The last thing the aspiring Communist dictator Fidel Castro (1926 – 1916) needed in the Fall of 1958 was to have the dreaded “Yanquees” breathing down his neck; and so to buy some time, he penned this seven page article for the easily-bamboozled editors of CORONET magazine and packed it with dozens of paragraphs that were deliberately intended to mislead the American public:
• “A million unemployed bespeaks a terrible economic sickness which must be cured… lest it fester into communism.”
• “Once appointed, the provisional government’s chief task will be to prepare and conduct truly honest general elections within twelve months.”
• “The truth is that, quite apart from my own reluctance to enter the presidential competition so soon, our constitution, as it now stands, would prohibit it. Under its age requirement clause, I am, at 31, far too young to to be eligible for the presidency, and will remain so for another ten years…”
It was this article, among other deceptions, that made President Eisenhower believe that the new government of Cuba was deserving of diplomatic recognition in February of 1959. Less than two years later the Kennedy administration severed ties with the Cuban regime and shortly after launched an ill-fated attack on the island kleptocracy.
