Rene Burri Quotes
In 1958, a year before the revolution, Magnum wanted to send me to Cuba because they had contacts with the rebels. I'd just spent six months in South America and said 'No', so I missed everything.
Boot, Chris, ed. Magnum Stories. Phaidon Press, 2004, p. 88.
In his early days as a revolutionary he was tried and jailed for an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship of Cuba:
This was the first American initiative for the assassination of Fidel Castro.
A major fan base for the Miami teams were Cuban Americans who react badly to any statement that could be favorable to Fidel Castro. This quotation is an example of a grey and evolving area in American law—the political freedom of speech rights of employees of employees of private corporations. See {627664} for his later statement.
In April of 1962, President Kennedy convened a meeting of top advisors at the State Department to discuss the proposed CIA plan for the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The senator was the lone dissenter from the plan:
Soon he had the power of a dictator but he didn’t force his will on the vast majority of the Cubans. His decrees made all the wealthy and the cronies of the dictator Batista outraged and most of them left Cuba. He was a dynamic demagogue and the people handed him dictatorial powers which he did not reject. He was so popular that he was the only leader in the Americas who would give 4 hour speeches and move through the streets without any bodyguards until the United States and dissident expatriates tried to assassinate him. With all that popularity, none the less he would not allow open criticism of his regime and jailed many political opponents. So he indeed became a dictator but never needed the machine gun to maintain power.
The Cuban dissidents and the CIA had assured President Kennedy and the Joint Chief’s of Staff that as soon as the CIA organized troops landed there would be uprisings throughout Cuba and the invaders would be supported by the Cuban people, happy to overthrow Castro. After the landing, there was not a single uprising nor was there any assistance provided to the invaders who were easily captured by Castro’s men. Castro was very popular. The CIA and Cuban dissidents were guilty of wishful thinking.
Johnson tasked Clark with finding out what the FBI knew of this story. The story was true. Worse, the CIA had hired members of the Mafia to do the assassination. (The Mafia resented Castro as he ended the Gambling Mecca that Cuba had been when his revolution succeeded. Before the Castro revolution, he Mafia got a “piece” of the profits from each Cuban casino for “protection.”) It might have been that the Kennedy Assassination was retaliation by Castro. However, the CIA withheld this from the Warren Commission and Robert Kennedy never revealed it even though he was a member of the Commission and the Commission had security clearance. See {637465}.
René Burri was a Swiss photographer. Burri was a member of Magnum Photos and photographed major political, historical and cultural events and key figures of the second half of the 20th century. He made portraits of Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso as well as iconic pictures of São Paulo and Brasília.
