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 Castro, and his younger brother, Raúl, had met their inglorious end on a forlorn Cuban beach.
The truth of Castro’s unlikely survival wasn’t known until the following February, when an American newspaperman braved army roadblocks, often in disguise, to see the 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 Castro. It was February 1957, and the American reporter was mesmerized.
“This was quite a man—a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, with a straggly beard,” wrote Herbert Matthews in his exclusive frontpage story in The New York Times. “The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.”