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Fidel Castro

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    8/4/2021

    5 Ways Americans Misunderstand Cuba

    by Caroline McCulloch

    Both the Cuban government's censorship and many Americans' nationalistic perspective hinder an accurate understanding of even the basic history and politics of the Cuban-American relationship. 

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    8/31/2020

    ‘Ten Days in Harlem’: An Interview with Historian Simon Hall

    An interview with historian Simon Hall examines the links between revolutionary Cuba, anticolonial rebellion, and civil rights militancy in the United States as revealed by Fidel Castro's 10-day visit to Harlem and the United Nations in 1960.

  • SOURCE: NY Times
    8/21/19

    My 60 Years of Disappointment With Fidel Castro

    by Enrique Krauze

    Latin American, with few exceptions, they have refused to see the historical failure of the Cuban Revolution and the oppressive and impoverishing domination of their patriarch.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    10-27-17

    The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55

    by James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang

    “The bullshitter…does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.” —Harry G. Frankfurt, "On Bullshit"

  • 7-26-15

    Who “Lost” Cuba?

    by Humberto Fontova

    The liberal line is that the United States backed Batista and tried to block Castro. Here, says the author, is evidence that view is incorrect.

  • SOURCE: Huffington Post
    12-19-13

    Fidel Castro Weighs In On Historic Handshake

    Castro praised his brother, Cuban head of state Raúl Castro, for the much-discussed handshake with U.S. President Barack Obama at Mandela’s memorial service.

  • Evil is Alive and Well (And Right Off Our Coast)

    by Humberto Fontova

    Raul Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. Via Wiki Commons.Foreign reporters -- preferably American -- were much more valuable to us at that time (1957-59) than any military victory. Much more valuable than recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our propaganda." (Che Guevara 1959)“Reporters in Havana are either insensitive to the pain of the opposition 'or in clear complicity' with the government.” (Cuban dissident and torture-victim Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antunez, in the Miami Herald, August 7, 2013)

  • SOURCE: AP
    5-6-13

    JFK Library acquires 2,000 Hemingway letters

    WASHINGTON — While most Americans have never seen Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba where he wrote some of his most famous books, a set of 2,000 recently digitized records delivered to the United States will give scholars and the public a fuller view of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist’s life.A private U.S. foundation is working with Cuba to preserve more of Hemingway’s papers, books and belongings that have been kept at his home near Havana since he died in 1961. On Monday at the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts and the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation announced that 2,000 digital copies of Hemingway papers and materials will be transferred to Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library.This is the first time anyone in the U.S. has been able to examine these items from the writer’s Cuban estate, Finca Vigia. The records include passports showing Hemingway’s travels and letters commenting on such works as his 1954 Nobel Prize-winning “The Old Man and the Sea.” An earlier digitization effort that opened 3,000 Hemingway files in 2008 uncovered fragments of manuscripts, including an alternate ending to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and corrected proofs of “The Old Man and the Sea.”...

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    3-5-13

    Francisco Toro: What Fidel Taught Hugo

    Francisco Toro is a Venezuelan journalist, political scientist and blogger. Born and raised in Caracas, he attended High School and College in the United States.Hugo Chávez died today in Venezuela at the age of 58, but his battle with a never-specified form of cancer was waged largely in a Cuban hospital—a telling detail, as Cuba loomed just as large in his political imagination as his native country.It's a point that my gringo friends up north always struggle with. The Cuban Revolution's immense influence on the region has been constantly underestimated and misunderstood from day one. It's only a slight exaggeration to suggest that everything of note that's happened south of the Rio Grande since 1959 has been an attempt either to emulate, prevent, or transcend the Cuban experience. Chávez will be remembered as the most successful of Fidel Castro's emulators, the man who breathed new life into the old revolutionary dream.