Fidel Castro – One Of The Most Hated Men in History

Susanna Kaysen, author of the bestselling 1993 novel Girl Interrupted once wrote, “....I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.” There isn’t a more appropriate statement for Fidel Castro, a man who was nothing short of a survivor. According to the 2006 British documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro, “More people have tried to murder the world's most famous socialist than any man alive." It was recently confirmed by the former director of Cuba’s intelligence services that there were more than 600 attempts to destabilize or assassinate Castro prior to his death in 2016 although the exact amount is rather fuzzy.

His attempted assassins are alleged to have plotted to kill him in a variety of ways, including poisoning him with pens and drinks, dosing his dive suit with fatal botulism, blowing him up during a speech and so on. If you can imagine an assassination attempt, it was probably plotted against Fidel Castro at some point.

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The number of people who wanted Castro dead, or at least erased from power, rose after he seized power in 1959, embraced the Soviet Union and communism as the new norm, took over US property on the island, cut ties with Cuba and the outside world, and forced thousands of Cubans into exile. These attempts were back by various sources that opposed of his communist regime that lasted from the 1950s to the early 2000s. One of these sources was the United States, who often operated at a distance by using anti-Castro Cuban exiles, known as Marielitos, or gangsters.

The Marielitos left in three waves. The first group was known as ‘the first arrivals’, who escaped to Miami in 1959 by boat or sea, the ‘freedom flights’ who were granted refugee status in places such as the US from the mid to late 1960s, and the ‘Mariel Boatlift’. These Marielitos were exiled by Castro in the early 1980s by claims of conspiracy and a way to rid Cuba of the ‘trash’. The boatlift was also triggered by housing and job shortages caused by the ailing and deeply struggling Cuban economy. These factors also lead to the simmering internal tensions on the island that were around until Castro’s death in 2016.

As previously mentioned, on assassination attempt came from mobster forces who worked closely with the American government. These two forces shared a common hatred for Castro and his regime and this led to a more than an unusual partnership. The mafia had paid off Cuban officials prior to the power shift which allowed them to operate businesses, such as hotels, casinos brothels on the island. However, this all came crashing down when Castro came into power and seized the mobsters' businesses. The US hated this power source for more obvious reasons. A CIA agent met with the famous mobster Sam Giancana in Miami in 1960. The agent then asked Giancana to help the American government kill Castro, to which he agreed and even said the mob would waive their usual fee. However, firearms were not the way the agent asked for Castro to be eliminated. Therefore, the mob delivered cyanide pills. The decision was made to serve chocolate milkshakes laced with the cyanide because that Castro adored them and was very unlikely to resist the temptation. Despite a well-orchestrated approach of attack, the attempt did not kill Castro. Fabian Escalante, former head of Cuban Intelligence and responsible for watching over Castro during his time in power, wrote in his book, Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro, "They ordered a chocolate milkshake, and in the rush and nervousness brought on by the moment for which he had prepared himself for over a year, he broke the capsule of poison while trying to pick it up, as it had stuck to the shelf of the freezer in which it was hidden." However, this was not the only failed attempt by the CIA, as the assassination attempts from 1959 to the 1960s were mostly orchestrated by the US bureau of Central Intelligence. Despite this, the plots occurring from the 1970s onward were by exiled Cuban who wanted a taste of revenge.

Another interesting attempt by the CIA involved a femme fatale love interest for Fidel Castro. They tried pills again, recruiting a lover of Castro's to deliver the poison named Marita Lorenz. Lorenz had met and fallen in love with Castro shortly after the revolution began and she described their relationship as a whirlwind of romance. In fact, she recounted their love affair in her memoir, Marita: One Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Love and Espionage from Castro to Kennedy. However, she was recruited and convinced by the CIA to poison her lover, and was sent back to Cuba with poison pills. Sadly, she recounts, when she got to Havana, she found that the pills had dissolved in the jar of face cream. The factoid that worsened the ordeal was that Castro, who had eyes and ears everywhere was one hundred percent aware of her plot. In her memoir she recalls Castro asking her, "Are you here to kill me?”, to which he followed suit by handing her his pistol. Overcome with emotion and shame, instead of shooting Castro she fell into his arms.

Fidel Castro will forever be known and recognized for establishing the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. This came post overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 in which Castro lead and orchestrated. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. Fidel is also infamous for suffocating the citizens of Cuba with a lack of economic and political freedoms. What were once politically active, decently wealthy people became poor, financially struggling citizens chained to Castro's ideals. If they strayed, the results would be incarceration, being exiled, and death. Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic, problematic relationship with the United States. Which resulted in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two nations officially mended their broken relations in July 2015. They also ended the trade embargo that had been in place since 1960, which filtered what came in and out of Cuba such as products, media, people, and etcetera. Castro died on November 25, 2016, at 90 the age of 90, 8 years after handing over power. Castro will forever be known as one of the most hated men in history.