Matthew Barlow

Fidel Castro died this weekend. He was 90.  Whatever you think of him, and I am largely ambivalent, he was a giant of the past half century.  He was the dictator of a tiny, poor Caribbean nation with a population about that of New York City, and yet, he was a giant on the world stage.  Even after the Soviet Empire collapsed and all that support for Fidel’s Castro dried up, he maintained power.  Of course, his was a totalitarian state and, yes, dissent was dealt with harshly. And, yes, millions of refugees fled in dire circumstances for the United States.

But, what I take issue with is the New York Times declaring that Castro was “the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959.”  Um. No.  He did not bring the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere.  It was already here.  One of the two major belligerents of the Cold War, the United States, is located just north of Cuba.  The CIA, meanwhile, was already running around Latin America by the time Fidel and his revolutionaries marched into Havana in January 1959, overthrowing the corrupt American puppet-dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

In 1948, the United States interfered in a civil war in Costa Rica in favour of José Figueres Ferrer, in order to rid the country of Communist rule (hint, Costa Rica wasn’t communist).  Six years later, in 1954, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, attempted to seize land belonging to United Fruit for a land redistribution programme.  Instead, he incurred the wrath of the CIA, which, at best co-operated with, at worst, bullied, the Guatemalan Army, forcing Guzmán to resign. I could go on.

And at any rate, the Cold War came to the Western Hemisphere in 1945, a cypher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (Apparently the Times needs a reminder that Canada is in the Western Hemisphere?) walked out of the embassy and wandered over to the Ottawa Journal newspaper offices to tell his story.  It took awhile, but Gouzenko became the first defector to Canada, complete with Soviet secrets.

The Times‘s headline about Castro bringing the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere is simply factually wrong.  And this is what concerns me.  History and facts DO matter, and to play fast and loose with them is dangerous. It leads to mis-information running rampant in society.  We are currently reeling from revelations of the role of fake news sites in the Presidential Election.  The New York Times, however, is usually regarded as the leading American newspaper, amongst the most well-regarded globally.  It would behoove the headline writers, writers, reporters, and editors of the august institution to learn history.