Monday, March 28, 2016

Fidel Castro blasts Obama’s trip to Cuba in harsh letter


ADAM EDELMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Updated: Today, 12:02 PM ET


So much for solidarity.

Just days after President Obama's historic trip to Cuba, Fidel Castro ripped the warming of relations between his nation and the U.S., angrily stating that "we don't need the empire to give us any presents."

In a 1,500-word bristling letter titled "Brother Obama," published Monday in Cuban state media, Castro, who did not meet with Obama during the visit, recounted decades of U.S. aggression against his country and told Obama to stay out of Cuba's affairs.


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"My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics," the 89-year-old Castro wrote. "No one should pretend that the people of this noble and selfless country will renounce its glory and its rights."



ALEX CASTRO/AP

The 1,500-word bristling letter, titled "Brother Obama," was published Monday in Cuban state media and was the former dictator's first response to Obama's three-day visit to Cuba last week.

"We are capable of producing the food and material wealth that we need with work and intelligence of our people," Castro added.

Quoting Obama's declaration during his visit last week that "it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind," Castro added that, "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States."

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Castro also used his letter to rebut Obama's speech during his visit line-by-line, engaging in an ex-post-facto dialogue with pointed critiques of perceived slights and insults, including Obama's failure to give credit to indigenous Cubans and Castro's prohibition of racial segregation after coming to power in 1959.



President Obama's historic trip to Cuba

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Castro also discussed decades of U.S. aggression against Cuba, describing in detail the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against the island, the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the U.S.

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The aggressive note marked the former dictator's first response to Obama's three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries' history of Cold War hostility.

Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his visit, choosing instead to sit down with Castro's brother Raul, who took over as Cuba's leader in 2008.



JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS
President Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro shake hands during their first meeting on the second day of Obama's visit to Cuba.

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His trip, the first to Cuba by an American president in nearly 90 years, was intended to build momentum behind his opening with the island nation and to convince the Cuban people and the Cuban government that a half-century of U.S. attempts to overthrow the Communist government had ended, allowing Cuba to reform its economy and political system without the threat of U.S. interference.

With News Wire Services


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