Don Pesci: Useful U.S. idiots for the Castros


When President  Obama arrived in Cuba on Palm Sunday along with his retinue, so large that they displaced 12 journalism students from Central Connecticut University, who were dispatched to other quarters 55 miles from Havana to make room for Mr. Obama.

Cuban President (dictator) Raul Castro, still kicking at 85, did not greet the president at the airport. It should be noted before passing on that Communist Cuba under the Castro brothers was never a hospitable place for foreign journalists.

A Cuban acquaintance tells me that the Castro brothers pulled a Queen Elizabeth on the lame-duck president: Some mountains will not go to Mohammed. When Mr. Obama visits England later this year, Queen Elizabeth will not attend his arrival in London; instead, the president and his traveling retinue will be transported to Windsor Castle, where he will be received right royally. Monarchs, even when they are decorative rather than functional, retain the privileges of monarchy.

But the Castro brothers?


It is not widely known that in 1963, following the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and the ensuing U.S. Soviet Union Missile crisis in 1962, President John Kennedy’s representatives entered into top- secret talks with Fidel Castro’s representatives to arrive at a modus vivendi agreeable to both parties.

 Very likely, Mr. Castro was searching for a new patron after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev withdrew diplomatically from the hot-headed Mr. Castro, who had implied in private talks with Mr. Khrushchev that he would not be averse to loosing one of Mr. Khrushchev’s nuclear missiles on the United States. Mr. Kennedy was not averse to a rapprochement, but his assassination months later by Lee Harvey Oswald, who, it was thought, had connections both in Cuba and Moscow, terminated any possible rapprochement.

Among American dignitaries traveling to Cuba on this historic occasion was U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who occupies one of the safest seats in Congress.  The lady, therefore, can afford to be adventuresome.

She served in Congress since 1991, a quarter century. Ms. DeLauro, 73, has grown more and more progressive over the years, though she has not proceeded as far left as the Castro brothers, both of whom are unrepentant communists of the Che Guevara type.






Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based political writer.