Fidel 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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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]

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

A estas alturas -finalizando el siglo XX- sabemos, al fin, que la historia no lo va a absolver [a Fidel Castro], sino, como decía Reynaldo Atenas, lo va a

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

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'.

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

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—,

The charismatic portrait of the modern leadership looks nothing like Fidel Castro. It is a faceless portrait that epitomizes the toughness of Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela's charisma, and the most compassionate heart of Mother Theresa.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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,

Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America’s Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro.

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.

I also argue that sin (or at least our thinking about it) has evolved significantly since the 1950s and continues to do so, such that Fidel Castro’s confident cri de Coeur from the early 1960’s, “History will absolve me,” could work today for a great many religious Jews and Christians wrestling with their conscience.

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.

the United States is preparing a bloody drama for Latin America

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

The historical lesson is that a revolutionary party can carry out tactical movements, but it mustn't commit strategic errors.

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.

The Trujillo and Duvalier regimes were among the most kleptocratic, sadistic, repressive and murderous in the entire twentieth century – a century which, tragically, provided plenty of competition. The State Department knew what was going on in these countries. And yet the idea that Fidel Castro was the worst of these leaders took hold and stuck, regardless of the evidence – and the bodies – piling up.

The Central Intelligence Agency, America’s best-known spy shop. In that fearful post-Joe McCarthy era, when assassinated JFK had publicly loved James Bond and secretly been entangled in covert intrigues like assassination plots against Cuba’s Fidel Castro outsourced to the Mafia by our spies, the CIA was a myth-shrouded invisible army. In those pre-Internet days before electronic books, Web sites with varied credibility, and search

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.

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

There is frequently another way to look at things and we are encouraged to do exactly that if we want to grow as a nation, however when we mess with the principles of what made our country great we are in danger of upsetting the apple cart. Many civilized countries that did, lost their freedom in a rapid downhill spiral. Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Cubans lost out by electing Fidel Castro and the Germans and Italians, wanting a better life, voted for Mussolini and Hitler.

I had witnessed this phenomenon in Cuba in the 1950s, when the idle rich were cruelly indifferent to poverty, and it had not surprised me when Fidel Castro had been able to organize his revolution. I had ample reason to despise that same Castro of recent years, for on major matters he had lied to me, encouraging me to make a fool of myself in my reports from Cuba, but I had to admit his drawing power and feared that much of Latin America, always hungry for a savior, would imitate Cuba—even Mexico.

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.

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.

Yo sé que la paz solo es posible si se tiene conciencia de la dignidad del ser humano. Yo sé que cada persona debe ser respetada por sí misma, yo sé que la paz empieza con el derecho a la vida y que se les da su dimensión tanto a los derechos civiles y políticos como a los económicos, sociales y culturales.

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.

In a June 25, 2010, Washington Post article, the CIA acknowledged officially discussing the creation of a video of a fake Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy in order to discredit him in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Evidently, the Agency did create a video of a fake Osama Bin Laden drinking liquor around a campfire with his cronies, bragging about their conquests of young boys. The article quoted an anonymous former CIA officer “chuckling” at the memory, and declaring that the actors used in the video were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees.” These ridiculous clandestine ideas brought to mind the childish efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro forty years earlier.

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.

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.

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.

Then Fidel Castro intervened, calling the situation a “great propaganda victory for Cuba.” It made headlines. Furious, Bobby cabled Castro, threatening to withdraw from the tournament unless the premier promised to stop using him as a political ploy. Bobby continued: I WOULD ONLY BE ABLE TO TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT IN THE EVENT THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY SENT ME A TELEGRAM DECLARING THAT NEITHER YOU, NOR YOUR GOVERNMENT WILL ATTEMPT TO MAKE POLITICAL CAPITAL OUT OF MY PARTICIPATION IN THE TOURNEY, AND THAT IN THE FUTURE NO POLITICAL COMMENTARIES ON THIS SCORE WILL BE MADE. BOBBY FISCHER Castro cabled back, denying making the statement and questioning Bobby’s courage: OUR LAND NEEDS NO SUCH “PROPAGANDA VICTORIES.” IT IS YOUR PERSONAL AFFAIR WHETHER YOU WILL TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT OR NOT. HENCE YOUR WORDS ARE UNJUST. IF YOU ARE FRIGHTENED AND REPENT YOUR PREVIOUS DECISION, THEN IT WOULD BE BETTER TO FIND ANOTHER EXCUSE OR TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO REMAIN HONEST. FIDEL CASTRO

Five years later, Albert Sabin published the results of an alternative polio vaccine he had used in an immunization campaign in Toluca, Mexico, a city of a hundred thousand people, where a polio outbreak was in progress. His was an oral vaccine, easier to administer than Salk’s injected one. It was also a live vaccine, containing weakened but intact poliovirus, and so it could produce not only immunity but also a mild contagious infection that would spread the immunity to others. In just four days, Sabin’s team managed to vaccinate more than 80 percent of the children under the age of eleven—26,000 children in all. It was a blitzkrieg assault. Within weeks, polio had disappeared from the city. This approach, Sabin argued, could be used to eliminate polio from entire countries, even the world. The only leader in the West who took him up on the idea was Fidel Castro. In 1962, Castro’s Committee for the Defense of the Revolution organized 82,366 local committees to carry out a succession of weeklong house-to-house national immunization campaigns using the Sabin vaccine. In 1963, only one case of polio occurred in Cuba.

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.

There was enough intimidation, witness tampering and foul play to go around. Many books have been published about this subject, witnesses have died, some violently, under very suspicious conditions. Over the years, evidence has been tampered with, and fearing for their lives, most other people have decided to clam up and withdraw into the shadows. Personally I still retain a list of convenient deaths after the Kennedy Assassination that happened rounding the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963! In February 1996, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his brother, Michael, flew to Havana for a meeting with Fidel Castro. As a gesture of goodwill, they brought with them a file of formerly top-secret U.S. documents. These documents were specifically about the Kennedy administration’s attempt to find a peaceful settlement with Cuba. Castro thanked them for the file and shared the impression that it was President Kennedy’s desire to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. “It’s unfortunate,” Castro said, “that things happened as they did.” Castro also indicated that normalization might have been possible, had it not been for President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Although numerous attempts at normalization between the two countries have been attempted since this meeting, powerful anti-Castro factions continued to thwart all of these efforts. Perhaps we are now witnessing the time when ways will be found to improve the relations between the United States and Cuba and then again perhaps not!

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!

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.

Demonstrating for peace to promote war was nothing new. Totalitarianism always requires a tangible enemy. To the ancient Greeks, a holocaust was simply a burnt sacrifice. Khrushchev wanted to go down in history as the Soviet leader who exported communism to the American continent. In 1959 he was able to install the Castro brothers in Havana and soon my foreign intelligence service became involved in helping Cuba's new communist rulers to export revolution throughout South America. At that point it did not work. In the 1950s and 1960s most Latin Americans were poor, religious peasants who had accepted the status quo. A black version of liberation theology began growing in a few radical-leftist black churches in the US where Marxist thought is predicated on a system pf oppressor class ( white ) versus victim class ( black ) and it sees just one solution: the destruction of the enemy. In the 1950s UNESCO was perceived by many as a platform for communists to attack the West and the KGB used it to place agents around the world. Che Guevara's diaries, with an introduction by Fidel Castro, were produced by the Kremlin's dezinformatsiya machine. Changing minds is what Soviet communism was all about. Khrushchev's political necrophagy ( = blaming and condemning one's predecessor in office. It is a dangerous game. It hurts the country's national pride and it usually turns against its own user ) evolved from the Soviet tradition of sanctifying the supreme ruler. Although the communists publicly proclaimed the decisive role of the people in history, the Kremlin and its KGB believed that only the leader counted. Change the public image of the leader and you change history, I heard over and over from Khrushchev's lips. Khrushchev was certainly the most controversial Soviet to reign in the Kremlin. He unmasked Stalin's crimes, but he made political assassination a main instrument of his own foreign policy; he authored a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West but he pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war; he repaired Moscow's relationships with Yugoslavia's Tito, but he destroyed the unity of the communist world. His close association with Stalin's killings made him aware of what political crime could accomplish and gave him a taste for the simple criminal solution. His total ignorance about the civilized world, together with his irrational hatred of the "bourgeoisie" and his propensity to offend people, made him believe that disinformation and threats were the most efficient and dignified way for a Soviet leader to deal with "bourgeois" governments. As that very clever master of deception Yuri Andropov once told me, if a good piece of disinformation is repeated over and over, after a while it will take on a life of its own and will, all by itself, generate a horde or unwitting but passionate advocates. When I was working for Ceausescu, I always tried to find a way to help him reach a decision on his own, rather than telling him directly what I thought he should do about something. That way both of us were happy. From our KGB advisors, I had learned that the best way to ut over a deception was to let the target see something for himself, with his own eyes. By 1999, President Yeltsin's ill-conceived privatization had enabled a small clique of predatory insiders to plunder Russia's most valuable assets. The corruption generated by this widespread looting penetrated every corner of the country and it eventually created a Mafia-style economic system that threatened the stability of Russia itself. During the old Cold War, the KGB was a state within a state. In Putin's time, the KGB now rechristened FSB, is the state. The Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. In 2004, Putin's Russia had one FSB officer for every 297 citizens.

Though Fidel came to boast of his Marxism-Leninism, he himself never joined the Communist Party. As the revolution careened along, the Communists may even at times have served as a restraining force, espedally in foreign affairs. Yet, despite the jostling for position between Communists and Fidelistas, the year 1959 saw the dear commitment of Castro’s revolution to the establishment of a Marxist dictatorship in Cuba and the service of Soviet foreign policy in the world—a commitment so incompatible with the expressed purposes of the revolution as surely to justify the word betrayal.

El socialismo abandona la referencia obrera y, poblado de maestros, funcionarios y revolucionarios profesionales, rinde culto a una dinastía de vagos sociópatas que, con Marx como referente, produce, en cien años cien millones de muertos: Lenin, Trotski, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, el Che, Fidel Castro, Abimael Guzmán…

Marita Lorenz, born on August 18, 1939, in Bremen, Germany, was best known for her undercover work with the CIA. She was the daughter of Captain Heinrich Lorenz, master of the S/S Bremen IV, a German passenger ship, and her mother, an American actress, was related to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Arriving in Havana on her father’s ship in 1959, she met Fidel who talked about improving the Cuban tourist business. It was obvious that he was taken by the beautiful 19-year-old brunette, and upon hearing that she was fluent in multiple languages, asked if she would translate some letters for him. She happily agreed and although continuing on to New York, she was persuaded to return to Havana to do the translations. When Castro arrived in her room, he revealed his true motives, which at the time repelled her. The next day when Castro reappeared things were vastly different.

The image of Che Guevara adorn the walls of students’ bedrooms and T-shirts the world over. Looking out over the head of the viewer he cuts a Christ-like figure. In fact, he was a murdering racist psychopath. A direct descendent of the last viceroy of Peru, he hated Black people and American Indians almost as much as gringos. Only pure-blooded Spaniards were good enough for him – despite his Irish blood He happily shot his own men in the back of the head for minor infractions. In Havana he summarily executed so many allies as well as enemies in the football stadium, Taliban-style, Fidel Castro had to beg him to stop. He helped establish labour camps in Cuba. A Stalinist, he backed the bloody suppression of the Hungarian Uprising An Argentinian, he played host to dictator Juan Perón. A hardline Communist, he back-channelled with President Kennedy. During the Cuban missile crisis he urged a pre-emptive strike against the US, though America’s retaliation would have wiped Cuba from the map. “The Cuban people are willing to sacrifice themselves,” he said. Did anyone ask them? He alienated the Cubans, the Russians and the Chinese in turn. The people of the Congo are suffering from his bungled intervention to this day. The Communist Party in Bolivia did not want him there. Nor did any of the other Communist parties in the surrounding countries. When he was captured, the only people that tried to rescue him were the CIA. Still, he takes a great photograph.

On January 8, 1959, Fidel made his grand entrance into Havana. With his son Fidelito at his side, he rode on top of a Sherman tank to Camp Columbia, where he gave the first of his long, rambling, difficult-to-endure speeches. It was broadcast on radio and television for the entire world to witness. For the Cubans it was what they had waited for! During the speech, smiling Castro asked Camilo Cienfuegos, “How am I doing?” and the catch phrase “Voy bien, Camilo” was born. The following Christmas the celebrations were exceptional and made up for the drab Christmas of 1958. There were great expectations on the part of the Cuban people, but most of these expectations would be shattered in the years to come. In the United States, people saw things differently. “Kangaroo trials” of Batista’s followers, ending with their executions, infuriated Americans who couldn’t believe what was happening on what they considered a happy island. Members of the U.S. Congress held formal hearings, interviewing exiled Cubans known as Batistianos. The result was that in the United States, people began to rally against Castro and in Cuba, people saw the United States as presumptuous and overbearing. Eisenhower treated Fidel with contempt and Nixon did not hide the fact that he disliked the Cuban leader. It was this combination of events that led Cuban-American relations into a diplomatic downhill spiral, from which the two countries have just now started to emerge. Without American backing, Cuba turned to Communism and looked to the Soviet Union for support. The results that followed should have been expected and were the consequences of American arrogance and Cuban misplaced pride.

In writing The Exciting Story of Cuba I tried not to judge or take sides. I tell the events as they happened and attempt to take a neutral or reasonable political position; however I am also convinced that both sides will disagree with some of my views. Hopefully this is not just one more dry history book, but rather a presentation of interesting stories of Cuba. Unfortunately, Cuba is still a divided country with extreme political leanings and loyalties. Cubans, in both the United States and on the island, are a proud people who frequently find it difficult to reach a middle ground. Research into recent history demonstrates that the people who fled from Castro, and those who still support him, see things in a very different light. It is said that, “To the victor go the spoils,” and in this case, both sides have experienced both victory and defeat. Thus, events are recorded in two very different ways. Americans have also played a major role in Cuban history. However, to be very clear, not everything America has done was right, nor was it always wrong, since special interest groups frequently influenced events in Washington. The consequential actions of the United States as they pertain to Cuban affairs reflect this. In the end, it is the reader’s conclusion that counts, but my attempt is to separate the wheat from the chaff and to clarify the brine as much as possible, but always with a sense of responsibility mixed with humor. The nature of this book is definitely historical and therefore can be used as a reference source that, although not footnoted, can easily be cross-referenced with standard textbooks as well as historical novels. It contains photographs, stories and information not readily found in other books about Cuban history.

As Michael spoke, a flourish of horns and maracas blasted over the speakers. The music made Veronica think of Havana in the fifties, before Fidel Castro. Men in Panama hats and women in slinky dresses enjoying decadent lives before Communism's proverbial hammer swung down. Just like tsarist Russia. For a moment, Veronica was back in the Russian dream world of ornate palaces and complicated love affairs.

Kennedy said, “I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba....” Castro fought for the liberation of Cuba. The Castro rebellion had its start on July 26, 1953, with an attack on the Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba. The military success of this raid was limited, but other skirmishes followed, brought on primarily by young people and university students. A strategy of terror on the part of the Batista régime followed, but this brutal behavior backfired and led to the signing by forty-five organizations, in an open letter supporting the revolutionary July 26 Movement. From his encampment high in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, on the eastern end of the island, Fidel Castro and his rebel troops dug in and began a campaign that would eventually lead to Batista’s defeat. For a time the United States continued to supply Batista with ships, planes, tanks and equipment. Napalm was used against the rebels and bodies filled the streets outside the Cuban capital. In March of 1958 the United States stopped the sales of arms to the Cuban government, however bodies continued to appear in increasing numbers until December 31, 1958. On December 11, 1958, the U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith informed Batista that the United States would no longer support his régime. Once again, Batista wore out his political welcome. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled Cuba by air, for the Dominican Republic. Repeating his performance of 1944, he again raided the Cuban treasury and absconded with about $300 million of personal wealth, and an estimated $700 million in art and cash. One hundred and eighty supporters accompanied him to Ciudad Trujillo. A week later on January 8, 1959, Castro and his army of revolutionaries rolled into Havana….

When Castro learned of the deal made without him, he was furious and felt betrayed by what he considered his ally. Castro, acting on his own, demanded that the United States stop the blockade of the island, and end its support for the militant Cuban dissidents in exile. He also insisted that the United States return Guantánamo Naval Base to Cuba and stop violating Cuban airspace, as well as its territorial waters. The United States totally ignored him and his demands, dealing instead directly with the Soviet Union. Castro feeling slighted did the only thing left for him, and refused to allow the United Nations access to inspect the missile sites for compliance with the withdrawal agreement. Although costly, the Soviet Union thought of this entire “missile exercise” as a display of Communist power in the Americas. This was a total disregard of the Monroe Doctrine regarding foreign influences in the Americas. Although ultimately it was a futile attempt, the Soviet Union hoped that it would inspire other Latin countries to follow the move towards Communism. During the next two decades, many attempts were made by Cuba to influence other Latin American countries to accept Communism. This influence was exercised primarily by inserting sympathetic leftist leaning movements into their political structure. However most of these attempts failed with the exception of Nicaragua. In 1967 “Che” Guevara attempted such a blatant movement in Bolivia. In time however many of these Latin countries such as Venezuela, took a shift to the left through their constitutional electoral process and embraced socialistic forms of government on their own.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

It was a fate that other, later Communist leaders would know, from Stalin and Mao Zedong to Fidel Castro and Kim Il-Sung. Lenin at least had the ruthless honesty to acknowledge the truth about what had happened and what would come next.

The cause of Communism's bloodthirsty history may be found in the grandiosity of Communism as an idea, and the grandiose self-conception of the Communist as an agent of that idea. The successful strata of Communist revolutionaries suffer from an enormous, bloated egotism. One has merely to examine the psychology of a Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Such are the special pampered children of history, magnificent in their own eyes, epic heroes, supreme and god-like agents of history's splendid drama. Here one finds no sense of self-limitation. There is only self-expansion. Unlike the well-adjusted human being, the aspiring Communist dictator is soaked in arrogance. From all of this flows the bloodthirstiness of the mass murderer. Identifying himself with the forces of history, the Communist leader puts himself in God's shoes. Here is a narcissism so pathological, an emptiness so profound, that nothing may come of it except monstrous crime.

Fidel Castro alitenda haki katika taifa lake ndiyo maana Mungu akamsaidia yeye na wananchi wake. Ijapokuwa ameondoka, lakini fikira zake sahihi zitaendelea kuwepo. Taifa la Kuba Mungu ataendelea kulibariki, kwa sababu fikira za Wakuba ni fikira za Fidel Castro.

Kuna tofauti kati ya haki na utawala wa mabavu. Haki ni jambo ambalo mtu anastahili au kitu anachostahiki kuwa nacho. Utawala wa mabavu ni utawala wa kidikteta. Ukitenda haki lazima kuna watu watafaidi. Lazima kuna watu wataumia. Fidel Castro alikuwa kiongozi msahili. Alikuwa kiongozi aliyewezesha kutendeka kwa mambo. Kwa sababu hiyo, wachache walimpenda, wengi walimchukia. Lakini ili ufanye mazuri lazima upambane na mabaya. Shetani mwenyewe hatakuruhusu ufanye mazuri bila kukuletea mabaya.

In response to Fidel Castro's revolution, a million Cubans - a tenth of the country's population - went into exile. A broken thread in modern Cuban history was left to dangle, with its own cast of characters and a unique set of experiences, ideas, and possibilities. Part of the Cuban question now is whether and how its past and future can be reconnected.

The Castro rebellion had its start on July 26, 1953, with an attack on the Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba. The military success of this raid was limited, but other skirmishes followed, brought on primarily by young people and university students. A strategy of terror on the part of the Batista régime followed, but this brutal behavior backfired and led to the signing by forty-five organizations, in an open letter supporting the revolutionary July 26 Movement. From his encampment high in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, on the eastern end of the island, Fidel Castro and his rebel troops dug in and began a campaign that would eventually lead to Batista’s defeat. For a time the United States continued to supply Batista with ships, planes, tanks and equipment. Napalm was used against the rebels and bodies filled the streets outside the Cuban capital. In March of 1958 the United States stopped the sales of arms to the Cuban government; however bodies continued to appear in increasing numbers until December 31, 1958. On December 11, 1958, the U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith informed Batista that the United States would no longer support his régime. Once again, Batista wore out his political welcome. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled Cuba by air, for the Dominican Republic. Repeating his performance of 1944, he again raided the Cuban treasury and absconded with about $300 million of personal wealth, and an estimated $700 million in art and cash. One hundred and eighty supporters accompanied him to Ciudad Trujillo. A week later on January 8, 1959, Castro and his army of revolutionaries rolled into Havana….

On the night of November 24, 1956, the Granma slipped her moorings with Castro’s guerrillas aboard, known as “los expedicionarios del yate Granma,” and left from Tuxpan, Veracruz, setting a course across the Yucatán Channel for southeastern Cuba. The 1,200-mile distance between Mexico and their landing point in southeastern Cuba was difficult and included 135 miles of open water and cross currents between Cape Catoche in Mexico and Cape San Antonio in Cuba. They had to stay far enough off the southern coast of Cuba to remain undetected. The overcrowded small vessel leaked, forcing everyone to take turns bailing water out of her, and at one point they lost a man overboard, which further delayed them. In all, the entire five-day trip ultimately lasted seven days. Their destination was a playa, beach, near Niquero in the Oriente Province, close to where José Martí landed 61 years prior, during the War of Independence. However, on December 2, 1956, when the Granma finally arrived at its destination, it smashed into a mangrove swamp crawling with fiddler crabs, near Los Colorados beach. They were well south of where they were supposed to meet up with 50 supporters. Having lost their element of surprise, they were left exposed and vulnerable. After the revolution the Granma was moved to Havana and is now on display in a protected glass enclosure at the Granma Memorial, near the Museum of the Revolution. The official newspaper in Cuba is also called the Granma. Note: Ships and boats as well as newspapers and other publications are italicized whereas memorials are not!

During the “Bay of Pigs Invasion” One Douglas “B-26” airplane with counterfeit Cuban markings was fired on and crashed into the sea about 30 miles north of the island. Another of these aircraft, which was also damaged but still air worthy, continued north and landed at Boca Chica Key Naval Air Station near Key West, Florida. The following day the crew was quickly flown to exile in Nicaragua. The United States government announced that the downed aircraft belonged to the Cuban air force and was manned by Cuban dissidents. In reply to this, Castro appeared on Cuban State television and denounced these claims. He put his military on high alert and directed defensive operations from the Cuban Military Headquarters, which had just been bombed by two of the masquerading airplanes. Fidel issued orders to detain anyone who was suspected of conspiracy or treason. Lists of these people had previously been prepared and were used to round up suspected dissenters. Within days, his overzealous police force and army incarcerated about 20,000 Cuban citizens, using whatever means were available, including a sports stadium. In a speech to the people, Fidel finally admitted to the public that his Movement was Socialistic. The Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa García, successfully presented evidence at the United Nations, proving that the attacks were foreign in origin. Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, replied that the United States had not participated in any action against Cuba. Ambassador Stevenson, knowing better, insisted that the aircraft that had landed in Miami had Cuban markings and therefore must have been of Cuban origin. Stevenson’s comments sounded contrived since the aircraft had Plexiglas noses, normally used as the bombardier’s station, whereas the actual Cuban B-26’s had solid noses with armament. It was obvious to the General Assembly that the United States Ambassador had been perpetrating an outright lie or, in diplomatic double talk, an untruth! It was an embarrassing moment that left the United States’ veracity open to ridicule

…the following day, after only six months in office, Manuel Urrutia Lleó resigned from the Presidency of Cuba, to which people in attendance started to applaud. He simply took off his suit coat and changed into a guayabera. Then leaving through a back door, he made his way to the Venezuelan Embassy where he sought asylum. Shortly thereafter, he emigrated from Cuba to the United States where he became bitter and depressed. In 1964 the former President Urrutia wrote a book named ''Fidel Castro & Company, Inc.: Communist Tyranny in Cuba,” condemning the Castro régime. Urrutia charged that he had been ousted from the presidency because Castro sought to stop what he called the “neutralization of his march toward Communism.” On July 5, 1981, Manuel Urrutia Lleó died at St. John's Hospital in Queens, New York. At the time of his death he was 79 years old.