Introduction—On July 20, 2026, the U.S. State Department released the report “Cuba—The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” This hundred-page report took a long look at the history of the conflict between the United States and Cuba since Fidel Castro’s 1959 Revolution. This article is the second of a four-part review of this report.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Fidel Castro’s reputation in America was its dual nature. To the government and most citizens, he rapidly became a pariah. However, the leftist fringes looked upon him increasingly as a curious combination of Don Quixote and Robin Hood. This article intends to map out the early stages of that metamorphosis.
A Young Leader of Men—April, 1959
In April 1959, Fidel Castro visited the United States. His popular reception in New York City was overwhelming. According to a retrospective BBC article from 2019, “It took 20 minutes for the New York Police Department just to usher the 32-year-old hero—instantly recognizable in his trademark khaki fatigues, forage cap and cigar—the 100 yards across Eighth Avenue to his hotel, in part because he kept jumping through police barriers into the crowd to shake hands, saying, “I must greet my public!”
A few days later, Castro met with Vice President Nixon. After the meeting, the Vice President dictated a four-page memorandum containing his reflections on the Cuban leader. “My own appraisal of him as a man is somewhat mixed. The one fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men.” Then, Mr. Nixon tries to answer the question on the State Department’s mind. “He seems to be sincere. He is either incredibly naïve about Communism or under Communist discipline—my guess is the former….” Subsequent events lend the last sentence an ironic quality. “But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred, we have no choice but to at least try to orient him in the right direction.”
Clearly, at that point, the Vice President—and presumably much of the rest of official Washington—adopted a hopeful, if uncertain attitude. For the time being, that suited Castro’s purposes. He knew that his revolution was fragile, that the U.S. could easily demolish it. Letting the Yanquis hope that he might be on their side bought Castro valuable time while he consolidated his rule at home.
Anger at the United Nations—September, 1960
Eighteen months later, a very different Fidel Castro re-visited New York City, this time to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. The halting English of early 1959 became a strident Spanish by late 1960. The uncertainty evident on “Face the Nation” was replaced by confident anger. The 269-minute address is still the longest in U.N. history. After the speech, the “Fair Play For Cuba Committee” translated and published it in thirty pages of tiny type.
The speech begins with a litany of complaints against the United States. He began by venting his outrage that his supporters were blamed for killing a nine-year-old Venezuelan girl in the El Prado restaurant on Eighth Avenue. He raged at length about the mistreatment of the Cuban Delegation to the U.N., which eventually found quarters in “a humble hotel in Harlem.”
His next point was more substantial, that Cuba had effectively been a U.S. colony while “a cruel deception” made it appear to be independent. America has snapped up the best land and natural resources and dominated its commerce. He listed economic and diplomatic indignities heaped upon his island. Then he ranted that the revolution had come and restored justice. But even then, he insisted, the United States tried to use its economic power to subordinate the Cuban people. So, he signed a “trade treaty” with the Soviet Union.
“There You Have Our Line”
The penultimate paragraph mimicked generations of revolutionaries.
“Therefore, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims before America: The right of the peasants to the land; the right of the workers to the fruit of their labor, the right of children to education;… the right of nations to turn fortresses into schools, and to arm their workers,… so that they may themselves defend their rights and their destinies.”
Castro then concluded with two atypically short, uninspiring sentences.
“Some wanted to know the line followed by the Revolutionary Government of Cuba. There you have our line.”
A Leftist Theme
That speech provided the leftist refrain for the decades to come. Cuba was the victim. Castro, the lover of peace, was forced toward the communists by U.S. stupidity, arrogance and greed.
The leftist refrain found resonance in the turbulent sixties as the nation navigated the “morass” in Southeast Asia, assassinations, riots and the sexual revolution. University professors and students who lacked wisdom believed the idea that the U.S. had threatened Castro’s Cuba. Johnson, Nixon and Kissinger were the bloody-handed aggressors; Castro, Ho and Mao became the men of destiny.
Castro knew the power that the leftist academia held. He grew up on his father’s sugar plantation, imbibed Cuban nationalism at the Jesuit El Colegio de Belén and anti-Americanism at the University of Havana Law School. He had experienced how a professor’s words could sway frustrated youth.
Preparing for Chaos
The discord of the late sixties did not fall mysteriously out of the sky. The ground had been prepared. Many American historians concentrate on two harbingers, the Watts (Los Angeles) Race Riots of 1965 and the bacchanalia known as the 1967 “Summer of Love” in San Francisco.
Often overlooked, though, is Castro’s “Tricontinental Conference” in January 1966. Ostensibly organized by the “Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America” (OSPAAAL), it brought together 512 delegates from 82 countries. The U.S.S.R. and Red China also sent large delegations, but they were on the sidelines.
The Russians and Chinese watched as Fidel Castro presented a new form of communist rhetoric. The conference elevated Fidel to a position as the primary spokesman for international radicalism. Second, the conference set the goals for that movement that continue to resonate today. The State Department report, Cuba—The Capital of 21st Century Communism, sums up that program.
Recasting Communism
“What emerged from this milieu was a new theory of revolutionary politics. The struggle had expanded from a class war to a much larger civilizational conflict, demanding not just economic equality, but social, cultural, and even spiritual transformation. Its advocates spoke the language of a single planetary struggle—stretching from the battlefield to the classroom—between the West and the Third World. In their telling, the revolutionary agent was no longer the industrial proletariat, but the colonized nations and peoples of the Global South. The principal antagonist of world history was no longer ‘capital,’ but Western civilization itself.”
This new movement shed the U.S.S.R.’s stale Marxism-Leninism. This was not to be the province of faceless Russian bureaucrats in their black suits. The young of the world rose to create the new world of their dreams. In 2026, the radicals at Jacobin Magazine retrospectively referred to this forum as “a decolonization of Marxist thought.”
Whether he realized it at the time or not, Fidel Castro had accomplished another milestone for Marxism. He had created a role for Cuba and for himself that would endure even when the Soviet shadow no longer protected him.