Murray Kempton on Fidel Castro

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March 16, 1960, Vol. V, No. 21

Kempton on Castro

An overflow audience of about 250 people last Thursday night heard Murray Kempton describe Fidel Castro as a man who may be a more historic figure than Eisenhower. The New York Post columnist spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Socialist Party at Debs Hall on University Place. He called Castro’s successful rebellion the only middle-class revolution in Latin America, a revolution of “very young men who seem to be devouring their parents.” Kempton described the Castro regime as an adventurous experiment in establishing a genuinely Socialist society, but also criticized it for being a police state. He added that it was the only police state he had ever visited where the people seem genuinely to like the police. Even though, Kempton said, the experiment will probably turn out badly, he believes it cannot turn out as badly as the Batista regime. s for the United States, he remarked, we had a sugar quota when Batista was shooting school kids, so maybe we can endure some insults to Herter. The Post columnist has recently returned from a trip to Cuba.

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