22 thoughts on “Is this the beginning of the rehabilatation of St. fidel?”

  1. It can also be said that Hitler possessed the same qualities of “formidable erudition, strategic thinking and natural leadership,” as well as “Machiavellian cunning” and “genius for public relations.”

  2. Fascinating article from Ann Louise Bardach, the same reporter who has written extensively about Luis Posada Carriles.

    The work of Bardach is essential to anyone who has serious interest in the psychology of important figures concerning the issue of Cuba. She writes with the same interest about Carriles, Bosch and Castro.

    I recommend her book “Cuba Confidential” too.

  4. One of those prison letters highlights Castro’s culinary interests and how amply and magnificently he indulged them while incarcerated. I translated it many years ago and shall look for it. A Castro apologist, commenting on this letter, even went so far as to suggest that these were “prison fantasies” since it was inconceivable to him that any prisoner could eat like a maharajah in jail.

  5. If Bardach has Mambo Watcher’s endorsement, then we have every reason to take everything she says with a mine of salt.

  6. Excerpt from an “Open Letter to Fidel Castro from a Young Cuban Woman,” by Sahíli Navarro, Matanzas, 7 September 2004:

    On the 26th of July in 1953, you led a group of your disciples in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, were taken prisoner and were sentenced to 15 years in prison, of which you had served 22 months when you benefited from the political amnesty decreed in 1955. You entered into a process with all legal guarantees, permitting you to assume your own defense. Your imprisonment on the Isle of Pines may be considered a happy and necessary vacation, according to your own account. During your months of incarceration, you received the privilege of receiving visits from your family twice a month, and access to the prison store where you made your daily purchases with only one order. You all founded a school called the “Abel Santamaría Ideological Academy,” with the objective of imparting classes to the rest of the assailants, and a library bearing the name “Raúl Gómez García.” The subjects studied were philosophy, world history, geography and languages. You could send letters to family members and friends, as well as receive correspondence without fear of restrictions or censorship. You received the visits of people who occupied important positions, for example then-Minister of Government Ramón Hermida and North Havana Judge Waldo Medina.

    Journalist Raúl Martin Sánchez published an interview in Bohemia Magazine with seven photographs showing you in your cell and the library on July 9, 1954. In the month of June 1954, you had a small Silverstone radio in your cell, and shortly thereafter your prison conditions were modified, as you explain in an August letter, which reads: “They opened my cell to another unit four times its size and a large patio, open from 7 am to 9 pm. We do not have a head count or formation in the whole day. We get up whenever we want; we have abundant water, food, and clean clothing. I do not know, however, how much longer we will be in this paradise.” Among those letters you sent, we can cite other descriptions of great importance: “Since I am a cook, every once in a while I entertain myself preparing some/a PISTO. Not long ago, my sister sent me a small ham from Oriente and I prepared a steak with guava jelly. I also make spaghetti from time to time, or a cheese omelet. I have arranged my things and the most absolute order reigns here. The rooms in the Hotel Nacional are not as clean. The heat obliges me to bathe twice a day. When I catch the sun in the morning in shorts, I feel the ocean air, such that I feel that I am at a beach. Afterwards, at a small restaurant here, I go to have a dinner of spaghetti with calamari, Italian bonbons for dessert, just-brewed coffee, and then [smoke] an H. Upman no. 4.”

    It is important that you remember this life of luxury that the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista provided for you, and then that you change the life you offer in Cuba’s prisons; with which I think you are not unfamiliar. The actual situation of those condemned in your paradise is none other than cruel treatment, violations of their rights, constant and beastly beatings, mistreatments, and lacks of medical and religious assistance. Prisoners find themselves cut off from communication; their correspondence is totally violated. They are removed hundreds of kilometers away from their place of residence; they share cells with highly dangerous inmates, in conditions of extreme overcrowding, without the possibility of cooking for themselves. Visits are every three months and care packages can weigh only 30 pounds. The conditions of hygiene and sanitation are incomparable, since they defy description. Water is totally contaminated and scarce. The food, most of the time, is spoiled. A Cuban can only say he is aware of the existence of bonbons, ham, spaghetti, calamari and cheese because of the stores that accept foreign currency and offer these products, made on our own island, at extremely elevated prices. What a contrast, truly, what with your being the best president in Cuban history, and this being the country, according to you, where there are no human rights violations! Is your leadership truly an example to follow, a beacon of light for our brother peoples?

    http://www.netforcuba.org/Documents-EN/Documents-Letters-22.htm

  7. It’s a pity she has wasted so much time, paper, and ink to show castro’s spirituality during those 2 or 3 years…when the work of 48 years is so much more revealing. Killings and executions, and destruction of an entire country, not to mention, separating entire families speaks for itself of his “spiritually.”

    It must be an “insult” to the maximum leader for this woman to overlook how much “spiritualityâ€? he has shown in his life’s work of “reformingâ€? Cuba.

  9. The article just got splashed on Drudge …. you know it’s going to get wings and attention by the unwashed masses who don’t consider the other 48 years.

    I started reading but couldn’t finish it. My liver has its limitations.

  10. The best thing about the article is that his father died of the same ailment at 80. Hopefully he follows in Dad’s footsteps soon.

  12. Interesting also is the fact that Fidel’s first wife, the aunt of the congressional Díaz Balarts, has reconciled with Fidel and returned to live in Cuba. Obviously, she’s expecting great things for her son “little” Fidelito (now pushing 60), who is certainly being groomed to succeed uncle Raúl in due course. Fidel Castro Díaz Balart is Cuba’s Prince Charles. Much as Prince Charles looks remarkably like his mother, Fidelito is the spitting image of his father with an extra 120 lbs. or so. He’s a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist (I guess rocket scientist would have been too obvious), who has spent his life shuffling between mommy in Spain and daddy (though daddy has custody). If possible, he’s an even bigger niño bitongo than Fidel Sr. God help our country if it ever falls into his manicured hands, for then we shall have our own insular Kim Il Jung.

  13. BTW, now that their aunt, Fidel’s ex, has reconciled with Fidel and moved back to Cuba, perhaps it is time for the Díaz-Balarts to denounce her (of course they never will). The Díaz Balarts are a remarkable family, the Cuban equivalent of the antique Roman clans, who would align one son with one faction and another with a second, so that regardless of the outcome of any conflict, the family would always be on top. Their father was the dean of the batistianos; their cousin Fidelito is the horse’s colt and Raúl’s heir; and Lincoln and Mario the representatives of the Miami exiles. The Díaz Balarts are indeed the Cuban Grachii.

  14. You would expect that the media has more to say on the 30 years Mario Chames de Armas spent in Kasstro’s jails…

    He died today. A true Cuban hero. Except for the Herald, no obituaries (yet).

    It’s all you need to know.

  16. Mario Chanes fought at Moncada (not with Fidel, who was hiding) and landed in the Granma expedition. At the triumph of the Revolution, he refused to accept any government sinecure but returned to private life. He became a public figure again only to denounce Fidel Castro as a Communist in 1961, which cost him 30 years in prison. He served every day of his sentence, including 6 years in solitary confinement. At the time of his release, Chanes was the world’s longest-service political prisoner. He had the immense merit to admit that he was duped by Castro and the supreme courage to brand him a liar. He could have taken his place in Castro’s entourage and lived the charmed life of a henchman, as so many did. But he refused. His example obliterates the excuses of all who did.

  18. Does Fidel even need an image makeover, he’s beloved by the MSM and on college campuses. I’m telling you when he croaks the tributes to him are going to be hard to take.

  22. “Mambi”.

    What embargo? The US sends more food to Cuba than any other country.
    Looks like we got another troll on our hands!

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