Fidel Castro: U.S.-Cuba Relations Will Improve When U.S. Elects Black President-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Fidel Castro said in 1973 that relations between the U.S. and Cuba would warm up when there was a black president and a Latin pope.
The Truth:
There’s no record of Fidel Castro predicted that U.S.-Cuban relations would normalize after the U.S. elected its first black president.
This quote has been circulating for a few years, but it gained traction after President Obama traveled to Cuba, marking the first time that a U.S. leader had done so in 90 years:
“The U.S. will come to talk to us when they have a black president and the world has a Latin American pope.”
-Fidel Castro
1973
In 2014, the Havana Times reported that the quote was a “common joke these days on the island, (a quote) put into the mouth of a fictional Fidel Castro.”
And our research supports that. We couldn’t find any record of Fidel Castro making that comment in the 1970s, or at any other time.
In 1977, Fidel Castro did, however, make a prediction about when relations between the U.S. and Cuba would improve. He told Barbara Walters in an interview that relations between the countries would improve during Jimmy Carter’s second term in office, between 1980 and 1984.
Of course, Castro’s prediction was wrong. Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan — and the rest is history.