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Fidel Castro: Latin America
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The health of Cuba's leader Fidel Castro is a sensitive subject these days. Exiled Cuban-Americans despise him, some saying they want him dead, while his countrymen and women seem to love him. What is your take? Do you have a story to share? How do you feel about Castro eventually being replaced as leader of Cuba?
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In 1948, Fidel Castro married Mirta Díaz Balart, the daughter of a lawyer for the United Fruit Company. Castro came to know the exclusive and prosperous world of Banes, United Fruit's company town. In Banes, the Americans lived and played separate from Cubans. Access to the town beach was controlled by a gate, and only United Fruit employees had the key. Each time he crossed that gate, friends at the time recall, Castro became enraged.
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July 26: Fidel Castro vigorously denied recent charges by President Bush that he encourages sex-tourism in Cuba to attract US dollars to the impoverished island. Castro ... became personal with Bush, bringing up old reports about his American nemesis' alleged past drinking habits. Speaking at the island's annual Revolution Day celebration in the central city of Santa Clara, Castro said the sex tourism allegations show that what the White House considers to be true about Cuba is ``that which the president makes up in his head, whether it corresponds to reality or not.'' Fidel Castro also said an attack on the island would be a "colossal mistake." [Speech by Fidel Castro at the ceremony for the 51 st anniversary of the 26th of July] (AP, EFE, 26/7/04)
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When Cuban leader Fidel Castro was just 12 years old, he wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt. In the letter dated November 6, 1940, Castro asked the President, "If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them."
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Viewed against the background of Cuban history, the only thing unique about Fidel Castro's insurrection was that it succeeded. Not only the aims but ... the method and, we might even go so far as to say, the style and temperament of the Fidelista uprising to a large degree were shaped by the traditions of nearly a century of frustrated struggle for national independence. In this respect, the experience of Cuba differs substantially from that of continental Latin America, a fact that helps explain why the Fidelista phenomenon appeared in Cuba rather than elsewhere.
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June 5: US union leaders demanded that Fidel Castro free independent union leaders from prison in Cuba. In a letter sent to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, the leaders from 23 American trade unions asked for the release from prison of eight Cuban workers who tried to form independent trade union organizations.
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