Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...which would come to about $15 million to $20 million. Castro reckoned well on American humanitarianism (although his Communist propaganda line denies the existence of any such thing) and on an American guilt complex for having sent the Cuban rebels on their abortive mission. Within four days of his ransom demand, a committee of U.S. citizens, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther and Dr. Milton Eisenhower, had been formed to raise the bulldozer dough by public subscription...
...beachhead to enable their just revolution to succeed. By paying Castro's price for a thousand good men, we give him the means to strengthen his enslavement of 6,000,000 others. The American people will, for the first time to my knowledge, be making use of ransom and tribute as an instrument of policy. If we start to pay tribute now for 1,000 of the one billion Communist hostages, where will it stop...
...gains and losses of the Cuban tractor deal were hotly debated in the U.S. (see THE NATION), but in Latin American eyes, the proposal represents a monumental propaganda setback for Castro. Throughout the hemisphere, which Castro hopes to lure into sympathy with his Marxist revolution, the response to his ransom demand was one of disgust. Wrote Rio's moderately liberal O Globo, whose circulation is the biggest in Brazil: "Hitler wanted to trade Jews for trucks; Fidel Castro wants to trade Cubans for tractors. It may be that this shows progress or superiority of Communism over Naziism...
...Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther sent Castro a telegram offering to raise funds for his 1,000-prisoner deal "as proof that free men will not desert those who risked all for what they thought was right." The U.S. State Department, which must grant export licenses for any bulldozer ransom payment, said it would give the matter its "most sympathetic consideration...
...this threat to the island's basic economy, Widow Bandaranaike acted swiftly. She went on the radio, declared that "the nation cannot be held to ransom by threats," ordered general mobilization of the armed forces, sent troop reinforcements scurrying up to the Tamil areas. She decreed a state of emergency, under which strikers could be jailed for up to five years, and imposed curfews on principal Tamil communities. She banned the Tamils' Federal Party, tossed into jail more than 70 of its leaders, including all but one of its Members of Parliament. Swiftly, the rebelliousness of the widow...