Cuba’s ‘gold medal’ survivor

Fidel Castro, who is 90 on Saturday, was the target of 164 assassination plots during 47 years in power.

For more than half a century, Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a target for many of his political enemies and adversaries by any means, including his assassination.

Castro once stated, in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, that he believed he had set a world record. “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal,” he said.

During his 47 years in power, Castro survived 637 conspiracies to kill him and 164 real assassination plots, making him the most targeted head of state in the 20th century.

“In the last few years, several Cuban security researchers conducted an investigation and we concluded that 637 conspiracies to kill Fidel Castro had been carried out with various methods,” Pedro Etcheverry, an investigator at Cuba’s State Security Research Center, told Xinhua.

Etcheverry said US intelligence services admitted in 1975 that they had organized eight separate plots to kill Castro since 1960, after he broke off relations with Washington and established key political and economic alliances with the former Soviet Union.

The expert said the US and antiCastro groups were very “aggressive” in the early years of the revolution and plots were continuously organized. He said many factors, including luck, had helped Castro survive the assassination attempts.

From sniper and bazooka plots to guns hidden in video cameras and even poisoned milkshakes have been some of the assassination methods.

One of the most renowned plots was in Chile in 1971 when Fidel Castro visited his ally, former president Salvador Allende.

“During a press conference, the CIA had infiltrated two cameramen with guns inside their video cameras. Minutes before Fidel came out to speak to the press, one of the two men declined to take a shot at Cuba’s president and the other one also backed down,” said Etcheverry.

Another tense moment came in 1997 in Venezuela when Fidel Castro attended the VII Iberoamerican Summit and terrorist groups planned an assassination plot.

“The plan in Margarita Island, Venezuela, was to fire a bazooka at Fidel’s airplane when it was about to land. The perpetrators were arrested and two bazookas, an assault rifle as well as explosives and guns were found,” he added.

Etcheverry believes Castro’s enemies never gave up in their attempts to physically eliminate him until he officially retired in 2008.

“The US government and terrorist groups insisted on trying to kill Fidel because he is a symbol of social justice, sovereignty and independence for Cuba and many other nations around the world,” he said.

have been carried out to kill Fidel Castro during his 47 years in power in Cuba.