Courtesy of Cubadebate, we have the following amusing little item to celebrate today:
The historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, is the person subject to the greatest number of assassination attempts, according to the Guinness Book of World Records and, surely, the archives of the US Central Intelligence Agency, the principal promoter of these frustrated homicide attempts.
According to the data reiterated on Tuesday by the Yahoo portal blog, as of 2006, the count of assassination attempts against him stands at 638, almost all of them perpetrated by the CIA.
The methods aimed at killing him were many, though all of them failed: from snipers, explosives hidden in his shoes, poison injected in a cigar, to a small explosive charge inside a baseball, among others.
From the very moment in which he headed the triumphant Cuban Revolution in 1959, enemies began to plot his physical demise. Among those most interested in killing the former prime minister of Cuba were the North American agencies of espionage and subversion.
Translation mine.
I couldn’t help snickering the entire time I was translating that. Either Fidel is incredibly clever and preternaturally good at outwitting his enemies, or (and personally, I suspect this latter is more the case) they are just that fucking stupid in Langley. Great at concocting elaborate plans, sure, but the execution is always lacking (pun intended).
And of course, Fidel IS very smart, much smarter than they, which is why Cuba remains the only Latin American country with no child malnutrition. It’s also why Cuba exports literacy and medical education to the rest of Latin America. And, oh yeah, this and so much more is why any effort to reverse the Revolution has failed to take. The problem with the so-called Cuban dissidents isn’t that they’re so few or so oppressed (they are neither), but because they have no fresh ideas. All they have is the financing and backing of the same failed US state organ that’s made a record number of assassination attempts on one leader who has now retired, since they couldn’t kill him out of office. Is it any wonder that they lack credibility? At this rate, Fidel will live to be 100, only to die peacefully in his sleep, and, one gets the feeling, merrily thumbing his nose in the general direction of Gringolandia.
Anyway: Enjoy your retirement and your Guinness, Fidel, ya big barbudo. You’ve certainly earned both.
Viva mi Comandante en Jefe!!!!
I hope comrade Fidel does make it to be 100 also.
But the Cuban Revolution was really never completed to full socialism and what was is now being reversed and now they are on the path of the restoration of full tilt boogie capitalism.
I am sure comrades Celia Hart, Che and the thousands of Cubans who gave their lives for real socialism are now turning over in their graves and those that are alive will have to fight for it.