Castro asked US president for $10

June 24, 2004 3:54 PM

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american,in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green American and I would like to have one of them"
Your friend, Fidel Castro
[via Mahalanobis]
posted by MzB (17 comments total)

Maybe if they'd just sent him the $10 it would have saved a lot of trouble.
posted by TheCuriousOrange at 4:04 PM on June 24, 2004

Why the hell didn't we give the poor kid a $10 bill? What a bunch of assholes, we are.
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:05 PM on June 24, 2004

If you read farther down, there's a really funny bit about a kid writing for federal grant money to clean up his room.

If I were president, he would have got the cash.
posted by Salmonberry at 4:14 PM on June 24, 2004

With the three trillion dollar bill he received from Homer and Mr. Burns,
Fidel should be quite content.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:20 PM on June 24, 2004

(Yeah, yeah - one trillion; but you have to remember, that was a vintage bill).
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:21 PM on June 24, 2004

Oh man, what does this say about all the emails we've sent?

"Remember this email from 20 years ago?"

Ouch.
posted by skallas at 4:21 PM on June 24, 2004

posted by skallas at 4:26 PM on June 24, 2004

So now we know how all those Nigerian e-mails started.
posted by dg at 4:28 PM on June 24, 2004

In an impeccable hand, young Fidel signs the letter to President Roosevelt : "Your friend".

finally, case closed
Roosevelt was a commie
I've always loved the anecdote that JP Morgan's manservant had to cut out all photos of Roosevelt from the newspapers before Morgan read them, because he hated Roosevelt so
posted by matteo at 4:42 PM on June 24, 2004

Not that it isn't remarkable, but this letter wasn't recently unearthed. I saw a copy in college in the 90's.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:52 PM on June 24, 2004

$10 in 1940 had the buying power of about $135 today, which is about 5% of Cuba's current per capita GDP.
posted by techgnollogic at 5:00 PM on June 24, 2004

The White House had an office to deal with all the president's correspondence and sure enough Fidel Castro received a reply, but disappointingly, no bill.

About 19 years later, his guerrilla campaign toppled the seven-year military rule of Cuban President Fulgeneio Batista and, at 32, Mr Castro became the country's new leader.

Christ, they'll blame the Democrats for everything.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:36 PM on June 24, 2004

heh. you said manservant.
posted by Kwantsar at 7:42 PM on June 24, 2004

What a greedy capitalist... always after money...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:16 PM on June 24, 2004

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american

I hear that he made the same request in his latest letter to Russia asking for aid.
posted by gyc at 11:30 AM on June 25, 2004

There were lots of 'ten dollars bill green american' in Cuba at the time, but not many Cubans got to see them.
posted by riviera at 9:56 PM on June 25, 2004

you can find a scanned copy of the letter if you look hard enough at the National Archives online site...

I posted it about three years ago to a certain website that should remain nameless, but who's clientele intersects nicely with this site.
posted by davros42 at 4:38 PM on June 28, 2004