Top 4 Fidel Castro Assassination Attempts
THE PASSING of Cuba’s Fidel Castro has prompted a mixed reaction of grief and opprobrium while sparking near endless debate surrounding his legacy which is set to continue for some time to come.
His death has also allowed many to marvel at Castro’s near imperviousness to death, no better exemplified by his stubborn refusal to be assassinated at the hands of the American government.
Unable to expose him to rank inequalities in America, which can cut so many people’s lives tragically short, the US authorities had to become inventive. WWN has compiled some of the most daring attempts by America on Castro’s life:
1) Making tobacco carcinogenic
Of course, the exploding cigar comes to mind when considering any list of Castro assassination attempts, but there are even more intriguing instances of near death. Despite the common misconception that cigars have always been carcinogenic, instilling tobacco with such properties was the brainchild of John F. Kennedy during his tenure as president. Observing, through intelligence briefings, that Castro had a love of Cuban cigars the US president hatched a plan to turn the healthy past time of smoking into something altogether more sinister and harmful. Tragically, such a move went on to have huge implications for the non-Fidel Castro population of the world too.
2) Turning Cuba into one giant bomb
The madcap assassination attempts of the Cuban leader seemed to know no bounds as the US concocted one harebrained scheme after another. But perhaps the most outlandish of them all was turning the island nation of Cuba into one giant bomb. Under the cover of darkness, night after night, US bomb setting experts added more and more explosives to the soil underneath Cuba in the hope that one humongous explosion which decimated the island would also take out Castro for good. However, after 6 long years of adding layer after layer of explosives, one bomb expert observed that he may have misplaced the detonator to the giant bomb years previously.
3) Killing him with kindness
Successive US administrations poured millions of dollars into research surrounding the theory that you could kill someone with kindness. One assassination effort involved sending Castro over 12,000 separate birthday gifts, each one more thoughtful than the last, but to no avail.
4) Watching Titanic
The bloated and overblown Hollywood epic was one of a very few US movie imports to make it to the shores of Cuba, however, this was no coincidence as the CIA suspected the aging Castro would become incredibly bored given the length of the movie with the final sucker punch delivered when he saw how there was clearly enough room on that piece of wood for both Jack and Rose.
The CIA had banked on Castro becoming so irate at such an ‘unsocialist act’ of selfishness by Rose that his heart would simply give out. It was not to be, as Castro chose instead to pause the movie on the scene in which Kate Winslet exposes her breasts, with leading Cuban doctors speculating the scene actually added years to his life.