After President Barack Obama returned from his visit to Cuba, former Cuban President Fidel Castro ripped the president for his comments about democracy and human rights.
Obama met with current Cuban President Raul Castro, but did not meet with his older brother Fidel.
While in Cuba last week, Obama talked about America’s shortcomings and even compared the Cuban and American revolutions. Obama also praised Cuba’s education and health care systems. But that wasn’t enough to please the former dictator.
In this photo released by the state media Cubadebate web site, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro delivers a speech to members of a Cuban medical brigade who arrived recently from Bolivia, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Cubadebate, Roberto Chile)
AP Photo/Cubadebate, Roberto Chile
In El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, the elder Castro griped that Obama overlooked the positive aspects of the Cuban revolution.
“Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama,” Castro wrote. “Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old.”
The United States and Cuba normalized relations in 2014.
But demonstrating he isn’t quite ready to move on, Castro also wrote the Bay of Pigs invasion by the Kennedy administration as a “mercenary force with cannons and armored infantry, equipped with aircraft … trained and accompanied by warships and aircraft carriers in the U.S. raiding our country. Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded.”
Castro also blasted America, bemoaning, “help that racist South Africa had received from [Ronald] Reagan and Israel.”
“I do not know what Obama has to say on this story now,” Castro wrote. He added, “My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics.”
He further wrote, “Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because it is our commitment to peace and brotherhood of all human beings living on this planet.”