http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38114953 Fidel Castro, Cuba's former president and leader of the Communist revolution, has died aged 90, state TV has announced. It provided no further details.
A charismatic man is dead, one whose hideous ideology and actions brought much suffering to Latin America. May the seeds of hatred that he planted all over the continent die as well.
And I think of the repeated refrain in Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow ... Only this time it was true.
On a serious note, I can't say I'm as knowledgeable about Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, etc. as I would like to be. Can anyone point me to trustworthy and objective sources (books, articles, videos...)?
Flip on CNN. There's a canned biography on Fidelito. Showing how he overthrew dictator Bautista to start his own Marxist dictatorship (very Latin American of him). Then he hugged Russia, almost started WWIII, helped spread revolution in the 3rd world & let thousands leave in the Mariel boat lift including a good number of criminals (take that, Gringos!). And Cubans in Miami are salsa-ing in the rain right now. Pretty much all you need to know.
The video of Castro right after the revolution looks quaint. Castro on Meet the Press. Hobnobbing with pols, diplomats and shaking hands with the public in Manhattan. Castro on The Tonight Show with Jack Parr. Pretty much a publicity hound back then. One of the stranger state visits in U.S. history began on September 18, 1960, when Cuban leader Fidel Castro touched down in New York City to address the United Nations. Castro’s revolutionary government was already at odds with the Eisenhower administration, and he only added to the tensions after he stormed out of his swanky Midtown hotel, relocated to Harlem and held court with the likes of Malcolm X and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The headline-grabbing visit later culminated with a marathon speech at the U.N., where Castro launched a scathing attack against American foreign policy. Take a look back at the trip that signaled the onset of decades of friction between the United States and Cuba. Fidel Castro had previously visited New York in April 1959, just four months after he led his victorious guerilla army into Havana and took charge of Cuba. The trip was part of Castro’s victory lap after toppling the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and he’d made the most of it by hiring a top public relations firm and touring the city with all the swagger of a rock star. News cameras had stalked the young revolutionary as he held babies, ate hotdogs and tossed peanuts to elephants at the Bronx Zoo. At one photo-op, he was pictured next to a group of American schoolchildren wearing fake Castro-style beards. There had been a few whispers about his suspected political leanings—he still hadn’t declared himself a communist—but many reporters were taken in by his fiery speeches and rugged military uniforms. http://www.history.com/news/fidel-castros-wild-new-york-visit-55-years-ago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fidel-castro-dead-miami-celebrates_us_58396dbee4b000af95ee489d Fidel Castro’s Death Sparks Celebrations On Miami’s Streets
If you love Castro, you should've moved to Cuba. He's a ********ing maggot dictator, and now he's a dead one. Hopefully Raul and the rest of his bunch will soon be dead with bullet holes in the their foreheads.
Interesting. Although not a perfect analogy, it's almost cliche when someone comes on the scene to take down despot only to turn into one themselves. Much like Zimbabwe -- it was sad to see such a revered anti-apartheid fighter as Mugabe turn into the worst-of-the-worst despots.
Nobody. I'm celebrating. Castro is dead! Hopefully the rest of the commies and despots will follow him into the woodchipper of history.
In a world and a history ripe with dictators and despots of all imaginable political stripes, the death of this particular one appears to have elicited a unique reaction from you. Perhaps that's a sign to look inwards? You do realize that Cuba didn't go from being the Sweden of the Caribbean to a communist dictatorship, right? Context.
Gloria Estefan puts Castro's death in perspective. “Although the death of a human being is rarely cause for celebration, it is the symbolic death of the destructive ideologies that he espoused that, I believe, is filling the Cuban exile community with renewed hope and a relief that has been long in coming,” “Although the grip of Castro’s regime will not loosen overnight, the demise of a leader that oversaw the annihilation of those with an opposing view, the indiscriminate jailing of innocents, the separation of families, the censure of his people’s freedom to speak, state sanctioned terrorism and the economic destruction of a once thriving & successful country, can only lead to positive change for the Cuban people and our world.” Well said.
Except that under Castro, Cuba became not just another oppressive autocratic regime, but also a launching pad for the spreading of a dangerous ideology to all Latin America and indeed the whole world. The seeds of hatred he helped plant still cause great damage today and are a huge factor in holding Latin America back from its great potential. I repudiate all dictator-thugs, but we need to go beyond the fact that Castro became another one of those to also recognize that the hateful ideology that Castro represented and helped spread must itself be repudiated and defeated.
Does that include Trump's comrade Vladimir Putin or have we moved on from the 80s? I find it interesting that guys like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are quick to call Fidel a brutal dictator in one breath and genuflect to Putin in another.
Thanks for that but I want to know @roadkit's own thoughts. Putin is an ally of President-elect Trump's.