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:{{Infobox President| name = Fidel Castro| image = Fidel Castro5 cropped.JPG || order =
President of Cuba of the
Council of State of Cuba and President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba of
Cuba ], 1976
Responsibilities transferred as of
July 31,
2006 ] (First), Juan Almeida Bosque,
Abelardo Colome Ibarra, Carlos Lage Davila,
Esteban Lazo Hernandez, Jose R. Machado Ventura ] || successor = Incumbent| birth_date = | birth_place = Birán, Holguín Province, Cuba ] (divorced 1955)
(2)
Dalia Soto del Valle ] || order2 = List of Prime Ministers of Cuba || term_start2 =
February 16,
1959 ], 1976 ] || successor2 = Office abolished || order3 =
Non-Aligned Movement || term_start3 = September 16,
2006 ] || successor3 = Incumbent |
-->
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is the current President of Cuba of Cuba, though currently with
2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties.
Castro led the
Cuban revolution overthrowing Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Shortly thereafter, Castro was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba of Cuba. Castro became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party
socialist state. In 1976 he became president of the Council of State of Cuba as well as of the
Council of Ministers of Cuba. He also holds the supreme military rank of
Rank and Insignia of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces ("Commander in Chief") of the Military of Cuba.
Castro first attracted attention in Cuban political life through
nationalism 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. 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 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 largely recognized as a dictator, he has not risen to power through open, public elections, and some contend that his rule is illegitimate because the socialist system itself was not established through what is considered to be legal means. Supporters, on the other hand, see Castro as a charismatic leader whose presidential authority has been acquired through legitimate elections.
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 agenda. 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
Eastern bloc. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba's one major Latin American ally, Nicaragua, put Cuba in a precarious spot. However, in recent years, Castro has found new regional allies in Latin America. Latin America Socialist and nationalist figures such as
Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia have been ready allies. Over time, Fidel has become a world icon,{{cite web] (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 expropriation of leading
Economy of Cuba. Opponents claim that these changes have had disastrous consequences and transformed Cuba into a third-world slum, as Cuba's GDP has failed to keep up with countries that were in a similar position during the 1950s despite the generous subsidies of the Soviet Union until the 1990s.Conversely, supporters attribute the U.S. embargo for Cuba's shortcomings, but maintain that Cuba's economy has expanded and grown at a more than acceptable rate since the revolution. In 2006, the Cuban government reported that Cuba achieved 12.5% growth, which included trade and social services as part of GDP estimation; an unusual practice. Excluding those categories, which is the more conventional practice, economic growth is estimated to be at 9.5%.
The expansion of Healthcare of Cuba and Education in Cuba has been a cornerstone of Castro's domestic political program. 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 http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/cubaprecastro21698.html and question the truthfulness of statistics concerning Cuba, despite its republication by the United Nations, World Health Organization, and
Central Intelligence Agency, due to the fact that most of this data is collected, or assisted in the collection, by the Cuban government. Healthy in Cuba, Sick in America? John Stossel Takes on Michael Moore, Examines Government-Run Health Care By MELISSA SCOTT, Sept. 7, 2007.
Under Castro, particularly after the onset of the Special Period created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has experienced a severe housing shortage http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/business/newsid_4643000/4643279.stm and a decline in the quality of its public works.
Aiding a Cuba in Transition: Humanitarian and Practical Considerations on Both Sides of the Florida Straits. Eric Driggs. ASCE 2004.
Moreover, there has been a significant decline in the average caloric intake since the Revolution came to power. http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/14776.htm Due to the lack of low-priced oil from the U.S.S.R., Cuba under Castro has rapidly been converting agriculture away from Soviet-style high mechanization towards "greener" methods of organic farming and urban agriculture in an effort to increase domestic consumption.
On July 31
2006, Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery for diverticulitis, 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties to the First Vice-President, his younger brother Raúl Castro. On June 2, 2007, Castro appeared on Cuban Television with Vietnamese Communist Party Leader
Nong Duc Manh looking somewhat healthier.
Childhood and education
, 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 . Your friend, Fidel Castro."Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on a sugar plantation in Birán, near Mayarí, in the modern-day Holguín Province – then a part of the now-defunct
Oriente. He was the third child born to Ángel Castro y Argiz, a
Galician people 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. Angel Castro was married to another woman, Maria Luisa Argota, Bardach, Ann Louise : Cuba Confidential. p57-59 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 Castro (Cuban revolutionary) and
Raúl Castro, and four sisters: Angelita,
Juanita Castro, 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.Raffy, Serge. 2004 Castro el Desleal. Santillana Ediciones Generales, S.L. Madrid. ISBN 84-03-09508-2Fuentes, Norberto 2005 La Autobiografia de Fidel Castro. Destino Ediciones. ISBN 970-749-001-2 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.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 Jesuit Preparatory School, a
Jesuit school in Havana in 1945.
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., 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." 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".
Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton : Cuba the Pursuit of Freedom p.523-524 Rivalries were so intense that Castro apparently collaborated in an attempt on Masferrer's life during this period, while Masferrer, whose paramilitary group
Les Tigres later became an instrument of state violence under Batista, perennially hunted the younger student seeking violent retribution.Bardach, Ann Louise : Cuba Confidential. p.40
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.
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. 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 Diaz-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
nationalismic 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. Hugh Thomas.
Cuba : The Pursuit of Freedom p532.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.
Cuban Revolution
Attack on 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 Castro, 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. 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 mountains east of Santiago where they were eventually discovered and captured. Although there is disagreement over why Castro and his brother, Raúl Castro, 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. 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. During his trial Castro delivered his famous defense speech
History Will Absolve Me, upholding his rebellious actions and boldly declaring his political views:
While he was being held at the prison for political activists on
Isla de la Juventud, he continued to plot Batista's overthrow, planning upon release to reorganize and train in Mexico. 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.
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.
In Mexico Castro met
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 Leonov in
Mexico City had not resulted in the hoped for weapon supply, 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 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 (yacht). for the purpose of starting a rebellion in Cuba.
The rebels landed at Playa Las Coloradas close to
Los Cayuelos near the eastern city of Manzanillo, Cuba on December 2,
1956. In short order, most of Castro's men were killed, dispersed, or taken prisoner by Batista's forces. 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. 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 military camp 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.
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. Castro and Matthews were followed by the TV crew of Andrew Saint George, said to be a
CIA contact person. Through television, Castro's rudimentary command of the
English language and charismatic presence enabled him to appeal directly to a U.S. audience.
In
1957, Castro also signed the
Manifesto of the Sierra Maestra http://www.chibas.org/raul_chibas_manifiesto.php in which he agreed to which was to call elections under the Electoral Code of 1943 within the first 18 months of his time in power and to restore all of the provisions of the
Constitution of 1940 that had been suspended under Batista. While he took steps to implement some of the measures in the Manifesto upon coming into power, Cuba failed to have elections, the most important part of the program, within the allotted time.
Operation Verano
In May 1958, Batista launched
Operation Verano aiming to crush Castro and other anti-government groups. It was called
La Ofensiva ("The Offensive") 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
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, Cuba, 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
Carlos 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.
The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize power throughout the island. 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
on April 15,
1959.On
January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana. 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.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.
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. 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.
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.
Between
April 15 and April 26, 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. He was refused a meeting with President
Dwight D. Eisenhower. After his visit to the United States, he would go on to join forces with the Soviet leader,
Nikita Khrushchev.
Years in power
On
May 17 1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform Law, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership.{{cite web|url=http://revolutions.truman.edu/cuba/aboutme.htm|title=First Agrarian Reform Law (1959)|publisher=|accessdate=2006-08-29-->
As early as July 1959, Castro's intelligence chief
Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City. Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including
Enrique Líster, 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 Premier of the Soviet Union
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
nationalization 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, Florida, actively supported and funded by successive U.S. administrations.
By the early autumn of 1960, the U.S. government was engaged in a semi-secret campaign to remove Castro from power.
On
January 3, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower broke off ties with Cuba, saying that Fidel Castro had provoked him once too often.
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
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the U.S. began planning to overthrow the government of Cuba in October 1959. 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.{{cite web ] | url = http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/press3.html | title = Bay of Pigs documents show CIA expected uprising against Castro, or military support | format = | work = | pages = | publisher = The National Security Archive | language = | accessdate = 2006-05-18| accessyear = --> President Kennedy cancelled several planned bombing sorties designed to cripple the entire Cuban Air Force.
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:
-->In a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, 1961, Castro declared that he was a Marxism-Leninism and that Cuba was adopting Communism. On
February 7, 1962, the U.S. imposed an United States embargo against Cuba. This embargo was broadened during 1962 and 1963, including a general travel ban for American tourists.
Many theories are offered for the failure of the U.S. operation. Some argue that the Americans misjudged Cuban support for Castro. 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. In addition, the covert placement of dozens of Cuban intelligence officials in the invasion force gave the Cuban government detailed information on the operation.
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
October 15, 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
October 22,
1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island. Nikolai Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate 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 October 27,
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. 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.{{cite web] 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 realized, he reportedly gave her a gun and told her to kill him but her nerve failed.{{cite news]|date= 25 Nov - 1 Dec 2006--> Castro once said in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic Games event, I would win the gold medal."
According to the Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency) 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 then US attorney general Robert Kennedy January 4, 1975 memorandum of conversation between President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, made available by the
National Security Archive, June 2007 .
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. Holland, Steve and Andy Sullivan. "CIA Tried to get Mafia to kill Castro: documents". Reuters News Service, June 26, 2007. "Family Jewels" Archive, pages 12-19 Johnson, Alex. "CIA opens the book on a shady past." MSNBC, June 26, 2007
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
John F. Kennedy assassination.
Embargo
The embargo, which Castro denounced, has been in place for 40 years. 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 and some well known people have condemned the embargo, for humanitarian reasons, including Pope John Paul II (in 1998 and 2005), and
Steven Spielberg.
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.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, Cuba 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. 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.{{cite news | last = Morris
| first = Ruth
| year = 2005
| month = [18 December
| url = http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sun_sentinel/access/943180711.html?dids=943180711:943180711&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Dec+18%2C+2005&author=Ruth+Morris+Havana+Bureau&pub=South+Florida+Sun+-+Sentinel&edition=&startpage=1.A&desc=CUBA%27S+DOCTORS+RESUSCITATE+ECONOMY+AID+MISSIONS+MAKE+MONEY%2C+NOT+JUST+ALLIES
| title = Cuba's Doctors Resuscitate Economy Aid Missions Make Money, Not Just Allies
| publisher = Sun-Sentinel.com
|accessdate=2006-12-28
-->
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. The U.S. authorized the shipment of food in 2001, the first since the embargo was imposed in 1962.
Foreign relations
Soviet Union
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. In 1966, Guevara left for
Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.
On August 23, 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
imperialism". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble." 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.
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. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had an immediate and devastating effect on Cuba.
Other countries
,
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 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-ruled government against the South African-backed National Union for Total Independence of Angola 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." 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 Anastasio Somoza Debayle government in Nicaragua in 1979. It has been claimed by the Carthage Foundation-funded Center for a Free Cuba that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Cuban military actions abroad.
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. Cuba, once shunned by many of its Latin American neighbours, now has full diplomatic relations with all but Costa Rica and El Salvador.
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. Mexican president
Vicente Fox apologized to Fidel Castro in 2002 over statements by Castro, who had taped their telephone conversation, to the effect 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. On a visit to South Africa in 1998 he was warmly received by President Nelson Mandela. President Mandela gave Castro South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope. 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,
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.
Prime Minister of Canada 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 Americas 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.
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 wi
:{{Infobox President| name = Fidel Castro| image = Fidel Castro5 cropped.JPG || order = President of Cuba of the
Council of State of Cuba and President of the
Council of Ministers of Cuba of
Cuba ],
1976Responsibilities transferred as of
July 31,
2006 ] (First), Juan Almeida Bosque,
Abelardo Colome Ibarra,
Carlos Lage Davila,
Esteban Lazo Hernandez, Jose R. Machado Ventura ] || successor = Incumbent| birth_date = | birth_place = Birán,
Holguín Province, Cuba ] (divorced 1955)
(2) Dalia Soto del Valle ] || order2 =
List of Prime Ministers of Cuba || term_start2 = February 16,
1959 ], 1976 ] || successor2 = Office abolished || order3 =
Non-Aligned Movement || term_start3 = September 16, 2006 ] || successor3 = Incumbent |
-->
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is the current
President of Cuba of Cuba, though currently with
2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties.
Castro led the
Cuban revolution overthrowing
Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Shortly thereafter, Castro was sworn in as the
Prime Minister of Cuba of Cuba. Castro became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, and led the transformation of Cuba into a
one-party socialist state. In 1976 he became president of the
Council of State of Cuba as well as of the Council of Ministers of Cuba. He also holds the supreme military rank of
Rank and Insignia of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces ("Commander in Chief") of the
Military of Cuba.
Castro first attracted attention in Cuban political life through nationalism 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. 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 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 largely recognized as a
dictator, he has not risen to power through open, public elections, and some contend that his rule is illegitimate because the socialist system itself was not established through what is considered to be legal means. Supporters, on the other hand, see Castro as a charismatic leader whose presidential authority has been acquired through legitimate elections.
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 agenda. 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
Eastern bloc. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba's one major Latin American ally, Nicaragua, put Cuba in a precarious spot. However, in recent years, Castro has found new regional allies in Latin America.
Latin America Socialist and nationalist figures such as
Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia have been ready allies. Over time, Fidel has become a world icon,{{cite web] (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 expropriation of leading
Economy of Cuba. Opponents claim that these changes have had disastrous consequences and transformed Cuba into a third-world slum, as Cuba's GDP has failed to keep up with countries that were in a similar position during the 1950s despite the generous subsidies of the Soviet Union until the 1990s.Conversely, supporters attribute the U.S. embargo for Cuba's shortcomings, but maintain that Cuba's economy has expanded and grown at a more than acceptable rate since the revolution. In 2006, the Cuban government reported that Cuba achieved 12.5% growth, which included trade and social services as part of GDP estimation; an unusual practice. Excluding those categories, which is the more conventional practice, economic growth is estimated to be at 9.5%.
The expansion of Healthcare of Cuba and
Education in Cuba has been a cornerstone of Castro's domestic political program. 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 http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/cubaprecastro21698.html and question the truthfulness of statistics concerning Cuba, despite its republication by the United Nations,
World Health Organization, and
Central Intelligence Agency, due to the fact that most of this data is collected, or assisted in the collection, by the Cuban government. Healthy in Cuba, Sick in America? John Stossel Takes on Michael Moore, Examines Government-Run Health Care By MELISSA SCOTT, Sept. 7, 2007.
Under Castro, particularly after the onset of the Special Period created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has experienced a severe housing shortage http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/business/newsid_4643000/4643279.stm and a decline in the quality of its public works.
Aiding a Cuba in Transition: Humanitarian and Practical Considerations on Both Sides of the Florida Straits. Eric Driggs. ASCE 2004.
Moreover, there has been a significant decline in the average caloric intake since the Revolution came to power. http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/14776.htm Due to the lack of low-priced oil from the U.S.S.R., Cuba under Castro has rapidly been converting agriculture away from Soviet-style high mechanization towards "greener" methods of organic farming and urban agriculture in an effort to increase domestic consumption.
On
July 31 2006, Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery for diverticulitis, 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties to the First Vice-President, his younger brother Raúl Castro. On June 2, 2007, Castro appeared on Cuban Television with Vietnamese Communist Party Leader Nong Duc Manh looking somewhat healthier.
Childhood and education
, 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 . Your friend, Fidel Castro."Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on a sugar plantation in Birán, near Mayarí, in the modern-day Holguín Province – then a part of the now-defunct Oriente. He was the third child born to
Ángel Castro y Argiz, a Galician people 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. Angel Castro was married to another woman, Maria Luisa Argota, Bardach, Ann Louise : Cuba Confidential. p57-59 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 Castro (Cuban revolutionary) and Raúl Castro, and four sisters: Angelita,
Juanita Castro, 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.Raffy, Serge. 2004 Castro el Desleal. Santillana Ediciones Generales, S.L. Madrid. ISBN 84-03-09508-2Fuentes, Norberto 2005 La Autobiografia de Fidel Castro. Destino Ediciones. ISBN 970-749-001-2 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.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 Jesuit Preparatory School, a
Jesuit school in Havana in 1945.
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.,
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." 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".Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton : Cuba the Pursuit of Freedom p.523-524 Rivalries were so intense that Castro apparently collaborated in an attempt on Masferrer's life during this period, while Masferrer, whose paramilitary group
Les Tigres later became an instrument of state violence under Batista, perennially hunted the younger student seeking violent retribution.Bardach, Ann Louise : Cuba Confidential. p.40
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.
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. 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 Diaz-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
nationalismic 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. Hugh Thomas.
Cuba : The Pursuit of Freedom p532.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.
Cuban Revolution
Attack on 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 Castro, 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. 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 mountains east of Santiago where they were eventually discovered and captured. Although there is disagreement over why Castro and his brother,
Raúl Castro, 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. 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. During his trial Castro delivered his famous defense speech
History Will Absolve Me, upholding his rebellious actions and boldly declaring his political views:
While he was being held at the prison for political activists on
Isla de la Juventud, he continued to plot Batista's overthrow, planning upon release to reorganize and train in Mexico. 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.
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.
In Mexico Castro met
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 Leonov in
Mexico City had not resulted in the hoped for weapon supply, 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 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 (yacht). for the purpose of starting a rebellion in Cuba.
The rebels landed at Playa Las Coloradas close to
Los Cayuelos near the eastern city of Manzanillo, Cuba on December 2,
1956. In short order, most of Castro's men were killed, dispersed, or taken prisoner by Batista's forces. 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. 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
military camp 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.
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. Castro and Matthews were followed by the TV crew of Andrew Saint George, said to be a CIA contact person. Through television, Castro's rudimentary command of the English language and charismatic presence enabled him to appeal directly to a U.S. audience.
In 1957, Castro also signed the
Manifesto of the Sierra Maestra http://www.chibas.org/raul_chibas_manifiesto.php in which he agreed to which was to call elections under the
Electoral Code of 1943 within the first 18 months of his time in power and to restore all of the provisions of the
Constitution of 1940 that had been suspended under Batista. While he took steps to implement some of the measures in the Manifesto upon coming into power, Cuba failed to have elections, the most important part of the program, within the allotted time.
Operation Verano
In May 1958, Batista launched
Operation Verano aiming to crush Castro and other anti-government groups. It was called
La Ofensiva ("The Offensive") 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
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, Cuba, 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 Carlos 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.
The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize power throughout the island. 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
on April 15, 1959.On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana. 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.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.
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. 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.
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.
Between April 15 and April 26, 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. He was refused a meeting with President
Dwight D. Eisenhower. After his visit to the United States, he would go on to join forces with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.
Years in power
On May 17
1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform Law, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership.{{cite web|url=http://revolutions.truman.edu/cuba/aboutme.htm|title=First Agrarian Reform Law (1959)|publisher=|accessdate=2006-08-29-->
As early as July 1959, Castro's intelligence chief
Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City. Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster, 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 Premier of the Soviet Union 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
nationalization 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, Florida, actively supported and funded by successive U.S. administrations.
By the early autumn of 1960, the U.S. government was engaged in a semi-secret campaign to remove Castro from power.
On January 3,
1961, President Dwight Eisenhower broke off ties with Cuba, saying that Fidel Castro had provoked him once too often.
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
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the U.S. began planning to overthrow the government of Cuba in October 1959. 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.{{cite web ] | url = http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/press3.html | title = Bay of Pigs documents show CIA expected uprising against Castro, or military support | format = | work = | pages = | publisher = The National Security Archive | language = | accessdate = 2006-05-18| accessyear = --> President Kennedy cancelled several planned bombing sorties designed to cripple the entire Cuban Air Force.
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:
-->In a nationally broadcast speech on
December 2, 1961, Castro declared that he was a
Marxism-Leninism and that Cuba was adopting
Communism. On February 7,
1962, the U.S. imposed an United States embargo against Cuba. This embargo was broadened during 1962 and 1963, including a general travel ban for American tourists.
Many theories are offered for the failure of the U.S. operation. Some argue that the Americans misjudged Cuban support for Castro. 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. In addition, the covert placement of dozens of Cuban intelligence officials in the invasion force gave the Cuban government detailed information on the operation.
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 October 15, 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 October 22,
1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island. Nikolai Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate 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 October 27, 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. 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.{{cite web] 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 realized, he reportedly gave her a gun and told her to kill him but her nerve failed.{{cite news]|date= 25 Nov - 1 Dec 2006--> Castro once said in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic Games event, I would win the gold medal."
According to the Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency) 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 then
US attorney general Robert Kennedy January 4, 1975 memorandum of conversation between President
Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, made available by the
National Security Archive, June 2007 .
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. Holland, Steve and Andy Sullivan. "CIA Tried to get Mafia to kill Castro: documents". Reuters News Service, June 26, 2007. "Family Jewels" Archive, pages 12-19 Johnson, Alex. "CIA opens the book on a shady past." MSNBC, June 26, 2007
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
John F. Kennedy assassination.
Embargo
The embargo, which Castro denounced, has been in place for 40 years. 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 and some well known people have condemned the embargo, for humanitarian reasons, including Pope John Paul II (in 1998 and 2005), and
Steven Spielberg.
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.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, Cuba 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. 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.{{cite news | last = Morris
| first = Ruth
| year = 2005
| month = [18 December
| url = http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sun_sentinel/access/943180711.html?dids=943180711:943180711&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Dec+18%2C+2005&author=Ruth+Morris+Havana+Bureau&pub=South+Florida+Sun+-+Sentinel&edition=&startpage=1.A&desc=CUBA%27S+DOCTORS+RESUSCITATE+ECONOMY+AID+MISSIONS+MAKE+MONEY%2C+NOT+JUST+ALLIES
| title = Cuba's Doctors Resuscitate Economy Aid Missions Make Money, Not Just Allies
| publisher = Sun-Sentinel.com
|accessdate=2006-12-28
-->
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. The U.S. authorized the shipment of food in 2001, the first since the embargo was imposed in 1962.
Foreign relations
Soviet Union
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. In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.
On
August 23, 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
imperialism". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of
West Germany and
fascist reactionary rabble." 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.
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. The subsequent
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had an immediate and devastating effect on Cuba.
Other countries
, 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 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-ruled government against the
South African-backed National Union for Total Independence of Angola 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." 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 Anastasio Somoza Debayle government in Nicaragua in 1979. It has been claimed by the Carthage Foundation-funded Center for a Free Cuba that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Cuban military actions abroad.
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. Cuba, once shunned by many of its Latin American neighbours, now has full diplomatic relations with all but Costa Rica and El Salvador.
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. Mexican president Vicente Fox apologized to Fidel Castro in 2002 over statements by Castro, who had taped their telephone conversation, to the effect 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. On a visit to South Africa in 1998 he was warmly received by President Nelson Mandela. President Mandela gave Castro South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope. 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,
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.
Prime Minister of Canada 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 Americas 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.
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 wi
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Comandante (2003)
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