I’ll Be Right On the Front Line Waiting for Them

Fidel Castro is a hard core revolutionary, and what he said recently about the hanging of Saddam Hussein was pretty indicative of that. At eighty years old, gravely ill, and possibly on his death bed, Castro pledged that he wouldn’t go down the same way as Saddam. “That’s not the way to go,” he told his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, with whom he maintains a close friendship. “If the Yankees ever invade, don’t go hide in a hole like Saddam,” he warned him. “If they ever invade Havana, I’ll be right on the front line waiting for them.”[1]

Just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Castro has endured almost half a century of U.S. aggressions, assassination attempts, and destabilization efforts. The recent documentary film “638 Ways to Kill Castro” documents the hundreds of different attempts on Castro’s life; explosive-laden cigars, hidden snipers, poisoned milk-shakes, a remote airplane with a bomb, bazookas, and grenade attacks. They very nearly succeeded once with a gun hidden in a video camera at a press conference, but the cameraman lost his nerve. Another time they tried to give Castro a poisoned scuba-diving suit, but he preferred his old one and never used it.

In a region of the world that is dominated by Washington, and where unwanted leaders have always been eliminated by either U.S. invasions, coups, or covert wars, Castro is still standing. Even when much of the world was saying that he was nearly dead, two weeks ago he appeared on television visiting with Hugo Chávez. After several operations, it appeared that his health situation has improved as he looked healthier than a few months ago.

The CIA strategies and manipulations have not been able to do with Castro what they have with nearly every other revolutionary leader in Latin America over the last century; Allende in Chile, Arbenz in Guatemala, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Aristide in Haiti, to name a few. In Cuba, Castro’s communist revolution continues to be the path, and although there has always been a lot of controversy surrounding it, I’m told the Revolution isn’t going anywhere. Cuban friends tell me that Castro’s brother Raúl has taken over his position, and that most Cubans on the island still back the revolution.