Comments on: Castro asked US president for $10

Castro asked US president for $10

MzB — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:54:07 -0800

"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]

By: TheCuriousOrange

TheCuriousOrange — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:04:23 -0800

Maybe if they'd just sent him the $10 it would have saved a lot of trouble.

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:05:35 -0800

Why the hell didn't we give the poor kid a $10 bill? What a bunch of assholes, we are.

By: Salmonberry

Salmonberry — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:14:57 -0800

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.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:20:20 -0800

With the three trillion dollar bill he received from Homer and Mr. Burns, Fidel should be quite content.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:21:36 -0800

(Yeah, yeah - one trillion; but you have to remember, that was a vintage bill).

By: skallas

skallas — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:21:47 -0800

Oh man, what does this say about all the emails we've sent? "Remember this email from 20 years ago?" Ouch.

By: skallas

skallas — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:26:28 -0800

By: dg

dg — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:28:20 -0800

So now we know how all those Nigerian e-mails started.

By: matteo

matteo — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:42:49 -0800

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

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:52:31 -0800

Not that it isn't remarkable, but this letter wasn't recently unearthed. I saw a copy in college in the 90's.

By: techgnollogic

techgnollogic — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:00:22 -0800

$10 in 1940 had the buying power of about $135 today, which is about 5% of Cuba's current per capita GDP.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 18:36:09 -0800

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.

By: Kwantsar

Kwantsar — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 19:42:37 -0800

heh. you said manservant.

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 23:16:41 -0800

What a greedy capitalist... always after money...

By: gyc

gyc — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 11:30:04 -0800

"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.

By: riviera

riviera — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 21:56:54 -0800

There were lots of 'ten dollars bill green american' in Cuba at the time, but not many Cubans got to see them.

By: davros42

davros42 — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:38:43 -0800

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.