Castro Quotes

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.

The moon is fat, but half of her is missing. A ruler-straight line divides her dark side from her light. She hangs low over the bustling Castro, noticeably earlier than the night before. Autumn is coming. For as long as I can remember, I’ve talked to the moon. Asked her for guidance. There’s something deeply spiritual about her pale glow, her cratered surface, her waxing and waning. She wears a new dress every evening, yet she’s always herself.

I’m not attached to anything. I’m attached to what it feels it's my duty, to do my duty. I think that I will die with the boots on.

...quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing.

There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.

Robert Conquest once suggested that 'a curious little volume might be made of the poems of Stalin, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, with illustrations by A. Hitler.

Today, the entire country is an immense University.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.

Ignorance is the root of many ills. Knowledge must be the fundamental ally of nations that aspire, despite all their tragedies and problems, to become truly emancipated, to build a better world.

La historia me absolverá!

I'm smiling because I know perfectly well what I am and I honestly don't give a damn what you think of me

If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian.

Humanity can learn from those who have broken their chains. Those who have chained humanity for centuries cannot teach humanity anything.

Castro inhaled again, blew out enough smoke to announce a pope.

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

We have the lowest student-teacher ratio and spend five times as much on schools than war - the opposite of what the United States does. [explaining why Cuba has the highest literacy in the world]

....Kebenaran tidak perlu di iklankan...

inspired my own life. Victory has thousands father but failure always find itself an orphan. --Fidel Castro

It seems insane to be expected to lie in a dark room alone and not feel completely crazy and bipolar and confused and more awake.

All times are beautiful for those who maintain joy within them; but there is no happy or favorable time for those with disconsolate or orphaned souls.

I have met only a very few people - and most of these were not Americans - who had any real desire to be free. Freedom is hard to bear. It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and, internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster. Whoever doubts this last statement has only to open his ears, his heart, his mind, to the testimony of - for example - any Cuban peasant or any Spanish poet, and ask himself what he would feel about us if he were the victim of our performance in pre-Castro Cuba or in Spain. We defend our curious role in Spain by referring to the Russian menace and the necessity of protecting the free world. It has not occurred to us that we have simply been mesmerized by Russia, and that the only real advantage Russia has in what we think of as a struggle between the East and the West is the moral history of the Western world. Russia's secret weapon is the bewilderment and despair and hunger of millions of people of whose existence we are scarecely aware. The Russian Communists are not in the least concerned about these people. But our ignorance and indecision have had the effect, if not of delivering them into Russian hands, of plunging them very deeply in the Russian shadow, for which effect - and it is hard to blame them - the most articulate among them, and the most oppressed as well, distrust us all the more... We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is. Anyway, the point here is that we are living in an age of revolution, whether we will or no, and that America is the only Western nation with both the power, and, as I hope to suggest, the experience that may help to make these revolutions real and minimize the human damage.

From the top of Castro Street, it looks like a river of people. It looks, I realize, like a march - rows and rows of people, gathered to exert their power. Only this time we aren't marching. We don't need to show our numbers to show our worth. This time our power comes from staying in this space, from walking the hallowed ground of our history and bringing it to life. I am alone, yes. But I am a part of everything. I feel it - I've been living in a world, but what I have is a universe.

My response to those who still try to justify Castro’s tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity.

Narcissists (and often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate: they fend off, hide and evade . . . [They] perfect the ability of saying nothing in lengthy Castro-like speeches. Their locution is impregnated with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my", "mine" - aka "high pronoun density"). The ensuing convoluted sentences are .. a lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The narcissist prefers to wait and see what procrastination brings: postponement of the inevitable leads to the inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival.

It is as if Little Red Riding Hood had asked the wolf: "Dear Grandmother, what is the truth for?" And the wolf had replied: "The truth helps me tell you better lies.

Luz Castro "And then i explain that the world did know and remained silent. and that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. NEUTRALITY HELPS THE OPPRESSOR, NEVER THE VICTIM. SILENCE ENCOURAGES THE TORMENTOR, NEVER THE TORMENTED. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must- at that moment- become the center of the universe." Elie Wiesel (from his speech when given the Nobel Peace Prize.)

I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

When I see you, I can’t help But be reminded Of all the mountains We didn’t move, Of all the things I didn’t do. The odds are against us, There is nothing left, But my desire, To immortalize you in words.

To the accusation that Cuba wants to export its revolution, we reply: Revolutions are not exported, they are made by the people.

But I can tell you I myself have made many mistakes. Things sometimes I would be ashamed to admit. But if it weren’t for those mistakes I wouldn’t have seen the beauty in me. I wouldn’t have awoken the goddess that lives in me. You see, goddesses although immortal were all flawed. They were all a bit extreme at their calling, and they were all betrayed and hurt at some point. They were even considered devious but what made them unique was their strength.

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

He wants their sexuality to be an equalizer; he wants to focus on the discrimination they face in common. But Simon can conceal his sexuality. Robert can’t conceal his blackness, and almost everyone in the Castro is white.

Históricamente, Cuba había escapado siempre de la realidad gracias a la sátira y a la burla. Sin embargo, con Fidel Castro, el sentido del humor fue desapareciendo hasta quedar prohibido; con eso el pueblo cubano perdió una de sus pocas posibilidades de supervivencia; al quitarle la risa le quitaron al pueblo el más profundo sentido de las cosas.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

The Cubans say that sex is the only thing that Castro hasn’t rationed.

Today you cannot talk about a United Nations system;… what actually exists is a domination system over nearly all countries in the world by a small group of powers under the aegis of the United States, determining all issues.

Be smart, but not too smart. Be beautiful, but not so pretty as to make other females mad. Be successful, but not bossy or overly ambitious. Nobody likes a mouthy brown woman. Be a declawed kitten.

I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn’t much she didn’t see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness — the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahía, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purple holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over the Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I’ve talked about, others I have left unspoken — there is no place where it will all live again

I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably... This truth should be taught to every human being -- that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice -- how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice.

Why the black lipstick? Is this goddess a Goth?

Es que, cuando los hombres llevan en la mente un mismo ideal, nada puede incomunicarlos, ni las paredes de una cárcel, ni la tierra de los cementerios, porque un mismo recuerdo, una misma alma, una misma idea, una misma conciencia y dignidad los alienta a todos.

I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn’t much she didn’t see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness — the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahía, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purple holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over the Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I’ve talked about, others I have left unspoken — there is no place where it will all live again. At

Che abandoned his first wife, Hilda, a Peruvian woman of Indian extraction, for a taller, blonder trophy wife (also named Aleida). Their 1959 wedding in Havana was the social event of the year and featured Raul Castro as "best man." After he married Aleida, Che would continue to "upgrade" his women, taking the worldly Tamara "Tania" Bunke, born of German parents in Argentina, as his mistress.

I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. He's very ebullient, as they say. I've heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice that's always very well worth noticing because it's always a bad sign: he doesn't know when to sit down. He's worse than Castro was. He won't shut up. Then he told me that he didn't think the United States landed on the moon and didn't believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. He's a wacko.

Anti-Castro Cubans were suspects in the assassination for good reason. The CIA, under the leadership of Soviet KGB officer John McCone, spent considerable time and effort making the anti-Castro Cubans look like they would have a reason to assassinate President Kennedy.

Não há nada que nos pareça tão inútil como as nossas cóleras, quando as evocamos tempos depois.

Eu son libre, nada pode conter a marcha dos meus pensamentos, e eles son a lei que rexe o meu destino

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America?

You’ve got to admit that you live at the center of a vortex that seems to funnel nothing but trouble your way.” ~FBI Special Agent Clive Poole to Maggie Mae Castro

N.S.C. briefing. Castro is very nervous. We’ll try to keep him that way.

Ageing is not easy, Senhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology.

Making more money is about getting clear on who you are and what you can offer in the world. –Brittney Castro

Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed.

But our story is not just about rape and chains, lies and misery. That was Ariel Castro’s world. Our story is about overcoming all that.

Seriously, did I miss something? Did John F. Kennedy walk into the Oval Office one day, only to find Fidel Castro lighting his Cohiba with the American flag while teabagging Jackie?

So if the ending of apartheid is now universally agreed to be a good thing, and Cuba played such a central role, how is it still possible to have such differing views of Castro and Mandela and of Cuba and South Africa? The short answer is that the mainstream media has been so successful in distorting basic historical facts that many are so blinded by Cold War hangovers that they are entirely incapable of critical thought, but the other answer is rather more Machiavellian. The reality is that apartheid did not die, and thus the reason so many white conservatives now love Mandela is essentially that he let their cronies "get away with it". The hypocritical worship of black freedom fighters once they are no longer seen to pose a danger or are safely dead - Martin Luther King might be the best example of this - is one of the key ways of maintaining a liberal veneer over what in reality is brutal intent.

It's worked! Our marriage has outlasted all of the world leaders, except for Castro. And if we keep talking, arguing, making love and dancing to the Ramones- it'll probably keep working.

Watching Castro, whose tiny hands looked like marshmallows, hoist the ball from his waist and through the hoop seemed like the human equivalent of an ant lifting fifty times its body weight.

Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed.

the Castro–Mandela dichotomy exposes the way the mainstream loves to worship a supposedly non-racist country as long as it leaves the accepted class hierarchies in place, but hates a society that has revolutionised some of its class relationships despite its actual material contribution to global anti-racist struggle.

The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

Parts of me wanted to ask you to stay. To keep fighting for me. To fight for us. But a certain ideology impeded me from doing so. The idea that when someone loves you enough, they will stay on their own, without you asking them to.

I stood in the library admiring the huge book collection. There was something inherently calming about being surrounded by books, even their smell and texture was comforting.

If I weren’t a gentleman, I would pound you into the ground right now.” He unfisted his hands in order to dismiss the temptation.

While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.

Creí que el dolor lo dejaría allí contigo, pero los sentimientos te persiguen allí donde vas, no hay sitio donde esconderse de ellos

I have traveled a long way through light and volatile stardust. The stars in the night sky are moth holes in space-time and the bodies of the larvae between each hole are the means of travel

Siempre he sido el que no encajaba en ningún lado, pero te diré que la vida está llena de mezclas estrambóticas. Fíjate, tenemos un ejemplo aquí mismo: la caja es cuadrada para una pizza redonda que comemos en porciones triangulares y el resultado es perfecto.

On November 22, 1963, he said, “One of the worst kept secrets [in the world] is the truth about the President’s murder. It wasn’t Castro or the Russians. The men who killed Mr. Kennedy were CIA contract agents. … It had to happen. The man was too independent for his own good.

Pero eso de que una persona te deje de hablar porque ya se enteró de que te gusta, o que tengas que esperarte tres meses para dar un beso que los dos quieren porque si no te van a acusar de fácil, es horrible. De hecho, creo que las femmes fatales son tan tradicionales y aburridas como las que cocinan pastelitos y esperan al príncipe azul, porque a fin de cuentas también se dedican a ser un cliché del tamaño del mundo y a reprimirse solitas para ser lo que los fulanos esperan de ellas.

I view Che, furthermore, as a moral giant who grows day by day, whose image, whose strength, whose influence has multiplied throughout the world. How could he fit below a tombstone? How could he fit in this plaza? How could he fit solely in our beloved but small island? Only the world he dreamed of, which he lived and fought for, is big enough for him.

Fish held the silence for so long that I had to restrain myself from prodding her. That's never a good idea. Sometimes people hesitate because they don't have the courage to come out with whatever needs to be said; other times they desperately want to speak but can't find the words. Jabbing them prematurely tends to shut them up. Outwaiting them gives them the time to say more than they intend.

Occasionally I glanced at the big blue cradle of civilization hanging in the sky, remembered for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that none of this had any right to be happening, and reminded myself for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that the only sane response was to continue carrying the tune.

The Marxist constituency has remained as narrow as the conception behind it. The Communist Manifesto, written by two bright and articulate young men without responsibility even for their own livelihoods—much less for the social consequences of their vision—has had a special appeal for successive generations of the same kinds of people. The offspring of privilege have dominated the leadership of Marxist movements from the days of Marx and Engels through Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and their lesser counterparts around the world and down through history. The sheer reiteration of the "working class" theme in Marxism has drowned out this plain fact.

The Left’s great fight is with material inequality, not with evil as normally understood. Thus, the Left has always been less interested in fighting tyranny than in fighting inequality. That is why Leftist dictators—from Lenin to Mao to Pol Pot to Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez—have had so much support from Leftists around the world. Many of these dictators were mass murderers, but to much of the world’s Left it was more important that they opposed material inequality (and America).

Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.

Benny Hinn hizo una serie de declaraciones proféticas célebres en diciembre de 1989, ninguna de las cuales se hizo realidad. Él con toda confianza le dijo a su congregación en el Centro Cristiano de Orlando que Dios le había revelado que Fidel Castro iba a morir en algún momento de la década de 1990, que la comunidad homosexual en Estados Unidos sería destruida por el fuego antes de 1995 y que un gran terremoto podría causar estragos en la costa este antes de el año 2000. Se equivocó en todos los aspectos,

It is one thing to overthrow a dictator or to repel and invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution.

Tengo miedo de una cosa que vive y que no se ve. Tengo miedo a la desgracia traidora que viene, y que nunca se sabe dónde viene. Adrianie, donde estas.

Aunque mi cuerpo se hiela, me imagino que me quemo; y es que el hielo algunas veces hace la impresión de fuego.

For why would I want to be a mere mortal, if there is a Goddess that lives in me?

Os acostumados á desgracia, chegan a contar por súas as que afrixen aos demais.

También se escribe historia con la utopía de mejorar los tiempos y librarse, a la vez, de muchos materiales y formas muertas que arrastra el pasado.

But if you take pleasure in morality, then you are always in deficit.

The hatred of hatred is still hate.

I had never tasted nicotine until I kissed your mouth, and I had never craved a cigarrete until you left...

There was probably the same amount of ink on those pages as blood and tears in my body.

JFK's great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.

I don't like you bondsman. But I hate mysteries even more

The higher up you go, the more gentle you have to reach down to help other people succeed.

Aún no es tarde, Lara. Mientras el corazón siga latiendo nunca es tarde

Embrace your unlikely journey.

Remember there are no losses, because if God did not grant you a desire it is simply because it was not written.

Aos desgraçados só resta o amor

Fuentes bien informadas de Miami anunciaban la inminente caída de Fidel Castro, que iba a desplomarse en cuestión de horas.

I’d known many smart young people with talent and ambition in my hometown, but they lacked access to opportunities or somebody from that higher level offering a hand to pull them up.

The person who expects to understand history must submerge himself in it, must get rid of patriotism, as well as bitterness. And especially in studying a historic life that consists in insecurity must the historian rid himself of all insecurity. He must accept the totality of the data in all their fullness, the noble with the paltry, thinking of how the two interlock.

Russell had taken me with him to Cuba just when Castro was starting to kick everybody out and confiscate their casinos and racetracks and houses and bank accounts and everything else they owned in Cuba. I never saw Russell madder than on that trip to Cuba, and I wasn’t even on the last trip he made where he was even madder because his friend Santo Trafficante from Florida had been arrested by the Communists and was being held in jail. I heard a rumor that Sam Giancana had to send Jack Ruby to Cuba to spread some money around to get Santo out. Around

The food that afternoon was served in tins that had contained Russian beef. It was three spoonfuls of boiled macaroni and a piece of bread. That was February 11, 1970. That day saw the beginning of a plan for biological and psychological experimentation more inhuman, brutal, and merciless than anything the western world had known with the exception of the Nazis’ activities.

Senhor Deus dos desgraçados! Dizei-me vós, Senhor Deus! Se é loucura... se é verdade Tanto horror perante os céus?! Ó mar, por que não apagas Co'a esponja de tuas vagas De teu manto este borrão?... Astros! noites! tempestades! Rolai das imensidades! Varrei os mares, tufão!

Jorge vuole mantenere l’aspetto di un quarantenne anche quando compirà cinquant’anni, tuttavia il destino si fa spesso beffe di noi. Jorge Castro non arriverà neanche a compierne quarantuno.

Eu, por exemplo, bem acho que deus pode existir. Não vejo irracionalidade ou improbabilidade alguma em o big bang ter sido acionado por uma mão divina ou que uma mão divina tenha criado as espécies animais e os planetas, etc. A grande questão é outra: por que deveria eu viver de forma diferente só porque o universo foi criado por um ser divino e não por forças cósmicas aleatórias?

Russell Bufalino had secret interests in Las Vegas casinos and not-so secret connections to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, whom Fidel Castro toppled in 1959. With Batista’s blessings Bufalino had owned a racetrack and a major casino near Havana. Bufalino lost a great deal of money and property, including the racetrack and the casino, when Castro booted the mob off the island. Time

Indeed, within Castro’s periphery there evolved a bizarre mutation known oxymoronically as “liberation theology,” where priests and even some bishops adopted “alternative” liturgies enshrining the ludicrous notion that Jesus of Nazareth was really a dues-paying socialist. For a combination of good and bad reasons (Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a man of courage and principle, in the way that some Nicaraguan “base community” clerics were not), the papacy put this down as a heresy. Would that it could have condemned fascism and Nazism in the same unhesitating and unambiguous tones.

Through Jimi Hendrix's music you can almost see the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Junior, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin in space, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the debut of Spiderman, Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, Ford Mustang cars, anti-Vietnam protests, Mary Quant designing the mini-skirt, Indira Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister of India, four black students sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, President Johnson pushing the Civil Rights Act, flower children growing their hair long and practicing free love, USA-funded IRA blowing up innocent civilians on the streets and in the pubs of Great Britain, Napalm bombs being dropped on the lush and carpeted fields of Vietnam, a youth-driven cultural revolution in Swinging London, police using tear gas and billy-clubs to break up protests in Chicago, Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton Beach, Native Americans given the right to vote in their own country, the United Kingdom abolishing the death penalty, and the charismatic Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It’s all in Jimi’s absurd and delirious guitar riffs.

No fim da entrevista, quando o líder cubano [Fidel Castro] já havia discorrido sobre tema variados, a repórter Lucia Newman quis saber a opinião sobre os cubanos presos em Miami 'acusados de fazer espionagem para o seu governo'. Ele começou dizendo que achava 'assombroso' que os Estados Unidos, 'o país que mais espiona no mundo', acusassem de espionagem justamente a Cuba, 'o país mais espionado do mundo'.

Ageing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.

Allí sufrió la indiferencia de los extraños, la desesperanza en soledad, los malos trances sin el consuelo de unas palabras amigas, y todo lo demás que inflige desengaños y deja huellas indelebles en el alma.

For more than a century, ideological extremists, at either end of the political spectrum, have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal, working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists,' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.

Fidel Castro disclosed that he was reading Churchill’s World War II memoirs. “If Churchill hadn’t done what he did to defeat the Nazis, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here,” he told a crowd that had gathered to see the new Cuban leader when he visited a Havana bookstore. “What is more, we have to take a special interest in him because he, too, led a little island against a great enemy.” Another surprising fan

I kicked, shouted an obscene word, got another faceful of goo for my troubles, and did the only thing left available to me. I started to laugh. This was a stupid way to die, all right. But also a god damned funny one.

Yo recuerdo que, cuando llegué a Estados Unidos, un cubano en Washington me dijo lo siguiente: «Nunca te vayas a pelear con la izquierda». Para ellos, pelearse con la izquierda significaba atacar al gobierno de Castro. Pero cómo podía yo después de veinte años de represión callarme aquellos crímenes. Por otra parte, nunca me he considerado un ser ni de izquierda ni de derecha, ni quiero que se me catalogue bajo ninguna etiqueta oportunista y política; yo digo mi verdad, lo mismo que un judío que haya sufrido el racismo o un ruso que haya estado en un gulag, o cualquier ser humano que haya tenido ojos para ver las cosas tal como son; grito, luego, existo.

From Marx, I received the concept of what human society is; otherwise, someone who hasn't read about it, or to whom it hasn't been explained, it's as though they were set down in the middle of a forest, at night, without knowing which way north is, or south, east or west. Marx told us what a society is and the history of its evolution. Without Marx, you can't formulate any argument that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical events - what the tendencies are, the probable evolution of a humanity that has not yet completed its social evolution.

La democracia, además, solo existirá en América cuando los pueblos sean realmente libres para escoger, cuando los humildes no estén reducidos —por el hambre, la desigualdad social, el analfabetismo y los sistemas jurídicos—,

We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and, internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster. Whoever doubts this last statement has only to open his ears, his heart, his mind, to the testimony of—for example—any Cuban peasant or any Spanish poet, and ask himself what he would feel about us if he were the victim of our performance in pre-Castro Cuba or in Spain.

Just as we once abhorred the vacuum, today we find repugnant the very idea of deceleration, regression, retreat, limitation, degrowth, applying brakes, descent - sufficiency. Anything that brings to mind any of these movements toward an intensive sufficiency of world (instead of an epic overcoming of the "limits " separating us from a hyperworld) is immediately accused of naïve localism, primitivism, irrationalism, bad conscience, guilt, or even just fascistic tendencies, period.

When men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can keep them isolated: neither walls of prisons nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity, will sustain them all.

There was not one witness to accuse me, there was no one to identify me, there was not a single piece of evidence against me. I was found guilty, simply out of the mistaken “conviction” held by the Political Police. And sadly, my case was no exception.

I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation, and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime,” Kennedy told French journalist Jean Daniel. “I believe that we created, built, and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America.

My brain felt glitchy, like a malfunctioning computer; my thoughts were like unwanted pop-ups. If technology strove to eventually emulate consciousness, the engineers had already unwittingly accomplished it: shitty pop-ups and unwanted emails were exactly like my thoughts.

Giancana said he was going to fix the election in Illinois so Kennedy would win that state. Jimmy couldn’t believe his ears. Jimmy tried to talk him out of it. Jimmy told him nobody could control Bobby because he was mental. Jimmy said people went to the old man during the McClellan Committee hearings and he couldn’t do anything about either one of his millionaire kids. Giancana told Jimmy that Kennedy was going to help them get Castro out of Cuba so they could get their casinos back. Jimmy said that they were crazy to trust those Kennedy boys

I was utterly exhausted. The lack of sleep and the tension were seriously affecting me. I sought God then. My conversations with Him brought me a spiritual strength that gave me new energy. I never asked Him to get me out of there; I didn’t think that God should be used for that kind of request. I only asked that He allow me to resist, that He give me the faith and spiritual strength to bear up under these conditions without sickening with hatred. I only prayed for Him to accompany me. And His presence, which I felt, made my faith an indestructible shield.

Time magazine reported in June 1975, a week before the assassination of Sam “Momo” Giancana in Chicago and a month before the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in Detroit, and during the time of the Church Committee Senate hearings on the CIA’s ties to organized crime, that Russell Bufalino’s help had been successfully recruited by the CIA in a mysterious CIA-gangland plot to kill Castro. Senator Frank Church’s committee concluded that Bufalino was part of a bizarre conspiracy to assassinate Castro with poison pills just before the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was to take place. Bufalino

What has Capitalism resolved? It has solved no problems. It has looted the world. It has left us with all this poverty. It has created lifestyles and models of consumerism that are incompatible with reality. It has poisoned the waterways. Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, Seas, the Atmosphere, the Earth. It has produced an incredible waste of resources. I always cite one example; imagine every person in China owned a Car, or aspired to own a Car. Everyone of the 1.1 Billion people in China, or that everyone of the 800 million people in India wished to own a Car, this method, this lifestyle, and Africa did the same, and nearly 450 million Latin Americans did the same. How long would Oil last? How long would Natural Gas last? How long would natural resources last? What would be left of the Ozone layer? What would be left of Oxygen on Earth? What would happen with Carbon Dioxide? And all these phenomenon that are changing the ecology of our world, they are changing Earth, they are making life on our Planet more and more difficult all the time. What model has Capitalism given the world to follow? An example for societies to emulate? Shouldn’t we focus on more rational things, like the education of the whole population? Nutrition, health, a respectable lodging, an elevated culture? Would you say capitalism, with it’s blind laws, it’s selfishness as a fundamental principle, has given us something to emulate? Has it shown us a path forward? Is humanity going to travel on the course charted thus far? There may be talk of a crisis in socialism, but, today, there is an even greater crises in capitalism, with no end in sight.

5. When Begging Ends I love the idea of Divine Source. It reminds us that everything, the fulfillment of every need, always emanates from the One. So if you learn how to keep your vibration high and attuned to That, whatever is needed to sustain you can always occur, often in surprising and delightful ways. Your Source is never a particular person, place, or thing, but God Herself. You never have to beg. Furthermore, Divine Source says that whatever resonates with you will always find you. That which does not, will fall away. It’s that simple. When Outrageous Openness first came out, I experienced this as I took the book around—some stores were simply not drawn to it. But knowing about Divine Source and resonance, I didn’t care. I remember taking it to a spiritual bookstore in downtown San Francisco. The desultory manager sort of half-growled, “Oh, we have a long, long wait here. You can leave a copy for our ‘pile’ in the back room. Then you could call a ton and plead with us. If you get lucky, maybe one day we’ll stock it. Just keep hoping.” “Oh, my God, no!” I shuddered. “Why would I keep twisting your arm? It’ll go easily to the places that are right. You never have to convince someone. The people who are right will just know.” He looked stunned when I thanked him, smiling, and left. And sure enough, other store clerks were so excited, even from the cover alone. They nearly ripped the book out of my hands as I walked in. When I brought it to the main bookstore in San Francisco’s Castro district, I noticed the manager striding toward me was wearing a baseball cap with an image of the goddess Lakshmi. “Great sign,” I mused. He held the book for a second without even cracking it open, then showed the cover to a coworker, yelling, “Hey, let’s give this baby a coming-out party!” So a few weeks later, they did. Sake, fortune cookies, and all. Because you see, what’s meant for you will always, always find you. You never have to be bothered by the people who aren’t meant to understand. And anyway, sometimes years later, they are ready . . . and they do. Change me Divine Beloved into One who knows that You alone are my Source. Let me trust that You fling open every door at the right time. Free me from the illusion of rejection, competition, and scarcity. Fill me with confidence and faith, knowing I never have to beg, just gratefully receive.

The men behind those iron palisades looked like skeletons; their faces were white and waxen from lack of sun. One of them was so emaciated that he seemed unreal. He didn’t speak, he didn’t wave or gesture, he was simply there, staring — he looked to me like a figure in a wax museum. However, not one of the men there could have spent more than two years and a few days in that jail. Just thinking about it sent a shiver of terror up my spine. Two years!

The mass execution was ordered by Raúl Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance; other officers in Castro’s guerrilla forces shot ex-soldiers en masse without a trial, without any charges of any kind lodged against them, simply as an act of reprisal against the defeated army.

...it doesn’t follow that all bearded men are bullies or heroes. There’s the fortuneteller’s beard, the Lenin cut, or again the European aristocrat’s. And then there’s the Castro beard and what is apparently the latest style—the beards sported by youngsters posing as artists, but just what that is called I don’t know.

I could only nod as emotions rolled in like a destructive storm. This was it. It was over. My incredible time with this beautiful talented man was up. I had to clench my teeth and swallow hard to mask the loss that threatened to overcome my calm exterior. I was holding on for dear life then he said two words with pure tranquility.

U.S. imperialism's avowed policy of sending soldiers to fight the revolutionary movement in any Latin American country, to kill workers, students, peasants, to kill Latin American men and women, has no other purpose than to maintain its monopolistic interests and the privileges of the treacherous oligarchies which support the monopolies.

Matar está mal, pero el Che puede hacerlo; violar mujeres está mal, pero Villa tiene ese derecho; la tiranía es inmoral, pero la de Fidel Castro es virtuosa; el imperialismo yanqui es abominable, pero el bolivariano o el soviético son correctos; el canibalismo es deleznable a menos que lo cometan los aztecas, porque entonces es místico y simbólico.

When they took him out and led him toward the moat, he passed in front of the portraits of Fidel and Raúl Castro. He paused a moment and then exclaimed, “And to think that because of those two wretches there are about to be five orphans!” Angrily, he turned toward Lieutenant Manolito, head of the prison, and said to him, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.

The addictive nature of social media and technology, send kids into a pitfall of: -Dopamine Hits -Distractions -Meaningless Actions

Quando se caminha para o céu, não se olha para a terra.

the United States is preparing a bloody drama for Latin America

The question is not whether or not one will suffer, I wrote. The question must necessarily be, What will justify the suffering?

I am a child of war. To truly love and be loved, I… I don’t know if I’m capable of either

The very idea of love, of family, was beaten out of me. I was taught that love is weakness. And I… I don’t know how that will ever change.

La vida se pone difícil después de séptimo básico

If our bodies are something to be ashamed of, why are they created so? If pleasure was not to be ours, why are we built to feel it?

I don't think purgatory is a place for people - it's a space for all those prayers that seem to go nowhere.

Put your f***ing finger down now before I break it off.

The guards were making a butcher shop out of the stairways. There was a hail of blows with chains, bayonets, and truncheons. They were breaking heads and arms.

Bissell fingered his napkin. "I do, Mr. Boyd. And I know how generous Mr. Hoffa, Mr. Marcello and a few other Italian gentlemen have been to the Cause, and I know that you possess a certain amount of influence in the Kennedy camp. And as the President's chief Cuban-issue liaison, I also know that Fidel Castro and Communism are a good deal worse than the Mafia, although I wouldn't dream of asking you to intercede on our friends' behalf, because it might cost you credibility with your sacred Kennedys." Stanton dropped his soup spoon. Pete let a big breath out eeeasy. Boyd put out a big shit-eating grin. "I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Bissell. Because if you did ask me, I'd have to tell you to go fuck yourself.

I turned on the water then returned to the door jamb. “That’s not fair, you’re nice and clean.” “I am?” He took a few steps toward me. “Aren’t you?” “No,” he scowled and shook his head. “I’m dirty. But you knew that.” Now, if you haven’t heard an Irishman say the word “dirty” before, I will compare it with dynamite in your ovaries. They say it with like, seven Rs.

I found a small velvet-and-nailhead Victorian sofa at a rummage sale on my way to a demonstration in the Castro District; the gay men selling it for $10 kindly hauled it over and up the stairs after the protest was over. It left droppings of ancient horsehair stuffing on the floor like an incontinent old pet. I accumulated small souvenirs, treasures, and artifacts that made the place gradually come to resemble an eccentric natural history museum, with curious lichen-covered twigs and branches, birds’ nests and shards of eggs, antlers, stones, bones, dead roses, a small jar of yellow sulfur butterflies from a mass migration in eastern Nevada, and, from my younger brother, a stag’s antlered skull that still presides over my home.

Fidel Castro had control of Cuba. Eisenhower had already put the economic embargo in place by that point. The Bay of Pigs had been a disaster. Being a Cuban-American was complicated. And instead of trying to make my way in the world as a Cuban woman, I simply forsook where I came from. In some ways, this helped me release any remaining ties connecting me to my father.

Al final de la novela descubríamos que su obsesión por «el cielo y el océano fundidos» como «realidad del Paraíso» era en realidad su pulsión de tánatos, es decir, su deseo de muerte, es decir, sus ganas de suicidarse, es decir, sus fantasías de morir ahogada en el mar como las fantasías de morir ahogada en el mar de Rosalía de Castro, hasta lograrlo como Virginia Woolf.

And yet something unsettling remained about the notion of John Pastano as a willful murderer: the recollection, perhaps, that after murdering Mary Castro, he had filled his hat with her blood and wandered out into the street with it. When he was collared over by the Tea-Water Pump, broken English had spilled out from the man. “Why you catch me?” he asked innocently. “Me not do

Suppose someone says, “Unfortunately, the popularity of soccer, the world’s favorite pastime, is starting to decline.” You suspect he is wrong. How do you question the claim? Don’t even think of taking a personal shot like “You’re silly.” That only adds heat, not light. “I don’t think so” only expresses disagreement without delving into why you disagree. “What do you mean?” lowers the emotional temperature with a question but it’s much too vague. Zero in. You might say, “What do you mean by ‘pastime’?” or “What evidence is there that soccer’s popularity is declining? Over what time frame?” The answers to these precise questions won’t settle the matter, but they will reveal the thinking behind the conclusion so it can be probed and tested. Since Socrates, good teachers have practiced precision questioning, but still it’s often not used when it’s needed most. Imagine how events might have gone if the Kennedy team had engaged in precision questioning when planning the Bay of Pigs invasion: “So what happens if they’re attacked and the plan falls apart?” “They retreat into the Escambray Mountains, where they can meet up with other anti-Castro forces and plan guerrilla operations.” “How far is it from the proposed landing site in the Bay of Pigs to the Escambray Mountains?” “Eighty miles.” “And what’s the terrain?” “Mostly swamp and jungle.” “So the guerrillas have been attacked. The plan has fallen apart. They don’t have helicopters or tanks. But they have to cross eighty miles of swamp and jungle before they can begin to look for shelter in the mountains? Is that correct?” I suspect that this conversation would not have concluded “sounds good!” Questioning like that didn’t happen, so Kennedy’s first major decision as president was a fiasco. The lesson was learned, resulting in the robust but respectful debates of the Cuban missile crisis—which exemplified the spirit we encouraged among our forecasters.

In consequence, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims before America: the right of peasants to land; the right of the worker to the fruit of his labor; the right of children to receive education; the right of the sick to receive medical and hospital care; the right of the young to work; the right of students to receive free instruction, practical and scientific; the right of Negroes and Indians to 'a full measure of human dignity'; the right of woman to civil, social and political equality; the right of the aged to secure old age; the right of intellectuals, artists and scientists to fight through their work for a better world; the right of States to nationalize imperialist monopolies as a means of recovering national wealth and resources; the right of countries to engage freely in trade with all other countries of the world; the right of nations to full sovereignty; the right of people to convert their fortresses into schools and to arm their workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Negroes, Indians, women, the young, the old, all the oppressed and exploited; that they may better defend, with their own hands, their rights and their future.

As a practical revolutionary Marx was active only for about 12 years (1848-1852, 1864-1872), and was not particularly successful; his role was primarily that of a theorist, an advocate of ideas. Yet it has sometimes been said that Marx exercised a decisive influence on the history of the 20th century. In reality, the people who exercised the decisive influence were the men of action (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc.) who organized revolutions in the name of Marxism. And these men, while calling themselves Marxists, never hesitated to set Marx's theories aside when "objective" circumstances made it advisable for them to do so. Moreover, the societies that resulted from their revolutions resembled the kind of society envisioned by Marx only insofar as they were in a general way socialistic.

ﺷﺠﺎﻉ ﻫﺬﺍ ﺍﻻﻧﺴﺎﻥ ﺍﻟﻤﻨﺘﺤﺮ ﻗﺪ ﻳﻜﻮﻥ ﺍﺷﺠﻊ ﺍﻧﺴﺎﻥ ﻓﺎﻟﻘﺪﻭﻡ ﻉ ﺍﻻﻧﺘﺤﺎﺭ ﻟﻴﺲ ﺳﻬﻞ ﻛﻤﺎ ﻳﺘﺨﻴﻠﻪ ﺍﻟﺒﻌﺾ ﻓﻜﺮﺓ ﺍﻟﻤﻮﺕ ﻧﻔﺴﻬﺎ ﺍﺻﻌﺐ ﻣﻦ ﺍﺩﺭﺍﻙ ﺍﻟﻔﺮﺩ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﺩﻱ ﻓﺴﻬﻮﻟﺔ ﺍﻟﻤﻮﺕ ﺗﻜﻤﻦ ﻓﻲ ﺗﻌﻘﻴﺪﻩ ﻭﺗﻌﻘﻴﺪﻩ ﻳﻜﻤﻦ ﻓﻲ ﺗﻔﺎﺻﻴﻠﻪ ﻭ ﺗﻔﺎﺻﻴﻠﻪ ﻻ ﻳﺪﺭﻛﻬﺎ ﻋﻘﻞ

March 1st—our February 28th according to the International Date Line—the earthquake and storm had come. From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March 23d the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island and left six men dead; and on that date the dreams of sensitive men assumed a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit, whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium! And what of this storm of April 2nd—the date on which all dreams of the dank city ceased, and Wilcox emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever? What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul.

Around that time, there was tremendous optimism about the possibility of the fall of the regime. Only a few weeks before, the United States had broken off relations with Cuba, and President Eisenhower had stated that “the Communist penetration into Cuba is real, and it constitutes a grave threat to the Western world.” At that time many Cubans believed that a Marxist regime would not be tolerated in the Americas;

The United States is not actually against terrorism per se, only those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. There is a lengthy and infamous history of Washington’s support for numerous anti-Castro terrorists, even when their terrorist acts were committed in the United States. At this moment, Luis Posada Carriles remains protected by the US government, though he masterminded the blowing up of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. He’s but one of hundreds of anti-Castro terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. The United States has also provided close support to terrorists, or fought on the same side as Islamic jihadists, in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Libya, and Syria, including those with known connections to al-Qaeda, to further foreign policy goals more important than fighting terrorism.

Uninterested kids Listening to uninterested teachers Teaching uninteresting topics While having access to the most interesting device of all time A PHONE! (This is a generalization, I got mad love for teachers)

Cando penso que te fuches, Negra sombra que me asombras, Ó pé dos meus cabezales Tornas, facéndome mofa. Cando maxino que es ida, No mesmo sol te me amostras, I eres a estrela que brila, I eres o vento que zoa. Si cantan, es ti que cantas, Si choran, es ti que choras, I es o marmurio do río I es a noite i es a aurora. En todo estás e ti es todo, Pra min i en min mesma moras, Nin me abandonarás nunca, Sombra que sempre me asombras.

Many intellectuals in the Western world defended the half-century (1959–2008) dictatorship of Fidel Castro of Cuba by noting, for example, under Castro’s rule the literacy rate in Cuba rose to a hundred percent. However, Cubans were not allowed to read anything forbidden by the communist regime. In the view of Castro’s defenders, it is better to be unfree and literate than to be free and illiterate. The Torah’s view, however, would seem to be the opposite; it is better to be free and illiterate, just as it is better to eat a poor man’s food and be free than to eat a rich man’s food as a slave. Furthermore, the very concept of freedom carries with it the possibility of improvement of one’s circumstances. The illiterate are free to learn to read; the poor are free to work, retain the fruits of their labors, and improve their lot in life—perhaps even become wealthy, as so many have in the freedom of the Western, Bible-based world.

pesar del incesante hostigamiento exterior, este pequeño país, apegado a su soberanía, ha obtenido resultados muy notables en materia de desarrollo humano: abolición del racismo, emancipación de la mujer, erradicación del analfabetismo, reducción drástica de la mortalidad infantil,15 elevación del nivel cultural general… En cuestiones de educación, de salud, de investigación médica y de deporte, Cuba ha alcanzado niveles que muchos países desarrollados envidiarían.16

What else has changes since 1984? Oil's running our, I say Earth's population is eight billion, mass extinction of flora and fauna are commonplace, climate change is foreclosing the Holocene Era. Aparteid's dead, as are the Castros in Cuba as is privacy. The USSR went bankrupt; the Eastern bloc collapsed; Germany reunified; the EU has gone federal; China's a powerhouse- though their air is industrial effluence in a gaseous state - and North Korea is still a gulag run by a coiffed cannibal. p 500

Tonight, she sang me a mantra that helps us to feel peaceful and relaxed with happy hearts. When we feel at peace, we can help more people, accomplish anything we want, and make good choices. We can even use this mantra to wish peace for another person.

Sim, a selva era bela, majestosa, mesmo deslumbrante. E era rica, havia de ser fantasticamente rica também, mas um dia – um dia que vinha ainda longe. Entretanto, toda a sua grandeza esmagaria, toda a sua deslumbrância seria volúpia do primeiro contacto, logo desvanecida pela monotonia; e os anónimos desbravadores iriam caindo, inexoravelmente, sob as febres, trespassados pelas flechas envenenadas, desvairados pela ausência do amor – escravos, pobres, miseráveis, ali onde a natureza erguia as suas mais fastigiosas pompas!

Haven’t you noticed that men struggle every day to correct the defects of my work? What is a plane or a diving suit but an emendation to my work? Even those who worship me spend their lives disagreeing with me and trying to improve on what I made. When they implore me for help with their misfortunes, deep down, are they not in fact censuring me, because what is a prayer but a rebellion that cannot be expressed?’ He smiled vaguely and added: ‘The only reason they don’t curse me is because they still believe I’m stronger than they are

We must listen to the women who came before us. We change the future by unloading the sorrow of the past. We sever the cord of generational curses. Some cords are meant to shrivel away to blackened dead flesh. They are our blood, but we are not them. We do not have to accept it. None of it.

Monsignor Pérez Serantes, the man Castro had asked for help when the assault on the Moncada barracks failed in July 1953. Castro sought the monsignor’s protection and intercession with Batista to obtain certain guarantees if he voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities. (In the assault on the Moncada barracks, a group of Castro’s troops burst into the military hospital where wounded and sick soldiers were convalescing; several defenseless sick men were stabbed in the back as they lay in their beds. Some of them had just undergone surgery and were still under anesthesia.)

Why did they believe that by killing him he would cease to exist as a combatant? Today he is not in La Higuera. Instead, he is everywhere; he is to be found wherever there is a just cause to defend. Those with a stake in eliminating him and making him disappear were incapable of understanding that he had already left an indelible mark on history; that his shin­ing, prophetic vision would become a symbol for all the poor of this world, in their millions. Young people, children, the elderly, men and women who knew him, honest persons throughout the world, regardless of their social origin, admire him. Che is waging and winning more battles than ever.

The ruling classes are entrenched in all positions of state power. They monopolize the teaching field. They dominate all means of mass communication. They have infinite financial resources. Theirs is a power which the monopolies and the ruling few will defend by blood and fire with the strength of their police and their armies.

In every society are men of base instincts. The sadists, brutes, conveyors of all the ancestral atavisms go about in the guise of human beings, but they are monsters, only more or less restrained by discipline and social habit. If they are offered a drink from a river of blood, they will not be satisfied until they drink the river dry.

In this chapter, I want to focus on the really big crimes that have been committed by atheist groups and governments. In the past hundred years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes—Communist Russia, Communist China, and Nazi Germany—have wiped out people in astronomical numbers. Stalin was responsible for around twenty million deaths, produced through mass slayings, forced labor camps, show trials followed by firing squads, population relocation and starvation, and so on. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s authoritative recent study Mao: The Unknown Story attributes to Mao Zedong’s regime a staggering seventy million deaths.4 Some China scholars think Chang and Halliday’s numbers are a bit high, but the authors present convincing evidence that Mao’s atheist regime was the most murderous in world history. Stalin’s and Mao’s killings—unlike those of, say, the Crusades or the Thirty Years’ War—were done in peacetime and were performed on their fellow countrymen. Hitler comes in a distant third with around ten million murders, six million of them Jews. So far, I haven’t even counted the assassinations and slayings ordered by other Soviet dictators like Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and so on. Nor have I included a host of “lesser” atheist tyrants: Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceaus̹escu, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il. Even these “minor league” despots killed a lot of people. Consider Pol Pot, who was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party faction that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Within this four-year period Pol Pot and his revolutionary ideologues engaged in systematic mass relocations and killings that eliminated approximately one-fifth of the Cambodian population, an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million people. In fact, Pol Pot killed a larger percentage of his countrymen than Stalin and Mao killed of theirs.5 Even so, focusing only on the big three—Stalin, Hitler, and Mao—we have to recognize that atheist regimes have in a single century murdered more than one hundred million people.

He began talking about the Vietnam War and about the children who were being killed by the American forces there, and he told her that if she was a Christian, as she claimed to be, she ought to be indignant over the monstrous crimes the Yankees were committing. Martha told him that according to him and others like him the Americans were responsible for all the evil in the world, but people like him never talked about the way the Communists from North Vietnam were killing innocent people as they invaded South Vietnam. She said that it was never the men that caused the war who died — they sat comfortably behind their desks while the poor wretches they sent out to fight were dying.

Much of Sartre’s time in the 1960s was spent travelling in China and the Third World, a term invented by the geographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952 but which Sartre popularized. He and de Beauvoir became familiar figures, photographed chatting with various Afro-Asian dictators-he in his First World suits and shirts, she in her schoolmarm cardigans enlivened by ‘ethnic’ skirts and scarves. What Sartre said about the regimes which invited him made not much more sense than his accolades for Stalin’s Russia, but it was more acceptable. Of Castro: ‘The country which has emerged out of the Cuban revolution is a direct democracy.’ Of Tito’s Yugoslavia: ‘It is the realization of my philosophy.

JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up organized crime. Nobody high-up in government has tangled the Mafia. J. E. Hoover, the hired hands of FBI and CIA, ran the assassination teams. They have been used since World War II. JFK was attempting to end the oil-tax depletion rip-offs, to get tax money from oil companies. JFK instituted the nuclear test ban treaty, often called “the kiss of death,” to oppose the Pentagon. JFK called off the Invasion of Cuba. He allowed Castro to live, antagonized narcotics and gambling, oil and sugar interests, formerly in Cuba. JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up the CIA, the “hidden government behind my back.” Allen Dulles was fired. Dulles, the attorney for international multinationals, was angry. JFK planned to withdraw troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. Nov. 24, 1963, two days after JFK’s burial, the Pentagon escalated the Vietnam war … with no known provocations, after JFK was gone. There was no chance Kennedy could survive antagonizing the CIA, oil companies, Pentagon, organized crime. He was not their man. The assassination of JFK employed people from the Texas-Southwest. It was not a Southern plot. Upstarts could not have controlled the northern CIA, FBI, Kennedy family connections. This was a more detailed, sophisticated conspiracy that was to set the pattern for future murders to take place. The murder was funded by Permindex, with headquarters in Montreal and Switzerland. Their stated purpose was to encourage trade between nations in the Western world. Their actual purpose was fourfold: 1) To fund and direct assassinations of European, Mid-East and world leaders considered threats to the western world, and to Petroleum Interests of their backers. 2) Provide couriers, agents for transporting and depositing funds through Swiss Banks for Vegas, Miami and the international gambling syndicate. 3) Coordinate the espionage activities of White Russian Solidarists and Division V of the FBI, headed by William Sullivan. 4) Build, acquire and operate hotels and gambling casinos. See: Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, by William Torbitt.

Exploitation has much more terrible connotations in a Third World country that in a developed capitalist country, because it is exactly out of fear of revolution, out of fear of socialism that developed capitalism came up with some distribution schemes that, to a certain degree, d away with the great hunger that European countries were familiar with in Engel's day, in Marx's day.

He heard ideas the mention of which — the thought of which — was prohibited in the society he represented. He often brought the newspaper Granma with him. It was the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba. And he would ask us to give him our reaction to things it printed. We would show him the doctrinaire objectives of the newspaper and the fact that the news was not really informative.

Guilty and innocent alike fell before the firing squads. In the mountains when government troops captured some of the alzados, the alzados would be shot down where they were captured, and doctors of forensic medicine would cut open their abdomens to try to find the rest of the guerrilla groups by seeing what the contents of the dead men’s stomachs were and determining where such food might be found.

The intimate relation between obligation and likelihood is nicely illustrated by an anecdote from the Soviet era. The story goes that during his state visit to Moscow,27 Fidel Castro is shown around the capital by Leonid Brezhnev. First of all, Castro is invited for a beer, which he downs in one go, and praises heartily. ‘Yes,’ says Brezhnev, ‘it was provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ Then Castro is chauffeured around the city, and is rather taken by the limo. ‘Yes,’ says Brezhnev, ‘these cars are provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ Later on, they visit an exhibition of fine crystal, and Castro duly waxes lyrical. ‘Yes,’ says Brezhnev, ‘the crystal is provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ ‘They must be very good friends,’ says Castro. ‘Yes,’ says Brezhnev, ‘they must.

Esa es otra cosa que los humanos no comprenden, el recuerdo es inherente al tiempo. Haberla amado durará por siempre, al igual que sus caricias en tu piel y su cuerpo tembloroso debajo de ti. Nunca vas a poder olvidarla, su sonrisa nunca será arrebatada de ti, ni de nadie. Ni la felicidad que vivió a tu lado. O su cuerpo calcinándose en la brazas de la injusticia, Lucio. Las que son como ella, nunca mueren, son eternas.

example. Every effort to get the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations even to consider our denunciations was fruitless. We sent that organization detailed information about the tortures, the murders, the plans to blow us up with the explosives installed in the Circulars, but it did nothing. The prestigious Commission on Human Rights had deaf ears and blind eyes for what was happening in the Cuban political prisons.

On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee-deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine-gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men.

Exactly the same thing happened with the International Red Cross. Talking to it about violations of human rights in Cuba was like talking to a post; it refused to listen. Cuban political prisoners simply did not exist. Why get upset about them, then? Years later, the Red Cross came to believe what it had been told. The United Nations as a whole and its individual nations know about the horrors of the Cuban jails, but they don’t dare condemn Cuba in their annual assemblies.

Operation Pedro Pan It was like a raging wildfire that the Radio Swan story spread throughout Cuba! Many affluent Cubans, convinced that their children would actually be sent to Moscow for political indoctrination, panicked and sent their children to Florida. In all, as many as 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to Miami, under a program named “Operation Peter Pan.” During the next two years, British Airways, under charter, flew many of the children to the United States by way of Kingston, Jamaica. The unaccompanied children started arriving in Miami in October of 1960. They arrived in waves, with the children of the more affluent families coming first. Their parents trusted their friends and family in the United States to take care of their children. Since the Castro régime was having economic difficulties very few people thought that it would last as long as it did. Most of them still believed that Castro was just a passing phenomenon until a counter-revolution would depose him.

Suddenly, one prisoner, as the guards rained blows on his back, raised his arms and face to the sky and shouted, “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do!” There was not a trace of pain, not a tremble in his voice; it was as though it were not his back the machete was lashing, over and over again, shredding his skin. The brilliant eyes of the “Brother of the Faith” seemed to burn; his arms open to the sky seemed to draw down pardon for his executioners. He was at that instant an incredible, supernatural, marvelous man.

One had to be more discerning in recognizing other Yankees players. And a program would have been of little help. In 1923, the Yankee uniforms were blank on the back. The team did not introduce uniform numbers until 1929; Ruth was given No. 3 because he batted third in the lineup and Gehrig was given No. 4 because he batted fourth. In 1923, the Yankees did not even have their famous interlocking N and Y on the left breast of their uniforms. The only similarity of those Yankees home uniforms with those of later years were the pinstripes.

All it took for the officers in charge of the Circulars to call out the guards was for a few prisoners to hold back on the floors. That was when the beatings started. The guards would rush in armed with bayonets, truncheons, and chains, and anyone they caught on the floors would be beaten senseless. These beatings by the garrison began after Captain Morejón said he’d give a gold medal to the man who could stand up for one year to the forced-labor plan and still not get down on his knees and beg to join the Political Rehabilitation Program.

6) The National General Assembly of the people of Cuba - confident that it is expressing the general opinion of the peoples of Latin America - affirms that democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy; with discrimination against the Negro; with disturbances by the Ku Klux Klan; nor with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenbergs to their death against the protests of a shocked world including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII.

Cuba has nine official National Public Holidays January 1st - Liberation Day & New Year’s Liberation Day is also called “Triunfo de la Revolucion.” This day celebrates the removal of dictator Batista from power and the start of Fidel Castro’s power. January 2nd - Victory of the Armed Forces A holiday commemorating its revolution’s history. Good Friday Good Friday became a national holiday following the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. The first Good Friday recognized as a holiday was in 2014, according to Granma, the Official Body Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. May 1st - International Labour Day Called “Dia de los Trabajadores,” Havana-Guide.com noted there are many celebrations this holiday, including “speeches on the ‘Plaza de la Revolucion’ celebrating the work force and the Communist party.” July 25th till 27th - Commemmoration of the Assault to Moncada/National Rebellion Day This three-day long holiday remembers the 1953 capture and exile of Fidel Castro, according to VisitarCuba. This happened near Santiago in the Moncada army barracks. This week is also celebrated with carnivals in Santiago as the saint day of St. James (Santiago). October 19th - Independence Day, “Dia de la Independencia” Independence Day celebrates the early independence of Cuba in 1868, when Carlos Manuel Cespedes freed his slaves and began the War of Independence against Spain, according to Travel Cuba. December 25, 2017 - Christmas, “Natividad” Christmas has only recently been re-established as a holiday due to Pope John Paul’s visit in 1998.

They contend, in their frenzy, that Cuba exports revolutions. There is room for the idea in their commercial, sleepless and pawnbroker minds, that revolutions can be bought or sold, rented, loaned, exported or imported as one more commodity. Ignorant of the objective laws which rule the development of human society, they believe that their monopolist, capitalist and semi-feudal regimes are eternal. Educated in their own reactionary ideology - a mixture of superstition, ignorance, subjectivism, pragmatism and other aberrations of the mind - they hold an image of the world and of the march of history which accords with their exploiting class interests. They presume that revolutions are born or die in the brains of individuals or by virtue of divine laws, and that the gods are on their side.

By October of 1958, most roads leading to the Oriente Province had become impassable. Bridges were cut and dropped by the rebels, making travel to the eastern part of Cuba extremely difficult. The elections in November were seen as an obvious sham and everyone knew that the only way to survive was to keep quiet and wait for changes to take place. Most of Batista’s supporters were still in denial and carried out their atrocities with abandon. Tension among the people in Havana had grown and as Christmas approached, it became obvious that this year things would be different. People that had been harassed, or worse, were in no mood to celebrate the holidays. With the country engaged in a civil war that affected everyone, Christmas was not celebrated in the usual manner during the winter of 1958.

[T]he wave of anger, of demands for justice, of claims for rights, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labour amasses the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected. For this great mass of humanity has said, 'enough!' and has begun to march. And their giant march will not be halted until they conquer true independence-- for which they have died in vain more than once. Today, however, those who die will die like the Cubans at Playa Giron. They will die for their own, true and never-to-be-surrendered independence. Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!

And in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs failure, not only our psychological state, but living conditions generally in the prison became much more severe. Even food was much scarcer. At that time, they would bring in vats full of greasy water with some vegetables floating in it — potatoes, pumpkins, yams — frequently dirty and rotten, at that. We found out from men working in the kitchen, who belonged to Circular 4, that one hundred pounds of foodstuffs per day were allocated for the six thousand prisoners on Isla de Pinos — that worked out to less than a pound for every fifty prisoners. And that was the extent of our food. The bread had not a drop of fat or lard in it, just salt, and not always that. Its texture was so rubbery that you could stretch it out to more than a third longer without breaking it.

No nation in Latin America is weak-- because each forms part of a family of 200 million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbour the same sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better future and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women throughout the world. Great as was the epic of Latin American independence, heroic as was that struggle, today's generation of Latin Americans is called upon to engage in an epic which is even greater and more decisive for humanity. For that struggle was for liberation from Spanish colonial power, from a decadent Spain invaded by the armies of Napoleon. Today the call for struggle is for liberation from the most powerful world imperialist centre, from the strongest force of world imperialism, and to render humanity a greater service than that rendered by our predecessors.

One of Castro’s first acts as Cuba’s Prime Minister was to go on a diplomatic tour that started on April 15, 1959. His first stop was the United States, where he met with Vice President Nixon, after having been snubbed by President Eisenhower, who thought it more important to go golfing than to encourage friendly relations with a neighboring country. It seemed that the U.S. Administration did not take the new Cuban Prime Minister seriously after he showed up dressed in revolutionary garb. Delegating his Vice President to meet the new Cuban leader was an obvious rebuff. However, what was worse was that an instant dislike developed between the two men, when Fidel Castro met Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon. This dislike was amplified when Nixon openly badgered Castro with anti-communistic rhetoric. Once again, Castro explained that he was not a Communist and that he was with the West in the Cold War. However, during this period following the McCarthy era, Nixon was not listening. During Castro’s tour to the United States, Canada and Latin America, everyone in Cuba listened intently to what he had to say. Fidel’s speeches, that were shown on Cuban television, were troubling to Raúl and he feared that his brother was deviating from Cuba’s path towards communism. Becoming concerned by Fidel’s candid remarks, Raúl conferred with his close friend “Che” Guevara, and finally called Fidel about how he was being perceived in Cuba. Following this conversation, Raúl flew to Texas where he met with his brother Fidel in Houston. Raúl informed him that the Cuban press saw his diplomacy as a concession to the United States. The two brothers argued openly at the airport and again later at the posh Houston Shamrock Hotel, where they stayed. With the pressure on Fidel to embrace Communism he reluctantly agreed…. In time he whole heartily accepted Communism as the philosophy for the Cuban Government.

Fidel Castro, who always enjoyed sports, promoted programs that helped Cuba become a front-runner in Latin America. The island nation fields outstanding baseball, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams. It also excels in amateur boxing. Believing that sports should be available for everyone, not just the privileged few, the phrase “Sports for all” is a motto frequently used. When Castro took power, he abolished all professional sports. Only amateur baseball has been played in Cuba since 1961. An unexpected consequence of this initiative was that many players discovered that they could get much better deals if they left Cuba. As an attempt to prevent this, Fidel forbade players from playing abroad and if they did leave the island, he would prevent their families from joining them. Originally, many Cuban baseball players played for teams in the American Negro league. This ended when Jackie Robinson was allowed to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers during the late 1940’s. Afterwards, all Cuban baseball players played for the regular leagues regardless of their race. The Negro National League ceased after the 1948 season, and the last All-Star game was held in 1962. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last remaining Negro/Latin league team and played until 1966. Cuban players with greater skill joined the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. If they defected to the United States directly, they had to enter the MLB Draft. However, if they first defected to another country they could become free agents. Knowing this, many came to the United States via Mexico. In all, about 84 players have defected from Cuba since the Revolution. The largest contract ever given to a defector from Cuba was to Rusney Castillo. In 2014, the outfielder negotiated a seven-year contract with the Boston Red Sox for $72.5 million. Starting in 1999, about 21 Cuban soccer players have defected to the United States. The Cuban government considers these defectors as disloyal and treats their families with disrespect, even banning them from taking part in national sports.

En esa reunión, Fidel Castro, el dictador cubano, se haría una foto histórica al lado de David Rockefeller, uno de los símbolos del capitalismo multinacional. La imagen recorrería el planeta, pero era mucho menos sabido que Peggy, la hija de David, había visitado frecuentemente Cuba desde 1985 o que David Rockefeller se reuniría al día siguiente con Castro en el edificio del Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores en Park Avenue.91 Para muchos podía parecer un simple gesto de cortesía social o un acto incomprensible, pero sería el propio David Rockefeller el que explicaría perfectamente su conducta en el año 2002 en sus Memorias. Millonario, filántropo, participante habitual en los círculos más elevados del poder, David Rockefeller realizaría la siguiente confesión: «Algunos creen incluso que nosotros — los Rockefeller — somos parte de una cábala secreta que trabaja contra los mejores intereses de los Estados Unidos, caracterizando a mi familia y a mí como «internacionalistas» que conspiran alrededor del mundo con otros para construir una estructura global política y económica más integrada — un mundo, si se quiere. Si esa es la acusación, me declaro culpable y estoy orgulloso de ello». La afirmación de Rockefeller resultaba de enorme relevancia no solo por su sinceridad, sino por su contundencia. Ante la acusación de que desarrollaba una agenda que no era la de los Estados Unidos y que incluso iba contra los intereses de esta nación, una agenda que manifestaba en su cordialidad ante el dictador cubano Fidel Castro, David Rockefeller se declaraba culpable y además orgulloso de serlo. Ante la acusación de ser un internacionalista que conspiraba con otros en todo el mundo, se declaraba culpable y orgulloso de serlo. Ante la acusación de estar construyendo una estructura política y económica de carácter global que avanzara hacia un solo mundo se declaraba culpable y orgulloso de serlo. A inicios de este siglo, apenas perpetrados los atentados del 11-S, Rockefeller no tenía el menor reparo en reconocer públicamente que sostenía una agenda globalista cuya finalidad era someter al mundo a un nuevo orden que chocaba incluso con los intereses de naciones como los Estados Unidos.

The more that injustice, exploitation, inequality, unemployment, poverty, hunger, and misery prevail in human society, the more Che's stature will grow. The more that the power of imperialism, hegemonism, domina­tion, and interventionism grow, to the detriment of the most sa­cred rights of the peoples-especially the weak, backward, and poor peoples who for centuries were colonies of the West and sources of slave labor-the more the values Che defended will be upheld. The more that abuses, selfishness, and alienation exist; the more that Indians, ethnic minorities, women, and immigrants suffer dis­ crimination; the more that children are bought and sold for sex or forced into the workforce in their hundreds of millions; the more that ignorance, unsanitary conditions, insecurity, and homelessness prevail-the more Che's deeply humanistic message will stand out. The more that corrupt, demagogic, and hypocritical politicians exist anywhere, the more Che's example of a pure, revolutionary, and consistent human being will come through. The more cowards, opportunists, and traitors there are on the face of the earth, the more Che's personal courage and revolution­ary integrity will be admired. The more that others lack the ability to fulfill their duty, the more Che's iron willpower will be admired. The more that some individuals lack the most basic self-respect, the more Che's sense of honor and dignity will be admired. The more that skeptics abound, the more Che's faith in man will be admired. The more pessimists there are, the more Che's optimism will be admired. The more vacillators there are, the more Che's audacity will be admired. The more that loafers squander the prod­uct of the labor of others, the more Che's austerity, his spirit of study and work, will be admired.