Fidel Castro courts newly elected Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt in Jan. 1959. Though a Venezuelan version of Cuba’s “Fidelistas sin Fidel” of the time (Mensheviks,) Betancourt quickly got Castro’s number. (Conservative Gen. Xers and Millenials might marvel but there was actually a day when many socialists were virulent anti-communists, and immune even to Fidel Castro’s “charm.”)
Among the primary Commandments of membership among the first generation of Cuba “experts” were morning and evening chantings to the effect that the block-headed and arrogant U.S. bully snubbed and scorned the innocent and friendly Fidel Castro, finally pushing him into the arms of Mother Russia. Some beg to differ:
Nowadays the Cuba-enthroned emperor of Venezuela more or less reigns while his baby brother Raul rules. The actual nuts and bolts of running the empire, which include stealing 100,000 barrels of oil daily from their Venezuelan viceroyalty as priority, comes courtesy of the 50,000 Cubans who infest Venezuela and run the colony’s vital police and intelligence functions, among many others. It took the Castros some doing, but they finally got Venezuela in the bag. To wit:
Fidel Castro’s very first trip abroad as head of state was to Venezuela where on January 25, 1959 he implored Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt to “join” his “master plan against the gringos.” The newly elected Venezuelan president soon learned that his “joining” would consist of massive loans, financial aid, and shipments of free oil to Castro from Venezuela. So Betancourt brusquely declined the “invitation.” It took Hugo Chavez for Venezuela to finally “join” Castro’s master plan.
Please note the date and the aggressive anti-U.S. policy Castro proposed to Venezuela. That was barely three weeks after Fidel Castro (with U.S. help) entered Havana. And yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find a U.S. “academic expert” who doesn’t swear up and down that in 1959-61 the U.S. arrogantly, selfishly and stupidly snubbed a friendly Fidel Castro and pushed him—kicking and screaming, no less– into the arms of the Russians.
Among Cubans, by the way, the word “gringo” was almost never used.
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Betancourt is thinking: “So WTF is this guy doing in military fatigues on a state visit? What kind of BS is this?”
How could anybody, especially Cubans, not have found such blatantly inappropriate behavior VERY dubious?
La verdad que eso Le Zumba, Asombra!…nothing dubious at all.
I meant the military costume worn everywhere and all the time.
Ad yet Batista, a genuine military man, refused –not only to wear any military trappings–but to be photographed around his uniformed military cohorts, thinking Cubans disliked military gear!…Le zzzumba!
Batista “estaba acomplejado.” That’s part of the reason he never dealt effectively with the Castro threat.
At the time of Batista’s coup in 1952, Raul Castro was already affiliated with the so-called Socialist Party in Cuba, which was actually communist. Batista had been on good terms with said party during his first term as president (1940-44), as there had been mutual favors. Immediately after the coup took place and became known, most of the main “socialists” supported it, and Raul Castro himself was seen celebrating the coup in public. This comes from an eyewitness, Frank Diaz-Balart, who was then living next door to Raul Castro in Havana, in the same boarding house, and who was also connected to him because he was the brother of Fidel Castro’s then-wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart. Needless to say, this is NOT mentioned anywhere in any official narrative of Castro, Inc.