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Fidel Castro Quotes

Browse 28 quotes about Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro Quotes

“At fourteen years of age, Fidel wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt conveying his pleasure at Roosevelt’s re-election. He continued the letter by asking President Roosevelt for a green ten-dollar bill since he had never seen one before. He ended the letter with, “Thank you very much. Good-bye. Your friend, Fidel Castro.” Perhaps things in Cuba would be different today had Fidel received a written reply and a green ten-dollar bill from President Franklin D....”

MoneyLettersMma Captain Hank BrackerFidel CastroPresident Roosevelt
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba, Cuban History
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“Without the benefit of being married to Ángel, Lina Ruz González had seven children by him, three boys and four girls. She was a simple woman who worked for him as a domestic servant. Fidel was her third child…. Lina married Fidel’s father in 1943, after his first wife, María Luisa Argota y Reyes, who was sarcastically known as the “Princess,” died, leaving her five children behind. From all accounts, it didn’t seem as if anyone missed her. In addition to the five children that María had, there was also a farmhand’s daughter, Generosa, who bore Ángel at least one son, by the name of Martin. Fidel was given his mother’s name “Ruz” before her marriage to his father, but even after his mother’s marriage, when Fidel was a teenager, although he was accepted, he continued to be treated as a bastard child, rather than a son, by his rough-hewn father. Much of Fidel’s early life is obscure, but as a teenager, there were times that he acted impulsively, as with most boys…. Once when he was refused the use of the family car, he threatened to set it on fire. At another time, he rode his bicycle as fast as he could into a stonewall on a dare; of course he got scraped up, but fortunately for him, it didn’t take long before he made a complete recovery.”

Captain Hank BrackerCuban HistoryFidel CastroFidel S Parents
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"
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“The Castro rebellion had its start on July 26, 1953, with an attack on the Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba. The military success of this raid was limited, but other skirmishes followed, brought on primarily by young people and university students. A strategy of terror on the part of the Batista régime followed, but this brutal behavior backfired and led to the signing by forty-five organizations, in an open letter supporting the revolutionary July 26 Movement. From his encampment high in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, on the eastern end of the island, Fidel Castro and his rebel troops dug in and began a campaign that would eventually lead to Batista’s defeat.”

Captain Hank BrackerSea StoriesMaine Maritime AcademyCuban RevolutionFidel Castro
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Salty & Saucy Maine"
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“On the night of November 24, 1956, the Granma slipped her moorings with Castro’s guerrillas aboard, known as “los expedicionarios del yate Granma,” and left from Tuxpan, Veracruz, setting a course across the Yucatán Channel for southeastern Cuba. The 1,200-mile distance between Mexico and their landing point in southeastern Cuba was difficult and included 135 miles of open water and cross currents between Cape Catoche in Mexico and Cape San Antonio in Cuba. They had to stay far enough off the southern coast of Cuba to remain undetected. The overcrowded small vessel leaked, forcing everyone to take turns bailing water out of her, and at one point they lost a man overboard, which further delayed them. In all, the entire five-day trip ultimately lasted seven days. Their destination was a playa, beach, near Niquero in the Oriente Province, close to where José Martí landed 61 years prior, during the War of Independence. However, on December 2, 1956, when the Granma finally arrived at its destination, it smashed into a mangrove swamp crawling with fiddler crabs, near Los Colorados beach. They were well south of where they were supposed to meet up with 50 supporters. Having lost their element of surprise, they were left exposed and vulnerable. After the revolution the Granma was moved to Havana and is now on display in a protected glass enclosure at the Granma Memorial, near the Museum of the Revolution. The official newspaper in Cuba is also called the Granma. Note: Ships and boats as well as newspapers and other publications are italicized whereas memorials are not!”

Captain Hank BrackerSea StoriesCuban HistoryFidel CastroGranma
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"
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“Ideology Fidel Castro was considered an ideologue by many. His fanaticism was always a continuing animosity towards the United States, while at the same time working to increase his good relationship with most left leaning Latin American countries. However, there have been times when out of necessity he had a tacit understanding with the United States. On September 11, 2001, Fidel Castro offered Cuban airports as emergency landing places, when all American aircraft were diverted from their primary destinations and ordered to land immediately, after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. On another occasion he accepted a one-time purchase of food after Category 4 Hurricane Michelle struck the island that same year. Once, he declined a U.S. Government offer of humanitarian aid turning to Canada instead. Castro continued having close relations with Canada and demonstrated this friendship when he attended Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in the fall of the year 2000. It was a way that he could retain contact with the western world without becoming involved with the United States.”

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Author:Captain Hank Bracker
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“Through Jimi Hendrix's music you can almost see the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Junior, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin in space, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the debut of Spiderman, Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, Ford Mustang cars, anti-Vietnam protests, Mary Quant designing the mini-skirt, Indira Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister of India, four black students sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, President Johnson pushing the Civil Rights Act, flower children growing their hair long and practicing free love, USA-funded IRA blowing up innocent civilians on the streets and in the pubs of Great Britain, Napalm bombs being dropped on the lush and carpeted fields of Vietnam, a youth-driven cultural revolution in Swinging London, police using tear gas and billy-clubs to break up protests in Chicago, Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton Beach, Native Americans given the right to vote in their own country, the United Kingdom abolishing the death penalty, and the charismatic Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It’s all in Jimi’s absurd and delirious guitar riffs.”

Martin Luther King JrBerlin WallI Have A Dream SpeechFidel CastroKennedy AssassinationSixties CultureJimi HendrixMini SkirtYuri Gagarin
Book:Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
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“William Alexander Morgan was born on April 19, 1928, as a United States citizen. Although he didn’t become a Comandante until later, it is interesting to note that he was a United States citizen when he joined Castro’s forces. He fought for the Cuban Revolution with a guerilla force led by Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, as part of the Second National Front of the Escambray Mountains, a mountain range in the central region of Cuba. Later in the battle of Santa Clara, Morgan was one of about two dozen Americans who had joined the Revolutionary army. He once stated that he did not believe that Castro was a Communist during the revolution, and only accepted the Communist ideology later. Morgan was promoted to the rank of Comandante on January 1, 1959. The next year, in October of 1960 he was arrested for treason. On March 11, 1961, when he was 32 years old, just before his death, Morgan said, “the most important thing for free men to do is to protect the freedom of others.” He was executed by a firing squad, standing against a stone wall in the moat surrounding La Cabaña in Havana. His wife was sentenced to 30 years in a Cuban prison, but was released after 12 years. In April of 2007, Morgan’s remains were returned to the United States after having been in Cuba for nearly 50 years. His United States citizenship was restored posthumously in April 2007, after having lost it for serving in a foreign country's military.”

Mma Captain Hank BrackerCuban RevolutionFidel CastroHistory PoliticsCastro S ArmyCommandante
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba, Cuban History
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“In writing The Exciting Story of Cuba I tried not to judge or take sides. I tell the events as they happened and attempt to take a neutral or reasonable political position; however I am also convinced that both sides will disagree with some of my views. Hopefully this is not just one more dry history book, but rather a presentation of interesting stories of Cuba. Unfortunately, Cuba is still a divided country with extreme political leanings and loyalties. Cubans, in both the United States and on the island, are a proud people who frequently find it difficult to reach a middle ground. Research into recent history demonstrates that the people who fled from Castro, and those who still support him, see things in a very different light. It is said that, “To the victor go the spoils,” and in this case, both sides have experienced both victory and defeat. Thus, events are recorded in two very different ways. Americans have also played a major role in Cuban history. However, to be very clear, not everything America has done was right, nor was it always wrong, since special interest groups frequently influenced events in Washington. The consequential actions of the United States as they pertain to Cuban affairs reflect this. In the end, it is the reader’s conclusion that counts, but my attempt is to separate the wheat from the chaff and to clarify the brine as much as possible, but always with a sense of responsibility mixed with humor. The nature of this book is definitely historical and therefore can be used as a reference source that, although not footnoted, can easily be cross-referenced with standard textbooks as well as historical novels. It contains photographs, stories and information not readily found in other books about Cuban history.”

Sea StoriesCuban HistoryMma Captain Hank BrackerFidel Castro
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba, Cuban History
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“No nation in Latin America is weak-- because each forms part of a family of 200 million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbour the same sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better future and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women throughout the world. Great as was the epic of Latin American independence, heroic as was that struggle, today's generation of Latin Americans is called upon to engage in an epic which is even greater and more decisive for humanity. For that struggle was for liberation from Spanish colonial power, from a decadent Spain invaded by the armies of Napoleon. Today the call for struggle is for liberation from the most powerful world imperialist centre, from the strongest force of world imperialism, and to render humanity a greater service than that rendered by our predecessors.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“[T]he wave of anger, of demands for justice, of claims for rights, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labour amasses the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected. For this great mass of humanity has said, 'enough!' and has begun to march. And their giant march will not be halted until they conquer true independence-- for which they have died in vain more than once. Today, however, those who die will die like the Cubans at Playa Giron. They will die for their own, true and never-to-be-surrendered independence. Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“In the actual historic conditions of Latin America, the national bourgeoisie cannot lead the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle. Experience shows that in our nations that class, even when its interests are in contradiction to those of Yankee imperialism, has been incapable of confronting it, for it is paralysed by fear of social revolution and frightened by the cry of the exploited masses. Facing the dilemma of imperialism or revolution, only its most progressive layers will be with the people.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“The United States, unlike its European cousins, had always preferred the indirect mode of domination, one which soon became the norm: formally independent and sovereign states, but heavily dependent on their metropolitan masters... The function of these formally independent states was to serve the economic needs of the imperial powers, at the cost of their own political and economic sovereignty. This often resulted in a plantation culture ruled by the production of a single commodity-- sugarcane, in the case of Cuba-- or the extraction of mineral and oil resources, as in Africa and the Middle East.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“In South America a governing creole elite, ruling in most cases with US political and military support, held the continent with relative ease. Rebellions, such as that led by Sandino in Nicaragua, were isolated and crushed. Physical and cultural repression of the indigenous population (with the exception of Mexico) was regarded as normal. Populist experiments (Argentina and Brazil) did not last too long. Few thought of Cuba as the likely venue for the first anti-capitalist revolution. (Introduction by Tariq Ali)”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti CapitalismAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“I am compelled to plead my own defence before this Court. There are two reasons: first, because I have been deprived almost entirely of legal advice; second, because only he who has been outraged as deeply as I, and who has seen his country so forsaken, its justice so reviled, can speak on an occasion like this with words made of the blood of his own heart and the very marrow of truth.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“What is the history of Cuba but the history of Latin America? And what is the history of Latin America but the history of Asia, Africa and Oceania? And what is the history of all these peoples but the history of the most pitiless and cruel exploitation by imperialism throughout the world? At the end of the last and the beginning of the present century a handful of economically developed nations had finished partitioning the world among themselves, subjecting to its economic and political domination two-thirds of humanity, which was thus forced to work for the ruling classes of the economically advanced capitalist countries.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“What is it that is hidden behind the Yankees' hate of the Cuban Revolution? What is it that rationally explains the conspiracy, uniting for the same aggressive purpose the most powerful and rich imperialist power in the contemporary world and the oligarchies of an entire continent, which together are supposed to represent a population of 350 million human beings, against a small country of only seven million inhabitants, economically underdeveloped, without financial or military means to threaten the security or economy of any other country? What unites them and stirs them up is fear. What explains it is fear. Not fear of the Cuban Revolution but fear of the Latin American revolution.”

PoliticalRevolutionSocialismCommunismUs HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroAnti Imperialism
Book:The Declarations of Havana
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“Kuna tofauti kati ya haki na utawala wa mabavu. Haki ni jambo ambalo mtu anastahili au kitu anachostahiki kuwa nacho. Utawala wa mabavu ni utawala wa kidikteta. Ukitenda haki lazima kuna watu watafaidi. Lazima kuna watu wataumia. Fidel Castro alikuwa kiongozi msahili. Alikuwa kiongozi aliyewezesha kutendeka kwa mambo. Kwa sababu hiyo, wachache walimpenda, wengi walimchukia. Lakini ili ufanye mazuri lazima upambane na mabaya. Shetani mwenyewe hatakuruhusu ufanye mazuri bila kukuletea mabaya.”

PeopleDictatorshipRightRuleWatuFidel CastroHakiUtawalaUdikteta
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“Se puede trasladar a una persona una fábrica, pero no se la puede obligar a pensar y a tener buenas ideas amenazándolas con la muerte.”

CubaSocialismoComunismoStalinTiraniaFidel CastroUnion SovieticaCorea Del Norte
Book:Por Que Fracasan los Paises( Los Origenes del Poder la Prosperidad y la Pobreza = Why Nations Fail)[SPA-POR QUE FRACASAN LOS PAISE][Spanish Edition][Paperback]
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“Suponer que los balseros cubanos abandonan la isla por razones que nada tienen que ver con el régimen de Castro es otra alegre temeridad (...) Todo el mundo sabe que huyen de Castro y lo que él representa para el pueblo cubano en términos no sólo de hambre y penuria, sino también de represión política. Buscan no sólo medios de supervivencia sino otra cosa que han perdido en su isla de infortunios: la libertad.”

CubaLibertadSocialismoComunismoTotalitarismoAutoritarismoFidel CastroBalserosCubanos
Book:Manual del perfecto idiota latinoamericano
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“I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. He's very ebullient, as they say. I've heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice that's always very well worth noticing because it's always a bad sign: he doesn't know when to sit down. He's worse than Castro was. He won't shut up. Then he told me that he didn't think the United States landed on the moon and didn't believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. He's a wacko.”

United StatesOsama Bin LadenConspiracy TheoryVenezuelaMoon LandingMegalomaniaFidel CastroApollo 119 11 Conspiracy TheoriesMoon Landing Conspiracy TheoriesHugo Chavez
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“When Castro learned of the deal made without him, he was furious and felt betrayed by what he considered his ally. Castro, acting on his own, demanded that the United States stop the blockade of the island, and end its support for the militant Cuban dissidents in exile. He also insisted that the United States return Guantánamo Naval Base to Cuba and stop violating Cuban airspace, as well as its territorial waters. The United States totally ignored him and his demands, dealing instead directly with the Soviet Union. Castro feeling slighted did the only thing left for him, and refused to allow the United Nations access to inspect the missile sites for compliance with the withdrawal agreement. Although costly, the Soviet Union thought of this entire “missile exercise” as a display of Communist power in the Americas. This was a total disregard of the Monroe Doctrine regarding foreign influences in the Americas. Although ultimately it was a futile attempt, the Soviet Union hoped that it would inspire other Latin countries to follow the move towards Communism. During the next two decades, many attempts were made by Cuba to influence other Latin American countries to accept Communism. This influence was exercised primarily by inserting sympathetic leftist leaning movements into their political structure. However most of these attempts failed with the exception of Nicaragua. In 1967 “Che” Guevara attempted such a blatant movement in Bolivia. In time however many of these Latin countries such as Venezuela, took a shift to the left through their constitutional electoral process and embraced socialistic forms of government on their own.”

MmaAmerican HistoryCuban HistoryFidel CastroCapt Hank BrackerMaitime History
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba, Cuban History
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“The more that injustice, exploitation, inequality, unemployment, poverty, hunger, and misery prevail in human society, the more Che's stature will grow. The more that the power of imperialism, hegemonism, domina­tion, and interventionism grow, to the detriment of the most sa­cred rights of the peoples-especially the weak, backward, and poor peoples who for centuries were colonies of the West and sources of slave labor-the more the values Che defended will be upheld. The more that abuses, selfishness, and alienation exist; the more that Indians, ethnic minorities, women, and immigrants suffer dis­ crimination; the more that children are bought and sold for sex or forced into the workforce in their hundreds of millions; the more that ignorance, unsanitary conditions, insecurity, and homelessness prevail-the more Che's deeply humanistic message will stand out. The more that corrupt, demagogic, and hypocritical politicians exist anywhere, the more Che's example of a pure, revolutionary, and consistent human being will come through. The more cowards, opportunists, and traitors there are on the face of the earth, the more Che's personal courage and revolution­ary integrity will be admired. The more that others lack the ability to fulfill their duty, the more Che's iron willpower will be admired. The more that some individuals lack the most basic self-respect, the more Che's sense of honor and dignity will be admired. The more that skeptics abound, the more Che's faith in man will be admired. The more pessimists there are, the more Che's optimism will be admired. The more vacillators there are, the more Che's audacity will be admired. The more that loafers squander the prod­uct of the labor of others, the more Che's austerity, his spirit of study and work, will be admired.”

RevolutionActivismSocialismCommunismCubaFidel CastroRevolutionariesChe Guevara
Author:Fidel Castro
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