Josep moncada biography of martin luther king
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Cuba: Revolution time
Like him or loathe him, you can’t deny the fact that Fidel Castro is a survivor. As I write this, Cuba’s compañero comandante is eighty-six years old. He has escaped an estimated 638 CIA-inspired assassination attempts, including exploding cigars and bacteria-infested diving suits. He has outlived nine US presidents, and withstood events like the Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1962 Missile Crisis, the collapse of the Soviet Union and — most recently — the death of his friend, ally, and cheap oil supplier, fellow comandante Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Castro held the reins of power in Cuba for almost five decades before handing over the top job in 2008 to his younger brother Raúl (now a mere eighty-two). Raúl has recently announced that when he reaches the end of his second term of office in 2018, he will retire. The Castro brothers will then have run Cuba for just short of six decades.
Yet the whole adventure started badly, so badly that Fidel and Raúl were lucky to survive into their thirties. On 26 July, 1953 — sixty years ago — they led a disastrous and foolhardy assault on an army barracks that ended in bloodshed and imprisonment, but is remembered in Cuba today with a strange sense of reverence.
In 1953, Fidel was a university-educated and qualified la
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