Fidel Castro to Obama - We don't need your 'presents'

Fidel Castro to Obama: We don't need your 'presents'
BY MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
Associated Press

HAVANA
Fidel Castro responded Monday to President Barack Obama's historic trip
to Cuba with a long, bristling letter recounting the history of U.S.
aggression against Cuba, writing that "we don't need the empire to give
us any presents."

The 1,500-word letter in state media titled "Brother Obama" was Castro's
first response to the president's three-day visit last week, in which
the American president said he had come to bury the two countries'
history of Cold War hostility. Obama did not meet with the 89-year-old
Fidel Castro on the trip but met several times with his 84-year-old
brother Raul Castro, the current Cuban president.

Obama's visit was intended to build irreversible momentum behind his
opening with Cuba and to convince the Cuban people and the Cuban
government that a half-century of U.S. attempts to overthrow the
Communist government had ended, allowing Cuban to reform its economy and
political system without the threat of U.S. interference.

Fidel Castro writes of Obama: "My modest suggestion is that he reflects
and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics."

Castro, who led Cuba for decades before handing power to his brother in
2008, was legendary for his hours-long, all-encompassing speeches. His
letter reflects that style, presenting a sharp contrast with Obama's
tightly focused speech in Havana. Castro's letter opens with
descriptions of environmental abuse under the Spaniards and reviews the
historical roles of Cuban independence heroes Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo
and Maximo Gomez.

Castro then goes over crucial sections of Obama's speech line by line,
engaging in an ex-post-facto dialogue with the American president with
pointed critiques of perceived slights and insults, including Obama's
failure to give credit to indigenous Cubans and Castro's prohibition of
racial segregation after coming to power in 1959.

Quoting Obama's declaration that "it is time, now, for us to leave the
past behind," the man who shaped Cuba during the second half of the 20th
century writes that "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having
a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United
States."

Castro then returns to a review of a half-century of U.S. aggression
against Cuba. Those events include the decades-long U.S. trade embargo
against the island; the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of
a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the U.S.

He ends with a dig at the Obama administration's drive to increase
business ties with Cuba. The Obama administration says re-establishing
economic ties with the U.S. will be a boon for Cuba, whose centrally
planned economy has struggled to escape from over-dependence on imports
and a chronic shortage of hard currency.

The focus on U.S-Cuba business ties appears to have particularly rankled
Castro, who nationalized U.S. companies after coming to power in 1959
and establishing the communist system into which his brother is now
introducing gradual market-based reforms.

"No one should pretend that the people of this noble and selfless
country will renounce its glory and its rights," Fidel Castro wrote. "We
are capable of producing the food and material wealth that we need with
work and intelligence of our people."

Source: Fidel Castro to Obama: We don't need your 'presents' | Miami
Herald -
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