“Forgotten Hollywood”- Death of a Dictator…

Posted on November 26, 2016 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here… fidelcastro1978

   Fidel Castro was a controversial and divisive world figure. He was a politician and revolutionary who governed from 1959 to 2008. A litany of critics viewed him as a totalitarian dictator whose administration oversaw multiple human-rights abuses, an exodus of more than one million of his citizenry, and the impoverishment of the Republic of Cuba’s economy. Through his actions and his writings, he influenced the politics of leaders, individuals, and groups across the globe for many generations. Politically, a Marxist-Leninist and a Cuban nationalist, FIDEL CASTRO —-> made the island-nation a one-party state.

   Fidel formed a revolutionary group in 1953, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother Raúl and Che Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Cuban President Fugencio Batista. After Batista’s overthrow, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba’s Prime Minister. The United States was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro’s early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy, not install socialism.

images   Our country became alarmed by Castro’s friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. After these threats, Castro formed an alliance with the Soviets, and allowed them to place nuclear weapons on the island, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis — a defining incident of the Cold War —in 1962.

   Castro’s increasing role on the world stage strained his relationship with the USSR, especially as Leonid Brezhnev became its General Secretary. Asserting Cuba’s independence, Castro refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, declaring it a Soviet-U.S. attempt to dominate the Third World. Abroad, Castro supported anti-imperialist groups, backing Marxist governments in Chile, Nicaragua, and Grenada, and sending troops to aid allies in the Yom Kippur War, Ethio-Somali War, and Angolan Civil War.

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     An adversary of every United States presidential administration since Dwight D. Eisenhower, Castro was also a constant thorn to the overt reactions of his leadership by the American Central Intelligence Agency, and Castro was an early economic foe to businesses supported by Mafia crime families in Cuba. He outlasted a crippling trade embargo policy. In 2006, he decided to transfer his responsibilities to Vice-President Raúl Castro, who formally assumed the presidency. In 2011, Fidel finally resigned from the Communist Party Central Committee. He, instead, took on the role of an elder statesmen.

   Later in life, El Jefe softened his views. During the North Korea crises of 2013, he urged the North Korean and United States governments to show restraint. Calling the situation incredible and absurd, he maintained that war would not benefit either side, and that it represented one of the gravest risks of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fidel survived long enough to see his brother negotiate an opening with President Barack Obama on December 17th, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. Next year, his brother plans on stepping down as leader of the island-nation.

fidel_castro_2007_thumb   In the final analysis, Fidel’s leadership style warranted comparisons with other despots like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini. A more accurate comparison might be the longtime reigns of Francisco Franco in Spain, and Joseph Stalin in Russia; ruthless autocrats that turned on their own loyal citizenry to maintain respective regimes, which included the use of forced labor and executions, mostly against political and ideological rivals.

   In the Cuban capital, flags flew at half-staff at public buildings and some foreign embassies across the city on Saturday. Cuba’s government announced that Castro’s ashes would be interred on December 4th in the eastern city of Santiago that was the birthplace of his revolution. That will follow a week of honors, including a nationwide caravan retracing, in reverse, his tour from Santiago to Havana, replicating the triumph of his 1959 revolution.

   Fidel Castro was one of the most influential world figures in the post World War II era (for better or worse), and a survivor. He was 90.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2016 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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