Fake News and the Myth of Fidel Castro as Robin Hood
Years before Fidel Castro, the defiant leader of revolutionary Cuba, died on November 25, his demise had been reported many times. The first was nearly 60 years ago, when the front pages of The New York Times and other newspapers flashed headlines about his death in a botched invasion of Cuba on December 2, 1956. The Cuban government, led by Fulgencio Batista, had spread the false story to stamp out a Castro-led insurrection, and for months the world believed that Fidel, and his younger brother Raúl, had met their inglorious end on a forlorn Cuban beach.
The truth of Fidel’s unlikely survival wasn’t known until the following February, when an American newspaperman braved Army roadblocks, often in disguise, to see the Cuban rebel in his mountain hideout in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra. It was just after dawn, with a weak winter sun slipping over the mountains and the forest dripping from overnight rain, when the thick brush parted and into the clearing strode a young and very much alive Fidel Castro. It was February 1957, and the American reporter was mesmerized.
RELATED: Fidel's tumultuous relationship with the U.S.
“This... was quite a man—a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned, full faced, with a straggly beard,” wrote Herbert L. Matthews in his exclusive front-page story in . “The personality of
