Fidel: o tirano mais amado do mundo

by Humberto Fontova

Escrito pelo cientista político cubano-americano Humberto Fontova, Fidel - O tirano mais amado do mundo narra a verdadeira história da Revolução Cubana e de seu líder, Fidel Castro, através de depoimentos e relatos de pessoas que sobreviveram a La Revolución. Um manifesto que explica como e por que os Estados Unidos criaram o mito Fidel Castro, que até hoje é símbolo da luta pela igualdade e da defesa dos direitos humanos. Fontova mostra que Cuba - que já foi a 11ª nação com o maior padrão de vida do mundo - tem hoje uma realidade pior do que a do Haiti. Os cubanos vivem sob o domínio total do governo, sem direito a propriedades, ao simples direito de ir e vir, ao consumo livre e a liberdade de expressão. Para Fontova, Fidel e sua quadrilha destruíram a economia do país, tornando o país dependente financeiro das grandes potencias e um fiel escudeiro do narcotráfico internacional. Mas por que os Estados Unidos, a ONU, as celebridades politicamente corretas e os engajados sociais pelo mundo defendem esse homem como um grande governante? É possível condenar ditadores como Augusto Pinochet e Adolph Hitler e passar a mão na cabeça de um homicida como Fidel Castro? Cuba apoiar o Irã é apenas uma demonstração de diplomacia internacional? E em tudo isso, como ficam os direitos civis dos cubanos aprisionados em Cuba?

Genres: Politics, History, Biography, Nonfiction

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 25, 2005

About the author

Humberto Fontova was born in Havana, Cuba. He and his family of 5 attempted to leave in 1961, but only 4 of them were successful. Humberto Fontova Sr. (author's father) was grabbed by the milicianos. He yelled to Esther (mother) and the 3 kids (Humberto age 7, Patricia age 8, and Enrique age 5) to "Go ahead!....Whatever happens to me, I don't want ya'll growing up here!" The next day, from a cousin's house in Miami, Esther called Cuba and found out that Humberto Sr. was in La Cabana, firing squad central where 2100 men and boys were murdered. Humberto Sr. stayed there for 3 months and then was released and returned to his family in New Orleans.

Humberto grew up in New Orleans. He graduated from the University of New Orleans with a degree in Political Science. He received his Masters Degree from Tulane University in Latin American Studies. He is married to Shirley Fontova and has three children, Monica, Michael and Robert. He is an avid hunter, fisherman and scuba diver. He has been writing for the hunting and fishing magazine: Louisiana Sportsman for almost thirty years. He has also written for other magazines such as Sierra, Scuba Times and Bowhunter. In 2001 he wrote his first book, The Helldivers' Rodeo; an extreme scuba diving and spear fishing adventure. Shortly after it's release, Humberto appeared on 3 episodes of Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher which included other panel guests such as Tom Green, Florence Henderson and James Coburn. In 2003 he released his second book, The Hellpig Hunt; a hunting adventure in the wild wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In 2005, he released his 3rd book which is a departure from his earlier writings into a more political genre, Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant. A political and emotional expose' about Fidel Castro and the only totalitarian dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere. This book has been published in english and spanish. In early 2007, his 4th book was released. Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him; which has now been published in four languages, english, spanish, portuguese and czech.

Humberto has appeared on such shows as The O'Reilly Factor with Bill O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmes, Fox and Friends, Glenn Beck, The Dennis Miller Show and various shows for Telemundo. He is constantly traveling across the country speaking at different events and universities. Humberto continuously writes articles for many news websites such as www.humaneventsonline.com, townhall.com, www.americanthinker.com, www.newsmax.com and frontpagemag.com.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was about time a book like this was written when this came out in 2005. Humberto Fontova strips away the lies we have been told by the mainstream media and universities about the man worshipped by empty headed Hollywood elites, American leftists and liberals and the elites in many Third World regimes that treat their people almost as squalidly as Castro has.

This is a brilliant book, an incredibly challenging polemic where Fontova cuts up the hypocrisy and stupidity of America's intellectual, media and Hollywood elites such as Castro's crony Oliver Stone who describes the bloodthirsty tyrant as 'very selfless and moral' and 'one of the world's wisest men', Dan Rather who refers to Castro as 'Cuba's own Elvis' Jack Nicholson calls Castro 'a genius!', Naomi Campbell 'A dream come true' and Norman Mailer 'the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since World War II'.

After the execrable and obese Michael Moore referred to the brave Cuban exiles as greedy 'wimps' Fontova takes apart the pompous prig he describes so beautifully as 'piggy Michael Moore'.

You will be disgusted at these sick and hollow if not demented songs of praise sung by these shallow nincompoops when you find out just what a savage butcher and tyrant Castro really is and the horrible crimes he has committed.

I was horrified to learn how the Castro regimes marketing of blood drained from political dissidents while they are still alive in the horrible Gulags known as UMAPS Castro has set up. So much like the grotesque harvesting of organs by Castro's Red Chinese allies. The PLO in Lebanon drained the blood of thousands of Maronite Christians too to transfer to evil Palestinian terrorists.
many of those dissidents killed and tortured have been Black Cubans while Blacks make up only 10% of the Cuban Communist Party. Former Black Panther Garland Grant who hijacked a plane to Cuba in 1971 informed a deaf world that he was 'living like a dog' and in 1977 that 'There's more racism here in Communist Cuba than the worst parts of Mississippi...Cuba aint what people think. I'd rather be in jail in the US than free here'.

Fontova points out how the Cuban Communists like their counterparts around the world have used food as a weapon causing massive deliberate famine and also used real weapons to main, torture and kill their opponents , even if they are in exile.

Fontova inspires us with the heroism of Cuban rebels who fought against forced collectivization during the Escambray Rebellion (1960-1966) put down with mass murder and burning of homes and villages by Castro'incarceration by the Apartheid South African government
Thousands of prisoners have been executed by firing squads including many by the doctrinaire psychopath Che Guevara, also exposed for someone totally antithetical to the rock-star rebel appearing on t shirts , watches and posters used by shallow leftwing youth for nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of thousands more have died, often deliberately murdered in trying to get to Miami in makeshift rafts and oil barrels knowing their chances of survival were slim but desperate to escape Castro's island prison

Particularly fascinating was to discover how authoritarian but relatively benevolent Cuban President Fulgencio Batista ran the country that was before Castro seized power in 1959 the most successful nation socio-economically in Latin America. Under Batista hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and Cuba took in more than 1 million Spanish immigrants. Cuba had the highest literacy rate in Latin America and the 9th highest standard of living in the world. Cuba in 1958 had twice Spain's pre capita income!
And under Castroite Cuba: In 1986 (after 27 years of Castro's rule)reached 24 per thousand , triple the average of Latin America. Cuban women are now the most suicidal in the world and Cuba has the highest abortion rate in the world. Havana has now overtaken Bangkok as the world capital of the child sex industry-if anything marks how we should judge a nation it should be on the welfare of it's children.

During the Cold War Cuba was a massive training camp for terrorists (including the IRA, PLO, Black Panthers and Carlos the Jackal).
And today Cuba under Raoul Castro is closely aligned with the genocidal regimes of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

Fontova also dissects the racism by the American liberal/left elites against Miami's conservative Cuban american community-Despicable Stalinist and anti-Semite Alexander Cockburn who has often urged genocide against Israeli Jews said that Cuban areas of Miami should be bombed. But we know that there also other targets of racism by the modern left including Israeli Jews and white working class people.
Fontova spares no punches in dissecting the hypocrisy of liberal and left commentators who would rather side with a mass murdering despot while demonizing his millions of victims-typical of the post-modern left.

Merged review:

It was about time a book like this was written when this came out in 2005. Humberto Fontova strips away the lies we have been told by the mainstream media and universities about the man worshipped by empty headed Hollywood elites, American leftists and liberals and the elites in many Third World regimes that treat their people almost as squalidly as Castro has.

This is a brilliant book, an incredibly challenging polemic where Fontova cuts up the hypocrisy and stupidity of America's intellectual, media and Hollywood elites such as Castro's crony Oliver Stone who describes the bloodthirsty tyrant as 'very selfless and moral' and 'one of the world's wisest men', Dan Rather who refers to Castro as 'Cuba's own Elvis' Jack Nicholson calls Castro 'a genius!', Naomi Campbell 'A dream come true' and Norman Mailer 'the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since World War II'.

After the execrable and obese Michael Moore referred to the brave Cuban exiles as greedy 'wimps' Fontova takes apart the pompous prig he describes so beautifully as 'piggy Michael Moore'.

You will be disgusted at these sick and hollow if not demented songs of praise sung by these shallow nincompoops when you find out just what a savage butcher and tyrant Castro really is and the horrible crimes he has committed.

I was horrified to learn how the Castro regimes marketing of blood drained from political dissidents while they are still alive in the horrible Gulags known as UMAPS Castro has set up. So much like the grotesque harvesting of organs by Castro's Red Chinese allies. The PLO in Lebanon drained the blood of thousands of Maronite Christians too to transfer to evil Palestinian terrorists.
many of those dissidents killed and tortured have been Black Cubans while Blacks make up only 10% of the Cuban Communist Party. Former Black Panther Garland Grant who hijacked a plane to Cuba in 1971 informed a deaf world that he was 'living like a dog' and in 1977 that 'There's more racism here in Communist Cuba than the worst parts of Mississippi...Cuba aint what people think. I'd rather be in jail in the US than free here'.

Fontova points out how the Cuban Communists like their counterparts around the world have used food as a weapon causing massive deliberate famine and also used real weapons to main, torture and kill their opponents , even if they are in exile.

Fontova inspires us with the heroism of Cuban rebels who fought against forced collectivization during the Escambray Rebellion (1960-1966) put down with mass murder and burning of homes and villages by Castro'incarceration by the Apartheid South African government
Thousands of prisoners have been executed by firing squads including many by the doctrinaire psychopath Che Guevara, also exposed for someone totally antithetical to the rock-star rebel appearing on t shirts , watches and posters used by shallow leftwing youth for nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of thousands more have died, often deliberately murdered in trying to get to Miami in makeshift rafts and oil barrels knowing their chances of survival were slim but desperate to escape Castro's island prison

Particularly fascinating was to discover how authoritarian but relatively benevolent Cuban President Fulgencio Batista ran the country that was before Castro seized power in 1959 the most successful nation socio-economically in Latin America. Under Batista hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and Cuba took in more than 1 million Spanish immigrants. Cuba had the highest literacy rate in Latin America and the 9th highest standard of living in the world. Cuba in 1958 had twice Spain's pre capita income!
And under Castroite Cuba: In 1986 (after 27 years of Castro's rule)reached 24 per thousand , triple the average of Latin America. Cuban women are now the most suicidal in the world and Cuba has the highest abortion rate in the world. Havana has now overtaken Bangkok as the world capital of the child sex industry-if anything marks how we should judge a nation it should be on the welfare of it's children.

During the Cold War Cuba was a massive training camp for terrorists (including the IRA, PLO, Black Panthers and Carlos the Jackal).
And today Cuba under Raoul Castro is closely aligned with the genocidal regimes of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

Fontova also dissects the racism by the American liberal/left elites against Miami's conservative Cuban american community-Despicable Stalinist and anti-Semite Alexander Cockburn who has often urged genocide against Israeli Jews said that Cuban areas of Miami should be bombed. But we know that there also other targets of racism by the modern left including Israeli Jews and white working class people.
Fontova spares no punches in dissecting the hypocrisy of liberal and left commentators who would rather side with a mass murdering despot while demonizing his millions of victims-typical of the post-modern left. Of course any mass murdering despot just has to declare himself a Communist and 'Anti-Imperialist' and be anti-Western to get the unconditional support of the Left.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I saw it while browing the stacks at the library and was excited to see it. Critical looks at Castro aren't all that common. In fact, as the author points out, Castro is the subject of contstant fawning by many in Hollywood, the media, and government.

I've never understood that. Sure, he's a communist, but he's hardly a progressive. I mean, the same folks who labeled Sarah Palin a book-burning tyrant praise a real tyrant who censors an entire country. They rant about the evil Pinochet, yet he was small-fry compared to the 15,000 to 17,000 people Fidel tortured and executed.

Seven years ago, I wrote a column about the fascination with Castro. I didn't get the appeal. And still don't.

So I was hoping this book could shed some light on that. Unfortunately, it doesn't do that.

It does do a fine job of documenting Castro's tyranny. That's the main strength of the book. And it lists several quotes from many people expressing their love for Castro. But it never even tries to explain why these folks love Castro.

But worse than that, it's written in a snarky, Ann Coulter-like tone that makes the author look like an angry kook. Angry kooks aren't the most reliable sources for unbiased, factual information. The author should have toned down the not-funny sarcasm and let the facts do the trash-talking for him.

[Mark Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author said it best 'Cuban Americans are this nation's first deplorables. I also learned the deep state (Not a conspiracy but a group of like minded individuals) is nothing new ,they helped Castro take power.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way American celebrities, media and politicians fawned to corrupt and wicked Castro is a moral and cultural failure. No one flees to Cuba, but thousands upon thousands have fled to the US grateful for its freedoms and liberties.

The book ends with a short chapter where Fontova tells of how he , his mother and siblings were welcomed by their southern neighbours when they fled to the US and settled there.

[Michael Connolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fontova shows that the majority of the Cuban people, not just the corrupt, rich people at the top, were much better off before Fidel Castro and the Communists took control in 1959. During the 1950s Cuba was one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. It attracted many immigrants from Spain, which was then ruled by the fascist Francisco Franco. Before Castro, Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America. During the 1950s, Cuba had a literacy rate of 80 percent and far more freedom of the press than it would subsequently have under Castro.
Cuba in the 1950s was run by a corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista was of mixed race, part white and part black. Many white Cubans supported Castro over Batista, because Castro was white. Fontova writes that since Castro came to power, 80 percent of Castro's prison population is now black, but only 10 percent of the Cuban Communist Party is black. Former Black Panther Garland Grant hijacked a plane to Cuba in 1971, and was soon locked up in one of Cuba's prisons. He claimed that there was more racism in Cuba than in the worst parts of Mississippi.
And Fidel Castro was not the only viable political alternative to Batista. In the 1958 election, Castro helped Batista steal the election from the honest and democratic politician Carlos Márquez-Sterling, because if Márquez-Sterling had been allowed to replace Batista, Castro would then have had no excuse for revolution.
Herbert Matthews of the New York Times newspaper reported that Fidel Castro was not a Communists, that, in fact, Castro was anti-Communist. In 1959 Walter Lippmann wrote that there was very little chance of Cuba falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. The newspaper Human Events was one of the few to assert that Fidel Castro was a Communist.
Two American ambassadors to Cuba, Arthur Gardner and Earl T. Smith, believed that Castro was a Communist. But they lost the battle to William Wieland of the State Department and his friend Herbert Mathews of the New York Times, who claimed that Castro was not a Communist. Arthur Gardner even warned his superiors at the State Department that Castro had said he was going to nationalize American companies in Cuba.
Batista lost power, because the United States withdrew its support from him. The State Department placed an arms embargo on Batista's Cuba.
The Escambray Rebellion against Castro lasted from 1960 to 1966. It was located in the Escambray mountains in central south Cuba. It was made up of peasants who resisted land seizures and forced collectivization, former members of the Batista regime, and guerrillas who had formerly fought with Castro. The rebels lost, because the United States stopped supplying the rebels with weapons and ammunition.
Fidel Castro often drained the blood from his prisoners before he executed them.

[Lee Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a raucous, slam-bang, fact-filled romp through evil. Fontova lines up fact after fact, footnoting and documenting the brutalities and horrors of Cuba. He shows the firing squads, the mass graves, the torture and the lies. I was shocked to find that 1 out of every 19 Cubans has been imprisoned for political crimes. The spectacle of rich white liberals waxing orgasmic over the torture of poor brown people is sickening. I had no idea that condemned political prisoners have their blood drained and sold before they are shot. Kind of like China's organ harvests. This book is just shocking. I wasn't really prepared for the extent of the Kennedys betrayal of their anti-Castro allies. JFK and his staff encouraging and arming the freedom fighters and then abandoning them to die. I knew about JFK's cowardly surrender during the Cuban Missile Crisis but never thought of it from the perspective of the betrayed Cubans. How often can you read about the willful idiocy of the CIA and the State Department, who preferred to make policy according to fashion and not principle. How can a book that is so much fun make you so mad?

[Carl Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed with Humberto Fontova's critical look at Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. It mostly gets the job done but much of it goes over various Hollywood actors and directors fawning over the dictator, further a lot of the material he writes about he already mentioned in the previous book about Che Guevara (Exposing the Real Che Guevara) which was outstanding, expertly sourced masterpiece ripping the left to shreds. This book is on the short side, I felt it was written for people who do not know much or anything of Fidel...I would highly recommend it for novices who want to know about the crazy bearded kook that's been running Cuba all these years, but for me nothing new.

[Eendju · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst book I ever read!
The author tries to be very convincing by using difficult words and way too many notes. However, at the same time he writes "The idiot...." many times. I'm sorry, but there's no way I can take an author like that serious.

[Craig · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's just be one-sided here. I swore I was an evangelical republican when I read this.

Seemed like a way to bash liberals through bashing a communist figure.

[David Braga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro revelador sobre as inimagináveis atrocidades praticadas por um ditador comunista e como o mesmo oculta seus crimes debaixo da insana e irracional paixão que desperta em pessoas desinformadas e numa esquerda cega pela sua ideologia utópica.