Fidel Castro attended the prestigious
Jesuit-run Colegio Dolores
in Santiago, Cuba. When he was twelve
he wrote a letter of congratulation
to President Roosevelt on his landslide
re-election – ‘My good friend Roosevelt’.
He asked for a ten-dollar bill – not to spend
but because he had never seen one –
and he offered to show Roosevelt
the iron mines at Mayari for his ‘sheaps’
(crossed out and replaced with ‘ships’). The White House
acknowledged the letter but did not enclose
a ten-dollar bill, and made no mention
of the mines. ‘Los americanos son
unos imbéciles’, he told a friend.
In 1959 when the USA
was not unsympathetic towards
what it saw as liberal nationalists
attempting to oust the embarrassing
Batista and his Mafia buddies,
Castro led a Cuban delegation
to Washington to seek support and not –
he was emphatic – money. Eisenhower
chose to play golf that day, and left his VP,
Richard Nixon, in charge. Trickie Dickie,
in effect, gave the Cubans a telling off.
Fidel Castro was enraged, perhaps, in part,
having been reminded of those childhood
humiliations of nineteen years before.
And the rest… as they say.
By David Selzer