Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro complete list. The most unusual assassination attempts on Fidel Castro Cigars for Comandante

According to the press, there could have been at least 600 assassination attempts. None of the assassination attempts caused Castro any physical or moral harm. The facts of attempts to carry out some assassination attempts still remain doubtful. As a result, Fidel Castro lived safely to 90.5 years old and died of natural causes on November 25, 2016, outliving most of those who planned his elimination.

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it's '68 the revolution is becoming the norm students around the world are protesting prudish attitudes towards sex and the pope thinks the sexual revolution has gone too far and bans contraception to Catholics usa a microchip company is founded that will soon be named intel and China is in the midst of a cultural revolution students and schoolchildren and young workers are destroying the remnants of the past and it seems that they have become too fond of this mao zedong mou chairman of the communist party of china in his youth he became a revolutionary participated in the civil war and won little leads the country in the forty-ninth year but recently his power was shaken by tatyana im fifties attempt to make a big leap in the economy ended in a grand economic failure and the famine of the authoritative undermined it actually explain the growing power of the younger and more ambitious General Secretary of the Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping, has been he joined the chinese communist party when he was studying in france paris not only worked as a fireman and waiter but i read marx's books and then continued my studies in the ussr when in china per person the civil war deng xiaoping come back and joined mao zedong's army and didn't work together and after the victory of the communists, he took the post of minister of finance in the new china when economic policy failed a little dan xiaoping his like-minded right hand maou yuusha UOC and decided to move yesterday's leader but the mau confuse all plans for them but makes a tea attempt to return to power and deal with younger comrades and for this, he takes away unexpected allies of the 20th river, that is, students and young workers, he himself is already old, he is 75 years old, but every year he demonstrates that he is in excellent physical shape by swimming 15 kilometers along the Yangtze River, this trick is popular especially among Chinese youth. 66 writes little article against hands leaders of the country of Deng Xiaoping or even a sheep and draws it up in the form of a wall newspaper mou criticizes the bureaucracy and those who want to return to capitalism and announces the beginning of a cultural revolution in fact this is his attempt to crack down on competitors and return to power the main forces of the cultural revolution young students and young workers first call themselves hyundai bins second for of anime all together it's red guard mau cultural revolution starts with criticism on the ground and quickly turns into mass violence armed with covenant past y young people smash temples waiting for libraries stage public beatings and executions of Deng Xiaoping is removed from the post of General secretary and is called one of the main enemies of the cultural revolution, in place of the old culture, china comes a new one in a billion copies, a red book sells across the country, a collection of quotes by young people, porcelain figurines of hongo and bins and a new revolutionary theater are very popular, and by and often sounds on z apade his poster and hung out in rebellion show paris allen ginsberg writes window poems beenox french director godard makes a film chinese but is also interested in the western and writes an article on the death of martin luther king of the year but in china his problems mau believes that it is time to deal with the main opponents he creates a group in a special case of Deng Xiaoping, in order to collect compromising evidence on the former General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, a large family of wife and five children put pressure on them and the Red Guards forcibly take their son to Deng Xiaoping Poof and their daughter to the campus of Peking University, subjecting them to endless interrogation in the summer, Deng Xiaoping finds himself under house arrest By arrest during the persecution, the son of Deng Xiaoping Fofan jumped out of the window of the third floor of the university, not wanting to endure the humiliation, they refuse to treat him and he will remain paralyzed. gang capture the cities are fighting among themselves, the opponents are little defeated the state system in ruins even the great wall of China suffered in the middle of the year, the mother understands that the raging youth can be dangerous even for himself and tries to calm them down. fight against the curbstone of the genome on July 27, 68 detachment with 30 thousand workers, with the support of the army, disperses students xiaoping loses all posts and is sent into exile to a tractor factory 68 will be when you can lose everything by refusing to serve in Vietnam, the American boxer mohammed ali is deprived of all sports license titles and now cannot do what he loves journalist hunter thompson was not killing a presidential candidate p

background

Assassination attempts

Quantity

The Church Commission directly counted 8 CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965 (in the early years of his rule in Cuba). Also, according to declassified documents of the US Government, the John F. Kennedy administration was actively involved in the fight against Castro. There are five time periods in which these assassination attempts were carried out: the data is confirmed by the Department of Defense and the US State Department:

• From the beginning of Castro's rule until August 1960
• August 1960 to April 1961
• From April to the end of 1961
• Late 1961 to late 1962
• Late 1962 to late 1963

According to Cuban intelligence agencies, the following number of plans were drawn up under different US presidents to assassinate Castro:

• 38 - under Dwight Eisenhower,
• 42 - under John F. Kennedy,
• 72 - under Lyndon Johnson,
• 184 - under Richard Nixon,
• 64 under Jimmy Carter
• 197 - under Ronald Reagan,
• 16 - under George W. Bush,
• 21 - under Bill Clinton.

According to the calculations of journalists and some of Castro's associates, the number of attempts to assassinate the commander under different US presidents could exceed several hundred. As Fabian Escalante wrote (Spanish) Russian, the former head of Cuba's counterintelligence service, who was involved in the protection of Fidel Castro, officially stated that 634 assassination attempts were made on Castro, some of which were undertaken under the program "Operation" "Mongoose" (or "Cuban" project) to overthrow the Cuban government. Sometimes journalists give a figure of 638 attempts: in 2006, a documentary film "638 Ways to Kill Castro" was released on the British Channel 4. The Comandante himself once said about this: "If the ability to survive after assassination attempts was an Olympic discipline, I would have a gold medal for it." Such implausibly large numbers have been repeatedly criticized by US intelligence agencies. Thus, the former head of the Latin American department of the CIA, Brian Latell, claims that his predecessors in this department in the early 1960s made "only two or three attempts" to kill Fidel Castro, and all of them "were far from achieving the goal." According to statements by other CIA employees, it is impossible to establish the number of assassination attempts on Castro for certain, but the Comandante himself deliberately exaggerated their number for the purpose of his own PR.

Mafia involvement

The American, Cuban and Italian mafias were interested in the assassination attempt on Castro. So, in 2007, documents about the participation of the mafia in assassination attempts were declassified: the so-called "Family Jewels" (English) Russian. During the operation in the Bay of Pigs, American gangsters of Italian origin Johnny Roselli participated in the preparation of the assassination attempt. (English) Russian, Salvatore Giancana (English) Russian and Santo Trafficante Jr. (English) Russian. In 1960, Momo Salvatore Giancana, who became the head of the Chicago Mafia (English) Russian after Al Capone, and Santo Trafficante, the head of the Miami Syndicate (both were among the 10 most wanted criminals by the FBI), received reports from the CIA about the possible murder of Castro. Johnny Roselli, a member of the Las Vegas Syndicate, was used by the CIA to contact mafia bosses. The contact was Robert Mahew (English) Russian, who introduced himself as a representative of Cuban entrepreneurs whose property had been nationalized. On September 14, Mahiu met with Roselli in a New York hotel and offered him $150,000 in exchange for killing Castro. James O'Connell, the de facto head of the Operational Support Division, who introduced himself as an aide to Mahiu, also attended the meeting.

Only a few documents indicated that Giancana risked taking on the responsibility for preparing the assassination: he was going to poison the food and drinks that his personal doctor passed to Castro. The poison pills were created in the laboratories of the CIA, and as a result, Juan Horta, one of the leaders of the Cuban government, had to transfer them. Several attempts to put poison in Fidel Castro's food failed, and Horta was removed from the task, forcing another person to work. Later, Giancana and Trafficante, with the help of Dr. Anthony Veron, head of the Cuban government in exile, tried to repeat the assassination attempt. Verona demanded US$10,000 in advance and US$1,000 in supply costs. As a result, the assassination attempt did not really take place, since the Bay of Pigs operation had already begun.

Some of the assassination attempts

Some documents about the liquidation plans were declassified by the American intelligence agencies, others were told by the representatives of the Cuban intelligence services themselves. The following attempts to liquidate the Comandante are known:

• At the very beginning of Castro's activities, one of the spies, posing as a peasant, infiltrated Fidel's camp. When the rebels stopped for the night, it turned out that the killer had nothing to hide with, and Castro himself decided to cover the recruit with his own blanket. The agent lay side by side with the commander all night, but he was afraid to shoot, and the next morning he fled from the camp.
• In 1960, Fidel's mistress Marita Lorenz (English) Russian(Spanish) Marita Lorenz), recruited by the CIA, was ordered to kill Castro with poisonous pills (the basis of the poison was a toxin from shellfish). She hid the pills in a tube of cream, but they dissolved in it. It is said that Castro, who uncovered the plot, offered her a gun so she could shoot him, but Lorenz, torn between her desire to see it through to the end and her own feelings for Fidel, did not dare to do so. However, in order to avoid reprisals from the CIA, Lorenz informed her contact that she had completed the task. Later, Lorenz left for Venezuela, returning to Cuba only in 1981 as part of a film crew that filmed a biopic about a woman. Later she moved to the USA.
• In April 1961, five machine gunners tried to shoot at Castro's car. The armored vehicle withstood the shelling despite being riddled with bullets. Castro was not hurt.
• One of the most obvious ways to eliminate Castro was by amphibious assault:
• Several times the Americans used aircraft and paratroopers to eliminate Castro.
• The Americans planned to blow up the yacht Aquarama II, where Fidel liked to rest, and the saboteurs had to do it at night. However, the Cuban intelligence services uncovered the plan, working out a plan for the possible evacuation of the Comandante and misleading the saboteurs about his whereabouts.
• In some cases, the CIA used the mafia (both American and Cuban):
• In 1963, the American lawyer James Donovan went to see Castro. He was supposed to give the commandant as a gift an aqualung, into the cylinders of which the CIA agents brought a tuberculosis bacillus. The lawyer, who did not know about this, decided that the scuba gear was too simple for a gift, and bought another, more expensive one, and left this one at home. On January 19, 1970, lawyer Donovan died of a heart attack caused by complications from a severe form of the flu, but there is a version that the tuberculosis bacillus that entered Donovan's body from scuba gear became the cause of death.
• In the 1960s, the CIA intelligence agencies developed a series of plans to eliminate the Comandante by transferring life-threatening cigars:
• On November 22, 1963, in Paris, a CIA officer handed over a poisoned ballpoint pen (poison Blackleaf 40) Lieutenant Rolando Cubela (English) Russian- one of the party leaders close to the leader, recruited by the CIA. It was necessary to shoot Fidel Castro with a ballpoint pen during a meeting of President John F. Kennedy's emissary with Castro to find out the possibility of improving relations between the two countries. The attempt failed, and Kubela himself was removed from further cooperation with the CIA in June 1965 for secret reasons (it is assumed that he appropriated all the funds issued by the CIA). In the end, in 1966, Cubela surrendered to the mercy of Castro and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was later pardoned and left Cuba in 1977, moving to Spain.
• Knowing about Castro's passion for diving, American intelligence distributed a large number of mollusks in the Cuban coast. The CIA agents planned to hide the explosives in a large shell and paint the clams in bright colors to get Fidel's attention. However, a storm thwarted the assassination attempt.
• In the Ernest Hemingway Museum in Cuba, the conspirators also unsuccessfully tried to set up an explosion.
• In 1971, several assassination attempts were planned during Fidel Castro's trip to Chile:
• There were also several attempts to simply poison Castro:
• During one of the speeches, the Americans tried to solder the wires leading to the microphone on the podium, so that Castro would be shocked with high voltage. The Cubans uncovered this plot, but they did not officially inform the commandant about this, deciding that one of the conspirators, trying to check the system, would shock himself.
• In 2000, during the visit of the Cuban leader to Panama, 90 kg of explosives were placed under the podium from which he was supposed to speak, but it did not work. The culprit turned out to be Luis Posada Carilles, who was convicted in 2000, pardoned 4 years later and sent to the USA to Florida.

Attempts to "shame"

In some cases, the CIA tried not so much to kill as to shame Fidel Castro and expose him to ridicule:

Effects

According to the results of the investigation of the Church Commission, it turned out that the CIA was also preparing assassination attempts on Rafael Trujillo, Patrice Lumumba and Ngo Dinh Diem. The Church Commission accused the CIA of violating the principles of foreign policy, morality and international law, stating that assassinations cannot be legitimate tools to achieve US goals. Congress was advised to change the bylaws to prevent such practices. However, US President Gerald Ford in 1977 signed Executive Order No. 11905 (English) Russian, which generally forbade employees of the US Government to organize political assassinations or assassination plans.

see also

• 638 ways to kill Castro (English) Russian
• US participation in state coups abroad  (English) Russian

Notes

1. Maciej Stasinsky. Fidel Castro - sułtan z Karaibów. Kulisy życia dyktatora zdradził były ochroniarz(Polish). Gazeta Wyborcza (June 27, 2014). Retrieved April 5, 2016.
2. , p. 64.
3. , p. 53.
4. , p. 71.
5. , p. 25.
6. PHIL BUCHEN. CASTRO(English) . NW 54214. DUVAL78-67 178-10003-10318. DocId:32112987. John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (June 1975). Retrieved 27 October 2017.
7. , p. 24-25.
8. Robert Stefanicki. Niech Fidelowi odpadnie broda(Polish). Gazeta Wyborcza (July 8, 2012). Retrieved 4 June 2016.
9. Campbell, Duncan. 638 ways to kill Castro (English), London: The Laura Nuessbaum (3 August 2006). Retrieved 7 June 2016.
10. Cia: studiati 638 modi per uccidere Castro(Italian). Corriere dela Sera (August 4, 2006). Retrieved 4 June 2016.
11. Rules of life. Fidel Castro Rus (Russian). Esquire. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
12. The Castropedia: Fidel's Cuba in facts and figures(English) . The Independent (January 17, 2007). Retrieved September 1, 2013.
13. (cite web|work=The New Times |title=Autumn of the Cuban Patriarch|author= Evgeny Bai |date=08/13/2016|url=http://newtimes.ru/stati/xroniki/osen-kubinskogo-patriarxa.html%7Caccessdate =))
14. The Castro Obsession. Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
15. Edward Jay Epstein. The Plots to Kill Castro (English) // George Magazine. - 2000. - June (no. 5). - P. 60-63.
16. Snow, Anita. (June 27, 2007). Retrieved 22 November 2014.
17. Trying to Kill Fidel Castro . The Washington Post June 27, 2007.
18. Juan Orta , historyofcuba.com, accessed on October 29, 2013.
19. Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan CIA tried to get mafia to kill Castro: documents . Reuters, June 27, 2007.
20. CIA.gov, "Family Jewels" Archive, pages 12-19
21. MSN.com Johnson, Alex. "CIA opens the book on a shady past." MSNBC, June 26, 2007
22. , p. 91.
23. "Spellbound" comandante: Castro from death protected even weather
24. 13 most incredible attempts to kill Fidel Castro
25. Martin Aston. The Man Who Wouldn't Die (English) , Radio Times(November 23, 2006).
26. Volker Skierka. Fidel Castro: A Biography. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. 488 p. (English)
27. Bardach, Ann Louise (November 1993). “The Spy Who Loved Castro” . Vanity Fair [English]. Retrieved 2015-04-07.
28. World record holder survival Fidel Castro (Russian)
29. , p. 88.
30. Memorandum for Record, no author, "Claim of a Former Cuban Agent", June 30, 1975, JFKAC, HSCA, Segregated CIA Collection, Box 75, Folder Felix Rodriguez
31. PICT0358
32. "A SU-100 that shot an American ship" (English)
33. , p. 154.
34. Jefferson Morley, Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) / Cuban Student Directorate
35. Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Vol. XXXVII, No. 205, Florida, Monday, August 27, 1962.// Exile gunners shot "everything we had"
36. Jack Colhoun. Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966. - OR Books, 2013
37. Memorandum to File from Bob Kelley, "Interview with John Henry Stephens", May 30, 1975, JFKAC, Church Commitee, Box 31, Folder 1.
38. , p. 88-89.
39. Snow, Anita. CIA Plot to Kill Castro Detailed (June 27). Retrieved March 31, 2015.
40. Invulnerable. Exotic assassination attempts on Fidel Castro (Russian)

There is a well-known phraseological unit "to be born in a shirt." We can safely say about this person that he was born in a suit made of a heavy-duty titanium alloy. He headed the Island of Freedom for a period comparable to ten American presidents and five Soviet general secretaries. This famous Cuban revolutionary is undeniably an unprecedented example of how a strange, sometimes inexplicable, set of circumstances can be the determining force in the development of an entire life path. Having become acquainted in more detail with the biography of Fidel Castro, I can no longer doubt the existence of such abstract concepts as fate, destiny and luck.

Even at the beginning of his revolutionary activity, during the fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains (1957-1958), F. Castro, who led the Rebel Army, was always in the first line of attack, each time risking his life. This continued until Castro's supporters wrote a collective letter asking their leader not to take part in the battles from now on. Perhaps in this case, the initiative of the people surrounding Castro helped prevent the premature death of the commander, which at one time did not happen to Admiral Nakhimov, famous for his habit of going out into the area completely open to enemy bullets and looking into the distance for hours.

This example is very significant. Throughout the rest of Fidel Castro's life, there were cases when the breath of death was felt very close, events occurred that postponed its triumph more and more for a longer perspective. F. Castro never consciously tried to escape from death, and perhaps that is why fate was favorable to him.

However, even the Soviet leadership showed superstition in connection with the likelihood of the death of their ideological ally. There is a known case when, the day after the revolution in Cuba, the staff of the Russian Museum in Leningrad removed a painting by the artist Pavel Fedotov from 1844, just because it was called “The Death of Fidelka.” Obviously, the picture was in no way connected with the events of the second half of the 20th century, but only depicted the grief of a woman over the death of her beloved dog.

However, the US Central Intelligence Agency has repeatedly attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. Langley, the headquarters of the CIA, was determined to get the head of the Cuban leader.

[Marita Lorenz] One of the first plans to assassinate F. Castro is more like the plot of a not very good melodrama. The former lover of Castro, Marita Lorenz, was involved in the case, on whose offended feelings they decided to play the “Fighters of the invisible front”, who persuaded her to avenge the breakup that had happened. The idea was that M. Lorenz poisoned her former lover with the help of poisonous capsules. However, according to one version, the poison dissolved in a tube of cream, where the woman hid the ampoules, and according to another, she simply changed her mind at the last moment.

The next attempt at poisoning is considered to be a case in a restaurant where F. Castro usually dined. The waiter was supposed to put poison on Castro's plate, but was unexpectedly fired from the restaurant. This crime was planned by American mafiosi, who suddenly lost their source of income from the operation of gambling and other entertainment establishments in Cuba, monopolized by the Cuban revolutionary. The elimination of Castro was entrusted to the gangster Santos Trafficante, who delivered the deadly poison to Havana.

In April 1961, five machine gunners attacked Castro's car in one of the narrow streets of Havana. The car was riddled with bullets, but Castro himself miraculously survived.

Then an attempt was made to offer the heavy smoker Fidel a box of cigars soaked in a potent poison. But, as you might guess, the plan didn't work.

A poisoned automatic pen with a built-in microsyringe, the injection of which is not sensitive to humans - why not a means of killing from the pages of Agatha Christie's detective novels? Cuban official Rolando Cubelo, who was recruited by American intelligence services in the early 1960s, was supposed to kill Castro with his help. As a reward, he was promised political asylum in the United States. Cubelo was exposed by Cuban counterintelligence and went to jail.

F. Castro liked to spend time on the beach in his free time, and American intelligence prepared a plan according to which explosives were disguised in one large sea shell. However, the storm thwarted the attempt.

In 1963, American lawyer James Donovan traveled to Cuba to negotiate with Castro for the release of a group of US citizens from a Cuban prison. The present that Donovan intended to give to the Cuban leader - scuba gear - turned out to be too cheap, according to the lawyer, and he bought a more expensive gift for F. Castro, and kept the scuba gear for himself. Of course, he could not have known that the scuba cylinders were known to be contaminated with the tubercle bacillus by the CIA official. After some time, Donovan died.

There were also many CIA projects aimed at discrediting Castro. For example, there was an idea to treat the premises of the radio station where Fidel was supposed to speak with narcotic substances. In the future, F. Castro, having inhaled the vapors of the drug, spoke, to put it mildly, not quite what he planned to convey to the audience from the very beginning. From the same series - cigars stuffed with a powerful hallucinogen. They were intended to be offered to the Cuban leader before a public speech.

There was even a treacherous plan to strip Fidel Castro of his famous beard. American experts decided that the bald leader would no longer be taken seriously by anyone, and planned to treat the insoles of Fidel's shoes with thallium salts, a potent hair remover.

Fortunately for Castro, none of the above ideas were put into practice.

November 1971 F. Castro paid a friendly visit to Chile. This is where the "Chilean pursuit" of the CIA for their constantly elusive victim begins.

It was planned to kill Castro during a press conference. An automatic rifle was mounted in the TV camera, with the help of which two CIA agents intended to "click" the Cuban leader during his speech. However, an hour before the start of the operation, one of the killers had an attack of appendicitis, and the second did not dare to act alone.

Then, along the route of Castro's cortege, a truck filled with four tons of dynamite was installed, but the time bomb mechanism rusted and failed.

On the way back from Chile to Havana, the Cuban leader's plane was to make a transit stop in Lima. A detachment of armed mercenaries was already waiting for him at the airport. It seems incredible, but at the last moment the Comandante decided to land at another airfield.

A total of 638 (!) attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro are known today. Their detailed description can be found in the book of the former chief of Cuban intelligence Fabio Escalante "638 ways to kill Castro." Unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro cost US taxpayers $120 million.

Of all the American presidents during the reign of F. Castro, only Jimmy Carter did not attempt to assassinate him because of his religious beliefs.

Now in Cuba they like to remember such a case: when Fidel was presented with a Galapagos tortoise, he asked how long she lived. “400 years,” they answered him. Comandante joked: "That's how it always is with pets - once you get used to them, they die in your arms."

One of the most prominent personalities in history is Cuban leader Fidel Castro. On this person, just think about it, 638 attempts were made. Most of them are US intelligence agencies. We will try to talk about the most famous and insidious plans to assassinate the Cuban commander.

Two snipers

Fidel Castro actively made visits to various countries. In 1971, on one of his trips to Chile, an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, in which 2 killers were supposed to be involved, to be sure. But this did not help the instigators: a few days before the murder, one of the snipers was hit by a car, and the second was struck down by an attack of appendicitis.

Insidious women

Comandante loved female attention very much, and the special services could not help but take advantage of this. So one of Fidel's former mistresses was recruited, who was instructed to poison the Cuban leader by slipping poisonous pills on him. The woman arranged a meeting with Castro, and did not think of anything better than to hide the pills in a tube of cream, where they simply dissolved. Nevertheless, Castro exposed the lady, after which he handed her a gun so that she would shoot him if she so desired. According to eyewitnesses, the lady could not do this and begged the commandant for forgiveness.

Cigars for Comandante

Fidel Castro is a heavy smoker, like a real Cuban he smoked only cigars. Through nominees, the CIA secret services handed him cigars with explosives as a present. By the will of fate, the security service of the leader of Cuba suspected something was wrong and saved the life of their leader.

Dangerous Tribune

Cigarettes are not the only attempt on Fidel related to explosives. In 2000, when Castro made an official visit to Panama, about 90 kilograms of explosives were hidden under the podium, from where the leader of the revolution was supposed to make a fiery speech. During the inspection of the territory, the guards did not reveal explosive elements, but again a miracle saved the commandant, the explosives simply did not detonate. If luck had not smiled at Fidel again, there would have been no chance of surviving after the explosion of so many explosives.

fatal clams

More insidious assassination attempts were made on Castro. Since he was a great diving enthusiast, the intelligence officers reconnoitered the place where the Comandante would dive. They planned to hide a large amount of explosives under water, while in order to attract the attention of Castro, the killers planned to paint the clams in bright colors. The assassination attempt was planned to the smallest detail, and when the entire mechanism of the assassination was planned and ready for implementation, a storm began at sea.

lawyer gift

Another failed CIA scheming was the covert use of the famous lawyer Donovan. An unsuspecting lawyer was supposed to give Castro a scuba gear, inside of which a tuberculosis bacillus was brought. The lawyer appreciated the gift and considered it not very worthy for the Cuban leader and decided to buy him a more expensive and high-quality model. And so it happened: the lawyer presented a new, expensive model of scuba gear to the commandant, and kept “scuba gear from the CIA” for himself. Fidel survived, but the lawyer, alas...

Even the pen

During the meeting between Kennedy and Castro, a CIA officer was supposed to hand over a poisoned pen to a Cuban, whose task was to plant it on the commandant. For unknown reasons, the attempt failed.

Favorite restaurant

Castro had a favorite restaurant, he visited it regularly. The CIA made an assassination attempt on the commander in this restaurant. It consisted in the fact that a gangster from Chicago receives capsules with deadly poison, which should be thrown at Fidel. When the assassination attempt was planned and prepared, the Comandante suddenly stopped going to this restaurant.

Fidel Castro will soon be 90 years old, he is alive in spite of his enemies, and with a high degree of probability it can be argued that he survived them.

A man of the era has passed away - Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. After surviving 638 assassination attempts, he died peacefully at the age of 90. He will remain a symbol of the Island of Freedom - Cuba, as the first person who radically changed the life of a whole generation of Cubans, and not only them. History will change attitudes about him more than once, probably from a variety of angles - the memory of even contemporaries is changeable. But he will remain an iconic figure in world history.

“Cuba is far away, Cuba is near” - the lines from the song of the Soviet era were dedicated specifically to Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban revolution. It was understood that the distant island was almost the sixteenth republic of the USSR. In addition to the fact that we received almost a third of Cuban cane sugar, which was sold “by weight” in almost every rural store, exotic Havana Club rum, which even Siberian men hung over, Cuban cigars, which were a little more expensive than shag and Prima cigarettes , Cuba was the same outpost of the Soviet Union off the coast of a completely non-peaceful America, which made it possible to maintain the fragile balance of peace.
During the Caribbean crisis, it was the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba that prevented a global world crisis. And the most significant role in this confrontation was played by Fidel Castro, who played on the side of Moscow, not Washington. It is very difficult to assess the role of Fidel Castro in world history. Many are now mourning his death, there are those who openly rejoice at the death of the Comandante (comrade-in-arms and friend of the no less legendary Che Guevara). In Russia, those who remember Fidel not only from their pages on social networks are sincerely sorry, those who do not remember shrug their shoulders indifferently. Nevertheless, it was Fidel Castro who played a huge role in establishing friendly relations between our countries. Then, in the sixties and seventies of the last millennium, it was not just friendship and assurances of loyalty, it was a guarantee of maintaining nuclear parity, when every advantageous position, like in the United States and the USSR, provided the likelihood of a retaliatory strike. NATO was based in Europe, then only Western. The Soviet Union, thanks to Cuba, could deliver a retaliatory and inevitable blow right in the stomach of the United States. And this could not be ignored. “In the series of events and actions of the heroic epic of Fidel Castro and Cuba, I especially single out the last 25 years,” notes Alexander Zimovsky, an international journalist who personally met with Castro. - After the disappearance of the USSR from the map of the world, Fidel Castro and Cuba were left alone with the United States and their satellites in the Western Hemisphere. And Fidel managed to save the country, practically without changing anything either in ideology or in the economy. While the former allied countries of the USSR went into oblivion, and various pro-Western regimes appeared in their place, Fidel continued to be a model of a principled and unchanging foreign and domestic policy.

First, Cuba, having lost the economic support of the USSR, developed its own domestic economic program.

Secondly, Castro was able to use the weakening of the US geopolitical positions in Latin America. That is, Fidel lived to see the Latin American “left turn” and a full-scale restoration of relations with states south of the Rio Grande.

Thirdly, the domestic political situation in the United States has changed, where Latinos have become one of the most influential groups of voters. Internal pressure also led to a change in US policy towards Cuba, and Obama made his moves.

Thus, it was precisely Fidel's political longevity and enormous political authority that turned modern Latin America, which was only a "backyard" of the United States, into a region open to other great powers. Simply put, if it were not for Fidel, we would not have seen the Russian flag and Russian business on this continent for a very long time.

And, of course, this will be the glorious historical trace of the Comandante. About the longevity of Fidel, who survived almost all political leaders from the camp of both opponents and allies (Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982), legends and anecdotes circulated during his lifetime. One of them said that when the commandant, having received a parrot as a gift and learning that he had been living for three hundred years, said sadly: “It will be a pity to leave.” Even after transferring political power in Cuba to his brother Raul, Fidel remained not just a symbol of Cuba, but also an active participant in the events in the country. And when American President Barack Obama flew to Cuba, he ignored this fact and did not even comment on this event. Like Raul Castro, who defiantly did not shake the outstretched hand of the American president, Cubans do not forgive old grievances.

The resentment of the Cubans remained in relation to Russia. When, in the early 1990s, Moscow disowned Havana and curtailed both its military and commercial presence in Cuba, the Cubans bluntly announced their betrayal. They sincerely believed in us and hoped for help. Now relations have returned almost to their previous course, and Cuba is ready for them on a full scale. On the island of Liberty, they are ready to accept not only Russian tourists, but also the Russian military as a guarantor of their own security. And this was precisely the will of Fidel Castro, who always believed that partnership and alliance with Russia would ensure Cuba's prosperity. “It was a real disaster when Russia turned away from Cuba under American pressure,” says a former correspondent for the Cuban government newspaper Granma ( Granma). “But we knew perfectly well that this was not the will of the Russian people, but only short-term circumstances. And our leader Fidel Castro did not allow himself then a single negative word about your country, only a certain regret. Even when the representative office of our newspaper in Moscow was closed, the tone of the publications regarding Russia did not change. And the work of the Cuban embassy in Moscow has never stopped. And now, after the death of Comandante Fidel, I am sure that our relations will not worsen. Havana and Moscow are nearby!” As a brief and almost lyrical digression about the Cuban journalist, who once graduated from the military journalism department in the Soviet Union, one can recall his personal participation in strengthening friendly ties between Russia and Cuba. When in 1992 there were problems with the sale of tobacco products in Moscow, Pedro Prado brought his friends to the editorial office of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper ... Cuban cigars. As a "retaliatory move", he was invited on an excursion to the Moscow plant "Crystal", where they could not do without a light tasting. However, the tone of his publications about Russia did not depend on such contacts - like most of the Cubans who studied with us, Pedro Prado always believed that friendship is a round-the-clock concept. Cuba will deviate from its path, says Pedro Prado. “Life goes on and our country will not lower the flag of Liberty Island.”

The former revolutionary and leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, was a real lucky man and a legendary survivor. According to Cuban officials, more than six hundred attempts were made on his life. The man spent most of his long life in the spotlight, surviving half a century of assassination plots. But, despite the desperate attempts of ill-wishers, Fidel died of natural causes at the age of ninety.

Fidel Castro activities

Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist after he assumed leadership of Cuba. Even before this, the staunchly anti-communist US government had suspicions about Fidel's political beliefs based on the content of his fiery speeches. Suspicions were confirmed in the first year of the new Cuba, as the country developed more and more relations with the Soviet Union.

Indeed, Castro's philosophy gravitated toward Leninist Marxism as his rule developed, although his beliefs differentiated in some key respects, such as his identification with non-aligned countries and guerrilla-style celebrations of the revolution. The best way to understand Castroism is to study a system that sought to combine the economic and political elements of Marxism with those of Simón Bolívar, whose anti-imperialist thrust is evident in Fidel's own philosophy.

How many times have there been attempts on Fidel Castro's life?

Fabian Escalante, formerly head of Cuba's intelligence agency and the man who was in charge of protecting the Cuban president for half a century, claims that Cuban agents are aware of 638 plots and attempts on Fidel's life.

List of assassination attempts

According to Cuban agents who have chronicled abuses by the United States intelligence services since the mid-seventies, they tried to kill Fidel in the most sophisticated ways. Here is some of them:

• Poisoned ice cream.
• Exploding shellfish.
• Poisoned wetsuit.

• Killer lover.
• Poisoned pen.
• Poison drugs based on LSD.
• Poisoned cigar.

Why did Fidel Castro have so many detractors?

For all its achievements in social policy, Fidel Castro's forty-nine-year reign was characterized by a brutal crackdown on freedom of expression. Amnesty International has been documenting the human rights situation in the island nation for over fifty years. During this time, they have collected hundreds of testimonies from "prisoners of conscience," people detained by the government simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association, and assembly.

The state of free speech in Cuba, where activists continued to be arrested and harassed for speaking out against the government, is Fidel Castro's darkest legacy.

The reason for overthrowing the Cuban president was his dictatorship, as well as his connections with the government of the Soviet Union. Fidel's communist and anti-imperialist views were frowned upon by the US. When the revolutionary allowed the Soviets to place missiles on his island, the States began to actively look for ways to eliminate the external threat in the face of Castro.

Conclusion

The peaceful death of Fidel Castro was the occasion for many respectful public statements by heads of state and leading politicians around the world. Notable figures such as Russian Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev, British Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, Canadian Justin Trudeau, US President Obama and Hillary Clinton called the late President Castro an "important historical figure", a "major figure" and a "defender of social justice" . His reputation as a cheater of death was established at an early age. As a young revolutionary, he was twice killed by the Cuban press - "killed" once when he led a failed uprising against the military barracks, and again when he returned from exile on a boat with guerrilla forces.

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