Posted on 02/24/2008 9:51:08 PM PST by george76
In 1962, Mr. Castro lost a round of golf to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who had been a caddy in his Argentine hometown before he became a guerrilla icon. Mr. Castro's defeat may have had disastrous consequences for the sport... A journalist who wrote about the defeat of Cuba's Maximum Leader, who was a notoriously bad loser, was fired the next day.
Now, top officials on the island want to turn Mr. Castro's Communist paradise into a hotspot for this decidedly capitalist sport, to generate hard cash for its cash-strapped economy. Last year, Cuba's minister of tourism, Manuel Marrero, announced plans to build as many as 10 golf courses to lure upscale tourists.
Mr. Entwistle says he knows of at least 11 other projects, in various stages of development, involving Canadian, British and Spanish developers.
The man driving Cuba's golf effort is Raúl Castro...
The famous game between Messrs. Castro and Guevara took place shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to José Lorenzo Fuentes, Mr. Castro's former personal scribe, who covered the game. Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says the match was supposed to send a friendly signal to President Kennedy. "Castro told me that the headline of the story the next day would be 'President Castro challenges President Kennedy to a friendly game of golf,'" he says.
But the game became a competitive affair between two men who did not like to lose, says Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes, who recalls that Mr. Guevara "played with a lot of passion." Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says he felt he couldn't lie about the game's outcome, so he wrote a newspaper story saying Fidel had lost.
Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says he lost his job the next day, eventually fell afoul of the regime and now lives in Miami.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Mark Entwistle, a former Canadian ambassador to the island...” bring on golf projects,”
Like the second rate Spanish vacartion resorts in Cuba, the golf courses will be strictly apartheid off limits to regular Cubans.
The Cuban people are slaves in their own country.
Pretty funny considering that Chavez and his monkey mayor Barreto have actively seized every golf course in greater Caracas for public housing.
yes
The Cuban people are slaves in their own country.
Cuba could become a major tourist destination not unlike Cancun, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. With gambling, recreation such as Golf and water sports the economy could improve and with Freedom for the residents it could eventually prosper.
It will be mired in it’s current poor state until Freedom arrives first.
See tagline.
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