634 WAYS TO KILL FIDEL CASTRO

It's amazing that Fidel Castro managed to survive all the US assassination attempts to kill him. Castro has introduced many reforms in all fields, particularly free health and educational services. Rather than earning US approval, this has not diminished US government and media demonization of Cuba or US sanctions against it. It makes one wonder how long Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will survive if US tries similar assassination attempts on him. Like Castro defeating a US-based dictatorship, Chavez has also defied the US by his crime of nationalising Venezuela's oil for Venezuelans. Given the record of US installed and supported military dictatorships in Latin America, will the Bush regime, or those that may take over the Bush mantle, go back to this strategy?

Executive Action:
634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro

By Fabián Escalante

The Secret War series

In a highly readable and informative style, Fabián Escalante reviews over four decades of attempts to kill Fidel Castro—involving weapons that ranged from exploding cigars and poison pens to grenades and bazookas. As the former director of Cuban counterintelligence, Escalante played a significant role in frustrating many of these assassination plans, made by the CIA and the Mafia under a project codenamed "Executive Action."

Although melodramatic and at times quite comical, these plots were deadly serious—and illegal, as subsequent U.S. government inquiries such as the 1975 Church Commission concluded. See more

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Latin America at the Crossroads
Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements & Political Alternatives

By Roberto Regalado

As the U.S. intensifies aggression against Latin America, Roberto Regalado provides an incisive analysis of the issues underlying the conflict.

With remarkable clarity and breadth, Regalado describes a resurgent Latin America struggling anew to break free from its history of domination and exploitation, explaining how the recent strengthening of popular movements—from the water struggles in Bolivia to the landless movement in Brazil—has led to the strategic and tactical redefinition of left political parties and social movements and a revisiting of the perennial question: reform or revolution?

This up-to-the-moment book considers the significance of recent events in Latin America including coca farmer Evo Morales's electoral victory in Bolivia and escalating conflict between Venezuela's President Chávez and Washington.

Roberto Regalado has worked in the Americas Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party since 1971, and served as a diplomat in the United States and Nicaragua. Regalado was a founding member of the São Paolo Forum. `He has been one of Cuba's most prominent researchers and commentators on Latin American politics for more than three decades. See more