Fidel Castro

… is 80 today.

Castro wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. (He says he was 12, but should have been 14.) “If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american in the letter [back] because never have I not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them.” Castro went on to say, “I don’t know very English but I know very much Spanish and I suppose you [FDR] don’t know very Spanish but you know very English because you are American but I am not American.”

A more complete copy of the letter is here.

NewMexiKen actually was able to view a speech Castro gave outside the Hotel Nacional in Havana in 1993. It was interesting to see in person the man who has been so much a focus of America for more than 40 years.