Word: fidels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...most of us, New Year's is a day for resolutions. But for Fidel Castro, it marked the culmination of a long-awaited revolution. Fifty years ago on Jan. 1, Castro's Communist revolution swept aside the hated Batista regime. The change was bad news for the U.S.; Castro's regime (and American attempts to eliminated it) prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle, closed off a beautiful country with a vibrant music culture, and - possibly worst of all - triggered a 46-year-old trade embargo that has deprived Americans of Cuba's most prized export: its vaunted cigars...
...thing to do in Latin America) and showed the U.S. that its worst Monroe Doctrine impulses (not to mention the Mafia that was overrunning Cuba then) could be thwarted. People buy Che Guevara T shirts for more than just the lefty chic. The Miami exiles (many of whom backed Fidel Castro before he went communist) deserve their props too, despite the Elian Gonzalez mess. Most were not corrupt oligarchs and gusanos (worms, as Fidel Castro called them) but industrious working- or middle-class men and women who helped build modern Miami. In December, the Miami Herald unveiled an online database...
...should begrudge respect for Cubans on either side of the straits - not those who died in prisons fighting Fulgencio Batista nor those who died on rafts escaping Fidel Castro. But after 50 years, it's time to stop reliving the Bay of Pigs...
...fittingly, don't expect much of a charged observance on either side of the Straits of Florida this week. It looks unlikely that the ailing, 82-year-old Fidel Castro, who ceded Cuba's presidency to his younger brother Raúl this year, will be fit enough to attend the celebration in Santiago de Cuba. In Miami, exile hard-liners are wrestling with a new Florida International University poll showing that a majority of Cuban-Americans there think the embargo should end. The question now is whether Washington and Havana can smell the cafe cubano, leave their cold...
...point is that both sides have got to learn to give a little. Last year, when TIME put Raúl Castro on its list of the world's 100 most influential people - because he had taken over for Fidel Castro as interim President and looked to be moving Cuba in a more pragmatic direction - the magazine got scorn from U.S. officials. This year, when TIME put Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez on the list - for the impact she's had on political blogging around the world - Cuban officials complained in turn. They're entitled to their opinion, but both camps...