation, that the power of the USA was incomparably superior to that of the USSR, and that the leaders of both nations knew this to be a fact. The United States, it is worth repeating, could have erased every important Soviet military installation and population centre in two or three hours while the strike capability of the USSR was negligible. Although Kennedy held the trump cards, he granted the Communist Empire a privileged sanctuary in the Caribbean by means of the "no invasion" pledge.
(A16) I. F. Stone, a journalist, wrote an article on John F. Kennedy after he was assassinated in 1963.
What if the Russians had refused to back down and remove their missiles from Cuba? What if they had called our bluff and war had begun, and escalated? How would the historians of mankind, if a fragment survived, have regarded the events of October?... Since this is the kind of bluff that can easily be played once too often, and that his successors
may feel urged to imitate, it would be well to think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy as an apostle of peace.
(A17) Fidel Castro, speech in Kuala Lumpur (3rd March, 2003)
These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United States president declared: "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world." That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States army."
That statement was not made by the government of a small and weak nation, but by the leader of the richest and mightiest military power that has ever existed, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to obliterate the world's population several times over - and other terrifying conventional military systems and weapons of mass destruction.
That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception some have of the third world nations. Never before had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.
There is nothing like full independence, fair treatment on an equal footing or national security for any of us; none is a permanent member of the UN security council with a veto right; none has any possibility of being involved in the decisions of the international financial institutions; none can keep its best talents; none can protect itself from capital flight or the destruction of nature and the environment caused by the squandering, selfish and insatiable consumerism of the economically developed countries.
After the last global carnage in the 1940s, we were promised a world of peace, a reduction of the gap between the rich and poor and the assistance of the highly developed to the less developed countries. It was all a huge lie. We had imposed on us an unsustainable and unbearable world order.
The world is being driven into a dead end. Within hardly 150 years, the oil and gas it took the planet 300 million years to accumulate will have been depleted. In just 100 years, the world population has grown from 1.5 billion to over 6 billion people, who will have to depend on energy sources that are still to be researched and developed. Poverty continues to grow while old and new diseases threaten whole nations with annihilation. The world's soil is being eroded and losing its fertility; the climate is changing; the air that we breathe, drinking water and the seas are increasingly contaminated.
Authority is being wrenched away from the United Nations, its established procedures are being obstructed and the organisation itself destroyed; development assistance is being reduced; there are continuous demands on the third world countries to pay a $2.5 trillion debt that cannot be paid under the present circumstances, while $1 trillion dollars are spent in ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons. Why and for what?
A similar amount is spent on commercial advertising, sowing consumerist longings that cannot be satisfied in the minds of billions of people. Why and for what? For the first time the human species is running a real risk of extinction due to the insane behaviour of the very same human beings, who are thus becoming the victims of this "civilisation".
However, no one will fight for us, that is, for the overwhelming majority, only we will do it. Only we can save humanity ourselves with the support of millions of manual and intellectual workers from the developed nations who are conscious of the catastrophes befalling their peoples. Only we can do it by sowing ideas, building awareness and mobilising global and North American public opinion. No one needs to be told this. You know it very well. Our most sacred duty is to fight, and fight we will.
(A18) BBC News Website (1st July, 2007)
Cuban President Fidel Castro has said recent CIA admissions of illicit Cold War activities disguise the fact the US is using such "brutal" tactics today.
Last week the CIA published documents called the "Family Jewels", revealing spy plots and assassination attempts.
The documents included plans to use Mafia help to kill Fidel Castro.
Mr Castro, still recovering after surgery last year, said in the official media the US was trying to pretend the tactics belonged to another era.
"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States," President Castro wrote.
In an editorial called the Killing Machine, he wrote: "Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction."
One of the key revelations of the documents was that the CIA tried to persuade mobster Johnny Roselli in 1960 to plot the assassination of the Cuban leader.
The plan was for poisoned pills to be put in Mr Castro's food, but it was shelved after the US-sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs failed a year later.
Mr Castro has long accused the US, including President George W Bush, of plotting to kill him.
In his editorial, Mr Castro also refers to the assassination of John F Kennedy, saying the US president was the victim of the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
Mr Castro says Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in killing the president.
"You lose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second," Mr Castro, himself an expert marksman, says.
(A19) Fidel Castro, The Killing Machine (30th June, 2007)
It was announced that the CIA would be declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal actions that included plans to eliminate the leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the publication is halted and it is delayed one day. No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps someone in the White House looked over the material.
The first package of declassified documents goes by the name of "The Family Jewels"; it consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been deleted. It deals with actions that were not authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings to control their minds, spying on civil activists and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.
The documents began to be gathered together 14 years after the first of the events took place, when then CIA director, James Schlesinger became alarmed about what the press was writing, especially all the articles by Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington Post, already mentioned in the "Manifesto to the People of Cuba". The agency was being accused of promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.
In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was demanding that "all the main operative officials of this agency must immediately inform me on any ongoing or past activity that might be outside of the constituting charter of this agency". Schlesinger, later appointed Head of the Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. Colby was referring to the documents as "skeletons hiding in a closet". New press revelations forced Colby to admit the existence of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups. The law that created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.
That "was just the tip of the iceberg", said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger himself warned that "blood would flow" if other actions were known, and he immediately added: "For example, that Robert Kennedy personally controlled the operation for the assassination of Fidel Castro". The President's brother was then Attorney General of the United States. He was later murdered as he was running for President in the 1968 elections, which facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case is that apparently he had reached the conviction that Jack Kennedy had been victim of a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots and other circumstances surrounding the death of the President, reached the conclusion that there had been at least three shooters. Solitary Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have been the only shooter. I found that rather striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate turned me into a shooting instructor with a telescopic sight for all the Granma expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and teaching, every day; even though the target is a stationary one it disappears from view with each shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.
Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to the USSR. He had already been there before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our country's embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him there so he wasn't authorized. They wanted to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack Ruby, – a man openly linked to the Mafia – unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full of police agents.
Subsequently, in international functions or on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would greet me respectfully. The former president's son, who was a very small child when his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.
The young man, in the prime of his life, and well brought up, tragically died in an airplane accident on a stormy night as he was flying to Martha's Vineyard with his wife. I never touched on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that if the president-elect had then been Nixon instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster we would have been attacked by the land and sea forces escorting the mercenary expedition, and both countries would have paid a high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to saying that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by Eisenhower's military reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.
I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful spot outside of the capital with French journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was bringing a message from President Kennedy. He said to me that in essence he had told him: "You are going to see Castro. I would like to know what he thinks about the terrible danger we just experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see you again as soon as you get back." "Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a political machine", he added, and we were not able to continue talking as someone rushed in with the news of what had just happened. We turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.
Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both the weakest part and the one that would take the first strike, but we did not agree with the concessions that were made to the United States. I have already spoken of this before.
Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater authority. He came to recognize the enormous sacrifices of human lives and material wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism. The worst of the relations between the United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by April 1961. When he hadn't resigned himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and other bloody occurrences began under the administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.
After the Missile Crisis we would have not refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never severed relations with the USSR as it had been asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had been aware of what a war could be using weapons of mass destruction they would have ended the Cold War earlier and differently. At least that’s how we felt then, when there was still no talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much more time to reach, through science and conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.
President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. "We do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it", he said.
As a result of the Commission's investigations that were led by Senator Frank Church, President Ford signed an executive order which expressly prohibited the participation of American officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.
The documents published now disclose information about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.
Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, for which the CIA created a special squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to investigate "the international activities of radicals and black militants". The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.
According to The New York Times, President Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War movement was controlled and funded by Communist governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.
The documents recognize, furthermore, that the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia University. It also searched homes and carried out tests on American citizens to determine the reactions of human beings to certain drugs.
In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: "I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don't know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case".
The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of "jewels". The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.
A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project called OFTEN which would collect "information about dangerous drugs in American companies", until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. In another memo there are reports that manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed" drugs to the CIA which had been "refused due to adverse secondary effects".
As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given LSD and other psycho-active drugs to people without their knowledge. According to another document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.
CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS – the operation that carried out surveillance on American opposition to the war in Vietnam and other political dissidents – expressed "a high level of resentment" for having been ordered to carry out such missions.
Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting matters revealed in these documents, such as the high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.
The technique used today by the CIA to avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.
For The New York Times, large censored sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the skeletons in its closets, and many activities developed in operations abroad, checked over years ago by journalists, congressional investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.
Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, makes a summary of the "jewels" compiled by his office. He lists eight cases – including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro – but they crossed out the document that is in the number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and a half pages.
"The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must be very good, especially since the second one is the list for the program concerning the assassination of Castro by Roselli," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive who requested the declassification of "The Family Jewels" 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use. When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: "The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency."
Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States.
The New York Times wrote that intelligence experts consulted expressed that the revelation of the documents is an attempt to distract attention from recent controversies and scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.
The declassification could also be an attempt at showing, in the early stages of the electoral process that the Democratic administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush's.
In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:
"In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the objective of determining whether the Security Office had agents who could help in a confidential mission that required gangster-style action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.
"Given the extreme confidentiality of the mission, the project was known only to a small group of people. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, but all the details were deliberately concealed from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though some officials of Communications (Commo) and the Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission's purpose.
"Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed in general terms about the project, and he was asked to evaluate whether he could get access to gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.
"Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him informally through clients, but he had been told that he was a member of the upper echelons of the 'syndicate' and that he was controlling all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.
"Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who knew that Maheu was a public relations executive looking after national and foreign accounts, and tell him that recently he had been contracted by a client who represented several international business companies, which were suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were convinced that the elimination of Castro would be a solution to their problem and they were ready to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know anything, about this operation.
"This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but after Maheu's persuasive efforts he agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew "some Cubans". Roselli made it clear that he didn't want any money for his part in all this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.
"During the week of September 25, Maheu was introduced to Sam who was living at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe – who was introduced as courier operating between Havana and Miami – that he saw photos of these two individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on the Attorney General's list of the ten most wanted. The former was described as the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this office upon learning this information.
"After analyzing the possible methods to carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they not resort to firearms but that, if they could get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be put into Castro's food or drink, this would be a much more effective operation. Sam indicated that he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.
"The TSD (Technical Services Division) was requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.
"Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful."
Everything that was said in the numerous paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear readers, the methods that were already being used by the United States to rule the world.
I remember that during the early years of the Revolution, in the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man working there with me whose name was Orta, who had been linked to the anti-Batista political forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, it could only be him. The decades have gone by and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I can't lay my hands on information to immediately prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.
The empire has created a veritable killing machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures, and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to this reality.
"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time", said Lincoln.
Books on Fidel Castro are available from Amazon
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Friday, August 24, 2007
Fulgencio Batista
General Rubén Fulgencio Batista (IPA: [fəlˈhɛnsio bəˈtistə], [fulˈxensio baˈtihta̩]) y Zaldívar (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940, and thus the eminence grise of Cuban politics for that period of time, and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 after having won election. He then became the country's leader after staging a coup, from 1952 to 1959. His authoritarian government during this subsequent period generated opposition despite his attempt to placate critics with a "show" election in 1954 when he ran without opposition. The actual opposition included the entire coalition that had overthrown President Gerardo Machado in 1933, including Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement, by which Batista was overthrown, in what is known as the Cuban Revolution.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Youth and the Revolution of 1933
* 2 Term as President (1940-44)
* 3 Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections
* 4 The Second Coup
o 4.1 The Coup and the Constitution of 1940
o 4.2 Economic Stewardship
+ 4.2.1 The Gambling Sector
o 4.3 Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959
* 5 Aftermath
* 6 See also
* 7 Books written by Batista
* 8 Bibliography on Batista
* 9 History of the era
[edit] Youth and the Revolution of 1933
Fulgencio was born in Banes, Holguín Province, in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo [2] and Carmela Zaldívar González, Cubans who fought for independence from Spain. Of very humble origins, Batista began working from an early age. A self-educated man, he attended school at night and is said to have been a voracious reader. Batista was considered socially a mulatto (mixed African and European blood). He bought a ticket to Havana and joined the army in 1921. [3] Sergeant Batista was the union leader of Cuba's soldiers, and the leader of the 1933 "Sergeants' Revolt" that replaced the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, at the request of the coalition that had recently ousted President Machado. It is generally conceded that U.S. Special Envoy Sumner Welles approved of this since it was a fait accompli. Céspedes was a well-respected civil engineer and the most successful minister in the Machado government but lacked a political coalition that could sustain him. Initially a presidency composed of five members, one each from the anti-Machado coalition, was created, but within days the representative for the students and professors of the Universtity of Havana, Ramón Grau, was made president and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the presidency [citation needed]. The majority of the commissioned officer corps was "forcefully retired" (meaning executed).[citation needed]
During this period, Batista violently suppressed a number of attempts to defeat his control. This included the quashing of an uprising in the ancient Atarés fort (Havana) by Blas Hernández, a rural guerrilla who had fought Machado. Many of those who surrendered were executed. Another attempt was the attack on the Hotel Nacional in which former army officers of the Cuban Olympic rifle team (including one Enrique Ros) put up stiff resistance until being defeated. Again, Batista's troops executed many who surrendered. The irony is that many of these officers had helped overthrow Machado. There were many other often minor and almost unrecorded attempted revolts against Batista that were bloodily suppressed. These minor revolts included one in Guamá, a place in the Sierra Maestra south of Guisa, where the followers of an anti-Batista guerrilla leader known as Gamboa (apparently a member, or former member, of the Antonio Guiteras anti-Machado guerrillas) were defeated and dispersed.
Grau was president for just over 100 days before Batista forced him to resign in January 1934. He was replaced by Carlos Mendieta y Montefur and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted 11 months. Succeeding puppet governments were led by José Barnet y Vinajeras (5 months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (7 months) before Federico Laredo Brú managed to rule from December 1936 to October 1940.
Batista was well liked by American interests, who had feared Grau's socialistic reforms and saw him as a stabilizing force with respect for American interests. It was in this time period that Batista formed a renowned friendship and business relationship with gangster Meyer Lansky that lasted over three decades.
Through Lansky, the mafia knew they had a friend in Cuba. Gangster Lucky Luciano, after being deported to Italy in 1946, went to Havana with a false passport. A summit at Havana's Hotel Nacional, with mobsters such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Moe Dalitz, and others, confirmed Luciano's authority over the U.S. mob and coincided with Frank Sinatra's singing debut in Havana. It was here that Lansky gave permission to kill Bugsy Siegel for skimming construction money from the Flamingo in Las Vegas.
Many of Batista's enemies faced the same fate as the ambitious Siegel. One of his most bitter opponents, Antonio Guiteras (founder of the student group Joven Cuba) was gunned down by government forces in 1935 while waiting for a boat in Matanzas province. Others just seemed to disappear into thin air.
[edit] Term as President (1940-44)
Batista's chance to sit in the president's chair came in 1940. Supported by a coalition of political parties, which included the old Cuban Communist Party, he defeated his rival Grau in the first presidential election under the new Cuban constitution that he had guided to ratification.
During his presidency, trade relations with the U.S. increased, and a series of war taxes was imposed on the Cuban population. Following Grau's election in 1944, Cuba experienced its first peaceful transfer of power in two decades.
[edit] Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections
While living luxuriously in Daytona Beach, Florida, Batista ran for and won a seat in the Cuban Senate in 1948. Four years later, he ran for president, but a poll published in the December 1951 issue of the popular magazine "Bohemia" showed him in last place. Not expected to win[citation needed], Batista staged a coup to take by force what he could not achieve again at the ballot box.
The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. Both front runners, Agramonte and Hevia in their own camps, had decided to name Col. Ramon Barquín who was a diplomat in Washington DC to head the Cuban Armed Forces after the elections. Barquín was a top officer who commanded the respect of the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquin would oust him and his followers, and when it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a “provisional president” for the next two years. Justo Carrillo told Barquín in Washington DC on March 1952 that the inner circles knew that Batista had aimed the coup at him; they immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and restablish the democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspitacion de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupacion Montecristi).
[edit] The Second Coup
[edit] The Coup and the Constitution of 1940
On March 10, 1952, almost twenty years after the Revolt of the Sergeants, Batista took over the government once more, this time against elected Cuban president Carlos Prío Socorras. The coup took place three months before the upcoming elections that he was sure to lose. Also running in that election (for a different office) was a young, energetic lawyer named Fidel Castro. On March 27 Batista's government was formally recognized by U.S. President Harry Truman.
Shortly after this recognition, Batista declared that, although he was completely loyal to Cuba's constitution of 1940, constitutional guarantees would have to be temporarily suspended, as well as the right to strike. In April, writes Hugh Thomas in The Cuban Revolution, "Batista proclaimed a new constitutional code of 275 articles, claiming that the 'democratic and progressive essence' of the 1940 Constitution was preserved in the new law."
[edit] Economic Stewardship
Under Batista, Cuba continued the strong economic growth that had marked the preceding decade.
[edit] The Gambling Sector
Batista opened the way for large-scale gambling in Havana. He announced that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Havana became the "Latin Las Vegas," a playground of choice for many gamblers. Opposition was swiftly and violently crushed, and many began to fear the new government.
In 1956, in midst of the revolutionary upheaval, the 21-story, 383-room Hotel Riviera was built in Havana at a cost of $14 million. It was known as mobster Meyer Lansky's dream and crowning achievement. The hotel opened on December 10, with a floor show headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky's official title was "kitchen director," but he controlled every aspect of the hotel. He complained that Rogers "can wiggle her ass, but she can't sing a goddamn note!"
[edit] Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959
Just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953. Having easily defeated the rebellion, and with Castro and most of the others in jail or dead, business was back to normal in Cuba.
Due to popular unrest, and to appease the United States government, Batista held an election in which he was the only legal candidate. He won, becoming president of Cuba in 1954.
The distinguished Colonel Cosme de la Torriente, a surviving veteran of the Cuban War of Independence, emerged in late 1955 to offer compromise. A series of meetings led by de la Torriente became known as "El Diálago Cívico" (the civic dialogue). Writes Hugh Thomas: "This Diálago Cívico represented what turned out to be the last hope for Cuban middle-class democracy, but Batista was far too strong and entrenched in his position to make any concessions."
Batista was so confident of his power that on May 15, 1955, he released Castro and the remaining survivors of the Moncada attack, hoping to dissuade some of his critics. Within weeks it was rumored that Batista's military police was looking to kill Castro, so the rebel went to Mexico to plan the revolution.
The Havana Post, expressing the attitude of the U.S. business community after a survey of the four years of Batista's second reign, alluded to the disappearance of gangsterism and said: 'All in all, the Batista regime has much to commend it." Hugh Thomas disagrees with that commentary. "In a way," Thomas writes, "Batista's golpe formalized gangsterism: the machine gun in the big car became the symbol not only of settling scores but of an approaching change of government."
By late 1955 student riots and anti-Batista demonstration had become frequent. These were dealt with in the violent manner his military police had come to represent. Students attempting to march from the University of Havana were stopped and beaten by the police, and student leader José A. Echeverría had to be hospitalized. Another popular student leader was killed on December 10, leading to a funeral that became a gigantic political protest with a 5-minute nationwide work stoppage.
Instead of loosening his grip, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and established tighter censorship of the media. His military police would patrol the streets and pick up anyone suspected of insurrection. By the end of 1955 they had grown more prone to violent acts of brutality and torture, with no fear of legal repercussions.
In March of 1956 Batista refused to consider a proposal calling for elections by the end of the year. He was confident that he could defeat any revolutionary attempt from the many factions who opposed him.
In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquin to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquin was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 6, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquin (then Vice Chair of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington DC and Cuban Military Attache of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated by snitch amongst the troops, Rios Morejon. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces when Batista tried in vain to negotiate the denial of the so colled conspiracy. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquin was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquin was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy - West Point). Without Barquin's officers the army could not sustain a fight. In the words of scholars like Justo Carillo, Felipe Pazos, Jose Miro Cardona, Hugh Thomas and Louis Horowitz: "Al frustrarse la Conspiración de los Puros a Cuba le toco perder. Sin Batista no hay Fidel (With the frustrated coup Cuba lost. Without Batista there is no Fidel)."
Batista continued to rule without concerns, even after the landing of the Granma in December of 1956 (which brought the Castro brothers back to Cuba along with Che Guevara and marked the beginning of the armed conflict).
Due to its continued opposition to the dictator, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956. (It would not reopen until early 1959, after a revolutionary victory.) But that did not end the flow of student blood, including Echeverría's, who was killed by police after a radio broadcast on March 13, 1957.
Batista's police also tracked down and killed Frank País, a coordinator with the 26th of July Movement, inciting a spontaneous strike in the three easternmost provinces of Cuba.
Another election in 1958 placed Andrés Rivero Agüero in the president's chair, but losing the support of the U.S. government meant his days in power were numbered.
On January 1, 1959, after formally resigning his position in Cuba's government and going through what historian Hugh Thomas describes as "a charade of handing over power" to his representatives, remaining family and closest associates boarded a plane at 3 a.m. at Camp Colombia and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
Throughout the night various flights out of Camp Colombia took Batista's friends and high officials to Miami, New York, New Orleans and Jacksonville. Batista's brother "Panchín," governor of Havana, left several hours later, and Meyer Lansky, suffering from ill health, also flew out that night. There was no provision made for the thousands of other Cubans who had worked with Batista's regime.
[edit] Aftermath
Batista later moved to Portugal and then Marbella, Spain, where he lived and wrote books the rest of his life. He was also the Chairman of a Spanish Life Insurance company which invested in property and mortgages on the Spanish Riviera. He died of heart attack on August 6, 1973.
He was married to Elisa Godinez-Gomez (1905-?) on July 10, 1926 and they had three children, Mirta Caridad (April 1927), Elisa Aleida (B. 1933), and Fulgencio Ruben Batista Godinez (b 1933). He later married Marta Fernández-Miranda (1920-2006) and they had Jorge and Roberto Francisco Batista Fernández.
Marta Fernández de Batista, Batista's widow, died on October 2, 2006. Roberto Batista, her son, says that she died at her West Palm Beach home. She had a heart attack on September 8. Batista was buried with her husband in San Isidro Cemetery in Madrid after a mass in West Palm Beach.
Raoul G. Cantero, III, born in Spain, naturalized in the US, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a judge on Florida State Supreme Court, is the grandson of Fulgencio Batista.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Youth and the Revolution of 1933
* 2 Term as President (1940-44)
* 3 Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections
* 4 The Second Coup
o 4.1 The Coup and the Constitution of 1940
o 4.2 Economic Stewardship
+ 4.2.1 The Gambling Sector
o 4.3 Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959
* 5 Aftermath
* 6 See also
* 7 Books written by Batista
* 8 Bibliography on Batista
* 9 History of the era
[edit] Youth and the Revolution of 1933
Fulgencio was born in Banes, Holguín Province, in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo [2] and Carmela Zaldívar González, Cubans who fought for independence from Spain. Of very humble origins, Batista began working from an early age. A self-educated man, he attended school at night and is said to have been a voracious reader. Batista was considered socially a mulatto (mixed African and European blood). He bought a ticket to Havana and joined the army in 1921. [3] Sergeant Batista was the union leader of Cuba's soldiers, and the leader of the 1933 "Sergeants' Revolt" that replaced the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, at the request of the coalition that had recently ousted President Machado. It is generally conceded that U.S. Special Envoy Sumner Welles approved of this since it was a fait accompli. Céspedes was a well-respected civil engineer and the most successful minister in the Machado government but lacked a political coalition that could sustain him. Initially a presidency composed of five members, one each from the anti-Machado coalition, was created, but within days the representative for the students and professors of the Universtity of Havana, Ramón Grau, was made president and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the presidency [citation needed]. The majority of the commissioned officer corps was "forcefully retired" (meaning executed).[citation needed]
During this period, Batista violently suppressed a number of attempts to defeat his control. This included the quashing of an uprising in the ancient Atarés fort (Havana) by Blas Hernández, a rural guerrilla who had fought Machado. Many of those who surrendered were executed. Another attempt was the attack on the Hotel Nacional in which former army officers of the Cuban Olympic rifle team (including one Enrique Ros) put up stiff resistance until being defeated. Again, Batista's troops executed many who surrendered. The irony is that many of these officers had helped overthrow Machado. There were many other often minor and almost unrecorded attempted revolts against Batista that were bloodily suppressed. These minor revolts included one in Guamá, a place in the Sierra Maestra south of Guisa, where the followers of an anti-Batista guerrilla leader known as Gamboa (apparently a member, or former member, of the Antonio Guiteras anti-Machado guerrillas) were defeated and dispersed.
Grau was president for just over 100 days before Batista forced him to resign in January 1934. He was replaced by Carlos Mendieta y Montefur and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted 11 months. Succeeding puppet governments were led by José Barnet y Vinajeras (5 months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (7 months) before Federico Laredo Brú managed to rule from December 1936 to October 1940.
Batista was well liked by American interests, who had feared Grau's socialistic reforms and saw him as a stabilizing force with respect for American interests. It was in this time period that Batista formed a renowned friendship and business relationship with gangster Meyer Lansky that lasted over three decades.
Through Lansky, the mafia knew they had a friend in Cuba. Gangster Lucky Luciano, after being deported to Italy in 1946, went to Havana with a false passport. A summit at Havana's Hotel Nacional, with mobsters such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Moe Dalitz, and others, confirmed Luciano's authority over the U.S. mob and coincided with Frank Sinatra's singing debut in Havana. It was here that Lansky gave permission to kill Bugsy Siegel for skimming construction money from the Flamingo in Las Vegas.
Many of Batista's enemies faced the same fate as the ambitious Siegel. One of his most bitter opponents, Antonio Guiteras (founder of the student group Joven Cuba) was gunned down by government forces in 1935 while waiting for a boat in Matanzas province. Others just seemed to disappear into thin air.
[edit] Term as President (1940-44)
Batista's chance to sit in the president's chair came in 1940. Supported by a coalition of political parties, which included the old Cuban Communist Party, he defeated his rival Grau in the first presidential election under the new Cuban constitution that he had guided to ratification.
During his presidency, trade relations with the U.S. increased, and a series of war taxes was imposed on the Cuban population. Following Grau's election in 1944, Cuba experienced its first peaceful transfer of power in two decades.
[edit] Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections
While living luxuriously in Daytona Beach, Florida, Batista ran for and won a seat in the Cuban Senate in 1948. Four years later, he ran for president, but a poll published in the December 1951 issue of the popular magazine "Bohemia" showed him in last place. Not expected to win[citation needed], Batista staged a coup to take by force what he could not achieve again at the ballot box.
The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. Both front runners, Agramonte and Hevia in their own camps, had decided to name Col. Ramon Barquín who was a diplomat in Washington DC to head the Cuban Armed Forces after the elections. Barquín was a top officer who commanded the respect of the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquin would oust him and his followers, and when it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a “provisional president” for the next two years. Justo Carrillo told Barquín in Washington DC on March 1952 that the inner circles knew that Batista had aimed the coup at him; they immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and restablish the democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspitacion de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupacion Montecristi).
[edit] The Second Coup
[edit] The Coup and the Constitution of 1940
On March 10, 1952, almost twenty years after the Revolt of the Sergeants, Batista took over the government once more, this time against elected Cuban president Carlos Prío Socorras. The coup took place three months before the upcoming elections that he was sure to lose. Also running in that election (for a different office) was a young, energetic lawyer named Fidel Castro. On March 27 Batista's government was formally recognized by U.S. President Harry Truman.
Shortly after this recognition, Batista declared that, although he was completely loyal to Cuba's constitution of 1940, constitutional guarantees would have to be temporarily suspended, as well as the right to strike. In April, writes Hugh Thomas in The Cuban Revolution, "Batista proclaimed a new constitutional code of 275 articles, claiming that the 'democratic and progressive essence' of the 1940 Constitution was preserved in the new law."
[edit] Economic Stewardship
Under Batista, Cuba continued the strong economic growth that had marked the preceding decade.
[edit] The Gambling Sector
Batista opened the way for large-scale gambling in Havana. He announced that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Havana became the "Latin Las Vegas," a playground of choice for many gamblers. Opposition was swiftly and violently crushed, and many began to fear the new government.
In 1956, in midst of the revolutionary upheaval, the 21-story, 383-room Hotel Riviera was built in Havana at a cost of $14 million. It was known as mobster Meyer Lansky's dream and crowning achievement. The hotel opened on December 10, with a floor show headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky's official title was "kitchen director," but he controlled every aspect of the hotel. He complained that Rogers "can wiggle her ass, but she can't sing a goddamn note!"
[edit] Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959
Just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953. Having easily defeated the rebellion, and with Castro and most of the others in jail or dead, business was back to normal in Cuba.
Due to popular unrest, and to appease the United States government, Batista held an election in which he was the only legal candidate. He won, becoming president of Cuba in 1954.
The distinguished Colonel Cosme de la Torriente, a surviving veteran of the Cuban War of Independence, emerged in late 1955 to offer compromise. A series of meetings led by de la Torriente became known as "El Diálago Cívico" (the civic dialogue). Writes Hugh Thomas: "This Diálago Cívico represented what turned out to be the last hope for Cuban middle-class democracy, but Batista was far too strong and entrenched in his position to make any concessions."
Batista was so confident of his power that on May 15, 1955, he released Castro and the remaining survivors of the Moncada attack, hoping to dissuade some of his critics. Within weeks it was rumored that Batista's military police was looking to kill Castro, so the rebel went to Mexico to plan the revolution.
The Havana Post, expressing the attitude of the U.S. business community after a survey of the four years of Batista's second reign, alluded to the disappearance of gangsterism and said: 'All in all, the Batista regime has much to commend it." Hugh Thomas disagrees with that commentary. "In a way," Thomas writes, "Batista's golpe formalized gangsterism: the machine gun in the big car became the symbol not only of settling scores but of an approaching change of government."
By late 1955 student riots and anti-Batista demonstration had become frequent. These were dealt with in the violent manner his military police had come to represent. Students attempting to march from the University of Havana were stopped and beaten by the police, and student leader José A. Echeverría had to be hospitalized. Another popular student leader was killed on December 10, leading to a funeral that became a gigantic political protest with a 5-minute nationwide work stoppage.
Instead of loosening his grip, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and established tighter censorship of the media. His military police would patrol the streets and pick up anyone suspected of insurrection. By the end of 1955 they had grown more prone to violent acts of brutality and torture, with no fear of legal repercussions.
In March of 1956 Batista refused to consider a proposal calling for elections by the end of the year. He was confident that he could defeat any revolutionary attempt from the many factions who opposed him.
In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquin to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquin was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 6, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquin (then Vice Chair of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington DC and Cuban Military Attache of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated by snitch amongst the troops, Rios Morejon. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces when Batista tried in vain to negotiate the denial of the so colled conspiracy. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquin was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquin was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy - West Point). Without Barquin's officers the army could not sustain a fight. In the words of scholars like Justo Carillo, Felipe Pazos, Jose Miro Cardona, Hugh Thomas and Louis Horowitz: "Al frustrarse la Conspiración de los Puros a Cuba le toco perder. Sin Batista no hay Fidel (With the frustrated coup Cuba lost. Without Batista there is no Fidel)."
Batista continued to rule without concerns, even after the landing of the Granma in December of 1956 (which brought the Castro brothers back to Cuba along with Che Guevara and marked the beginning of the armed conflict).
Due to its continued opposition to the dictator, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956. (It would not reopen until early 1959, after a revolutionary victory.) But that did not end the flow of student blood, including Echeverría's, who was killed by police after a radio broadcast on March 13, 1957.
Batista's police also tracked down and killed Frank País, a coordinator with the 26th of July Movement, inciting a spontaneous strike in the three easternmost provinces of Cuba.
Another election in 1958 placed Andrés Rivero Agüero in the president's chair, but losing the support of the U.S. government meant his days in power were numbered.
On January 1, 1959, after formally resigning his position in Cuba's government and going through what historian Hugh Thomas describes as "a charade of handing over power" to his representatives, remaining family and closest associates boarded a plane at 3 a.m. at Camp Colombia and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
Throughout the night various flights out of Camp Colombia took Batista's friends and high officials to Miami, New York, New Orleans and Jacksonville. Batista's brother "Panchín," governor of Havana, left several hours later, and Meyer Lansky, suffering from ill health, also flew out that night. There was no provision made for the thousands of other Cubans who had worked with Batista's regime.
[edit] Aftermath
Batista later moved to Portugal and then Marbella, Spain, where he lived and wrote books the rest of his life. He was also the Chairman of a Spanish Life Insurance company which invested in property and mortgages on the Spanish Riviera. He died of heart attack on August 6, 1973.
He was married to Elisa Godinez-Gomez (1905-?) on July 10, 1926 and they had three children, Mirta Caridad (April 1927), Elisa Aleida (B. 1933), and Fulgencio Ruben Batista Godinez (b 1933). He later married Marta Fernández-Miranda (1920-2006) and they had Jorge and Roberto Francisco Batista Fernández.
Marta Fernández de Batista, Batista's widow, died on October 2, 2006. Roberto Batista, her son, says that she died at her West Palm Beach home. She had a heart attack on September 8. Batista was buried with her husband in San Isidro Cemetery in Madrid after a mass in West Palm Beach.
Raoul G. Cantero, III, born in Spain, naturalized in the US, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a judge on Florida State Supreme Court, is the grandson of Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is the current President of Cuba, though currently with his duties transferred.
Castro led the revolution overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and shortly after was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba.[1] Castro became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic. In 1976 he became president of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. He also holds the supreme military rank of Comandante en Jefe ("Commander in Chief") of the Cuban armed forces.
Castro first attracted attention in Cuban political life through nationalist critiques of Batista and the United States political and corporate influence in Cuba. He gained an ardent, but limited, following and also drew the attention of the authorities.[2] He eventually led the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, after which he was captured, tried, incarcerated and later released. He then travelled to Mexico[3][4] to organize and train for the guerrilla invasion of Cuba that took place in December 1956. Since his assumption of power in 1959 he has evoked both praise and condemnation (at home and internationally). Castro is described by opponents as a dictator[5][6] while supporters see Castro as a charismatic liberator.[7]
Outside of Cuba, Castro has been defined by his relationship with the United States and the former Soviet Union, both of whom courted Cuban attentions as part of their own global political game. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 by U.S. backed forces, the Castro-led government has had an openly antagonistic relationship with the U.S., which encouraged a closeness with the Soviet bloc. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 forced Castro to seek alliances regionally to counter U.S. and find like-minded partners in regional nationalist figures such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Over time he has become a world icon,[8] and is the current Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement (his second term in that office, the first having been 1979-1983.
At home, Fidel Castro has overseen the implementation of various economic policies, leading to the rapid centralization of Cuba's economy, land reform, collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, and the nationalization of leading Cuban industries. The expansion of publicly funded health care and education has been a cornerstone of Castro's domestic social agenda. Cuba ranks better than many countries on the United Nations' List of countries by infant mortality rate, which is claimed by Castro's supporters as a success of his regime. Opponents note that Cuba's health care and infant mortality were the same if not better before the revolution than after [9].Castro and his policies are cited by some as being responsible for Cuba's economic problems, whilst others blame the U.S. embargo. Still others attribute the shortcomings to a mix of these factors.
On July 31, 2006, Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery for diverticulitis,[10] transferred his responsibilities to the First Vice-President, his younger brother Raúl Castro. On 2 June 2007, Castro appeared on Cuban Television with Vietnamese Communist Party Leader Nong Duc Manh looking somewhat healthier.[11]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Childhood and education
* 2 Political beginnings
* 3 Cuban Revolution
o 3.1 Attack on Moncada Barracks
o 3.2 26th of July Movement
o 3.3 Operation Verano
o 3.4 Battle of Yaguajay
o 3.5 Assumption of power
* 4 Years in power
o 4.1 Bay of Pigs
o 4.2 Cuban Missile Crisis
o 4.3 Assassination attempts
o 4.4 Embargo
o 4.5 Foreign relations
+ 4.5.1 Soviet Union
+ 4.5.2 Other countries
* 5 Succession issues
* 6 Human rights record
* 7 Religious beliefs
* 8 Public image
* 9 Personal
o 9.1 Family
o 9.2 Wealth
* 10 References and footnotes
* 11 Further reading
* 12 See also
* 13 External links
Childhood and education
A letter written by the twelve year old Castro to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, expressing admiration and asking for a $10 bill. Castro writes, "If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green American, because never, I have not seen a ten dollar bill," signing the letter, "Thank you very much. Good by [sic]. Your friend, Fidel Castro."
A letter written by the twelve year old Castro to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, expressing admiration and asking for a $10 bill. Castro writes, "If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green American, because never, I have not seen a ten dollar bill," signing the letter, "Thank you very much. Good by [sic]. Your friend, Fidel Castro."
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on a sugar plantation in Birán, near Mayarí, in the modern-day province of Holguín – then a part of the now-defunct Oriente province. He was the third child born to Ángel Castro y Argiz, a Galician immigrant who became relatively prosperous through hard work in the sugar industry and shrewd investments. His mother, Lina Ruz González, who was a household servant, was also of Galician background.[3] Angel Castro was married to another woman, Maria Luisa Argota,[12] until Fidel was 17, and thus Fidel as a child had to deal both with his illegitimacy and the challenge of being raised in various foster homes away from his father's house.
Castro has two brothers: Ramón and Raúl, and four sisters: Angelita, Juanita, Enma, and Agustina. All of them were born out of wedlock. He also has two half siblings, Lidia and Pedro Emilio who were raised by Ángel Castro's first wife.
Fidel was not baptized until he was eight, also very uncommon, bringing embarrassment and ridicule from other children.[13][14] Ángel Castro finally dissolved his first marriage when Fidel was 15 and married Fidel’s mother. Castro was formally recognized by his father when he was 17, when his surname was legally changed to Castro from Ruz, his mother’s name.[13][14] Although accounts of his education differ, most sources agree that he was an intellectually gifted student, more interested in sports than in academics, and spent many years in private Catholic boarding schools, finishing high school at Belen, a Jesuit school in Havana in 1945.[15]
Political beginnings
In late 1945, Castro entered law school at the University of Havana. He became immediately embroiled in the political culture at the University, which was a reflection of the volatile politics in Cuba during that era.
University student Fidel Castro (center, standing, in black suit) addressing fellow students during a protest on November 11, 1947.
University student Fidel Castro (center, standing, in black suit) addressing fellow students during a protest on November 11, 1947.
Since the fall of president Gerardo Machado in the 1930s, student politics had degenerated into a form of gangsterismo dominated by fractious action groups, and Castro, believing that the gangs posed a physical threat to his university aspirations, experienced what he later described as "a great moment of decision."[16] He returned to the university from a brief hiatus to involve himself fully in the various violent battles and disputes which surrounded university elections, and was to be implicated in a number of shootings linked to Rolando Masferrer's MSR action group. "To not return", said Castro later, "would be to give in to bullies, to abandon my beliefs".[16] Rivalries were so intense that Castro apparently collaborated in an attempt on Masferrer's life during this period,[16] while Masferrer, whose paramilitary group Les Tigres later became an instrument of state violence under Batista,[17] perennially hunted the younger student seeking violent retribution.[18]
In 1947, growing increasingly passionate about social justice lacking under Cuba's current system, Castro joined the Partido Ortodoxo which had been newly formed by Eduardo Chibás. A charismatic and emotional figure, Chibás was running for president against the incumbent Ramón Grau San Martín who had allowed rampant corruption to flourish during his term. The Partido Ortodoxo publicly exposed corruption and demanded government and social reform. It aimed to instill a strong sense of national identity among Cubans, establish Cuban economic independence and freedom from the United States, and dismantle the power of the elite over Cuban politics. Though Chibás lost the election, Castro, considering Chibás his mentor, remained committed to his cause, working fervently on his behalf. In 1951, while running for president again, Chibás shot himself in the stomach during a radio broadcast. Castro was present and accompanied him to the hospital where he died.[15]
Bogotazo
Main article: Bogotazo
Fidel Castro's role in the Bogotazo incident has been dogged by speculation and controversy but the following account seems to be generally agreed upon. In 1948 Castro traveled to Bogotá in Colombia for a political conference of Latin American students that coincided with the ninth meeting of the Pan-American Union Conference. The students had planned to use this opportunity to distribute pamphlets protesting United States dominance of the Western Hemisphere and to foment discontent. A few days after the conference began, the populist Colombian Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated, triggering massive riots in the streets in which many (mostly poor workers) were injured or killed. Rioting and looting spread to other cities in Colombia, beginning an era of turbulence that became known as "La Violencia". The students were caught up in the violence and chaos rocking the city, picking up rifles and roaming the streets distributing anti-United States material and stirring a revolt. When Castro was pursued by the Colombian authorities for his role in the riots, he took refuge in the Cuban Embassy and was flown back to Havana.[19][20] It seems clear that experiencing the power of popular insurrection had an effect on Castro and influenced his subsequent political thinking.
Castro returned to Cuba and married Mirta Díaz Balart, a student from a wealthy Cuban family where he was exposed to the lifestyle of the Cuban elite. In 1950 he graduated from law school with a Doctor of Laws degree and began practicing law in a small partnership in Havana, mostly representing the poor and underprivileged. By now he had become well known for his passionately nationalistic views and his intense opposition to the influence of the United States on Cuban internal affairs. Increasingly interested in a career in politics, Castro had become a candidate for a seat in the Cuban parliament when General Fulgencio Batista led a coup d'état in 1952, successfully overthrowing the government of President Carlos Prío Socarrás and canceling the election.
Batista established himself as de facto leader with the support of establishment elements of Cuban society and powerful Cuban agencies. His regime was formally recognized by the United States, buttressing his power. Castro, nearing thirty, was now a politician without a legitimate platform and thus he broke away from the Partido Ortodoxo to marshal legal arguments based on the Constitution of 1940 to formally charge Batista with violating the constitution. His petition, entitled Zarpazo, was denied by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees and he was not allowed a hearing.[21] This experience formed the foundation for Castro's opposition to the Batista regime and convinced him that revolution was the only way to depose Batista.[22]
Cuban Revolution
Main article: Cuban revolution
Attack on Moncada Barracks
Main article: Moncada Barracks
As discontent over the Batista coup grew, Castro abandoned his law practice and formed an underground organization of supporters, including his brother, Raúl, and Mario Chanes de Armas. Together they actively plotted to overthrow Batista. They collected guns and ammunition and finalized their plans for an armed attack on Moncada Barracks, Batista's largest garrison outside Santiago de Cuba. On the 26th of July, 1953, they attacked Moncada Barracks. The Céspedes garrison in Bayamo was also attacked as a diversion.[3] The attack proved disastrous and more than sixty of the one-hundred and thirty-five militants involved were killed.
Castro and other surviving members of his group managed to escape to a part of the rugged Sierra Maestra[23] mountains east of Santiago where they were eventually discovered and captured. Although there is disagreement over why Castro and his brother, Raúl, were not executed on capture as many of their fellow militants were, there is evidence that an officer recognized Castro from his university days and treated the captured rebels compassionately, despite the 'illegal' unofficial order to have the leader executed.[3] Others, such as Angel Prado, military commander of the 26th of July Movement, say that on the night of the attack Castro's driver got lost and he never reached the barracks. That night was the night of “El Carnaval de Santiago” and the streets of Santiago de Cuba were filled with party goers.
Castro was tried in the fall of 1953 and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison.[24] During his trial Castro delivered his famous defense speech History Will Absolve Me,[25] upholding his rebellious actions and boldly declaring his political views:
“ I warn you, I am just beginning! If there is in your hearts a vestige of love for your country, love for humanity, love for justice, listen carefully... I know that the regime will try to suppress the truth by all possible means; I know that there will be a conspiracy to bury me in oblivion. But my voice will not be stifled – it will rise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it... Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me. ”
While he was being held at the prison for political activists on Isla de Pinos, he continued to plot Batista's overthrow, planning upon release to reorganize and train in Mexico.[3] After having served less than two years, he was released in May 1955 due to a general amnesty from Batista who was under political pressure, and went as planned to Mexico.[26]
26th of July Movement
Main article: 26th of July Movement
Once in Mexico, Castro reunited with other Cuban exiles and founded the 26th of July Movement, named after the date of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks. The goal remained the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. Castro had learned from the Moncada experience that new tactics were needed if Batista's forces were to be defeated. This time, the plan was to use underground guerrilla tactics, at that time a form of combat unknown in Latin America.[3]
In Mexico Castro met Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a proponent of guerrilla warfare. Guevara joined the group of rebels and became an important force in shaping Castro's evolving political beliefs. Guevara's observations of the misery of the poor in Latin America had already convinced him that the only solution lay in violent revolution.
Since regular contacts with a KGB agent named Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov in Mexico City had not resulted in the hoped for weapon supply,[27] they decided to go to the United States to gather personnel and funds from Cubans living there, including Carlos Prío Socarrás, the elected Cuban president deposed by Batista in 1952. Back in Mexico, the group trained under a Spanish Civil War Veteran, Cuban-born Alberto Bayo[25] who had fled to Mexico after Francisco Franco's victory in Spain. On November 26, 1956, Castro and his group of 81 followers, mostly Cuban exiles, set out from Tuxpan Mexico aboard the yacht Granma. for the purpose of starting a rebellion in Cuba.[28]
The rebels landed at Playa Las Coloradas close to Los Cayuelos near the eastern city of Manzanillo on December 2, 1956. In short order, most of Castro's men were killed, dispersed, or taken prisoner by Batista's forces.[28] While the exact number is in dispute, it is agreed that no more than twenty of the original eighty-two men survived the bloody encounters with the Cuban army and succeeded in fleeing to the Sierra Maestra mountains.[29] The group of survivors included Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos. Those who survived were aided by people in the countryside. They regrouped in the Sierra Maestra in Oriente province and organized a column under Fidel Castro's command.
From their encampment in the Sierra Maestra mountains, the 26th of July Movement waged a guerrilla war against the Batista government. In the cities and major towns also, resistance groups were organizing until underground groups were everywhere. The strongest was in Santiago formed by Frank País.[30][31]
In the summer of 1955, País’s organization merged with the 26th of July Movement of Castro. As Castro's movement gained popular support in the cities and countryside, it grew to over eight hundred men. In mid-1957 Castro gave Che Guevara command of a second column. A journalist, Herbert Matthews from the New York Times, came to interview him in the Sierra Maestra, attracting interest to Castro's cause in the United States. The New York Times front page stories by Matthews presented Castro as a romantic and appealing revolutionary, bearded and dressed in rumpled fatigues.[32][33] Castro and Matthews were followed by the TV crew of Andrew Saint George, said to be a CIA contact person.[34] Through television, Castro's rudimentary command of the English language and charismatic presence enabled him to appeal directly to a U.S. audience.
Operation Verano
Main article: Operation Verano
Fidel Castro in his days as a guerrilla
Fidel Castro in his days as a guerrilla
In May 1958, Batista launched Operation Verano aiming to crush Castro and other anti-government groups. It was called "la Ofensiva" by the rebels (Alarcón Ramírez,1997). Although on paper heavily outnumbered, Castro's guerrilla forces scored a series of victories, largely aided by mass desertions from Batista's army of poorly trained and uncommitted young conscripts. During the Battle of La Plata, Castro's forces defeated an entire battalion. While pro-Castro Cuban sources later emphasized the role of Castro's guerrilla forces in these battles, other groups and leaders were also involved, such as escopeteros (poorly-armed irregulars). During the Battle of Las Mercedes, Castro's small army came close to defeat but he managed to pull his troops out by opening up negotiations with General Cantillo while secretly slipping his soldiers out of a trap.
When Operation Verano ended, Castro ordered three columns commanded by Guevara, Jaime Vega and Camilo Cienfuegos to invade central Cuba where they were strongly supported by rebellious elements who had long been operating in the area. One of Castro's columns moved out onto the Cauto Plains. Here, they were supported by Huber Matos, Raúl Castro and others who were operating in the eastern-most part of the province. On the plains, Castro's forces first surrounded the town of Guisa in Granma Province and drove out their enemies, then proceeded to take most of the towns that had been taken by Calixto Garcia in the 1895-1898 Cuban War of Independence.
Battle of Yaguajay
Main article: Battle of Yaguajay
In December 1958, the columns of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos continued their advance through Las Villas province. They succeeded in occupying several towns, and then began preparations for an attack on Santa Clara, the provincial capital. Guevara's fighters launched a fierce assault on the Cuban army surrounding Santa Clara, and a vicious house-to-house battle ensued. They also derailed an armored train which Batista had sent to aid his troops in the city while Cienfuegos won the Battle of Yaguajay. Defeated on all sides, Batista's forces crumbled. The provincial capital was captured after less than a day of fighting on December 31, 1958.
After the loss of Santa Clara and expecting betrayal by his own army, Batista (accompanied by president-elect Andres Rivero Agüero) fled to the Dominican Republic in the early hours of January 1, 1959. They left behind a junta headed by Gen. Eulogio Cantillo, recently the commander in Oriente province, the center of the Castro revolt. The junta immediately selected Dr. Carlos Piedra, the oldest judge of the Supreme Court, as provisional President of Cuba as specified in the Constitution of 1940. Castro refused to accept the selection of Justice Piedra as provisional President and the Supreme Court refused to administer the oath of office to the Justice.[35]
The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize power throughout the island.[35] At the age of 32, Castro had successfully masterminded a classic guerrilla campaign from his headquarters in the Sierra Maestra and ousted Batista.
Assumption of power
Castro arrives in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1959.
Castro arrives in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1959.
On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana.[36] As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described the scene as one of jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of the 26th of July Movement waved on automobiles and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic.[35] Castro called a general strike in protest of the Piedra regime. He demanded that Dr. Urrutia, former judge of the Urgency Court of Santiago de Cuba, be installed as the provisional President instead. The Cane Planters Association of Cuba, speaking on behalf of the island's crucial sugar industry, issued a statement of support for Castro and his movement.[37]
Law professor José Miró Cardona created a new government with himself as prime minister and Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president on January 5. The United States officially recognized the new government two days later.[38] Castro himself arrived in Havana to cheering crowds and assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on January 8.
In February Miró suddenly resigned and on February 16, 1959, Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba.[1]
Friction with the U.S. developed as the new government began expropriating property owned by major U.S. corporations (United Fruit in particular) and announced plans to base the compensation on the artificially low property valuations that the companies themselves had kept to a fraction of their true value so that their taxes would be negligible.[37]
Between 15 April and 26 April, Castro and a delegation of industrial and international representatives visited the U.S. as guests of the Press Club. Castro hired one of the best public relations firms in the United States for a charm offensive visit by Castro and his recently initiated government. Castro answered impertinent questions jokingly and ate hotdogs and hamburgers. His rumpled fatigues and scruffy beard cut a popular figure easily promoted as an authentic hero.[39] He was refused a meeting with President Eisenhower. Rebuffed, he soon joined forces with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.[36]
Years in power
On May 17, 1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership.[40][41]
Fidel Castro addresses delegates of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 1960.
Fidel Castro addresses delegates of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 1960.
As early as July 1959, Castro's intelligence chief Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City.[42] Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster Forján, to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
In February 1960, Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. When the U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon afterward. To the concern of the Eisenhower administration, Cuba began to establish closer ties with the Soviet Union. A variety of pacts were signed between Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, allowing Cuba to receive large amounts of economic and military aid from the USSR. The mould was set. U.S. disappointment with their lack of power in Cuban decision making fueled Castro's fears leading to increasing Cuban dependence on USSR support.
In June 1960, Eisenhower reduced Cuba's sugar import quota by 7,000,000 tons, and in response, Cuba nationalized some $850 million worth of U.S. property and businesses. The revolutionary government grabbed control of the nation by nationalizing industry, expropriating property owned by Cubans and non-Cubans alike, collectivizing agriculture, and enacting policies which would benefit the population. While popular among the poor, these policies alienated many former supporters of the revolution among the Cuban middle and upper-classes. Over one million Cubans later migrated to the U.S., forming a vocal anti-Castro community in Miami, Florida, actively supported and funded by successive U.S. administrations.
Further information: Cuban-American lobby
By the early autumn of 1960, the U.S. government was engaged in a semi-secret campaign to remove Castro from power.[43]
On January 3, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower broke off ties with Cuba, saying that Fidel Castro had provoked him once too often.[44]
In April 1961, the U.S. government unsuccessfully attempted to depose Castro from power by supporting an armed force of Cuban exiles to retake the island. This attempt is known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Bay of Pigs
Main article: Bay of Pigs Invasion
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the U.S. began planning to overthrow the government of Cuba in October 1959.[45] On April 17, 1961, approximately 1,400 members of a CIA-trained Cuban exile force landed at the Bay of Pigs, while the U.S. publicly denied any involvement.
Documents released by the National Security Archive show that the CIA expected the Cuban people to welcome a U.S.-sponsored invasion, spontaneously rising up against the Castro regime. It expected Cuban military and police forces to refuse to fight against the CIA's 1,400-man mercenary invasion force.[46] President Kennedy cancelled several planned bombing sorties designed to cripple the entire Cuban Air Force.[47]
The Cubans repelled the invaders, killing many and capturing a thousand. On May 1, 1961, as hundreds of thousands celebrating May Day roared their approval, Castro announced:
“ The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government. ... If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like capitalism.[48] ”
In a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, 1961, Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was adopting Communism. On February 7, 1962, the U.S. imposed an embargo against Cuba. This embargo was broadened during 1962 and 1963, including a general travel ban for American tourists.[49]
Many theories are offered for the failure of the U.S. operation. Some argue that the Americans misjudged Cuban support for Castro.[50] They had believed the testimonies of the Cuban exiles, who told them that Castro was not well supported by the Cuban people. In the weeks prior to the invasion, the Castro regime had rounded up tens of thousands of Cubans, holing them up in sports stadiums across the island in order to quash discontent on the island and prevent its adversaries from joining exile forces. The idea that Cubans would rise up against Castro, while possibly correct judging by the discontent reported to be growing on the island at the time, never materialized, perhaps as a result of the incarcerations and reprisals that would likely ensue. Also, the CIA-trained force of 1,400, armed only with light arms, was greatly outnumbered by a Cuban force of tens of thousands armed with tanks and artillery.[citation needed] In addition, the covert placement of dozens of Cuban intelligence officials in the invasion force gave the Cuban government detailed information on the operation.[51]
Cuban Missile Crisis
Main article: Cuban Missile Crisis
Tensions between Cuba and the U.S. heightened during the 1962 missile crisis, which nearly brought the US and the USSR into nuclear conflict. Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to a possible U.S. invasion and justified the move in response to US missile deployment in Turkey. After consultations with his military advisors, he met with a Cuban delegation led by Raúl Castro in July in order to work out the specifics. It was agreed to deploy Soviet R-12 MRBMs on Cuban soil; however, American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance discovered the construction of the missile installations on 15 October 1962 before the weapons had actually been deployed. The US government viewed the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Key West as an aggressive act and a threat to US security. As a result, the US publicly announced its discovery on 22 October 1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island. Nikolai Sergevich Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate[52] and the Soviet KGB deputy station chief in Warsaw, was the translator Castro used for contact with the Russians during this period.
In a personal letter to Khrushchev dated 27 October 1962, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Cuba were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response.[53] Soviet field commanders in Cuba were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US commitment not to invade Cuba and an understanding that the US would remove American MRBMs targeting the Soviet Union from Turkey and Italy, a measure that the US implemented a few months later. The missile swap was never publicized because the Kennedy Administration demanded secrecy in order to preserve NATO relations and protect Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections.
Assassination attempts
Fabian Escalante, who was long tasked with protecting the life of Castro has calculated the exact number of assassination schemes and/or attempts by the CIA to be 638. Some such attempts have included an exploding cigar, a fungal-infected scuba-diving suit, and a mafia-style shooting. Some of these plots are depicted in a documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro.[54] One of these attempts was by his ex-lover Marita Lorenz whom he met in 1959. She subsequently agreed to aid the CIA and attempted to smuggle a jar of cold cream containing poison pills into his room. When Castro realised, he reportedly gave her a gun and told her to kill him but her nerve failed.[55] Castro once said in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."
According to the Family Jewels documents declassified by the CIA in 2007, one such assassination attempt before the Bay of Pigs invasion involved Johnny Roselli and Al Capone's successor in the Chicago Outfit, Salvatore Giancana and his right-hand man Santos Trafficante. It was personally authorized by US attorney general Robert Kennedy [56].
Giancana and Miami Syndicate leader Santos Trafficante were contacted in September 1960 about the possibility of an assassination attempt by a go-between from the CIA, Robert Maheu, after Maheu had contacted Johnny Roselli, a member of the Las Vegas Syndicate and Giancana's number-two man. Maheu had presented himself as a representative of numerous international business firms in Cuba that were being expropriated by Castro. He offered $150,000 for the "removal" of Castro through this operation (the documents suggest that neither Roselli nor Giancana and Trafficante accepted any sort of payments for the job). According to the files, it was Giancana who suggested using a series of poison pills that could be used to doctor Castro's food and drink. These pills were given by the CIA to Giancana's nominee Juan Orta, whom Giancana presented as being an official in the Cuban government who was also in the pay of gambling interests, and who did have access to Castro. After a series of six attempts to introduce the poison into Castro's food, Orta abruptly demanded to be let out of the mission, handing over the job to another, unnamed participant. Later, a second attempt was mounted through Giancana and Trafficante using Dr. Anthony Verona, the leader of the Cuban Exile Junta, who had, according to Trafficante, become "disaffected with the apparent ineffectual progress of the Junta". Verona requested $10,000 in expenses and $1,000 worth of communications equipment. However, it is unknown how far the second attempt went, as the entire program was cancelled shortly thereafter due to the launching of the Bay of Pigs invasion. [57] [58] [59]
Resulting from these numerous assassination attempts, Castro sent out warnings to the US government to stop the attempts or face retaliatory actions. This resulted in a theory stating that Cuba was behind the Kennedy assassination.
See also: Kennedy assassination theories
Embargo
Main article: United States embargo against Cuba
This article may need to be rewritten.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page.
The embargo, which Castro denounced, has been in place for 40 years.[60] A former Prime Minister of Spain had written that the embargo was Castro's greatest ally, as it perpetuated the government; he asserted that if it were lifted, Castro would lose his presidency in three months[61] and some well known people have condemned the embargo, for humanitarian reasons, including Pope John Paul II (in 1998 and 2005),[62][63] and Steven Spielberg.[64]
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was left bankrupt and isolated by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Eighty-five percent of its markets had disappeared, along with the subsidies and trade agreements that had supported its economy. The situation became desperate. Daily life was a struggle with extended gas and water outages, severe power shortages, and dwindling food supplies available for rationing.[65] By 1994, the island's economy, which had survived over 30 years of sanctions by the US, teetered on the brink of collapse. Cuba was plunged into what was called the "Special Period" during which there were shortages of everything. To survive Cuba legalized the US dollar, turned to tourism, and encouraged the transfer of remittances in US dollars from Cubans living in the USA to their relatives on the Island. Even as late as 2004, Castro was forced to shut down 118 factories, including steel plants, sugar mills and paper processors for the month of October to deal with a crisis caused by fuel shortages.[66] However Castro continues to exercise flexibility in coping with these crises. In 2005 thousands of Cuban doctors were sent to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.[67]
After the massive damage caused by Hurricane Michelle in 2001, Castro proposed a one-time cash purchase of food from the U.S. after declining a U.S. offer of humanitarian aid.[68] The U.S. authorized the shipment of food in 2001, the first since the embargo was imposed in 1962.[69]
Foreign relations
Main article: Foreign relations of Cuba
Soviet Union
Fidel Castro embracing former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Fidel Castro embracing former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Following the establishment of diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military and economic aid. Castro was able to build a formidable military force with the help of Soviet equipment and military advisors. The KGB kept in close touch with Havana, and Castro tightened Communist Party control over all levels of government, the media, and the educational system, while developing a Soviet-style internal police force.
Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union caused something of a split between him and Guevara, who took a more pro-Chinese view following ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Maoist CPC. [citation needed] In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.
On 23 August 1968, Castro made a public gesture to the USSR that caused the Soviet leadership to reaffirm their support for him. Two days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to repress the Prague Spring, Castro took to the airwaves and publicly denounced the Czech rebellion. Castro warned the Cuban people about the Czechoslovakian 'counterrevolutionaries', who "were moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble."[70] In return for his public backing of the invasion, at a time when many Soviet allies were deeming the invasion an infringement of Czechoslovakia's sovereignty, the Soviets bailed out the Cuban economy with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports.
In 1971, despite an Organization of American States convention that no nation in the Western Hemisphere would have a relationship with Cuba (the only exception being Mexico, which had refused to adopt that convention), Castro took a month-long visit to Chile, following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. The visit, in which Castro participated actively in the internal politics of the country, holding massive rallies and giving public advice to Salvador Allende, was seen by those on the political right as proof to support their view that "The Chilean Way to Socialism" was an effort to put Chile on the same path as Cuba.[71]
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, the comradely relationship between Havana and Moscow was strained by Gorbachev's implementation of economic and political reforms in the USSR. "We are witnessing sad things in other socialist countries, very sad things," lamented Castro in November 1989, in reference to the changes that were sweeping such communist allies as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland.[72] The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had an immediate and devastating effect on Cuba.
Other countries
Schafik Handal, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Evo Morales, in Havana in 2004.
Schafik Handal, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Evo Morales, in Havana in 2004.
On November 4, 1975, Castro ordered the deployment of Cuban troops to Angola in order to aid the Marxist MPLA-ruled government against the South African-backed UNITA opposition forces. Moscow aided the Cuban initiative with the USSR engaging in a massive airlift of Cuban forces into Angola. On Cuba's role in Angola, Nelson Mandela is said to have remarked "Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice."[73] Cuban troops were also sent to Marxist Ethiopia to assist Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden War with Somalia in 1977. In addition, Castro extended support to Marxist Revolutionary movements throughout Latin America, such as aiding the Sandinistas in overthrowing the Somoza government in Nicaragua in 1979. It has been claimed by the Carthage Foundation-funded Center for a Free Cuba[74] that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Cuban military actions abroad.[75]
Cuba and Panama have restored diplomatic ties after breaking them off in 2005 when Panama's former president pardoned four Cuban exiles accused of attempting to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. The foreign minister of each country re-established official diplomatic relations in Havana by signing a document describing a spirit of fraternity that has long linked both nations.[76] Cuba, once shunned by many of its Latin American neighbours, now has full diplomatic relations with all but Costa Rica and El Salvador.[76]
Although the relationship between Cuba and Mexico remains strained, each side appears to make attempts to improve it. In 1998, Fidel Castro apologized for remarks he made about Mickey Mouse which led Mexico to recall its ambassador from Havana. He said he intended no offense when he said earlier that Mexican children would find it easier to name Disney characters than to recount key figures in Mexican history. Rather, he said, his words were meant to underscore the cultural dominance of the US.[77] Mexican president Vicente Fox apologized to Fidel Castro in 2002 over allegations by Castro that Fox forced him to leave a United Nations summit in Mexico so that he would not be in the presence of President Bush, who also attended.[78]
At a summit meeting of sixteen Caribbean countries in 1998, Castro called for regional unity, saying that only strengthened cooperation between Caribbean countries would prevent their domination by rich nations in a global economy.[79] Caribbean nations have embraced Cuba's Fidel Castro while accusing the US of breaking trade promises. Castro, until recently a regional outcast, has been increasing grants and scholarships to the Caribbean countries, while US aid has dropped 25% over the past five years.[80] Cuba has opened four additional embassies in the Caribbean Community including: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Suriname, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This development makes Cuba the only country to have embassies in all independent countries of the Caribbean Community.[81]
In the poorest areas of Latin America and Africa, Castro is seen as a hero, the leader of the Third World, and the enemy of the wealthy and greedy.[82] On a visit to South Africa in 1998 he was warmly received by President Nelson Mandela.[83] President Mandela gave Castro South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope.[84] Last December Castro fulfilled his promise of sending 100 medical aid workers to Botswana, according to the Botswana presidency. These workers play an important role in Botswana's war against HIV/AIDS. According to Anna Vallejera, Cuba's first-ever Ambassador to Botswana, the health workers are part of her country's ongoing commitment to proactively assist in the global war against HIV/AIDS,[85]
The president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez is a grand admirer of his and Bolivian president Evo Morales called him the "Grandfather". In Harlem, he is seen as an icon because of his historic visit with Malcolm X in 1960 at the Hotel Theresa.[86]
Castro and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Castro and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Castro was known to be a friend of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and was an honorary pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral in October 2000. They had continued their friendship after Trudeau left office until his death. Canada became one of the first American allies to openly trade with Cuba. Cuba still has a good relationship with Canada. In 1998, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arrived in Cuba to meet President Castro and highlight their close ties. He is the first Canadian government leader to visit the island since Pierre Trudeau was in Havana in 1976.[87]
In December 2001, European Union representatives described their political dialogue with Cuba as back on track after a weekend of talks in Havana. The EU praised Cuba's willingness to discuss questions of human rights. Cuba is the only Latin American country without an economic co-operation agreement with the EU. However, trade with individual European countries remains strong since the US trade embargo on Cuba leaves the market free from American rivals.[88] In 2005, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel ended his visit to Cuba optimistic that relations with the communist state will become stronger. The EU is Cuba's largest trading partner. Cuba's imprisonment of 75 dissidents and the execution of three hijackers have strained diplomatic relations. However, the EU commissioner was impressed with Fidel Castro's willingness to discuss these concerns, although he received no commitments from Castro. Cuba does not admit to holding political prisoners, seeing them rather as mercenaries in the pay of the United States.[89]
Succession issues
According to Article 94 of the Cuban Constitution, the First Vice President of the Council of State assumes presidential duties upon the illness or death of the president. At the moment (early 2007), that is Raúl Castro.
Due to the issue of presidential succession and Castro's longevity, there have long been rumors, speculation and hoaxing about Castro's health and demise. In 1998 there were reports that he had a serious brain disease, later discredited.[90] In June 2001, he apparently fainted during a seven-hour speech under the Caribbean sun.[91] Later that day he finished the speech, walking buoyantly into the television studios in his military fatigues, joking with journalists.[92]
In January 2004, Luis Eduardo Garzón, the mayor of Bogotá, said that Castro "seemed very sick to me" following a meeting with him during a vacation in Cuba.[93] In May 2004, Castro's physician denied that his health was failing, and speculated that he would live to be 140 years old. Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein said that the "press is always speculating about something, that he had a heart attack once, that he had cancer, some neurological problem", but maintained that Castro was in good health.[94]
On October 20, 2004, Castro tripped and fell following a speech he gave at a rally, breaking his kneecap and fracturing his right arm.[95] He was able to recover his ability to walk and publicly demonstrated this two months later.[96]
Due to his large role in Cuba, his well-being has become a continual source of speculation both on and off the island as he has grown older. The CIA has long been interested in Castro's health.[97]
In 2005, the CIA said it thought Castro had Parkinson's disease.[98][99] Castro denied such allegations, while also citing the example of Pope John Paul II in saying that he would not fear the disease.[100]
Illness and transfer of duties
See also: 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties
Castro's appearance on Cubavision 28 October 2006
Castro's appearance on Cubavision 28 October 2006
On July 31, 2006, Castro delegated his duties as President of the Council of state, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and the post of commander in chief of the armed forces to his brother Raúl Castro. This transfer of duties has been described as temporary while Fidel recovers from surgery he underwent due to an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding".[101] Fidel Castro was too ill to attend the nationwide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Granma boat landing on December 2, 2006, which also became his belated 80th birthday celebrations. Castro's non-appearance fueled reports that he has terminal pancreatic cancer and was refusing treatment,[102] but on December 17, 2006 Cuban officials stated that Castro has no terminal illness and will eventually return to his public duties.[103][104]
While Cuba continues to deny U.S.-made claims that Castro is suffering from a terminal cancer, on December 24, 2006, Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya reported that Spanish surgeon José Luis García Sabrido has been flown to Cuba on a plane charted by the Cuban government. Dr. García Sabrido is an intestinal expert who further specializes in the treatment of cancer. The plane that Dr. García Sabrido's traveled in also was reported to be carrying a large quantity of advanced medical equipment.[105][106] On December 26, 2006, shortly after returning to Madrid, Dr. García Sabrido held a news conference in which he answered questions about Castro's health. He stated that "He does not have cancer, he has a problem with his digestive system," and added, "His condition is stable. He is recovering from a very serious operation. It is not planned that he will undergo another operation for the moment."[107] Although most Cubans acknowledge that they are aware Castro is seriously ill, most also seem worried about a future without Castro.[108]
On January 16, 2007 the Spanish newspaper El País, citing two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Marañón hospital —who employs Dr. García Sabrido— in Madrid, reported Castro was in "very grave" condition, having trouble cicatrizing, after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection caused by a severe case of diverticulitis. However, Dr. García Sibrido told CNN that he was not the source of the report and that "any statement that doesn't come directly from [Castro's] medical team is without foundation."[109] Also, a Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment, while White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report appeared to be "just sort of a roundup of previous health reports. We've got nothing new."[110][111][112] On 30 January 2007, Cuban television and the paper Juventud Rebelde showed fresh video and photos from a meeting between Castro and Hugo Chavez said to have taken place the previous day.[113][114]
In mid-February 2007 it was reported by the Associated Press that Acting President Raul Castro had said that Fidel Castro's health was improving and he was taking part in all important issues facing the government. "He's consulted on the most important questions," Raul Castro said of Fidel. "He doesn't interfere, but he knows about everything."[115] On 27 February 2007, Reuters reported that Fidel Castro had called into Aló Presidente, a live radio talk show hosted by Hugo Chávez, and chatted with him for thirty minutes during which time he sounded "much healthier and more lucid" than he had on any of the audio and video tapes released since his surgery in July. Castro reportedly told Chávez, "I am gaining ground. I feel I have more energy, more strength, more time to study," adding with a chuckle, "I have become a student again." Later in the conversation (transcript in Spanish; audio) , he made reference to the fall of the world stock markets that had occurred earlier in the day and remarked that it was proof of his contention that the world capitalist system is in crisis.[116]
Reports of improvements in his condition continued to circulate throughout March and early April. On 13 April 2007, Chávez was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that Castro has "almost totally recovered" from his illness. That same day, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Roque confirmed during a press conference in Vietnam that Castro had improved steadily and had resumed some of his leadership responsibilities.[117] On 21 April 2007 the official newspaper Granma reported that Castro had met for over an hour with Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party who was visiting Havana. Photographs of their meeting showed the Cuban president looking healthier than he had in any previously released since his surgery.[118]
As a comment on Castro’s recovery, U.S. President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away." Hearing about this, Castro, who is an atheist, ironically replied: "Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and the plans of other presidents who ordered my assassination: the good Lord protected me."[119]
Human rights record
Main article: Human rights in Cuba
Some Cubans dissidents and political opponents were branded "counterrevolutionaries", "fascists," or "CIA operatives" and imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial;[120][121] many were executed.[122][123] Military Units to Aid Production, or UMAPs, were labor camps established in 1965 which confined "social deviants" including homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses in order to purge "counter-revolutionary" influences from certain segments of the population.[124] These camps were closed in 1968 in response to international outcries and internal political analysis.[125] Castro claims that Cuba does not hold political prisoners, arguing that Cuba is justified because these prisoners are not jailed because of their political beliefs, but have been convicted of "counter-revolutionary" crimes, including bombings.[126] Moreover, he claims opposition to the Cuban government to be illegitimate, and the result of an ongoing conspiracy fostered by Cuban exiles with ties to the United States or the CIA, and with abundant representation and access to the American media[citation needed]. Many Castro supporters also say that Castro's measures are justified to prevent the fall of his government, demonstrably under constant economic and military pressure from the US and allies for more than half a century, whereas his opposition says he uses the United States as an excuse to justify his continuing political control[citation needed].
In 2001, Hallgeir Langeland nominated Fidel Castro for the Nobel Peace Prize for sending medical and engineering aid to developing countries.[127]
Religious beliefs
Castro was raised a Roman Catholic as a child but doesn't practice as one. In Oliver Stone's documentary Comandante, Castro states "I have never been a believer", and has total conviction that there is only one life. A clip of this can be found here. [4] Pope John XXIII excommunicated Castro in 1962 on the basis of a 1949 decree by Pope Pius XII forbidding Catholics from supporting communist governments. The excommunication was aimed at undermining support for Castro among Catholics. For Castro, who had previously renounced his Catholic faith, this was an event of very little consequence, nor was it expected to be otherwise. [citation needed]
In 1992, Castro agreed to loosen restrictions on religion and even permitted church-going Catholics to join the Cuban Communist Party. He began describing his country as "secular" rather than "atheist".[128] Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, the first visit by a reigning pontiff to the island. Castro and the Pope appeared side by side in public on several occasions during the visit. Castro wore a dark blue business suit (in contrast to his fatigues) in his public meetings with the Pope and treated him with reverence and respect.[129] With Castro and other senior Cuban officials in the front row at a mid-morning Mass, the pope delivered a ringing call for pluralism in Cuba. He rejected the materialistic, one-party ideology of the Cuban state. And he said that true liberation "cannot be reduced to its social and political aspects," but must also include "the exercise of freedom of conscience — the basis and foundation of all other human rights." Later in the day, though, the pope also made his most critical reference yet to the American economic embargo of Cuba. At a departure ceremony at José Martí International Airport that evening, he said that Cuba's "material and moral poverty" arises not only from "limitations to fundamental freedoms" and "discouragement of the individual," but also from "restrictive economic measures — unjust and ethically unacceptable — imposed from outside the country."[129] He also criticized widespread abortion[130] in Cuban hospitals and urged Castro to end the government's monopoly on education to allow the return of Catholic schools. A month later Castro condemned the use of abortion as a form of birth control.[131]
In December 1998, Castro formally re-instated Christmas Day as the official celebration it was formerly before the Communist Party abolished it in 1969.[132] Cubans were again allowed to mark Christmas as a holiday and to openly hold religious processions. The Pope sent a telegram to Castro thanking him for restoring Christmas as a public holiday.[133]
Castro attended a Roman Catholic convent blessing in 2003. The purpose of this unprecedented event was to help bless the newly restored convent in Old Havana and to mark the fifth anniversary of the Pope's visit to Cuba.[134]
The senior spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian faith arrived in Cuba in 2004, the first time any Orthodox Patriarch has visited Latin America in the Church's history. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I consecrated a cathedral in Havana and bestowed an honour on Fidel Castro. His aides said that he was responding to the decision of the Cuban Government to build and donate to the Orthodox Christians a tiny Orthodox cathedral in the heart of old Havana.[135]
After the Pope's death in April 2005, an emotional Castro attended a mass in his honor in Havana's cathedral and signed the Pope's condolence book at the Vatican Embassy.[136] He had last visited the cathedral in 1959, 46 years earlier, for the wedding of one of his sisters. Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino led the mass and welcomed Castro, who was dressed in a black suit, expressing his gratitude for the "heartfelt way the death of our Holy Father John Paul II was received (in Cuba)."[137]
Public image
By wearing military-style uniforms and leading mass demonstrations, Castro projects an image of a perpetual revolutionary. He is mostly seen in military attire, but his personal tailor, Merel Van 't Wout, convinced him to occasionally change to a business suit.[138] Castro is often referred to as "Comandante", but is also nicknamed "El Caballo", meaning "The Horse", a label that was first attributed to Cuban entertainer Benny Moré, who on hearing Castro passing in the Havana night with his entourage, shouted out "Here comes the horse!"[139] During the revolutionary campaign, fellow rebels knew Castro as "The Giant".[140] Large throngs of people gather to cheer at Castro's fiery speeches, which typically last for hours. Many details of Castro's private life, particularly involving his family members, are scarce and Castro insists that he does not promote a cult of personality. When asked about the matter in 1985 he replied,
Although we have been dogmatic, we have never preached cult of personality. You will not see a statue of me anywhere, nor a school with my name, nor a street, nor a little town, nor any type of personality cult because we have not taught our people to believe, but to think, to reason out."[141]
There are no streets in Cuba named after Castro, and no statues or peso bills bearing his image.[142] Despite this, Castro was accused by American anarchist Sam Dolgoff of "bask[ing] in the adulation and servility of his subordinates" and "creating a regime built around the cult of the personality functions" encouraging "the illusion that only he and his select group of revolutionaries have earned the right to wield unlimited power over the people of Cuba."[143] Castro has also been described as an example of the rise of a distinct "charismatic leader"[144] common to developing nations, and of encouraging the "personalistic political regime". This theory contends that Castro has maintained power largely through highly visible, charismatic leadership and popular appeals to the Cuban people, though the administration is successful only as long as the leader's charisma lasts.[145]
Personal
Family
Fidel Castro making a speech in Havana in 1978, image by Marcelo Montecino
Fidel Castro making a speech in Havana in 1978, image by Marcelo Montecino
By his first wife Mirta Díaz Balart, Castro has a son named Fidel "Fidelito" Castro Díaz-Balart. Díaz-Balart and Castro were divorced in 1955, and she remarried. After a spell in Madrid, Díaz-Balart reportedly returned to Havana to live with Fidelito and his family.[146] Fidelito grew up in Cuba; for a time, he ran Cuba's atomic-energy commission before being removed from the post by his father.[147] Díaz-Balart's nephews are Republican U.S. Congressmen Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, vocal critics of the Castro government.
Fidel has five other sons by his second wife, Dalia Soto del Valle: Alexis, Alexander, Alejandro, Antonio, and Angel.[147]
While Fidel was married to Mirta, he had an affair with Naty Revuelta resulting in a daughter named Alina Fernández-Revuelta.[147] Alina left Cuba in 1993, disguised as a Spanish tourist,[148] and sought asylum in the United States. She has been a vocal critic of her father's policies.
His sister Juanita Castro has been living in the United States since the early 1960s and was featured in a film documentary by Andy Warhol in 1965.[149]
Wealth
In 2005, American business and financial magazine Forbes listed Castro among the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $550 million. The estimates, which the magazine admitted was "more art than science",[150] claimed that the Cuban leader's personal wealth was nearly double that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, despite anecdotal evidence from diplomats and businessmen that the Cuban leader's personal life was notable for its austerity.[151] This assessment was drawn by making economic estimates of the net worth of Cuba's state-owned companies, and used the assumption that Castro had personal economic control.[152] Forbes magazine later increased the estimates to $900 million, adding rumors of large cash stashes in Switzerland.[151] The magazine offered no proof of this information,[150] and according CBS news, Castro's entry on the rich list was notably brief compared to the amount of information provided on other figures.[150]
Castro, who had considered suing the magazine, responded that the claims were "lies and slander", and that they were part of a US campaign to discredit him.[151] He declared: "If they can prove that I have a bank account abroad, with $900m, with $1m, $500,000, $100,000 or $1 in it, I will resign."[151] President of Cuba's Central Bank, Francisco Soberon, called the claims a "grotesque slander", asserting that money made from various state owned companies is pumped back into the island's economy, "in sectors including health, education, science, internal security, national defense and solidarity projects with other countries."[152]
Maria Werla, a Cuban-American anti-Castro activist, claims that Castro and his loyalists control several billions of dollars in real estate, bank accounts, private estates, yachts and other assets — called “the Comandante's Reserves” — in Europe, Latin America and Asia - and a luxurious lifestyle for the top Cuban leadership.[153] These attempts often must rely on the testimonials of defectors who were close to Castro, and investigators have not been able to give hard evidence of his real worth.[citation needed]
Castro led the revolution overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and shortly after was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba.[1] Castro became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic. In 1976 he became president of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. He also holds the supreme military rank of Comandante en Jefe ("Commander in Chief") of the Cuban armed forces.
Castro first attracted attention in Cuban political life through nationalist critiques of Batista and the United States political and corporate influence in Cuba. He gained an ardent, but limited, following and also drew the attention of the authorities.[2] He eventually led the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, after which he was captured, tried, incarcerated and later released. He then travelled to Mexico[3][4] to organize and train for the guerrilla invasion of Cuba that took place in December 1956. Since his assumption of power in 1959 he has evoked both praise and condemnation (at home and internationally). Castro is described by opponents as a dictator[5][6] while supporters see Castro as a charismatic liberator.[7]
Outside of Cuba, Castro has been defined by his relationship with the United States and the former Soviet Union, both of whom courted Cuban attentions as part of their own global political game. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 by U.S. backed forces, the Castro-led government has had an openly antagonistic relationship with the U.S., which encouraged a closeness with the Soviet bloc. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 forced Castro to seek alliances regionally to counter U.S. and find like-minded partners in regional nationalist figures such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Over time he has become a world icon,[8] and is the current Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement (his second term in that office, the first having been 1979-1983.
At home, Fidel Castro has overseen the implementation of various economic policies, leading to the rapid centralization of Cuba's economy, land reform, collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, and the nationalization of leading Cuban industries. The expansion of publicly funded health care and education has been a cornerstone of Castro's domestic social agenda. Cuba ranks better than many countries on the United Nations' List of countries by infant mortality rate, which is claimed by Castro's supporters as a success of his regime. Opponents note that Cuba's health care and infant mortality were the same if not better before the revolution than after [9].Castro and his policies are cited by some as being responsible for Cuba's economic problems, whilst others blame the U.S. embargo. Still others attribute the shortcomings to a mix of these factors.
On July 31, 2006, Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery for diverticulitis,[10] transferred his responsibilities to the First Vice-President, his younger brother Raúl Castro. On 2 June 2007, Castro appeared on Cuban Television with Vietnamese Communist Party Leader Nong Duc Manh looking somewhat healthier.[11]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Childhood and education
* 2 Political beginnings
* 3 Cuban Revolution
o 3.1 Attack on Moncada Barracks
o 3.2 26th of July Movement
o 3.3 Operation Verano
o 3.4 Battle of Yaguajay
o 3.5 Assumption of power
* 4 Years in power
o 4.1 Bay of Pigs
o 4.2 Cuban Missile Crisis
o 4.3 Assassination attempts
o 4.4 Embargo
o 4.5 Foreign relations
+ 4.5.1 Soviet Union
+ 4.5.2 Other countries
* 5 Succession issues
* 6 Human rights record
* 7 Religious beliefs
* 8 Public image
* 9 Personal
o 9.1 Family
o 9.2 Wealth
* 10 References and footnotes
* 11 Further reading
* 12 See also
* 13 External links
Childhood and education
A letter written by the twelve year old Castro to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, expressing admiration and asking for a $10 bill. Castro writes, "If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green American, because never, I have not seen a ten dollar bill," signing the letter, "Thank you very much. Good by [sic]. Your friend, Fidel Castro."
A letter written by the twelve year old Castro to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, expressing admiration and asking for a $10 bill. Castro writes, "If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green American, because never, I have not seen a ten dollar bill," signing the letter, "Thank you very much. Good by [sic]. Your friend, Fidel Castro."
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on a sugar plantation in Birán, near Mayarí, in the modern-day province of Holguín – then a part of the now-defunct Oriente province. He was the third child born to Ángel Castro y Argiz, a Galician immigrant who became relatively prosperous through hard work in the sugar industry and shrewd investments. His mother, Lina Ruz González, who was a household servant, was also of Galician background.[3] Angel Castro was married to another woman, Maria Luisa Argota,[12] until Fidel was 17, and thus Fidel as a child had to deal both with his illegitimacy and the challenge of being raised in various foster homes away from his father's house.
Castro has two brothers: Ramón and Raúl, and four sisters: Angelita, Juanita, Enma, and Agustina. All of them were born out of wedlock. He also has two half siblings, Lidia and Pedro Emilio who were raised by Ángel Castro's first wife.
Fidel was not baptized until he was eight, also very uncommon, bringing embarrassment and ridicule from other children.[13][14] Ángel Castro finally dissolved his first marriage when Fidel was 15 and married Fidel’s mother. Castro was formally recognized by his father when he was 17, when his surname was legally changed to Castro from Ruz, his mother’s name.[13][14] Although accounts of his education differ, most sources agree that he was an intellectually gifted student, more interested in sports than in academics, and spent many years in private Catholic boarding schools, finishing high school at Belen, a Jesuit school in Havana in 1945.[15]
Political beginnings
In late 1945, Castro entered law school at the University of Havana. He became immediately embroiled in the political culture at the University, which was a reflection of the volatile politics in Cuba during that era.
University student Fidel Castro (center, standing, in black suit) addressing fellow students during a protest on November 11, 1947.
University student Fidel Castro (center, standing, in black suit) addressing fellow students during a protest on November 11, 1947.
Since the fall of president Gerardo Machado in the 1930s, student politics had degenerated into a form of gangsterismo dominated by fractious action groups, and Castro, believing that the gangs posed a physical threat to his university aspirations, experienced what he later described as "a great moment of decision."[16] He returned to the university from a brief hiatus to involve himself fully in the various violent battles and disputes which surrounded university elections, and was to be implicated in a number of shootings linked to Rolando Masferrer's MSR action group. "To not return", said Castro later, "would be to give in to bullies, to abandon my beliefs".[16] Rivalries were so intense that Castro apparently collaborated in an attempt on Masferrer's life during this period,[16] while Masferrer, whose paramilitary group Les Tigres later became an instrument of state violence under Batista,[17] perennially hunted the younger student seeking violent retribution.[18]
In 1947, growing increasingly passionate about social justice lacking under Cuba's current system, Castro joined the Partido Ortodoxo which had been newly formed by Eduardo Chibás. A charismatic and emotional figure, Chibás was running for president against the incumbent Ramón Grau San Martín who had allowed rampant corruption to flourish during his term. The Partido Ortodoxo publicly exposed corruption and demanded government and social reform. It aimed to instill a strong sense of national identity among Cubans, establish Cuban economic independence and freedom from the United States, and dismantle the power of the elite over Cuban politics. Though Chibás lost the election, Castro, considering Chibás his mentor, remained committed to his cause, working fervently on his behalf. In 1951, while running for president again, Chibás shot himself in the stomach during a radio broadcast. Castro was present and accompanied him to the hospital where he died.[15]
Bogotazo
Main article: Bogotazo
Fidel Castro's role in the Bogotazo incident has been dogged by speculation and controversy but the following account seems to be generally agreed upon. In 1948 Castro traveled to Bogotá in Colombia for a political conference of Latin American students that coincided with the ninth meeting of the Pan-American Union Conference. The students had planned to use this opportunity to distribute pamphlets protesting United States dominance of the Western Hemisphere and to foment discontent. A few days after the conference began, the populist Colombian Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated, triggering massive riots in the streets in which many (mostly poor workers) were injured or killed. Rioting and looting spread to other cities in Colombia, beginning an era of turbulence that became known as "La Violencia". The students were caught up in the violence and chaos rocking the city, picking up rifles and roaming the streets distributing anti-United States material and stirring a revolt. When Castro was pursued by the Colombian authorities for his role in the riots, he took refuge in the Cuban Embassy and was flown back to Havana.[19][20] It seems clear that experiencing the power of popular insurrection had an effect on Castro and influenced his subsequent political thinking.
Castro returned to Cuba and married Mirta Díaz Balart, a student from a wealthy Cuban family where he was exposed to the lifestyle of the Cuban elite. In 1950 he graduated from law school with a Doctor of Laws degree and began practicing law in a small partnership in Havana, mostly representing the poor and underprivileged. By now he had become well known for his passionately nationalistic views and his intense opposition to the influence of the United States on Cuban internal affairs. Increasingly interested in a career in politics, Castro had become a candidate for a seat in the Cuban parliament when General Fulgencio Batista led a coup d'état in 1952, successfully overthrowing the government of President Carlos Prío Socarrás and canceling the election.
Batista established himself as de facto leader with the support of establishment elements of Cuban society and powerful Cuban agencies. His regime was formally recognized by the United States, buttressing his power. Castro, nearing thirty, was now a politician without a legitimate platform and thus he broke away from the Partido Ortodoxo to marshal legal arguments based on the Constitution of 1940 to formally charge Batista with violating the constitution. His petition, entitled Zarpazo, was denied by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees and he was not allowed a hearing.[21] This experience formed the foundation for Castro's opposition to the Batista regime and convinced him that revolution was the only way to depose Batista.[22]
Cuban Revolution
Main article: Cuban revolution
Attack on Moncada Barracks
Main article: Moncada Barracks
As discontent over the Batista coup grew, Castro abandoned his law practice and formed an underground organization of supporters, including his brother, Raúl, and Mario Chanes de Armas. Together they actively plotted to overthrow Batista. They collected guns and ammunition and finalized their plans for an armed attack on Moncada Barracks, Batista's largest garrison outside Santiago de Cuba. On the 26th of July, 1953, they attacked Moncada Barracks. The Céspedes garrison in Bayamo was also attacked as a diversion.[3] The attack proved disastrous and more than sixty of the one-hundred and thirty-five militants involved were killed.
Castro and other surviving members of his group managed to escape to a part of the rugged Sierra Maestra[23] mountains east of Santiago where they were eventually discovered and captured. Although there is disagreement over why Castro and his brother, Raúl, were not executed on capture as many of their fellow militants were, there is evidence that an officer recognized Castro from his university days and treated the captured rebels compassionately, despite the 'illegal' unofficial order to have the leader executed.[3] Others, such as Angel Prado, military commander of the 26th of July Movement, say that on the night of the attack Castro's driver got lost and he never reached the barracks. That night was the night of “El Carnaval de Santiago” and the streets of Santiago de Cuba were filled with party goers.
Castro was tried in the fall of 1953 and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison.[24] During his trial Castro delivered his famous defense speech History Will Absolve Me,[25] upholding his rebellious actions and boldly declaring his political views:
“ I warn you, I am just beginning! If there is in your hearts a vestige of love for your country, love for humanity, love for justice, listen carefully... I know that the regime will try to suppress the truth by all possible means; I know that there will be a conspiracy to bury me in oblivion. But my voice will not be stifled – it will rise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it... Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me. ”
While he was being held at the prison for political activists on Isla de Pinos, he continued to plot Batista's overthrow, planning upon release to reorganize and train in Mexico.[3] After having served less than two years, he was released in May 1955 due to a general amnesty from Batista who was under political pressure, and went as planned to Mexico.[26]
26th of July Movement
Main article: 26th of July Movement
Once in Mexico, Castro reunited with other Cuban exiles and founded the 26th of July Movement, named after the date of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks. The goal remained the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. Castro had learned from the Moncada experience that new tactics were needed if Batista's forces were to be defeated. This time, the plan was to use underground guerrilla tactics, at that time a form of combat unknown in Latin America.[3]
In Mexico Castro met Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a proponent of guerrilla warfare. Guevara joined the group of rebels and became an important force in shaping Castro's evolving political beliefs. Guevara's observations of the misery of the poor in Latin America had already convinced him that the only solution lay in violent revolution.
Since regular contacts with a KGB agent named Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov in Mexico City had not resulted in the hoped for weapon supply,[27] they decided to go to the United States to gather personnel and funds from Cubans living there, including Carlos Prío Socarrás, the elected Cuban president deposed by Batista in 1952. Back in Mexico, the group trained under a Spanish Civil War Veteran, Cuban-born Alberto Bayo[25] who had fled to Mexico after Francisco Franco's victory in Spain. On November 26, 1956, Castro and his group of 81 followers, mostly Cuban exiles, set out from Tuxpan Mexico aboard the yacht Granma. for the purpose of starting a rebellion in Cuba.[28]
The rebels landed at Playa Las Coloradas close to Los Cayuelos near the eastern city of Manzanillo on December 2, 1956. In short order, most of Castro's men were killed, dispersed, or taken prisoner by Batista's forces.[28] While the exact number is in dispute, it is agreed that no more than twenty of the original eighty-two men survived the bloody encounters with the Cuban army and succeeded in fleeing to the Sierra Maestra mountains.[29] The group of survivors included Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos. Those who survived were aided by people in the countryside. They regrouped in the Sierra Maestra in Oriente province and organized a column under Fidel Castro's command.
From their encampment in the Sierra Maestra mountains, the 26th of July Movement waged a guerrilla war against the Batista government. In the cities and major towns also, resistance groups were organizing until underground groups were everywhere. The strongest was in Santiago formed by Frank País.[30][31]
In the summer of 1955, País’s organization merged with the 26th of July Movement of Castro. As Castro's movement gained popular support in the cities and countryside, it grew to over eight hundred men. In mid-1957 Castro gave Che Guevara command of a second column. A journalist, Herbert Matthews from the New York Times, came to interview him in the Sierra Maestra, attracting interest to Castro's cause in the United States. The New York Times front page stories by Matthews presented Castro as a romantic and appealing revolutionary, bearded and dressed in rumpled fatigues.[32][33] Castro and Matthews were followed by the TV crew of Andrew Saint George, said to be a CIA contact person.[34] Through television, Castro's rudimentary command of the English language and charismatic presence enabled him to appeal directly to a U.S. audience.
Operation Verano
Main article: Operation Verano
Fidel Castro in his days as a guerrilla
Fidel Castro in his days as a guerrilla
In May 1958, Batista launched Operation Verano aiming to crush Castro and other anti-government groups. It was called "la Ofensiva" by the rebels (Alarcón Ramírez,1997). Although on paper heavily outnumbered, Castro's guerrilla forces scored a series of victories, largely aided by mass desertions from Batista's army of poorly trained and uncommitted young conscripts. During the Battle of La Plata, Castro's forces defeated an entire battalion. While pro-Castro Cuban sources later emphasized the role of Castro's guerrilla forces in these battles, other groups and leaders were also involved, such as escopeteros (poorly-armed irregulars). During the Battle of Las Mercedes, Castro's small army came close to defeat but he managed to pull his troops out by opening up negotiations with General Cantillo while secretly slipping his soldiers out of a trap.
When Operation Verano ended, Castro ordered three columns commanded by Guevara, Jaime Vega and Camilo Cienfuegos to invade central Cuba where they were strongly supported by rebellious elements who had long been operating in the area. One of Castro's columns moved out onto the Cauto Plains. Here, they were supported by Huber Matos, Raúl Castro and others who were operating in the eastern-most part of the province. On the plains, Castro's forces first surrounded the town of Guisa in Granma Province and drove out their enemies, then proceeded to take most of the towns that had been taken by Calixto Garcia in the 1895-1898 Cuban War of Independence.
Battle of Yaguajay
Main article: Battle of Yaguajay
In December 1958, the columns of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos continued their advance through Las Villas province. They succeeded in occupying several towns, and then began preparations for an attack on Santa Clara, the provincial capital. Guevara's fighters launched a fierce assault on the Cuban army surrounding Santa Clara, and a vicious house-to-house battle ensued. They also derailed an armored train which Batista had sent to aid his troops in the city while Cienfuegos won the Battle of Yaguajay. Defeated on all sides, Batista's forces crumbled. The provincial capital was captured after less than a day of fighting on December 31, 1958.
After the loss of Santa Clara and expecting betrayal by his own army, Batista (accompanied by president-elect Andres Rivero Agüero) fled to the Dominican Republic in the early hours of January 1, 1959. They left behind a junta headed by Gen. Eulogio Cantillo, recently the commander in Oriente province, the center of the Castro revolt. The junta immediately selected Dr. Carlos Piedra, the oldest judge of the Supreme Court, as provisional President of Cuba as specified in the Constitution of 1940. Castro refused to accept the selection of Justice Piedra as provisional President and the Supreme Court refused to administer the oath of office to the Justice.[35]
The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize power throughout the island.[35] At the age of 32, Castro had successfully masterminded a classic guerrilla campaign from his headquarters in the Sierra Maestra and ousted Batista.
Assumption of power
Castro arrives in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1959.
Castro arrives in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1959.
On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana.[36] As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described the scene as one of jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of the 26th of July Movement waved on automobiles and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic.[35] Castro called a general strike in protest of the Piedra regime. He demanded that Dr. Urrutia, former judge of the Urgency Court of Santiago de Cuba, be installed as the provisional President instead. The Cane Planters Association of Cuba, speaking on behalf of the island's crucial sugar industry, issued a statement of support for Castro and his movement.[37]
Law professor José Miró Cardona created a new government with himself as prime minister and Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president on January 5. The United States officially recognized the new government two days later.[38] Castro himself arrived in Havana to cheering crowds and assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on January 8.
In February Miró suddenly resigned and on February 16, 1959, Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba.[1]
Friction with the U.S. developed as the new government began expropriating property owned by major U.S. corporations (United Fruit in particular) and announced plans to base the compensation on the artificially low property valuations that the companies themselves had kept to a fraction of their true value so that their taxes would be negligible.[37]
Between 15 April and 26 April, Castro and a delegation of industrial and international representatives visited the U.S. as guests of the Press Club. Castro hired one of the best public relations firms in the United States for a charm offensive visit by Castro and his recently initiated government. Castro answered impertinent questions jokingly and ate hotdogs and hamburgers. His rumpled fatigues and scruffy beard cut a popular figure easily promoted as an authentic hero.[39] He was refused a meeting with President Eisenhower. Rebuffed, he soon joined forces with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.[36]
Years in power
On May 17, 1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership.[40][41]
Fidel Castro addresses delegates of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 1960.
Fidel Castro addresses delegates of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 1960.
As early as July 1959, Castro's intelligence chief Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City.[42] Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster Forján, to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
In February 1960, Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. When the U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon afterward. To the concern of the Eisenhower administration, Cuba began to establish closer ties with the Soviet Union. A variety of pacts were signed between Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, allowing Cuba to receive large amounts of economic and military aid from the USSR. The mould was set. U.S. disappointment with their lack of power in Cuban decision making fueled Castro's fears leading to increasing Cuban dependence on USSR support.
In June 1960, Eisenhower reduced Cuba's sugar import quota by 7,000,000 tons, and in response, Cuba nationalized some $850 million worth of U.S. property and businesses. The revolutionary government grabbed control of the nation by nationalizing industry, expropriating property owned by Cubans and non-Cubans alike, collectivizing agriculture, and enacting policies which would benefit the population. While popular among the poor, these policies alienated many former supporters of the revolution among the Cuban middle and upper-classes. Over one million Cubans later migrated to the U.S., forming a vocal anti-Castro community in Miami, Florida, actively supported and funded by successive U.S. administrations.
Further information: Cuban-American lobby
By the early autumn of 1960, the U.S. government was engaged in a semi-secret campaign to remove Castro from power.[43]
On January 3, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower broke off ties with Cuba, saying that Fidel Castro had provoked him once too often.[44]
In April 1961, the U.S. government unsuccessfully attempted to depose Castro from power by supporting an armed force of Cuban exiles to retake the island. This attempt is known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Bay of Pigs
Main article: Bay of Pigs Invasion
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the U.S. began planning to overthrow the government of Cuba in October 1959.[45] On April 17, 1961, approximately 1,400 members of a CIA-trained Cuban exile force landed at the Bay of Pigs, while the U.S. publicly denied any involvement.
Documents released by the National Security Archive show that the CIA expected the Cuban people to welcome a U.S.-sponsored invasion, spontaneously rising up against the Castro regime. It expected Cuban military and police forces to refuse to fight against the CIA's 1,400-man mercenary invasion force.[46] President Kennedy cancelled several planned bombing sorties designed to cripple the entire Cuban Air Force.[47]
The Cubans repelled the invaders, killing many and capturing a thousand. On May 1, 1961, as hundreds of thousands celebrating May Day roared their approval, Castro announced:
“ The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government. ... If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like capitalism.[48] ”
In a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, 1961, Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was adopting Communism. On February 7, 1962, the U.S. imposed an embargo against Cuba. This embargo was broadened during 1962 and 1963, including a general travel ban for American tourists.[49]
Many theories are offered for the failure of the U.S. operation. Some argue that the Americans misjudged Cuban support for Castro.[50] They had believed the testimonies of the Cuban exiles, who told them that Castro was not well supported by the Cuban people. In the weeks prior to the invasion, the Castro regime had rounded up tens of thousands of Cubans, holing them up in sports stadiums across the island in order to quash discontent on the island and prevent its adversaries from joining exile forces. The idea that Cubans would rise up against Castro, while possibly correct judging by the discontent reported to be growing on the island at the time, never materialized, perhaps as a result of the incarcerations and reprisals that would likely ensue. Also, the CIA-trained force of 1,400, armed only with light arms, was greatly outnumbered by a Cuban force of tens of thousands armed with tanks and artillery.[citation needed] In addition, the covert placement of dozens of Cuban intelligence officials in the invasion force gave the Cuban government detailed information on the operation.[51]
Cuban Missile Crisis
Main article: Cuban Missile Crisis
Tensions between Cuba and the U.S. heightened during the 1962 missile crisis, which nearly brought the US and the USSR into nuclear conflict. Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to a possible U.S. invasion and justified the move in response to US missile deployment in Turkey. After consultations with his military advisors, he met with a Cuban delegation led by Raúl Castro in July in order to work out the specifics. It was agreed to deploy Soviet R-12 MRBMs on Cuban soil; however, American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance discovered the construction of the missile installations on 15 October 1962 before the weapons had actually been deployed. The US government viewed the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Key West as an aggressive act and a threat to US security. As a result, the US publicly announced its discovery on 22 October 1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island. Nikolai Sergevich Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate[52] and the Soviet KGB deputy station chief in Warsaw, was the translator Castro used for contact with the Russians during this period.
In a personal letter to Khrushchev dated 27 October 1962, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Cuba were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response.[53] Soviet field commanders in Cuba were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US commitment not to invade Cuba and an understanding that the US would remove American MRBMs targeting the Soviet Union from Turkey and Italy, a measure that the US implemented a few months later. The missile swap was never publicized because the Kennedy Administration demanded secrecy in order to preserve NATO relations and protect Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections.
Assassination attempts
Fabian Escalante, who was long tasked with protecting the life of Castro has calculated the exact number of assassination schemes and/or attempts by the CIA to be 638. Some such attempts have included an exploding cigar, a fungal-infected scuba-diving suit, and a mafia-style shooting. Some of these plots are depicted in a documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro.[54] One of these attempts was by his ex-lover Marita Lorenz whom he met in 1959. She subsequently agreed to aid the CIA and attempted to smuggle a jar of cold cream containing poison pills into his room. When Castro realised, he reportedly gave her a gun and told her to kill him but her nerve failed.[55] Castro once said in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."
According to the Family Jewels documents declassified by the CIA in 2007, one such assassination attempt before the Bay of Pigs invasion involved Johnny Roselli and Al Capone's successor in the Chicago Outfit, Salvatore Giancana and his right-hand man Santos Trafficante. It was personally authorized by US attorney general Robert Kennedy [56].
Giancana and Miami Syndicate leader Santos Trafficante were contacted in September 1960 about the possibility of an assassination attempt by a go-between from the CIA, Robert Maheu, after Maheu had contacted Johnny Roselli, a member of the Las Vegas Syndicate and Giancana's number-two man. Maheu had presented himself as a representative of numerous international business firms in Cuba that were being expropriated by Castro. He offered $150,000 for the "removal" of Castro through this operation (the documents suggest that neither Roselli nor Giancana and Trafficante accepted any sort of payments for the job). According to the files, it was Giancana who suggested using a series of poison pills that could be used to doctor Castro's food and drink. These pills were given by the CIA to Giancana's nominee Juan Orta, whom Giancana presented as being an official in the Cuban government who was also in the pay of gambling interests, and who did have access to Castro. After a series of six attempts to introduce the poison into Castro's food, Orta abruptly demanded to be let out of the mission, handing over the job to another, unnamed participant. Later, a second attempt was mounted through Giancana and Trafficante using Dr. Anthony Verona, the leader of the Cuban Exile Junta, who had, according to Trafficante, become "disaffected with the apparent ineffectual progress of the Junta". Verona requested $10,000 in expenses and $1,000 worth of communications equipment. However, it is unknown how far the second attempt went, as the entire program was cancelled shortly thereafter due to the launching of the Bay of Pigs invasion. [57] [58] [59]
Resulting from these numerous assassination attempts, Castro sent out warnings to the US government to stop the attempts or face retaliatory actions. This resulted in a theory stating that Cuba was behind the Kennedy assassination.
See also: Kennedy assassination theories
Embargo
Main article: United States embargo against Cuba
This article may need to be rewritten.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page.
The embargo, which Castro denounced, has been in place for 40 years.[60] A former Prime Minister of Spain had written that the embargo was Castro's greatest ally, as it perpetuated the government; he asserted that if it were lifted, Castro would lose his presidency in three months[61] and some well known people have condemned the embargo, for humanitarian reasons, including Pope John Paul II (in 1998 and 2005),[62][63] and Steven Spielberg.[64]
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was left bankrupt and isolated by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Eighty-five percent of its markets had disappeared, along with the subsidies and trade agreements that had supported its economy. The situation became desperate. Daily life was a struggle with extended gas and water outages, severe power shortages, and dwindling food supplies available for rationing.[65] By 1994, the island's economy, which had survived over 30 years of sanctions by the US, teetered on the brink of collapse. Cuba was plunged into what was called the "Special Period" during which there were shortages of everything. To survive Cuba legalized the US dollar, turned to tourism, and encouraged the transfer of remittances in US dollars from Cubans living in the USA to their relatives on the Island. Even as late as 2004, Castro was forced to shut down 118 factories, including steel plants, sugar mills and paper processors for the month of October to deal with a crisis caused by fuel shortages.[66] However Castro continues to exercise flexibility in coping with these crises. In 2005 thousands of Cuban doctors were sent to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.[67]
After the massive damage caused by Hurricane Michelle in 2001, Castro proposed a one-time cash purchase of food from the U.S. after declining a U.S. offer of humanitarian aid.[68] The U.S. authorized the shipment of food in 2001, the first since the embargo was imposed in 1962.[69]
Foreign relations
Main article: Foreign relations of Cuba
Soviet Union
Fidel Castro embracing former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Fidel Castro embracing former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Following the establishment of diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military and economic aid. Castro was able to build a formidable military force with the help of Soviet equipment and military advisors. The KGB kept in close touch with Havana, and Castro tightened Communist Party control over all levels of government, the media, and the educational system, while developing a Soviet-style internal police force.
Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union caused something of a split between him and Guevara, who took a more pro-Chinese view following ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Maoist CPC. [citation needed] In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.
On 23 August 1968, Castro made a public gesture to the USSR that caused the Soviet leadership to reaffirm their support for him. Two days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to repress the Prague Spring, Castro took to the airwaves and publicly denounced the Czech rebellion. Castro warned the Cuban people about the Czechoslovakian 'counterrevolutionaries', who "were moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble."[70] In return for his public backing of the invasion, at a time when many Soviet allies were deeming the invasion an infringement of Czechoslovakia's sovereignty, the Soviets bailed out the Cuban economy with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports.
In 1971, despite an Organization of American States convention that no nation in the Western Hemisphere would have a relationship with Cuba (the only exception being Mexico, which had refused to adopt that convention), Castro took a month-long visit to Chile, following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. The visit, in which Castro participated actively in the internal politics of the country, holding massive rallies and giving public advice to Salvador Allende, was seen by those on the political right as proof to support their view that "The Chilean Way to Socialism" was an effort to put Chile on the same path as Cuba.[71]
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, the comradely relationship between Havana and Moscow was strained by Gorbachev's implementation of economic and political reforms in the USSR. "We are witnessing sad things in other socialist countries, very sad things," lamented Castro in November 1989, in reference to the changes that were sweeping such communist allies as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland.[72] The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had an immediate and devastating effect on Cuba.
Other countries
Schafik Handal, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Evo Morales, in Havana in 2004.
Schafik Handal, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Evo Morales, in Havana in 2004.
On November 4, 1975, Castro ordered the deployment of Cuban troops to Angola in order to aid the Marxist MPLA-ruled government against the South African-backed UNITA opposition forces. Moscow aided the Cuban initiative with the USSR engaging in a massive airlift of Cuban forces into Angola. On Cuba's role in Angola, Nelson Mandela is said to have remarked "Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice."[73] Cuban troops were also sent to Marxist Ethiopia to assist Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden War with Somalia in 1977. In addition, Castro extended support to Marxist Revolutionary movements throughout Latin America, such as aiding the Sandinistas in overthrowing the Somoza government in Nicaragua in 1979. It has been claimed by the Carthage Foundation-funded Center for a Free Cuba[74] that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Cuban military actions abroad.[75]
Cuba and Panama have restored diplomatic ties after breaking them off in 2005 when Panama's former president pardoned four Cuban exiles accused of attempting to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. The foreign minister of each country re-established official diplomatic relations in Havana by signing a document describing a spirit of fraternity that has long linked both nations.[76] Cuba, once shunned by many of its Latin American neighbours, now has full diplomatic relations with all but Costa Rica and El Salvador.[76]
Although the relationship between Cuba and Mexico remains strained, each side appears to make attempts to improve it. In 1998, Fidel Castro apologized for remarks he made about Mickey Mouse which led Mexico to recall its ambassador from Havana. He said he intended no offense when he said earlier that Mexican children would find it easier to name Disney characters than to recount key figures in Mexican history. Rather, he said, his words were meant to underscore the cultural dominance of the US.[77] Mexican president Vicente Fox apologized to Fidel Castro in 2002 over allegations by Castro that Fox forced him to leave a United Nations summit in Mexico so that he would not be in the presence of President Bush, who also attended.[78]
At a summit meeting of sixteen Caribbean countries in 1998, Castro called for regional unity, saying that only strengthened cooperation between Caribbean countries would prevent their domination by rich nations in a global economy.[79] Caribbean nations have embraced Cuba's Fidel Castro while accusing the US of breaking trade promises. Castro, until recently a regional outcast, has been increasing grants and scholarships to the Caribbean countries, while US aid has dropped 25% over the past five years.[80] Cuba has opened four additional embassies in the Caribbean Community including: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Suriname, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This development makes Cuba the only country to have embassies in all independent countries of the Caribbean Community.[81]
In the poorest areas of Latin America and Africa, Castro is seen as a hero, the leader of the Third World, and the enemy of the wealthy and greedy.[82] On a visit to South Africa in 1998 he was warmly received by President Nelson Mandela.[83] President Mandela gave Castro South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope.[84] Last December Castro fulfilled his promise of sending 100 medical aid workers to Botswana, according to the Botswana presidency. These workers play an important role in Botswana's war against HIV/AIDS. According to Anna Vallejera, Cuba's first-ever Ambassador to Botswana, the health workers are part of her country's ongoing commitment to proactively assist in the global war against HIV/AIDS,[85]
The president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez is a grand admirer of his and Bolivian president Evo Morales called him the "Grandfather". In Harlem, he is seen as an icon because of his historic visit with Malcolm X in 1960 at the Hotel Theresa.[86]
Castro and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Castro and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Castro was known to be a friend of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and was an honorary pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral in October 2000. They had continued their friendship after Trudeau left office until his death. Canada became one of the first American allies to openly trade with Cuba. Cuba still has a good relationship with Canada. In 1998, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arrived in Cuba to meet President Castro and highlight their close ties. He is the first Canadian government leader to visit the island since Pierre Trudeau was in Havana in 1976.[87]
In December 2001, European Union representatives described their political dialogue with Cuba as back on track after a weekend of talks in Havana. The EU praised Cuba's willingness to discuss questions of human rights. Cuba is the only Latin American country without an economic co-operation agreement with the EU. However, trade with individual European countries remains strong since the US trade embargo on Cuba leaves the market free from American rivals.[88] In 2005, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel ended his visit to Cuba optimistic that relations with the communist state will become stronger. The EU is Cuba's largest trading partner. Cuba's imprisonment of 75 dissidents and the execution of three hijackers have strained diplomatic relations. However, the EU commissioner was impressed with Fidel Castro's willingness to discuss these concerns, although he received no commitments from Castro. Cuba does not admit to holding political prisoners, seeing them rather as mercenaries in the pay of the United States.[89]
Succession issues
According to Article 94 of the Cuban Constitution, the First Vice President of the Council of State assumes presidential duties upon the illness or death of the president. At the moment (early 2007), that is Raúl Castro.
Due to the issue of presidential succession and Castro's longevity, there have long been rumors, speculation and hoaxing about Castro's health and demise. In 1998 there were reports that he had a serious brain disease, later discredited.[90] In June 2001, he apparently fainted during a seven-hour speech under the Caribbean sun.[91] Later that day he finished the speech, walking buoyantly into the television studios in his military fatigues, joking with journalists.[92]
In January 2004, Luis Eduardo Garzón, the mayor of Bogotá, said that Castro "seemed very sick to me" following a meeting with him during a vacation in Cuba.[93] In May 2004, Castro's physician denied that his health was failing, and speculated that he would live to be 140 years old. Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein said that the "press is always speculating about something, that he had a heart attack once, that he had cancer, some neurological problem", but maintained that Castro was in good health.[94]
On October 20, 2004, Castro tripped and fell following a speech he gave at a rally, breaking his kneecap and fracturing his right arm.[95] He was able to recover his ability to walk and publicly demonstrated this two months later.[96]
Due to his large role in Cuba, his well-being has become a continual source of speculation both on and off the island as he has grown older. The CIA has long been interested in Castro's health.[97]
In 2005, the CIA said it thought Castro had Parkinson's disease.[98][99] Castro denied such allegations, while also citing the example of Pope John Paul II in saying that he would not fear the disease.[100]
Illness and transfer of duties
See also: 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties
Castro's appearance on Cubavision 28 October 2006
Castro's appearance on Cubavision 28 October 2006
On July 31, 2006, Castro delegated his duties as President of the Council of state, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and the post of commander in chief of the armed forces to his brother Raúl Castro. This transfer of duties has been described as temporary while Fidel recovers from surgery he underwent due to an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding".[101] Fidel Castro was too ill to attend the nationwide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Granma boat landing on December 2, 2006, which also became his belated 80th birthday celebrations. Castro's non-appearance fueled reports that he has terminal pancreatic cancer and was refusing treatment,[102] but on December 17, 2006 Cuban officials stated that Castro has no terminal illness and will eventually return to his public duties.[103][104]
While Cuba continues to deny U.S.-made claims that Castro is suffering from a terminal cancer, on December 24, 2006, Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya reported that Spanish surgeon José Luis García Sabrido has been flown to Cuba on a plane charted by the Cuban government. Dr. García Sabrido is an intestinal expert who further specializes in the treatment of cancer. The plane that Dr. García Sabrido's traveled in also was reported to be carrying a large quantity of advanced medical equipment.[105][106] On December 26, 2006, shortly after returning to Madrid, Dr. García Sabrido held a news conference in which he answered questions about Castro's health. He stated that "He does not have cancer, he has a problem with his digestive system," and added, "His condition is stable. He is recovering from a very serious operation. It is not planned that he will undergo another operation for the moment."[107] Although most Cubans acknowledge that they are aware Castro is seriously ill, most also seem worried about a future without Castro.[108]
On January 16, 2007 the Spanish newspaper El País, citing two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Marañón hospital —who employs Dr. García Sabrido— in Madrid, reported Castro was in "very grave" condition, having trouble cicatrizing, after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection caused by a severe case of diverticulitis. However, Dr. García Sibrido told CNN that he was not the source of the report and that "any statement that doesn't come directly from [Castro's] medical team is without foundation."[109] Also, a Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment, while White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report appeared to be "just sort of a roundup of previous health reports. We've got nothing new."[110][111][112] On 30 January 2007, Cuban television and the paper Juventud Rebelde showed fresh video and photos from a meeting between Castro and Hugo Chavez said to have taken place the previous day.[113][114]
In mid-February 2007 it was reported by the Associated Press that Acting President Raul Castro had said that Fidel Castro's health was improving and he was taking part in all important issues facing the government. "He's consulted on the most important questions," Raul Castro said of Fidel. "He doesn't interfere, but he knows about everything."[115] On 27 February 2007, Reuters reported that Fidel Castro had called into Aló Presidente, a live radio talk show hosted by Hugo Chávez, and chatted with him for thirty minutes during which time he sounded "much healthier and more lucid" than he had on any of the audio and video tapes released since his surgery in July. Castro reportedly told Chávez, "I am gaining ground. I feel I have more energy, more strength, more time to study," adding with a chuckle, "I have become a student again." Later in the conversation (transcript in Spanish; audio) , he made reference to the fall of the world stock markets that had occurred earlier in the day and remarked that it was proof of his contention that the world capitalist system is in crisis.[116]
Reports of improvements in his condition continued to circulate throughout March and early April. On 13 April 2007, Chávez was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that Castro has "almost totally recovered" from his illness. That same day, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Roque confirmed during a press conference in Vietnam that Castro had improved steadily and had resumed some of his leadership responsibilities.[117] On 21 April 2007 the official newspaper Granma reported that Castro had met for over an hour with Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party who was visiting Havana. Photographs of their meeting showed the Cuban president looking healthier than he had in any previously released since his surgery.[118]
As a comment on Castro’s recovery, U.S. President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away." Hearing about this, Castro, who is an atheist, ironically replied: "Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and the plans of other presidents who ordered my assassination: the good Lord protected me."[119]
Human rights record
Main article: Human rights in Cuba
Some Cubans dissidents and political opponents were branded "counterrevolutionaries", "fascists," or "CIA operatives" and imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial;[120][121] many were executed.[122][123] Military Units to Aid Production, or UMAPs, were labor camps established in 1965 which confined "social deviants" including homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses in order to purge "counter-revolutionary" influences from certain segments of the population.[124] These camps were closed in 1968 in response to international outcries and internal political analysis.[125] Castro claims that Cuba does not hold political prisoners, arguing that Cuba is justified because these prisoners are not jailed because of their political beliefs, but have been convicted of "counter-revolutionary" crimes, including bombings.[126] Moreover, he claims opposition to the Cuban government to be illegitimate, and the result of an ongoing conspiracy fostered by Cuban exiles with ties to the United States or the CIA, and with abundant representation and access to the American media[citation needed]. Many Castro supporters also say that Castro's measures are justified to prevent the fall of his government, demonstrably under constant economic and military pressure from the US and allies for more than half a century, whereas his opposition says he uses the United States as an excuse to justify his continuing political control[citation needed].
In 2001, Hallgeir Langeland nominated Fidel Castro for the Nobel Peace Prize for sending medical and engineering aid to developing countries.[127]
Religious beliefs
Castro was raised a Roman Catholic as a child but doesn't practice as one. In Oliver Stone's documentary Comandante, Castro states "I have never been a believer", and has total conviction that there is only one life. A clip of this can be found here. [4] Pope John XXIII excommunicated Castro in 1962 on the basis of a 1949 decree by Pope Pius XII forbidding Catholics from supporting communist governments. The excommunication was aimed at undermining support for Castro among Catholics. For Castro, who had previously renounced his Catholic faith, this was an event of very little consequence, nor was it expected to be otherwise. [citation needed]
In 1992, Castro agreed to loosen restrictions on religion and even permitted church-going Catholics to join the Cuban Communist Party. He began describing his country as "secular" rather than "atheist".[128] Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, the first visit by a reigning pontiff to the island. Castro and the Pope appeared side by side in public on several occasions during the visit. Castro wore a dark blue business suit (in contrast to his fatigues) in his public meetings with the Pope and treated him with reverence and respect.[129] With Castro and other senior Cuban officials in the front row at a mid-morning Mass, the pope delivered a ringing call for pluralism in Cuba. He rejected the materialistic, one-party ideology of the Cuban state. And he said that true liberation "cannot be reduced to its social and political aspects," but must also include "the exercise of freedom of conscience — the basis and foundation of all other human rights." Later in the day, though, the pope also made his most critical reference yet to the American economic embargo of Cuba. At a departure ceremony at José Martí International Airport that evening, he said that Cuba's "material and moral poverty" arises not only from "limitations to fundamental freedoms" and "discouragement of the individual," but also from "restrictive economic measures — unjust and ethically unacceptable — imposed from outside the country."[129] He also criticized widespread abortion[130] in Cuban hospitals and urged Castro to end the government's monopoly on education to allow the return of Catholic schools. A month later Castro condemned the use of abortion as a form of birth control.[131]
In December 1998, Castro formally re-instated Christmas Day as the official celebration it was formerly before the Communist Party abolished it in 1969.[132] Cubans were again allowed to mark Christmas as a holiday and to openly hold religious processions. The Pope sent a telegram to Castro thanking him for restoring Christmas as a public holiday.[133]
Castro attended a Roman Catholic convent blessing in 2003. The purpose of this unprecedented event was to help bless the newly restored convent in Old Havana and to mark the fifth anniversary of the Pope's visit to Cuba.[134]
The senior spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian faith arrived in Cuba in 2004, the first time any Orthodox Patriarch has visited Latin America in the Church's history. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I consecrated a cathedral in Havana and bestowed an honour on Fidel Castro. His aides said that he was responding to the decision of the Cuban Government to build and donate to the Orthodox Christians a tiny Orthodox cathedral in the heart of old Havana.[135]
After the Pope's death in April 2005, an emotional Castro attended a mass in his honor in Havana's cathedral and signed the Pope's condolence book at the Vatican Embassy.[136] He had last visited the cathedral in 1959, 46 years earlier, for the wedding of one of his sisters. Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino led the mass and welcomed Castro, who was dressed in a black suit, expressing his gratitude for the "heartfelt way the death of our Holy Father John Paul II was received (in Cuba)."[137]
Public image
By wearing military-style uniforms and leading mass demonstrations, Castro projects an image of a perpetual revolutionary. He is mostly seen in military attire, but his personal tailor, Merel Van 't Wout, convinced him to occasionally change to a business suit.[138] Castro is often referred to as "Comandante", but is also nicknamed "El Caballo", meaning "The Horse", a label that was first attributed to Cuban entertainer Benny Moré, who on hearing Castro passing in the Havana night with his entourage, shouted out "Here comes the horse!"[139] During the revolutionary campaign, fellow rebels knew Castro as "The Giant".[140] Large throngs of people gather to cheer at Castro's fiery speeches, which typically last for hours. Many details of Castro's private life, particularly involving his family members, are scarce and Castro insists that he does not promote a cult of personality. When asked about the matter in 1985 he replied,
Although we have been dogmatic, we have never preached cult of personality. You will not see a statue of me anywhere, nor a school with my name, nor a street, nor a little town, nor any type of personality cult because we have not taught our people to believe, but to think, to reason out."[141]
There are no streets in Cuba named after Castro, and no statues or peso bills bearing his image.[142] Despite this, Castro was accused by American anarchist Sam Dolgoff of "bask[ing] in the adulation and servility of his subordinates" and "creating a regime built around the cult of the personality functions" encouraging "the illusion that only he and his select group of revolutionaries have earned the right to wield unlimited power over the people of Cuba."[143] Castro has also been described as an example of the rise of a distinct "charismatic leader"[144] common to developing nations, and of encouraging the "personalistic political regime". This theory contends that Castro has maintained power largely through highly visible, charismatic leadership and popular appeals to the Cuban people, though the administration is successful only as long as the leader's charisma lasts.[145]
Personal
Family
Fidel Castro making a speech in Havana in 1978, image by Marcelo Montecino
Fidel Castro making a speech in Havana in 1978, image by Marcelo Montecino
By his first wife Mirta Díaz Balart, Castro has a son named Fidel "Fidelito" Castro Díaz-Balart. Díaz-Balart and Castro were divorced in 1955, and she remarried. After a spell in Madrid, Díaz-Balart reportedly returned to Havana to live with Fidelito and his family.[146] Fidelito grew up in Cuba; for a time, he ran Cuba's atomic-energy commission before being removed from the post by his father.[147] Díaz-Balart's nephews are Republican U.S. Congressmen Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, vocal critics of the Castro government.
Fidel has five other sons by his second wife, Dalia Soto del Valle: Alexis, Alexander, Alejandro, Antonio, and Angel.[147]
While Fidel was married to Mirta, he had an affair with Naty Revuelta resulting in a daughter named Alina Fernández-Revuelta.[147] Alina left Cuba in 1993, disguised as a Spanish tourist,[148] and sought asylum in the United States. She has been a vocal critic of her father's policies.
His sister Juanita Castro has been living in the United States since the early 1960s and was featured in a film documentary by Andy Warhol in 1965.[149]
Wealth
In 2005, American business and financial magazine Forbes listed Castro among the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $550 million. The estimates, which the magazine admitted was "more art than science",[150] claimed that the Cuban leader's personal wealth was nearly double that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, despite anecdotal evidence from diplomats and businessmen that the Cuban leader's personal life was notable for its austerity.[151] This assessment was drawn by making economic estimates of the net worth of Cuba's state-owned companies, and used the assumption that Castro had personal economic control.[152] Forbes magazine later increased the estimates to $900 million, adding rumors of large cash stashes in Switzerland.[151] The magazine offered no proof of this information,[150] and according CBS news, Castro's entry on the rich list was notably brief compared to the amount of information provided on other figures.[150]
Castro, who had considered suing the magazine, responded that the claims were "lies and slander", and that they were part of a US campaign to discredit him.[151] He declared: "If they can prove that I have a bank account abroad, with $900m, with $1m, $500,000, $100,000 or $1 in it, I will resign."[151] President of Cuba's Central Bank, Francisco Soberon, called the claims a "grotesque slander", asserting that money made from various state owned companies is pumped back into the island's economy, "in sectors including health, education, science, internal security, national defense and solidarity projects with other countries."[152]
Maria Werla, a Cuban-American anti-Castro activist, claims that Castro and his loyalists control several billions of dollars in real estate, bank accounts, private estates, yachts and other assets — called “the Comandante's Reserves” — in Europe, Latin America and Asia - and a luxurious lifestyle for the top Cuban leadership.[153] These attempts often must rely on the testimonials of defectors who were close to Castro, and investigators have not been able to give hard evidence of his real worth.[citation needed]
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