No matter what each of us believe we know about Fidel Castro, he will
go down in history as one of the great revolutionaries.
There is so much misinformation and negative propaganda surrounding
Castro, that getting even a glimpse of the Man himself, is nearly
impossible. But looking beyond the piles of paper and the miles of
shock jock talk shows, and seeing the difference between the life of
the common Cuban today and that of the common Cuban under Batista,
tells the real story. In spite of the efforts of the world's greatest
empire, Cuba stood and flourished. 11 million people against 300
million, but stand their ground they did.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/26/16, Richard Driscoll <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> All:
>
>
> Fidel Castro, who defied US for 50 years, dies at 90 in Cuba
>
>
> By Michael Weissenstein and Peter Orsi / Associated Press
> <https://www.abqjournal.com/author/quickwire>
>
>
> Published: Friday, November 25th, 2016 at 10:56pm
> Updated: Saturday, November 26th, 2016 at 6:37am
>
> <https://www.abqjournal.com/?attachment_id=896226>
> FILE - In this April 19, 2016 file photo, Fidel Castro attends the last
> day of the 7th Cuban Communist Party Congress in Havana, Cuba. Fidel
> Castro formally stepped down in 2008 after suffering gastrointestinal
> ailments and public appearances have been increasingly unusual in recent
> years. Cuban President Raul Castro has announced the death of his
> brother Fidel Castro at age 90 on Cuban state media on Friday, Nov. 25,
> 2016. (Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate via AP, File)
>
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> MIAMI — Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory,
> embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 U.S.
> presidents during his half century rule of Cuba, has died at age 90.
>
> With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television
> that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the
> announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Toward victory,
> always!"
>
> Castro's reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from
> Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and
> the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the
> brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a
> crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of
> assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand
> power over to Raul.
>
> Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista,
> exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before
> triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32,
> the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an
> inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America
> to Africa.
>
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>
> His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally
> began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to
> hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and
> then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his
> trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.
>
> "Socialism or death" remained Castro's rallying cry even as
> Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in
> China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million
> people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.
>
> He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with
> U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana
> announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time
> since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal
> with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a monthlong silence.
> Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March 2016.
>
> Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana's Miramar neighborhood when
> he heard that Fidel Castro had died.
>
> "Fidel? Fidel?" he said, slapping his head in shock. "That's not what I
> was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn't
> seem true."
>
> "It's a tragedy," said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. "We all grew up
> with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard."
>
> But the news cheered the community of Cuban exiles in Florida who had
> fled Castro's government. Thousands gathered in the streets in Miami's
> Little Havana to cheer and wave Cuban flags.
>
> Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba's sugar
> country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting
> labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous
> plantation of his own.
>
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>
> Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he
> received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in
> 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the
> eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and
> his brother Raul went to prison.
>
> Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of
> jail, famously declaring, "History will absolve me."
>
> Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band
> that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a
> yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing,
> he rallied support in Cuba's eastern Sierra Maestra mountains.
>
> Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana
> to celebrate Batista's downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his
> rebel caravan arrived in the capital on Jan. 8, 1959.
>
> The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government,
> cautiously trusting Castro's early assurances he merely wanted to
> restore democracy, not install socialism.
>
> Within months, Castro was imposing radical economic reforms. Members of
> the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were
> shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed
> and in the early years, homosexuals were herded into camps for
> "re-education."
>
> In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners.
> Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, including Castro's daughter Alina
> Fernandez Revuelta and his younger sister Juana.
>
> Still, the revolution thrilled millions in Cuba and across Latin America
> who saw it as an example of how the seemingly arrogant Yankees could be
> defied. And many on the island were happy to see the seizure of property
> of the landed class, the expulsion of American gangsters and the closure
> of their casinos.
>
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>
> Castro's speeches, lasting up to six hours, became the soundtrack of
> Cuban life and his 269-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly in
> 1960 set the world body's record for length that still stood more than
> five decades later.
>
> As Castro moved into the Soviet bloc, Washington began working to oust
> him, cutting U.S. purchases of sugar, the island's economic mainstay.
> Castro, in turn, confiscated $1 billion in U.S. assets.
>
> The American government imposed a trade embargo, banning virtually all
> U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine, and it severed
> diplomatic ties on Jan. 3, 1961.
>
> On April 16 of that year, Castro declared his revolution to be
> socialist, and the next day, about 1,400 Cuban exiles stormed the beach
> at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's south coast. But the CIA-backed invasion
> failed.
>
> The debacle forced the U.S. to give up on the idea of invading Cuba, but
> that didn't stop Washington and Castro's exiled enemies from trying to
> do him in. By Cuban count, he was the target of more than 630
> assassination plots by militant Cuban exiles or the U.S. government.
>
> The biggest crisis of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow
> exploded on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced
> there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and imposed a naval blockade
> of the island. Humankind held its breath, and after a tense week of
> diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them. Never had the
> world felt so close to nuclear war.
>
> Castro cobbled revolutionary groups together into the new Cuban
> Communist Party, with him as first secretary. Labor unions lost the
> right to strike. The Catholic Church and other religious institutions
> were harassed. Neighborhood "revolutionary defense committees" kept an
> eye on everyone.
>
> Castro exported revolution to Latin American countries in the 1960s, and
> dispatched Cuban troops to Africa to fight Western-backed regimes in the
> 1970s. Over the decades, he sent Cuban doctors abroad to tend to the
> poor, and gave sanctuary to fugitive Black Panther leaders from the U.S.
>
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>
> But the collapse of the Soviet bloc ended billions in preferential trade
> and subsidies for Cuba, sending its economy into a tailspin. Castro
> briefly experimented with an opening to foreign capitalists and limited
> private enterprise.
>
> As the end of the Cold War eased global tensions, many Latin American
> and European countries re-established relations with Cuba. In January
> 1998, Pope John Paul II visited a nation that had been officially
> atheist until the early 1990s.
>
> Aided by a tourism boom, the economy slowly recovered and Castro
> steadily reasserted government control, stifling much of the limited
> free enterprise tolerated during harder times.
>
> As flamboyant as he was in public, Castro tried to lead a discreet
> private life. He and his first wife, Mirta Diaz Balart, had one son
> before divorcing in 1956. Then, for more than four decades, Castro had a
> relationship with Dalia Soto del Valle. They had five sons together and
> were said to have married quietly in 1980.
>
> By the time Castro resigned 49 years after his triumphant arrival in
> Havana, he was the world's longest ruling head of government, aside from
> monarchs.
>
> In retirement, Castro voiced unwavering support as Raul slowly but
> deliberately enacted sweeping changes to the Marxist system he had built.
>
> His longevity allowed the younger brother to consolidate control,
> perhaps lengthening the revolution well past both men's lives. In
> February 2013, Raul announced that he would retire as president in 2018
> and named newly minted Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel as his successor.
>
> "I'll be 90 years old soon," Castro said at an April 2016 Communist
> Party congress where he made his most extensive public appearance in
> years. "Soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of
> us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof that on
> this planet, if one works with fervor and dignity, they can produce the
> material and cultural goods that human beings need and that need to be
> fought for without ever giving up."
>
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>
> Cuba's government announced that Castro's ashes would be interred on
> Dec. 4 in the eastern city of Santiago that was a birthplace of his
> revolution. That will follow more than a week of honors, including a
> nearly nationwide caravan retracing, in reverse, his tour from Santiago
> to Havana with the triumph of the revolution in 1959.
>
> ___
>
> Associated Press writer Anita Snow in Mexico City and AP news researcher
> Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
>
> ___
>
> Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mweissenstein
> <http://www.twitter.com/mweissenstein>
>
> Peter Orsi on Twitter: at www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi"
> <http://www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi>
>
> Following from Albuquerque Journal.
>
> "
>
>
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