We don't really expect you to sit through the above video (at least not all the way through), but it seems somehow fitting background music while you read our abridged version of the career of Fidel Castro, who finally stepped down as Cuba's leader today, nearly half a century after leading the revolution. Viva la revolucion! and, uh, read on...
1926 - Fidel Castro born to illegitimate parents.
1938 - Fidel writes to Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking him for a $10 bill. The bill never materializies, and Fidel decides to one day lead a bloody revolution.
1945-1948 - enrolls in Law School at the University of Havana. In the next few years, is implicated in several shootings on the university campaus after disputed studet body elections are not ruled in his favor.
1948 - while in Bogota for a conference, Fidel hears of the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán and participates in mass ritoting over the Colombian Liberal Party leader's death. Narrowly escapes arrest by hauling ass to the Cuban embassy.
1951 - Eduardo Chibas, Presidential candidate and mentor to Fidel, shoots himself in the stomach, live on national radio, and dies in Fidel's arms en route to the hospital.
1952 - General Batista leads a coup d'etat and successfully seizes power. Fidel feels pushed aside, and plots his next move:
1953 - A failed attack on Batista's largest barracks. Rumors swirl that Castro gets too caught up in Carnival street partying and misses the revolution. Either way, he is miraculously spared execution and gives his most famous speech, one that Scanner Brian repeats for ex-girlfriends at every possible opportunity:
But my voice will not be stifled – it will rise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it... Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me!
1955 - meets Che, the Real Gangsta.
1956-1958 - Fidel, Che, Raul Castro, and other comrades invade Cuba via Mexico and build the revolution, town by town, with word of mouth spreading and mini revolutions springing up across the countryside. Fidel's goon squad seizes government buildings and solidifies its coup on New Year's Eve, 1958. Fidel is still thirty-two-years-old. (And, uh, what have we done with our lives?)
1959 - contrary to popular belief, the US actually recognized the new Cuban government, although it was several weeks before Castro was to assume the Prime Ministership. After President Eisenhower refuses to meet with him, Castro sidles up next to the Premier of the USSR, a crucial turn of events in world history.
1960 - Cuba, in an effort to hurt US business abroad, seizes all US property on its soil and continues snatching up land owned by Cuban citizens. These upper-middle-class communities turn on Castro and many of them subsequently flee to the US. The year ends with the US attempting to form a plan to assassinate Castro, but the CIA-led campaign never comes together to the government's satisfaction.
1961 - The CIA and President Kennedy go in on the Bay of Pigs, an exile-led attack on Cuban soil. The attack goes about as well as Fidel's first revolution. The CIA tries approxamitely 638 times (according to Wikipedia) to kill Castro, who isn't even using doubles. Fidel finds out his ex-lover is trying to murder him and gives her a gun and permission to finish him off, but she is intimidated and backs down.
1962 - The Cuban Missle Crisis
1963 - Kennedy is murdered in Dallas. Fidel is rumored to be involved. Oswald is a communist.
1966 - Che is tired of Castro's bullshit, his b.o., his smelly cigars, and heads off to disappointing revolutionary opps in other Latin American countries. He's soon assassinated by a CIA hitman.
1960-2006 - The US embargo continues, lifted only once, after a Hurricane devastated much of Cuba's food supply in 2001. Senor Fidel continues making friends with America's enemies, especially Communist and Socialist governments.
2004 - the Pope makes an historic visit to Cuba. Years later, Castro will fight back tears at the Pope's Vatican memorial.
2006 - wire services claim Castro is suffering from terminal cancer and Castro disappears from public view.
2006 - Michael Moore undergoes liposuction in Havana as Fidel looks on, drinking wine and feeding him peyote. (Just seeing if you're still reading...)
2007 - Castro is believed recovered from a stomach illness, although his brother Raul continues to run Cuba's government. According to Wikipedia:
As a comment on Castro’s recovery, U.S. President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away." Hearing about this, Castro, who is an atheist, ironically replied: "Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and the plans of other presidents who ordered my assassination: the good Lord protected me."
2008 - February 18, Castro announces his retirement in a signed letter to a Spanish-language newspaper.
Lest we forget who Fidel Castro really was during his 49 years of power, let us run down some of the highlights from his human rights record: he had hundreds of thousands of people tortured, imprisoned in forced labor camps, and executed. He blamed these attacks, some of them on homosexuals (as portrayed in the book and movie "Before Night Falls") as
Castro, despite his country's near-destitution, has always been little more than a rich asshole, perhaps an even richer asshole than the Queen of England. From Wikipedia:
Maria Werla, a Cuban-American anti-Castro activist, claims, partially based on the testimonials of defectors who were close to Castro, that Castro and his loyalists control several billions of dollars in real estate, bank accounts, private estates, yachts and other assets — called “the Comandante's Reserves” — in Europe, Latin America and Asia - and a luxurious lifestyle for the top Cuban leadership.
Viva la revolucion, perhaps, but thank God Castro is outta there. From Reuters... a quote by Juan Acosta, Cuban exile living in Florida:
"It's very good that Fidel resigns. But if Fidel dies, it's better," [he] said.