As the infinitely more powerful and wealthier partner in a dysfunctional relationship, he certainly believed it was the US that bore the greater blame. Even when Obama finally visited Havana this year, the two men did not meet. For a blundering, know-nothing Trump, it could be another chance to make a difficult situation worse. But there was no denying his ideological attraction to the communist system that emerged in Russia and eastern Europe after and which was soon challenging US and British power across a developing world struggling to shrug off imperial and colonial shackles.
But this dependence on Russia came at a price, and the debt was collected in when Khrushchev and the Red Army began a secret deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba.
It was an audacious move that president Kennedy, when he became aware of it, predictably deemed an existential threat. It led directly to the so-called Cuban missile crisis , the closest the world has yet come to nuclear Armageddon. The crisis was defused, in part by the reciprocal, secret withdrawal of US nuclear-capable missiles from Turkey. This fear-filled view of Castro as international bogeyman was exacerbated by a third aspect of his political life story — his self-appointed role as a prime exporter of revolution, unbending champion of the oppressed and bold advocate for the countries of the developing world.
His support was practical as well symbolic. Castro also proved an inspirational figure for leftwing liberation movements and would-be revolutionaries across central and Latin America. In s Nicaragua, scene of an undeclared dirty war between the Contra rebels illegally backed by the Reagan administration and the Sandinista Front led by Daniel Ortega, and likewise in El Salvador and Panama, Castro helped provide a counterweight to American efforts, both direct and indirect, to prop up or install conservative, pro-Washington regimes.
In his later years, even as he slipped out of public view, the story remained more or less the same. But for the most part, Castro, iconic hero of the left, was on the right side of history. This article is more than 4 years old. Fidel Castro, left, and Che Guevara in the s. Reuse this content. Senator Wayne Morse, all protested. We will make trenches in the streets. No Cuban voices rose in protest, though there were doubtless many private misgivings.
Sticking up for calm justice might be misinterpreted as sticking up for the tyrant Batista—a dangerous practice in Cuba today. Overwhelming public opinion, especially among women, urged the firing squads on. As he walked with his entourage through the lobby of the Havana Hilton last week, Castro stopped to talk with two old women, who blubbered a request that their murdered sons be avenged.
A Special Moral Climate. The spectacle of Cuban killing Cuban and calling it justice was nothing new to history.
Men still alive today saw the carnage of Spanish rule, and their sons died in the streets in the massacre. Capable of high idealism and warm generosity, Cubans are also endowed to the full with the Latin capacity for brooding revenge and blood purges.
Two wrongs, in many Cuban minds, do make a right. This set of mind fed, under Batista, on a rich diet of police terrorism, often starkly visible. Many of the Batista cops who faced the firing squads last week were proved killers whose twisted minds drew pleasure from pain. To extract secrets from captured rebels, they yanked out fingernails, carbonized hands and feet in red-hot vises. Castration was a major police weapon. Bodies were left in sun-speckled streets as police warnings.
Other rebels were forced to watch their wives raped by cops. But reporters trying to run down atrocity stories often found them to be rumors or plants. Habitual Corruption. Political morality under Batista, while conforming to a half-century of practice, hardly lived up to the idealistic constitution. Brothels, such as the Mambo Club, with chic girls, matronly overseers and a consulting physician, catered to U.
Cheaper cribs along Virtues Street enticed Cubans. There were 10, harlots and as many panderers. Payoffs from prostitution and gambling ran into the millions and were efficiently organized, e. But in Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, the army, while shucking its dictator-boss, remained nearly intact and moderated the transition to free elections. In Cuba, as in the Mexico of , the people rose to smash the army.
Living on Euphoria. Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks—behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. Wildly, he blasted U. Castro has the Cuban moralistic streak in spades, showing no apparent affection for money or soft living.
He has to be cajoled into changing his filthy fatigue jacket. Other Latin American leaders trust his democratic professions, hope that his shortcomings will not bring on disorder and another dictatorship. Symbol on a Hill. Castro has confidence, physical courage, shrewdness, generosity and luck—qualities that will one day plant his statue in some Havana plaza.
He won his long war not by fighting but by perching in sublime self-confidence on the highest mountain range in Cuba for more than two years, proving that Batista could be flouted.
He became the symbol of his rebellious country, pulled quarreling rebel factions together and inspired them to face down a modern army. We do the most work, we make the most rum and sugar, we make the most money too. We hate dictators. He was in love with guns from the time he fired his first. From the age of eight he spent most of his time at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Santiago ; his younger brother Raul, a quarrelsome, envious youngster of five, tagged along.
Like many another Cuban student, he kept a revolver or two around the dormitory. He worked his way up through student politics at Belen and Havana University , got hauled in twice for questioning about political murders. Cuban gunboats intercepted the rebels and Castro swam three miles to shore, his Tommy gun still on his back.
He turned to law, defended a few friends in political trouble, a few farmers evicted from their plots; he honeymooned in New York with his bride Mirtha. At on the morning of March 10, Castro, a candidate for Congress in the elections that Batista canceled, at once found his cause. At dawn on July A suspicious Jeep patrol came up.
Castro, then 26, stepped out, raised his twelve-gauge shotgun and shot his first man. On January 1, , a young Cuban nationalist named Fidel Castro drove his guerilla army into Havana and Elected in as the 35th president of the United States, year-old John F. Kennedy became one of the youngest U. The U-2 aerial photographs were analyzed inside a secret office above a used car dealership.
The critical photographs snapped by U-2 reconnaissance planes over Cuba were shipped for analysis to a top-secret CIA facility in a most unlikely location: a building above the Steuart However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one.
Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from to Though he largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, the Cuban Missile Crisis began after he positioned nuclear weapons 90 miles from An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another.
On October 27, , Rudolf Anderson Jr. Thirteen days before, the Air Force major had flown one of the first top-secret reconnaissance missions over Cuba that confirmed the existence of Soviet missile Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Fidel Castro. Castro Assumes Power in Cuba. John F. Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from to Arms Race An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another.
How the Death of a U.
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