Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Reflections on the Death of Fidel Castro

Richard and All,
While I'm not Miriam, that never stopped me from running off my mouth.
The answer to your question regarding how many important people have
been forgotten, the answer is, Countless Billions.
Each living person today, represents an unbroken chain of successes,
dating back to the beginning of Time. To my great grandson Jace, my
dad, Clyde Fletcher Jarvis was a most important person. Jace will
remember his great-great grandpa, as well as his great grandpa(me) and
his grandma(my eldest daughter). We have a book that reminds Jace of
the people who made it possible for him to be here. On the Jarvis
side, it goes back to 1756, and the birth in Virginia(now West
Virginia) of John Jarvis. Earlier records are some uncertain. On the
Ludwig side there is a family tree going back to King Ludwig(called
"Mad King Ludwig"), in the 1400's. John Ludwig(born 1735) came to
America in 1752 and became a ship captain in the Revolutionary War.
All of these people are remembered, even if only by a small, but very
important number of folks...my family.
My rambling point is this, when we learn to honor and respect *All
humans who have walked upon this Planet Earth, when we do that, we
just might have the beginnings of a World Peace.

Carl Jarvis


On 11/28/16, Richard Driscoll <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> Miriam:
>
> I do not know if it is true but I am very confident that it is likely to
> occur.
>
> How many historical figures of great importance who have accomplished
> many positive and possibly some of great importance have we forgotten?
>
> Richard
> On 11/28/2016 2:49 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> If that's true, it's unfortunate because he is an important historical
>> figure and he accomplished many positive things, many more than some of
>> our
>> ostensible allies.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Richard
>> Driscoll
>> Sent: Monday, November 28, 2016 3:24 PM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Reflections on the Death of Fidel Castro
>>
>> All:
>>
>> Yes in about five years when the name Fidel Castro is mentioned a large
>> portion of the audience will look undisturbed and say, Who?
>>
>> Richard
>>
>>
>> On 11/28/2016 8:13 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>>> We will need to wait for the historical treatment of Castro, somewhere
>>> out in the future...if we have a future. Presently we will be
>>> subjected to the heavy "Hate Castro" folks to get their venom out of
>>> their systems.
>>> The very last people I would turn to for commentary on Castro's legacy
>>> is "Little Cuba". Miami is the de facto capital of the old Cuba. I
>>> have no proof, but my gut tells me that among those Cubans who grabbed
>>> the People's money and fled to the protection of our Freedom Loving
>>> country, were Mafia members, or at least Mafia business partners.
>>> While I am always on the side of open government, by and for the
>>> People, I can sympathize with a new government having to fight off the
>>> death grip of the Mafia and its Ilk. I am not so old and fumbled
>>> brained that I could forget what Cuba looked like to the average
>>> working class Cuban. But in case folks are too young or too
>>> indoctrinated to recall, just hold onto your britches, the Trumpsters
>>> will take the USA down that same path. Think of the glitter and
>>> glamor of the high rise hotels with the high priced nightclubs,
>>> peopled by the glamorous wealthy Americans, decked out in their
>>> finery. And back behind the facade will be the hovels of the working
>>> serfs, living among the filth and pot holes of a crumbling, once proud
>>> nation.
>>> Civilization or Environment, it will be a race to the bottom. Which
>>> one will lose first?
>>>
>>> Carl Jarvis
>>>
>>> On 11/28/16, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> And ironically for the law and order folks Battista was a total
>>>> puppet of the Mafia including Lanksy and their holdings and rackets in
>> Cuba.
>>>> Remember when Battista fled Cuba he didn't go empty handed. He fled
>>>> with $450 million in 1959 dollars.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
>>>> To: <blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>>>> Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2016 2:19 PM
>>>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Reflections on the Death of Fidel
>>>> Castro
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> IF Fidel Castro accomplished but one act, that of unseating Fulgencio
>>>> Batista, he would have been a "People's Hero".
>>>> Fulgencio Batista was the poster boy for all that was corrupt, cold
>>>> and greedy in Latin American Dictators.
>>>> But despite arousing the wrath of the wealthy Cubans and the "fun
>>>> loving" American rich, Fidel Castro went on to shape a government
>>>> that not only out lasted the corrupt governments in Latin America,
>>>> but raised the standard of living for the working class. Not
>>>> withstanding the mighty efforts by the American Empire to make Castro
>>>> into a Demon and a ruthless killer. I find it interesting that the
>>>> American Empire, while espousing democracy and freedom, took in the
>>>> suffering rich Cubans who grabbed their personal wealth and fled to
>> Florida.
>>>> And what really riles me, is the fact that America's working class
>>>> allowed these leeches to live off our hard earned working class
>>>> dollars, even as they plotted to bring Castro down and return to
>>>> their rightful place at the top of the heap.
>>>> Carl Jarvis
>>>>
>>>> On 11/27/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>>> Truthdig
>>>>>
>>>>> Reflections on the Death of Fidel
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/reflections_on_the_death_of_fide
>>>>> l_201611
>>>>> 26/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> AddThis Sharing Buttons
>>>>> Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to More6
>>>>>
>>>>> Posted on Nov 26, 2016
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> By Steve Wasserman
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro speaks on May Day in 1960.
>>>>> (AP)
>>>>>
>>>>> Steve Wasserman is publisher of Heyday Books (https://heydaybooks.com)
>>>>> .
>>>>>
>>>>> Nearly 60 years ago, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times
>>>>> interviewed a rebel-with-a-cause most people thought was dead.
>>>>> Matthews' scoop in the tangled jungle of Cuba's Sierra Maestra proved
>> that the man was alive.
>>>>> His
>>>>> name (which in its entirety was but four syllables) would soon come
>>>>> to be known the world over. To his followers, the first two
>>>>> syllables would
>>>>> suffice: "Fi-del."
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro's quest to topple Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista captured
>>>>> the imagination of millions. Victory, secured after only two years
>>>>> of urban insurrection and guerrilla warfare, catapulted the
>>>>> 32-year-old former lawyer and son of a wealthy landowner into the
>>>>> ranks of revolutionary stardom.
>>>>> After the catastrophes and crimes that had befallen the 1917
>>>>> Bolshevik project, Castro seemed at first to herald something new.
>>>>> His was the first socialist revolution, after all, to have been made
>>>>> without the central participation of the Communist Party (and even,
>>>>> it appeared, against the
>>>>> party: In the aftermath of Castro's failed attack on the military
>>>>> barracks of Moncada in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, the
>>>>> party's apparatchiks had denounced him as a "putschist" and an
>>>>> "adventurist"). All previous socialist revolutionaries had seemed
>>>>> grimly puritanical. By contrast, Castro's barbudos appeared almost
>>>>> to be bohemians with guns. Democracy and radical reform were poised
>>>>> to replace dictatorship and social misery.
>>>>>
>>>>> The hundreds of photographs taken of Castro and his men as they made
>>>>> their 500-mile victory march up the Central Highway from Santiago de
>>>>> Cuba to Havana capture something of the country's exhilaration and
>>>>> popular acclaim.
>>>>> Burt Glinn, for one, an intrepid 33-year-old member of the New York
>>>>> office of the Magnum Photographic Cooperative, was among the most
>>>>> gifted of the many photographers drawn to Cuba. (A selection of his
>>>>> work can be seen in his book "Havana: The Revolutionary Moment."
>>>>> Also highly recommended is "Fidel's Cuba: A Revolution in Pictures,"
>>>>> by Osvaldo Salas and Roberto
>>>>> Salas.) He borrowed money from Clay Felker, his roommate, to hire a
>>>>> charter flight to Havana the moment he learned Batista had fled the
>>>>> country after
>>>>>
>>>>> a
>>>>> lavish 1958 New Year's Eve party. Glinn, like fellow photojournalist
>>>>> Lee Lockwood of the Black Star photo agency, knew that nothing is
>>>>> more seductive than making history except, perhaps, taking pictures
>>>>> of it. Glinn's and Lockwood's pictures show Castro and his men,
>>>>> weary with fatigue and near-disbelief stamped on their youthful
>>>>> faces, being met by a thronging populace beside itself with ardor,
>>>>> as they rolled through province after province, city after city, en
>>>>> route to the nation's capital to proclaim their mastery of the
>>>>> island. Eyes dance with hope; the radiant future beckons.
>>>>>
>>>>> History was on the move, bursting with possibility and promise. The
>>>>> tyrant was gone and revolutionary idealism had yet to curdle into
>>>>> cynicism. Nor had the effort to survive soured into despotism.
>>>>> Today, it is all but impossible to gaze at those pictures of armed
>>>>> campesinos, many of them still boys barely able to boast peach fuzz
>>>>> on their cheeks, as they sprawled about the lobby of the recently
>>>>> built and newly occupied Hilton Hotel, promptly dubbed and still
>>>>> known as the Havana Libre, without thinking of the heartbreak that
>>>>> was to come in the years ahead. Preserved in innumerable
>>>>> photographs, those early and heady days were filled with Sunday
>>>>> patriots; city girls flirting with shy peasants, M-1 carbines
>>>>> strapped to their backs; a general, if happy, chaos engulfing a
>>>>> people in almost libidinous tumult, even as Castro sought to hold a
>>>>> disparate movement together by the sheer force of his leonine
>>>>> personality and his demonstrated and widely admired willingness to
>>>>> risk his life in the fight against the dictatorship. Lockwood later
>>>>> wrote of vast numbers of people assembling in every city Castro
>>>>> entered, chanting "Fi-del! Fi-del!" and the crowds "parting before
>>>>> him and closing behind him like Moses passing through the Red Sea."
>>>>> Castro seemed "the incarnation of a legendary hero surrounded by an
>>>>> aura of magic, a bearded Parsifal who had brought miraculous
>>>>> deliverance to an ailing Cuba."
>>>>>
>>>>> It was, of course, Castro's extraordinary eloquence, strength of
>>>>> character and unyielding commitment to action that drew men and
>>>>> women alike to his side. Personality trumped politics. It was this
>>>>> striking element—an element that still infuses many of the pictures
>>>>> of the young Castro with a nearly electric charge palpable after all
>>>>> these years—that caused many observers to regard him as a dangerous
>>>>> extremist even as they acknowledged the man's magnetism. Others,
>>>>> like Argentina's Che Guevara, were drawn to him, although Guevara
>>>>> originally viewed Castro's movement as bourgeois, even while
>>>>> conceding that it was led by a man whose "image is enhanced by
>>>>> personal qualities of extraordinary brilliance." Later, Castro's
>>>>> willingness to embrace more radical solutions when necessary
>>>>> continually surprised and pleased Guevara as much as it dismayed the
>> movement's moderates.
>>>>> It is perhaps hard at this remove to summon up the eros, the sheer
>>>>> vitality, of the revolution Castro made. The seduction of his
>>>>> flamboyant leadership, his spontaneity of spirit, was almost
>>>>> impossible to resist. He was virile, glamorous—in a word, sexy. He
>>>>> relied less on Marxist dogma than on photogenesis to capture the
>>>>> minds and hearts of millions. He was, as the late Marshall Frady
>>>>> once wrote, "an almost Tolstoyan figure in the profusion of his
>>>>> exuberance and imagination. Among all the premiers and statesmen
>>>>> over the globe, he was at least the one figure who seemed
>>>>> unquestionably, tumultuously alive." Not only were Castro and his
>>>>> barbudos [bearded revolutionaries] better-looking than the corrupt
>>>>> politicians and gangsters they overthrew, they knew it, and it is
>>>>> easy to see, on the evidence of the many iconic photographs of the
>>>>> period, how it was that a "golden legend,"
>>>>> as
>>>>> the French philosopher Régis Debray once called it, arose.
>>>>>
>>>>> The history of every revolution is always a battle of clichés, and
>>>>> in Cuba's case the commonly accepted narrative reduces its
>>>>> revolution to a romantic fable of the charismatic Castro and his 12
>>>>> apostles, whose numbers multiplied faster than players in a pyramid
>>>>> game and who, having survived the rigors of guerrilla warfare, broke
>>>>> the back of a regime as brutal as it was corrupt. This myth was, in
>>>>> part, of Castro's own making. What is indisputable is that by
>>>>> December 1958, Castro's rebel army of 3,000 armed men had defeated a
>>>>> government that fielded a vastly superior military force of 80,000
>>>>> troops. Or, perhaps more precisely, in the face of mounting civil
>>>>> strife, Batista's political support vanished, Washington's
>>>>> confidence in him crumbled, and his will to power collapsed. And so,
>>>>> in time-honored fashion, the despot fled his suffering island in the
>>>>> middle of the night, stuffing his luggage with millions of stolen
>>>>> dollars to live out the remainder of his life in the baronial manner
>>>>> to which he had long been accustomed. He died in Portugal in 1973.
>>>>>
>>>>> For many years now, Castro's most perfervid opponents have been at
>>>>> pains to disparage him as a foreign implant—Galician on his father's
>>>>> side, schooled by Jesuits and cleaving to Marxism, factors that
>>>>> disqualify him, in their view, from being Cuban at all. Even so
>>>>> unabashed an apologist as his long-time friend Gabriel Garcia
>>>>> Marquez concedes Castro's oddness when he notes that "he is one of
>>>>> the rare Cubans who neither sings nor dances."
>>>>> Others, more generous, regard him as an authentic reformer who in
>>>>> the attempt to free his country from the grip of the United States
>>>>> came, disastrously, to embrace his inner caudillo. Such critics
>>>>> initially welcomed his ambition to transform Cuba—to rid it of the
>>>>> corruptions of the past, to diversify the economy by breaking the
>>>>> stranglehold of sugar and tobacco, and to restore the 1940
>>>>> Constitution.
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro was, it appeared, a man determined to chart his own way. In
>>>>> the gun-happy swirl of radical factions that fought among themselves
>>>>> at the University of Havana in the 1940s and early 1950s, Castro
>>>>> stood out. He was admired less for his politics, which were often
>>>>> mercurial, than for the force of his personality. By all accounts,
>>>>> he was one of those men who seem to suck all the oxygen out of any
>>>>> room they enter. He did not then have a reputation as a disciplined
>>>>> and patient communist. Rather, he was something of a hothead, having
>>>>> won his reputation as a man of action in 1947 when he took part in
>>>>> an abortive attempt to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow
>>>>> Rafael Trujillo; the next year, he won his street-fighting spurs
>>>>> while visiting Bogota, Colombia, when an ill-fated uprising broke out.
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro's zeal to remake Cuba was seen by sympathizers as a patriotic
>>>>> project, less to do with Karl Marx than with Jose Marti, the
>>>>> founding father of the country. It was a posture that won him many
>>>>> adherents, especially among the men and women of Cuba's middle and
>>>>> upper-middle classes whose political aspirations had been thwarted
>>>>> by Batista's March 10, 1952, coup.
>>>>> As for Castro's anti-Yankee sentiments, he came by them honestly.
>>>>> Years later, the U.S.-made bombs that Batista used against Castro
>>>>> and his men would harden his attitude. In a letter from his redoubt
>>>>> in the Sierra Maestra to Celia Sanchez, the daughter of a dentist
>>>>> and his chief courier between the rebel army and the city
>>>>> underground, Castro wrote of his anger toward the United States:
>>>>> "When I saw the rockets that they fired on Mario's house, I swore
>>>>> that the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing.
>>>>> When this war is over, I'll start a much longer and bigger war of my
>>>>> own: the war I'm going to fight against them."
>>>>>
>>>>> The long, near-Talmudic debate over when and how Castro became a
>>>>> communist is largely beside the point. What was clear from the start
>>>>> was the man's radical disposition and refusal to be cowed into a
>>>>> complacent reformism.
>>>>> His
>>>>> defining ideological characteristic was his implacable
>>>>> anti-imperialism.
>>>>> His
>>>>> sympathies were plain. These sympathies and much else—from
>>>>> reminiscences of his childhood to his thoughts on the crackup of the
>>>>> Soviet Union and the current imbroglio in Iraq—are on offer in his
>>>>> lengthy reflections given in
>>>>> 2005 to Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde diplomatique, during 100
>>>>> hours of interviews and published in a meticulous English
>>>>> translation by Andrew Hurley in a book of more than 700 pages called
>>>>> "My Life: A Spoken Autobiography." (Interestingly, Hurley is also
>>>>> the translator of Armando Valladares' indelible 1986 memoir of his
>>>>> time in Castro's jails, "Against All Hope.") Castro recalls that it
>>>>> was in the party's Havana bookstore on Calle Carlos III that, as a
>>>>> college student, he bought "most of the classics of Marxist
>>>>> literature." (Twenty years ago, Castro said as much to Frei Betto,
>>>>> the Dominican priest from Brazil, to whom he granted 23 hours of
>>>>> interviews, which were edited and published in the United States as
>>>>> "Fidel and Religion," saying, "Almost all of the books I read were
>>>>> bought on credit at the Communist Party bookstore on Carlos III
>>>>> Street.") While he found himself in accord with many of the party's
>>>>> goals, he despaired of its rampant sectarianism and what he
>>>>> condemned as its "ghetto mentality." In addition, the party was
>>>>> compromised in the eyes of many Cubans by its willingness to
>>>>> collaborate with Batista and to serve in his government.
>>>>>
>>>>> He was also keenly aware of the deep-seated anti-communism that
>>>>> marked Cuba's political culture. Looking back, Castro concedes his
>>>>> "ideas were Socialist, and pretty radical." And he confesses that he
>>>>> was determined to steer the population toward ever more radical
>>>>> positions. But he didn't want to panic his opponents. He was careful
>>>>> not to prematurely proclaim the socialist character of his ultimate
>>>>> goal. His admission isn't new. In 1965, in a lengthy series of
>>>>> conversations—some 25 hours—with Lockwood, the American
>>>>> photojournalist, an edited version of which was published two years
>>>>> later as "Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel," Castro said "that all
>>>>> radical revolutionaries, in certain moments or circumstances, do not
>>>>> announce programs that might unite all of their enemies on a single
>>>>> front." He was aware of the need to be cunning: "To have said that
>>>>> our program was Marxist-Leninist or Communist would have awakened many
>> prejudices."
>>>>> Still,
>>>>> he told Lockwood, "it is possible that there was some moment when I
>>>>> appeared less radical than I really was. It is possible too that I
>>>>> was more radical than even I myself knew." More: "If you ask me
>>>>> whether I considered myself a revolutionary at the time I was in the
>>>>> mountains, I would answer yes. I considered myself a revolutionary.
>>>>> If you asked me, did I consider myself
>>>>>
>>>>> a
>>>>> Marxist-Leninist, I would say no, I did not consider myself a
>>>>> Marxist-Leninist."
>>>>>
>>>>> Moreover, Castro had not only to be certain of the support of a
>>>>> majority
>>>>> of
>>>>> the island's 6 million people but also of a majority of his comrades,
>>>>> telling Ramonet that he "had to do some heavy arguing, even among the
>>>>> militants of the 26th of July Movement." It couldn't have been easy:
>>>>> "There
>>>>> was also competition, rivalry, among the leadership, and you had to
>>>>> keep
>>>>> your eye on all that."
>>>>>
>>>>> It is a rare admission of the difficulty of keeping together the many,
>>>>> often
>>>>> conflicting strands of the various factions that made up the
>>>>> opposition
>>>>> to
>>>>> Batista while constantly demanding obeisance to his personal
>>>>> leadership.
>>>>> For
>>>>> in addition to the clash of personalities and the differences in
>>>>> temperament
>>>>> of the various men who vied to head the movement to oust Batista, it
>>>>> was
>>>>> also riven by ideological differences—differences that had their
>>>>> origin
>>>>> in
>>>>> the diverging strategies and priorities of those who fought in the
>>>>> mountains
>>>>> and in the cities. The seeds of future conflicts (and defections)
>>>>> after
>>>>> Castro's triumph were in the contradictions of class that, to a very
>>>>> considerable extent, would mark both the struggle against Batista and
>> the
>>>>> years after his overthrow during which Castro consolidated his power.
>>>>> Many
>>>>> who helped to make the revolution later broke with him. The list of
>>>>> ex-Fidelistas is long. It includes Huber Matos, Anibal Escalante,
>>>>> David
>>>>> Salvador, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Pedro Diaz Lanz, Carlos Franqui,
>>>>> Guillermo
>>>>> Cabrera Infante, Mario Llerena, Herberto Padilla and Ernesto
>>>>> Betancourt.
>>>>> Some would flee; others would be expelled; still others would be
>>>>> imprisoned.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The anti-Batista resistance was made up of men as diverse as Che
>> Guevara,
>>>>> who in a private letter insisted that "the solution of the world's
>>>>> problems
>>>>> lies behind the so-called iron curtain," and René Ramos Latour, a
>>>>> leader
>>>>> of
>>>>> the movement's urban underground who castigated Guevara for thinking
>>>>> it
>>>>> possible "to free ourselves from the noxious 'Yankee' domination by
>> means
>>>>> of
>>>>> a no less noxious 'Soviet' domination." The urban wing was composed
>>>>> mostly
>>>>> of middle-class moderates, many of whom would feel betrayed by Castro
>>>>> when
>>>>> he embraced socialism in 1961 after the victory over the U.S.-backed
>>>>> Bay
>>>>> of
>>>>> Pigs invasion. The guerrilla army, on the other hand, drew upon the
>>>>> peasantry, the revolution's chief beneficiaries and most vigorous
>>>>> defenders.
>>>>> (Two informed and detailed histories of the inner workings of the
>>>>> anti-Batista resistance, based on primary documents and extensive
>>>>> interviews
>>>>> with the participants, stand out: Ramon L. Bonachea and Marta San
>>>>> Martin's
>>>>> "The Cuban Insurrection, 1952-1959," and Julia E. Sweig's "Inside the
>>>>> Cuban
>>>>> Revolution.")
>>>>>
>>>>> The old debate over whether Castro was an opportunist with a hidden
>>>>> socialist agenda, or a social democrat and Cuban patriot forced by the
>>>>> enmity of the United States into accepting the Soviet Union's help as
>> the
>>>>> price of the revolution's survival, hardly matters now. It is clear
>>>>> from
>>>>> the
>>>>> abundant public and private record, only some of which has come to
>> light,
>>>>> that Castro always regarded himself as a radical visionary and
>>>>> nationalist
>>>>> whose politics were shaped more by the writings of Marti and Bolivar
>> than
>>>>> by
>>>>> Marx and Lenin. Even though the revolution's ideology is today
>> officially
>>>>> proclaimed as Marxist-Leninist, in a speech delivered in East Berlin
>>>>> in
>>>>> 1977, Castro embarrassed his more orthodox Communist hosts by
>>>>> declaring:
>>>>> "I
>>>>> still don't know to what extent I'm still a utopian and to what extent
>>>>> I've
>>>>> become a Marxist-Leninist—perhaps I may even be a bit of a dreamer."
>>>>> (It
>>>>> is
>>>>> a speech, alas, not included in the "Fidel Castro Reader," a useful
>>>>> compendium of 20 of Castro's most important orations. The editors,
>>>>> David
>>>>> Deutschmann and Deborah Shnookal, faced a daunting task: Castro, they
>>>>> estimate, has given "more than 5,000 speeches over a 48-year period.")
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro, of course, was familiar with and admired Marx and Lenin. One
>>>>> did
>>>>> not
>>>>> have to wait for Ramonet's questions to learn this. In letters Castro
>>>>> wrote
>>>>> while in prison in the Isle of Pines, serving a 15-year sentence for
>>>>> his
>>>>> failed attack on the Moncada—Batista granted him amnesty after less
>>>>> than
>>>>> two
>>>>> years in jail—he wrote: "Marx and Lenin each had a weighty polemical
>>>>> spirit,
>>>>> and I have to laugh. It is fun, and I have a good time reading them.
>> They
>>>>> would not give an inch and they were dreaded by their enemies." Castro
>>>>> was
>>>>> enthralled by "the magnificent spectacle offered by the great
>> revolutions
>>>>> of
>>>>> history: they have always meant the victory of the huge majority's
>>>>> aspirations for a decent life and happiness over the interests of a
>> small
>>>>> group." He longed to revolutionize Cuba "from one end to the other."
>>>>> He
>>>>> relished the prospect, vowing "I would not be stopped by the hatred
>>>>> and
>>>>> ill
>>>>> will of a few thousand people, including some of my relatives, half
>>>>> the
>>>>> people I know, two-thirds of my fellow professionals, and four-fifths
>>>>> of
>>>>> my
>>>>> schoolmates."
>>>>>
>>>>> Twenty-one of these early and revealing letters are collected in "The
>>>>> Prison
>>>>> Letters of Fidel Castro," with an introduction by Ann Louise Bardach,
>> the
>>>>> perspicacious and indefatigable author of "Cuba Confidential," and an
>>>>> epilogue by Castro's onetime friend and frequent correspondent Luis
>> Conte
>>>>> Aguero, who fled to Miami in 1960. Others can be read in "Diary of the
>>>>> Cuban
>>>>> Revolution" by Carlos Franqui, the former head of Castro's Radio
>> Rebelde.
>>>>> An
>>>>> insightful account of the fates of his schoolmates at the elite Jesuit
>>>>> boarding school he attended as a teenager is found in "The Boys From
>>>>> Dolores: Fidel Castro's Classmates from Revolution to Exile," by
>>>>> Patrick
>>>>> Symmes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro read voraciously in prison, often as much as 14 hours a day.
>>>>> Enamored
>>>>> with history's radical reformers, he was particularly taken with the
>> life
>>>>> of
>>>>> Napoleon ("How generous Napoleon was with his enemies! I have read
>>>>> many
>>>>> books about him and I never get bored"), Kant and Marx ("After
>>>>> breaking
>>>>> my
>>>>> head over Kant for a while, Marx seems easier to read than the Lord's
>>>>> Prayer") and Robespierre, whom he considered an honest idealist: "The
>>>>> [French] Revolution was in danger, the frontiers surrounded by enemies
>> on
>>>>> all sides, traitors ready to plunge a dagger into one's back, the
>>>>> fence
>>>>> sitters were blocking the way—one had to be harsh, inflexible,
>>>>> tough—it
>>>>> was
>>>>> better to go too far than not go far enough, because everything might
>>>>> have
>>>>> been lost. The few months of the Terror were necessary to do away with
>>>>> a
>>>>> terror that had lasted for centuries. In Cuba, we need more
>>>>> Robespierres."
>>>>>
>>>>> Yet later, in both private letters and public pronouncements, Castro
>>>>> disavowed terrorism as a tactic of revolutionary war. He was not a
>>>>> nihilist,
>>>>> and he deliberately eschewed, indeed condemned, terrorism for its
>>>>> disregard
>>>>> of human life. In a letter during the fight against Batista rebuking
>>>>> brother
>>>>> Raul for his reckless kidnapping of a group of U.S. citizens
>>>>> (subsequently
>>>>> released unharmed), Fidel said: "It is essential to declare
>> categorically
>>>>> that we do not utilize the system of hostages, however justified our
>>>>> indignation may be against the political attitudes of any government."
>> He
>>>>> went on to say that "such tactics would turn international opinion
>>>>> against
>>>>> us. ..." In a radio speech to Batista's soldiers, Castro called on
>>>>> them
>>>>> to
>>>>> surrender, pledging that "[n]o prisoner will be interrogated,
>> mistreated,
>>>>> or
>>>>> humiliated in word or deed, and all will receive the generous and
>>>>> humane
>>>>> treatment military prisoners have always received from us." By most
>>>>> accounts, Castro's practice—during the guerrilla war at least—was as
>> good
>>>>> as
>>>>> his promise.
>>>>>
>>>>> In his talks with Ramonet, Castro is at pains to emphasize the point
>>>>> (Cuba
>>>>> was, Castro said, the first country to condemn the 9/11 attackers and
>>>>> to
>>>>> express its sympathy and solidarity with the people of the United
>>>>> States),
>>>>> and in a remark that seemed aimed at the insurgents in Iraq, he
>> declared,
>>>>> "No war is ever won through terrorism. ... Neither the theorists of
>>>>> our
>>>>> wars
>>>>> of independence nor any Marxist-Leninist that I know of advocated
>>>>> assassination or terrorist-style acts, acts in which innocent people
>>>>> might
>>>>> be killed. That's not contemplated in any revolutionary doctrine. ...
>>>>> Ethics
>>>>> is not simply a moral issue—if ethics is sincere, it produces
>>>>> results."
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro sought not merely to overthrow a single dictator, but to alter
>> the
>>>>> habits of a nation's entire cultural and political economy. He knew
>>>>> his
>>>>> nemesis lay 90 miles to the north. He knew he would have to vanquish a
>>>>> notion of Cuba that had lodged itself firmly in the American
>> imagination.
>>>>> This would prove to be a herculean task. Cuba, for Americans, had long
>>>>> been
>>>>> a location of fantasy, of escape and reinvention. After the economic
>>>>> panic
>>>>> of 1893 plunged the United States into widespread depression,
>>>>> thousands
>>>>> of
>>>>> jobless men emigrated to Cuba to seek their fortune, seeing in Cuba,
>>>>> as
>>>>> the
>>>>> advertising campaigns of the time proclaimed, a "virgin land," "a new
>>>>> California," a "veritable Klondike of wealth." The novelist James
>>>>> Gould
>>>>> Cozzens described Havana during these early days of the American
>>>>> occupation,
>>>>> after the defeat of Spain at the close of the 19th century, as being
>>>>> filled
>>>>> with "adventurers, misinformed idiots, knaves, murderers, thieving
>>>>> contractors, corrupt officials, lease hunters—every form of rogue and
>>>>> rascal. It was then the last and worst American frontier, with the
>> ethics
>>>>> and atmosphere of all frontiers; life, depraved and violent; honor,
>>>>> non-existent; and fabulous money loose for the stealing."
>>>>>
>>>>> Another American wrote disparagingly of "scum floating across the
>>>>> Gulf,"
>>>>> of
>>>>> a "whole class of ... buzzards" and "American braggarts" who
>>>>> "swaggered
>>>>> through the town with their hands in their pockets and their hats
>>>>> tilted
>>>>> back." Bars proliferated; then, during Prohibition, speak-easies and
>>>>> casinos. By the 1950s, in Havana, according to Louis A. Perez Jr.'s
>>>>> indispensable "On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture,"
>>>>> almost 12,000 women could be found working as prostitutes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cuba, until Castro's triumph, was a place of retreat and refuge, a
>> resort
>>>>> for the smart set and the socially prominent, attracting trendsetters
>> and
>>>>> celebrities such as Gloria Vanderbilt, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia
>> Earhart,
>>>>> Irving Berlin, Will Rogers and Errol Flynn. Cuba offered access to the
>>>>> exotic with minimum exposure to risk, a place where, as one writer
>>>>> said
>>>>> approvingly, "conscience takes a holiday." Havana, wrote Graham
>>>>> Greene,
>>>>> was
>>>>> an "extraordinary city where every vice was permissible and every
>>>>> trade
>>>>> possible." As Ernest Hemingway put it, more bluntly, it had "both
>> fishing
>>>>> and fucking." The writer Jose de la Campa Gonzalez wrote in 1937, with
>>>>> some
>>>>> exasperation, of this development in his "Memorias de un machadista":
>>>>> "Another new Cuba had arisen, strange, incoherent, in which all that
>>>>> was
>>>>> discussed was of horse races, of football, of baseball, and nonstop
>>>>> discussions of the United States, with a ridiculous ambition of
>>>>> speaking
>>>>> English ... [and] a stupid adoration of everything that was from the
>>>>> United
>>>>> States."
>>>>>
>>>>> But his was a minority view. On the evidence painstakingly marshaled
>>>>> by
>>>>> Perez, many Cubans regarded the American presence as promising the
>>>>> transformation of Cuban life, from poverty to prosperity, from
>>>>> backwardness
>>>>> to modernity. To be sure, the price of success might well require
>>>>> Cubans
>>>>> to
>>>>> adapt to American values and tastes. But it was a price some Cubans
>>>>> were
>>>>> willing to pay. This was especially true of Habaneros. Increasingly,
>>>>> Havana's inhabitants were living beyond their means, imagining
>> themselves
>>>>> as
>>>>> the de facto citizens of the wealthy and paternal colossus to the
>>>>> north,
>>>>> even as they bridled at American presumption and swagger. By the
>>>>> mid-1950s,
>>>>> the sugar-and-tobacco economy began to sputter: Prices on the world
>>>>> market
>>>>> for these unessential commodities plummeted, the island's economy
>>>>> contracted, opportunities diminished. The cost of living began to
>>>>> soar,
>>>>> the
>>>>> cities flared into violence, Batista fled, and Castro came to power.
>>>>>
>>>>> Castro imagined a different future. His true calling, he felt, was to
>>>>> do
>>>>> everything possible to escape the American orbit. He would seek to end
>>>>> decades of humiliation by fulfilling Marti's dream of having Cuba play
>>>>> David
>>>>> to America's Goliath. Cuba, he declared, would break with the past and
>>>>> renounce the blandishments of the profligate American way of life:
>>>>> "How
>>>>> could we import rice and buy Cadillacs? That is what we did before. Is
>>>>> that
>>>>> not madness? The act of a disoriented country. ... Why were we buying
>>>>> Cadillacs when what we needed were tractors?" From now on, Cubans
>>>>> would
>>>>> have
>>>>> to tighten their belts, forgo the goods that they had for decades
>>>>> taken
>>>>> for
>>>>> granted. Castro sought to remake the Cuban personality, to construct
>> what
>>>>> Che Guevara hailed as the "new man": purged of egotism and
>>>>> selfishness,
>>>>> motivated more by moral incentives and economic sobriety than material
>>>>> rewards, an ascetic revolutionary who would shun the gleaming goods on
>>>>> display in the seductive windows of El Encanto, once Havana's most
>>>>> elegant
>>>>> department store.
>>>>>
>>>>> Fifty years earlier, expressing nationalism for many Cubans meant
>>>>> replacing
>>>>> Spanish customs with American ones. Now, with Castro at the helm,
>>>>> everything
>>>>> American was suspect. It was a political and cultural shock from which
>>>>> the
>>>>> Cuban middle class never recovered (and that Washington policymakers
>>>>> never
>>>>> forgave). Most of them preferred voluntary exile and prosperity in
>>>>> Miami
>>>>> to
>>>>> enforced equality and privation in Havana. The proximity of the United
>>>>> States made it possible for Castro to rid himself of the very class
>>>>> that
>>>>> had
>>>>> done so much to help him during the hard fight against Batista—and
>>>>> which
>>>>> suffered the greatest number of casualties at the hands of Batista's
>>>>> torturers—and now was outraged that Castro was bent on denying it the
>>>>> privileges it had long enjoyed. He refused to return to business as
>>>>> usual.
>>>>> The middle class' contribution to defeating Batista was largely
>>>>> written
>>>>> out
>>>>> of the official story of the revolution's triumph. Soon the exiles
>> formed
>>>>> a
>>>>> base where, with the constant encouragement and support of successive
>>>>> American administrations, they could launch a thousand conspiracies
>>>>> and
>>>>> attempts to subvert Castro and his regime. Castro claimed to Ramonet
>>>>> to
>>>>> have
>>>>> thwarted over the years more than 500 attempts to assassinate him.
>>>>> There
>>>>> is
>>>>> no reason to doubt him. When he took power, Cuba's population was 6
>>>>> million;
>>>>> nearly a million would flee to the United States. Today, Cuba's
>>>>> population
>>>>> has nearly doubled, and nearly half were born after Jan. 1, 1959.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ramonet's interviews with Castro elicited a rather startling
>>>>> admission,
>>>>> confirming and elaborating upon comments made more than 20 years ago
>>>>> to
>>>>> Gianni Mina, the Italian television journalist: Castro said that in
>>>>> the
>>>>> first years after he came to power there were "about 300
>>>>> counter-revolutionary organizations" trying to plot his overthrow.
>>>>> Resistance to his rule, he admitted, "spread to all the provinces in
>>>>> the
>>>>> country" and involved thousands of armed men. So fierce and protracted
>>>>> was
>>>>> the opposition that the fight to suppress it "cost us more lives than
>> the
>>>>> war against Batista had." It was, he said, a "dirty war" that would
>>>>> last
>>>>> years longer than his own struggle against Batista. The action in the
>>>>> Escambray Mountains was especially difficult, requiring Castro to send
>>>>> 40,000 troops and "put a squad in every house in every zone to clean
>>>>> it
>>>>> out." Castro's support among the peasants there was considerably less
>>>>> than
>>>>> what he had enjoyed among the campesinos of the Sierra Maestra, his
>>>>> main
>>>>> base of operations in Cuba's southernmost province of Oriente. The
>>>>> 26th
>>>>> of
>>>>> July Movement didn't hold sway in the Escambray; other anti-Batista
>>>>> groups,
>>>>> whose leaders neither trusted Castro nor shared his politics, did.
>>>>>
>>>>> With the United States providing a haven for his opposition meant that
>>>>> Castro could favor expulsion over extermination. This was particularly
>>>>> true
>>>>> after the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, which ended in a
>>>>> secret
>>>>> understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union: In
>> exchange
>>>>> for the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles, Washington agreed to
>>>>> end
>>>>> its
>>>>> violent efforts to overthrow or otherwise end the Castro regime. Of
>>>>> course,
>>>>> this was a shift in policy honored more in the breach than in
>>>>> practice,
>>>>> and
>>>>> it did nothing to weaken the economic embargo that Washington had
>> imposed
>>>>> on
>>>>> Cuba. But Castro's revolution had secured a degree of security.
>>>>>
>>>>> Geography is fate. It was both Castro's curse as well as his blessing
>>>>> that
>>>>> the U.S. was so near. It was easy to banish his opposition and send it
>>>>> packing across the Florida Straits. Or, to put it another way, it is
>>>>> unlikely that, after Castro's demise, unmarked mass graves will be
>>>>> found
>>>>> filled with the remains of opponents who had been made to disappear.
>> Cuba
>>>>> is
>>>>> not Chile under Pinochet or Argentina under the generals. Or Iraq
>>>>> under
>>>>> Saddam Hussein. Or Russia under Stalin. Those of his critics who have
>>>>> inflated their rhetoric to the heights of hyperbole do a disservice to
>>>>> actually understanding the more complicated reality and character of
>>>>> the
>>>>> revolt Castro mounted and the revolution he made.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is nonetheless true, however, that Castro, with the indispensable
>>>>> subvention of the Soviet Union, set about creating a police state to
>>>>> enforce
>>>>> an ethic of self-denial and unremitting labor. But nothing worked,
>>>>> neither
>>>>> incessant moral hectoring nor harsh laws. His people, despite the many
>>>>> years
>>>>> of being enjoined "to be like Che," remained firmly attached to the
>>>>> pleasure
>>>>> principle, with an undiminished affection for American movies, jazz,
>>>>> music
>>>>> and sport. It didn't seem to matter whether they were workers or
>>>>> peasants,
>>>>> lived in the city or toiled in the countryside. The Russian Lada never
>>>>> had
>>>>> a
>>>>> chance against the American Ford. After years of wearing Arrow shirts,
>>>>> riding in Otis elevators and repairing their clothes with Singer
>>>>> sewing
>>>>> machines, Cubans found it all but impossible to accept the inferior
>> goods
>>>>> produced in the Soviet bloc. Ideology succumbed to aesthetics.
>>>>>
>>>>> Nor could the Cuban revolution be exported, as Castro hoped, despite
>>>>> the
>>>>> exemplary work of tens of thousands of doctors and teachers in a score
>> of
>>>>> countries. Only music could; and the music that sold was the
>>>>> pre-revolutionary music of an older, nearly forgotten Cuba whose best
>>>>> representatives had become the invisible men of a decaying,
>>>>> melancholic
>>>>> Havana. Today a new generation of Western movie stars, musicians and
>>>>> supermodels—from Robert Redford to Ry Cooder to Naomi
>> Campbell—parachutes
>>>>> into the island, seeking renewal and rejuvenation at the fount of its
>>>>> irrepressible libido. Cuba once again is an exotic location for
>> fantasies
>>>>> of
>>>>> indulgence and abandon. Politically indifferent, the new tourists
>>>>> enroll
>>>>> themselves in the service of an old story.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some years ago, I attended a sold-out concert of the Buena Vista
>>>>> Social
>>>>> Club, making its debut in Los Angeles' art deco Wiltern Theatre. With
>> the
>>>>> legendary Cachaito Lopez on bass, the elegant, silver-haired Ruben
>>>>> Gonzalez
>>>>> at the piano, the silky vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer and the sexy Omara
>>>>> Portuondo
>>>>> at the microphone and a dozen other virtuoso musicians, including
>> Eliades
>>>>> Ochoa, the ensemble seemed a miracle—indeed, a resurrection.
>> Effortlessly
>>>>> gliding from ballad to ballad, the trombonist suddenly broke into a
>>>>> languorous, Cuban-inflected melody whose familiar strains were greeted
>>>>> with
>>>>> an audible gasp of recognition from the delighted audience: He was
>>>>> playing,
>>>>> lyrically and lovingly, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The audience
>>>>> began
>>>>> to
>>>>> sing, wistfully at first and then with gathering conviction, the
>>>>> lyrics
>>>>> of
>>>>> one of America's best-known songs. Whatever else might be said about
>> Cuba
>>>>> and the United States, one thing is certain: It is not yet the end of
>> the
>>>>> affair.
>>>>>
>>>>> As for Castro, all things must pass. His early ideals of libertarian
>>>>> socialism are nowhere in evidence. Today it is abundantly clear that
>>>>> Castro
>>>>> was essentially a practical caudillo for whom power mattered above all
>>>>> else.
>>>>> His tragedy: Confronting unremitting hostility from the colossus of
>>>>> the
>>>>> North, Castro felt himself forced to destroy the revolution in order
>>>>> to
>>>>> save
>>>>> it. His survival was made possible by the Cold War. As he admitted to
>>>>> Ramonet, the Soviet Union provided the crucial support without which
>>>>> the
>>>>> United States might well have crushed him. He goes further,
>>>>> speculating:
>>>>> "If
>>>>> we'd won on that 26 July 1953 [in attacking Batista's Moncada army
>>>>> barracks], we wouldn't be here today. The alignment of forces in the
>>>>> world
>>>>> in 1953 was such that we wouldn't have been able to withstand them.
>>>>> Stalin
>>>>> had just died—he died in March of 1953—and the troika that succeeded
>>>>> him
>>>>> would never have given Cuba the support that Khrushchev did, let's
>>>>> say,
>>>>> seven years later, when the Soviet Union didn't, perhaps, equal the
>>>>> United
>>>>> States but did at least have great economic and military power." The
>>>>> price
>>>>> Castro paid was steep, especially after the failure of his bid to
>> achieve
>>>>> economic independence in 1970 by harvesting a record 10 million tons
>>>>> of
>>>>> sugar, a debacle that nearly wrecked the economy and left him in ever
>>>>> greater thrall to Moscow. It was then, as Régis Debray puts it in the
>>>>> second
>>>>> volume of his recently published memoirs, "Praised Be Our Lords," that
>>>>> a
>>>>> "Soviet starch had been ironed into the criollo insouciance."
>>>>>
>>>>> When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba was bereft: "We lost all our
>>>>> markets
>>>>> for sugar, we stopped receiving foodstuffs, fuel, even the wood to
>>>>> bury
>>>>> our
>>>>> dead in. From one day to the next, we found ourselves without fuel,
>>>>> without
>>>>> raw materials, without food, without soap, without everything."
>>>>> Castro's
>>>>> repeated and increasingly feverish attempts to diversify the country's
>>>>> economy had largely failed. Today the tyranny of cash-crop monoculture
>>>>> remains unbroken: The Cuban economy is, again, dependent on sugar,
>>>>> tobacco
>>>>> and tourism. Chavez's Venezuela, for a time, replaced the Soviet Union
>> as
>>>>> a
>>>>> supplier of cut-rate oil. Meanwhile, the gerontocracy now headed by
>>>>> Castro's
>>>>> brother, Raul, lurches from one nostrum to another as a hurricane of
>>>>> high-tech mongrel capitalism swirls about his socialist Erewhon.
>>>>>
>>>>> His triumph: standing up for the right of small states to resist the
>>>>> bullying and domination of large powers. He was not willing to submit
>>>>> to
>>>>> the
>>>>> dictates of Washington, nor was he always a reliable cat's paw for
>>>>> Moscow.
>>>>> One has only to examine the roots of Castro's Africa policies, which
>>>>> antedated his coziness with the Soviets and were carried out
>>>>> independently
>>>>> of Soviet desires throughout much of the 1960s, to know that he very
>>>>> often
>>>>> refused to kowtow to Kremlin orthodoxy. Whatever else might be said of
>>>>> this
>>>>> most complicated and audacious figure, he strode the world's stage as
>>>>> if
>>>>> his
>>>>> island were a continental power, raising a prophetic voice, decrying
>>>>> the
>>>>> unequal relations between North and South, upholding the right of
>>>>> rebellion
>>>>> and human solidarity, denouncing the despoilment of the environment
>>>>> and
>>>>> excoriating "the profligate, egotistical and insatiable consumerism of
>>>>> the
>>>>> developed countries." He dreamt of leading a continental revolution,
>> like
>>>>> a
>>>>> latter-day Simon Bolivar.
>>>>>
>>>>> The irony: Had Castro died shortly after overthrowing Batista, his
>>>>> unsullied
>>>>> place in Cuba's history would have been assured. His work as a
>>>>> revolutionary
>>>>> might have been regarded as fruitful up to the moment when he failed
>>>>> to
>>>>> recognize that it was time to step aside. He was unable to do so. His
>>>>> lust
>>>>> for power and a sense of messianic mission prevented him. What Simon
>> Leys
>>>>> once wrote of Mao's China can as well be said of Castro's Cuba:
>>>>> "Nations
>>>>> which do not have the opportunity of getting rid of their geniuses are
>>>>> sometimes liable to pay very dearly for the privilege of being led by
>>>>> them."
>>>>>
>>>>> Or as Bertolt Brecht put it: "Unhappy the nation that needs heroes."
>>>>>
>>>>> As for the United States, Washington's refusal, until Obama, to award
>>>>> Cuba
>>>>> the relations it is willing to accord other communist countries—like
>>>>> China
>>>>> and Vietnam—was petulance raised to the level of policy. Cuba's heresy
>>>>> did
>>>>> not rest on Castro's communist conceits. Rather, it rested on its
>>>>> unwillingness to accept America's hemispheric hegemony. Cuba was
>>>>> neither
>>>>> the
>>>>> revolutionary specter of Castro's hyperbole nor the subversive
>>>>> hobgoblin
>>>>> of
>>>>> White House propagandists. Castro's threat did not lie in his fealty
>>>>> to
>>>>> Marxist dogma, but rather in the delusions suffered by planners in the
>>>>> Pentagon, and his enduring example of stiff-necked resistance to
>> American
>>>>> hubris.
>>>>>
>>>>> For in the eyes of Washington's imperial overlords, Castro's greatest
>> sin
>>>>> was his pride, and this they could never forgive.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Evangelical Jerry Fallwell Jr. Says Trump Wanted to Make Him Education
>>>>> Secretary
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> And So it Begins: Normalizing the Election
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Better Living Through Criticism
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Bolivia Declares State of Emergency With Worst Drought in 25 Years
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> © 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If the only accomplishment Fidel Castro
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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