Hearing Fidel Castro piece together a conversation with a reporter in English after visit to United Nations in the US on Youtube is quite a treat. He struggles to brave hostile questions with a limited English vocabulary and a thick Cuban accent. He is asked if he is a communist and tells the reporter to wait for the history, “the history will tell what we are.” (Fidel Castro after Visit to United Nations in the U.S., 1960) This memo will be an analysis of Castro’s contradictory interactions with the U.S., his actions may point to strategic duplicity or perhaps honest ambivalence about North Americans.
Fidel Castro was a man of contradictions, as an aside, I’d like to mention the delicious largely unknown fact that despite his hatred of the …show more content…
But Castro had to get news of the group’s survival out to the people and so a meeting with an American reporter, Matthews was scheduled. During the carefully planned encounter, Castro orchestrated quite a show for the American. A soldier appeared during the talk to announce contact with another unit, which did not exist. Raul had the same group of soldiers march back and forth in front of the men, to give the impression that the group was much larger than it actually was. Castro even ensured he had proof of the meeting by having one of his men take a picture of the two. The reporter managed to leave Cuba safely, and so did the story Fidel had crafted more so than Matthews. The article was not only released in New York, a member of Castro’s team flew to New York to make copies of Matthews’ article and mail it to Cuban elites. Castro’s silver tongue had triumphed yet again. He had seduced Matthews into writing a story that engendered, intensified and exploited the public’s disillusionment. (Patterson, Contesting Castro, pgs. 75-81) This was something Castro and the man he vehemently despised and wanted to oust shared: both knew how to play the Americans. Batista, on one hand wavered between “acting like a constitutional leader and a dictator” his goal was to please the Americans and, of course, his pockets, much more than it was to please his own people. Patterson presents the harshest accusation against Castro, one shared by almost all the exiles back home, is that the man is a deceitful manipulator. Clever and cunning, he knew exactly what Americans would eat up and what was too radical for them to
Fidel Castro was a man of contradictions, as an aside, I’d like to mention the delicious largely unknown fact that despite his hatred of the …show more content…
But Castro had to get news of the group’s survival out to the people and so a meeting with an American reporter, Matthews was scheduled. During the carefully planned encounter, Castro orchestrated quite a show for the American. A soldier appeared during the talk to announce contact with another unit, which did not exist. Raul had the same group of soldiers march back and forth in front of the men, to give the impression that the group was much larger than it actually was. Castro even ensured he had proof of the meeting by having one of his men take a picture of the two. The reporter managed to leave Cuba safely, and so did the story Fidel had crafted more so than Matthews. The article was not only released in New York, a member of Castro’s team flew to New York to make copies of Matthews’ article and mail it to Cuban elites. Castro’s silver tongue had triumphed yet again. He had seduced Matthews into writing a story that engendered, intensified and exploited the public’s disillusionment. (Patterson, Contesting Castro, pgs. 75-81) This was something Castro and the man he vehemently despised and wanted to oust shared: both knew how to play the Americans. Batista, on one hand wavered between “acting like a constitutional leader and a dictator” his goal was to please the Americans and, of course, his pockets, much more than it was to please his own people. Patterson presents the harshest accusation against Castro, one shared by almost all the exiles back home, is that the man is a deceitful manipulator. Clever and cunning, he knew exactly what Americans would eat up and what was too radical for them to