Chief - The most sensible thing for the USA to have done about Castro, starting in 1959, would have been to be friendly with him and to help him set up a new and prosperous society in Cuba. Castro's heros, philosophically speaking, were the founders of the USA, such as Washington and Jefferson. Castro threw out an almost unbelievably corrupt government under Batista. The corruption and brutality of Batista's government had created such hostility in the general Cuban population that it resulted in enormous popular support for the revolutionaries. Castro was seen as a progressive force in many mainstream American publications prior to his entry into Havana, and he was a progressive force.

The mistake the USA made was to decide to make Castro an enemy. Castro came to New York (I believe it was in '59, but it may have been in '60), hoping to establish friendly relations, work out trade arrangements, etc. The US government wouldn't even talk to him! Instead, he got to meet the American press, some Europeans at the U.N., and that was it. He had been ostracized in a very deliberate way by Washington, and he knew it. He subsequently went to the Russians for help, because there was simply no other "game in town". He was forced to go to the Russians in order to survive.

That need not have been done. The reason it was done was this: Castro had nationalized the ownings of the big American sugar companies, and had kicked the American Mafia and their casinos and whorehouses out of Cuba...and given the country back to its own people!!! This meant he offended a lot of very rich and powerful people in the USA, and those people fund and lobby in Washington. They back the Democrats and the Republicans and provide campaign funding.

Castro had committed absolute sacrilege as far as they were concerned and he had to die for it.

A great shame. The nation that once said it was: "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become the nation that is "of the rich, by the rich, for the rich". It does not promote democracy, it seeks out markets.

Castro was George Washington, about 200 years later, but he made the mistake of assuming that he would be treated as an equal, instead of treated like a "dirty wetback" who had the effrontery to challenge Big Business.

Never get in the way of the corporations. They will crush you or turn you into an international pariah.

- LH