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With a history of tensions between the United States and its neighbour Cuba, there aren’t many Americans who can speak about visiting Cuba and meeting the Cuban leader. But Bill Richardson has some stories to tell. He is a former governor of New Mexico who served in Bill Clinton’s administration. He was sent to Havana as an envoy a few times to meet Fidel Castro.
Well the strongest memories are the two very lengthy meetings we had in the late 80s and 90s when I was trying to get some political prisoners out of Cuba and also trying to better the US-Cuba relationship. But obviously he is a historic figure, good and bad, but a major player, cold war icon… You know, all these memories started streaming through when I found out about his death.
I understand that for all the differences between you and him, you did have something in common.
We did. It was baseball. We both spoke Spanish. We connected personally. You know, he’d get mad at me periodically but on baseball, I remember telling him I went to see a game in Havana. It was a high scoring game but their pitching was a little week. And he didn’t like that. But I quickly changed my tone because I was trying to get some political prisoners out. And he kind of smiled. But it was a way we connected personally. He was a very interesting character sort of a Renaissance man. But at the same time he had this very strong repressive tendencies I’d say. “You know, Fidel, you got to do more on human rights.” “My God,” he said, “what do you mean human rights? What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, you’ve got thousands of political prisoners”. And he said back to me, “no, I don’t have any of them. They are all enemies, criminals of the state”.
Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico.
For more of an insight into the Cuban leader’s routes, our former Havana correspondent Sarah Rainsford who’s now in Moscow visited the estate in the far east of the island where Fidel Castro was born and grew up.
This is where Fidel’s life began. This is the farm that he grew up on. And the first thing you notice about it is he was obviously from a pretty wealthy family. His father was a Spanish immigrant. He began as a laborer for the American company setting up plantations here. But he soon began acquiring land of his own. And the area we’re just heading into now under the huge trees here was the family estate.
