Best 35 quotes in «castro quotes» category

While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.

There is now a museum near Havana, commemorating the “Campaña Nacional de Alphabetization en Cuba” in La Ciudad Libertad or the “City of Liberty.” This museum is situated in Fulgencio Batista’s former office, in the western suburbs of Havana. The museum contains many thank-you letters that were sent to Fidel Castro with gratitude. These letters were also used by UNESCO to gauge the success of the 1961 literacy campaign. Many of these letters are now on display and can be seen along with photographs, taken around the island during that year. Additional materials including the records of all 100,000 volunteers are also proudly kept on file here.

Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.

Comandante Fidel Castro is the greatest revolutionary of the 20th Century, bar none.

Castro, without question, is one of the smartest politicians that's ever walked.

As his country crumbled around him, Fidel Castro's stature diminished abroad and at home.

Comandante Fidel Castro is a gifted communicator. He is a brilliant, brilliant mind. But the thing that struck me most about him was he was not a "nationalist.

Fidel Castro is loved down into the children. The Revolution won't die!

Fidel Castro was loved and hated passionately.

Fidel Castro gave it all to make his nation serviceable to all who desire real change. That's why I love Fidel Castro, and that's why he will never die.

Fidel Castro was a charismatic revolutionary and a ruthless leader who allowed no dissent.

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record.

Fidel Castro is one of the most inspiring leaders of the 20th century.

Fidel Castro was a born rebel.

I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.

He [Castro] is a genius. We spoke about everything.

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control.

I just don't want to die the same day Castro dies

I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.

I'm a staunch anti-Castro individual.

Now we all know that Fidel Castro dressed up like Marilyn Monroe and gave JFK a case of syphilis so bad it eventually blew out the back of his head.

Of course in Miami, not denouncing Fidel Castro at every turn is almost as bad as saying Gloria Estefan can't sing.

Some people call me the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

Some people say to me, "My God, but Fidel Castro is a communist!" I say: "No, he was a messenger of God.

[Raul Castro] is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met.

Unless we make revolutionary reforms, some day - in some unknown serra - some unknown Fidel Castro will rise up in Brazil.

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.

What's happening in Cuba is not a failure of the Cuban people. It's a failure of Fidel Castro and the Communists.

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship

Attempts on Castro’s Life According to Castro’s former bodyguard, Fabián Escalante, and Ramiro Valdés, head of the Cuban G-2 secret service, there were a total of 638 attempts to kill the Cuban leader, including the attempt by Marita Lorenz when she concealed the poison capsules in a jar of cold cream, before bringing them into her hotel room. Another time a fungus-impregnated scuba outfit was prepared, expecting that Fidel would wear it. This was followed by an exploding cigar attempt. Still another time, the CIA supposedly impregnated some of Castro’s favorite cigars with botulin, but they never got to him. Cigars as a vehicle to kill Castro were abandoned, when he gave up smoking in 1985.

He wants their sexuality to be an equalizer; he wants to focus on the discrimination they face in common. But Simon can conceal his sexuality. Robert can’t conceal his blackness, and almost everyone in the Castro is white.

Operation Pedro Pan It was like a raging wildfire that the Radio Swan story spread throughout Cuba! Many affluent Cubans, convinced that their children would actually be sent to Moscow for political indoctrination, panicked and sent their children to Florida. In all, as many as 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to Miami, under a program named “Operation Peter Pan.” During the next two years, British Airways, under charter, flew many of the children to the United States by way of Kingston, Jamaica. The unaccompanied children started arriving in Miami in October of 1960. They arrived in waves, with the children of the more affluent families coming first. Their parents trusted their friends and family in the United States to take care of their children. Since the Castro régime was having economic difficulties very few people thought that it would last as long as it did. Most of them still believed that Castro was just a passing phenomenon until a counter-revolution would depose him.

So if the ending of apartheid is now universally agreed to be a good thing, and Cuba played such a central role, how is it still possible to have such differing views of Castro and Mandela and of Cuba and South Africa? The short answer is that the mainstream media has been so successful in distorting basic historical facts that many are so blinded by Cold War hangovers that they are entirely incapable of critical thought, but the other answer is rather more Machiavellian. The reality is that apartheid did not die, and thus the reason so many white conservatives now love Mandela is essentially that he let their cronies "get away with it". The hypocritical worship of black freedom fighters once they are no longer seen to pose a danger or are safely dead - Martin Luther King might be the best example of this - is one of the key ways of maintaining a liberal veneer over what in reality is brutal intent.

Nelson Mandela was already a name synonymous with freedom and wisdom, justice and principle, by the time I took my first steps. However, it was not until over a decade later, when in my late teens I started to do a little reading and research of my own, that I even heard mention of Cuba's contribution to anti-apartheid. This obvious omission, along with the simplistic narratives that surrounded Mandela and Castro, was a valuable lesson to me about how the powerful craft history and news media to their own ends.