Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Fidel Castro, Cuban Revolutionary Who Defied U.S., Dies at 90

Mr. Castro brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere, bedeviled 11
American presidents and briefly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

By ANTHONY DePALMANOV. 26, 2016

.. it's very long, yet does add some more insight to the American - Cuban saga .. a few bits and pieces ..

Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died on Friday. He was 90.

[ Insert: think this was new to me .. Castro: A Letter from Khrushchev
by Andrew Stuttaford November 26, 2016 11:21

Like many millenarians, Castro welcomed the thought of the purifying fire to come. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, decades into a career in which had waded through blood, remained convinced that communism still offered the promise of a radiant future to come and was a wily and determined opponent of the US. But, unlike Castro, he had lost his taste for the apocalypse.

Here, via PBS, is the text of a letter Khrushchev wrote to Castro not long after the Cuban missile crisis.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442482/castro-letter-khrushchev ]

[...]

But beyond anything else, it was Mr. Castro’s obsession with the United States, and America’s obsession with him, that shaped his rule.

[...]

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Mr. Castro faced one of his biggest challenges: surviving without huge Communist subsidies.

[...]

Mr. Castro’s initial response to the Batista government was to challenge it with a legal appeal, claiming that Mr. Batista’s actions had violated the Constitution. Even as a symbolic act, the attempt was futile.

[...]

[ this is interesting in that it seems one journalist had a profound effect on the initial American approach to Castro ]

The escapade began when Castro loyalists contacted a correspondent and editorial writer for The New York Times, Herbert L. Matthews, and arranged for him to interview Mr. Castro. A few Castro supporters took Mr. Matthews into the mountains disguised as a wealthy American planter.

[ Insert: Mathews portrayed Fidel Castro as something other than a strictly devout Marxist-Leninist,
which ?? perhaps Castro might have been at one early stage .. see .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Matthews#Matthews_in_the_Cuban_Revolution ]

[...]

Events over the next few months became the catalyst for another transformation in Mr. Castro’s public image. More than 500 Batista-era officials were brought before courts-martial and special tribunals, summarily convicted and shot to death. The grainy black-and-white images of the executions broadcast on American television horrified viewers.

Mr. Castro defended the executions as necessary to solidify the revolution. He complained that the United States had raised not a whimper when Mr. Batista had tortured and executed thousands of opponents.

But to wary observers in the United States, the executions were a signal that Mr. Castro was not the democratic savior he had seemed. In May 1959, he began confiscating privately owned agricultural land, including land owned by Americans, openly provoking the United States government.

In the spring of 1960, Mr. Castro ordered American and British refineries in Cuba to accept oil from the Soviet Union. Under pressure from Congress, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut the American sugar quota from Cuba, forcing Mr. Castro to look for new markets. He turned to the Soviet Union for economic aid and political support. Thus began a half-century of American antagonism toward Cuba.

Finally, in 1961, he gave the United States 48 hours to reduce the staff of its embassy in Havana to 18 from 60. A frustrated Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba and closed the embassy on the Havana seacoast. The diplomatic stalemate lasted until 2015, when embassies were finally reopened in both Havana and Washington.

.. much more .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-dies.html?_r=0

See also:

Castro: It’s Complicated!
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126821903