Word: fidel
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...prevent Fidel Castro from lighting fuses across the hemisphere, Peru last week tried to convene an inter-American meeting to consider means of dealing with Communist Cuba. The idea was pigeonholed by other Latin American nations still reluctant to face the problem...
...Veteran New York Timesman Herbert Lionel Matthews, 61, the big thrill came one February night four years ago in Cuba's Oriente province. Led there by intermediaries. Matthews sat for three 'hours with a bearded and gabby young guerrilla leader named Fidel Castro, puffing Havana cigars and discussing, in whispers, Castro's plans to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The rendezvous with Castro did indeed produce an impressive scoop. Until Matthews' three-part series appeared in the Times, much of the world had been led to believe Castro dead, his rebel movement aborted. In Matthews...
...that young man"), Matthews fell into the trap that everywhere awaits the unwary reporter: he let emotional bias suspend his judgment. In his eyes. Castro became a hero of whom Matthews can still write today, as he does in The Cuban Story: "I could never bring myself to condemn Fidel Castro outright for what he has done ... I see what is good about [the revolution], how important it is. and I retain my sympathy, and. in many respects, admiration for Fidel Castro...
...early as 1957, plenty of evidence suggested that Matthews1 admiration was misplaced. But the Timesman, a longtime student of Latin American affairs, apparently did not bother to examine it. "Let us note in passing." he writes in The Cuban Story, "that already in 1948, at the age of 21, Fidel Castro was anti-Yankee and agitating against 'Yankee imperialism.' " But in his first story in the Times, Matthews let Castro say, without rebuttal, that "We have no animosity toward the United States and the American people...
...adopted a rebel has now become Castro's apologist: "Let me repeat that I am not making a moral judgment in saying that given the problems he faced, internally and externally, given the character of the Cuban people, and given his determination to make a radical, social revolution. Fidel came up with a logical answer." Besides, says Matthews. Castro did not necessarily turn left; he may have been pushed: "Historians will have to ask themselves how much the American attitude and policies helped to force Fidel Castro in this direction.'' (Even Times book reviewer, Charles Poore, appeared...