Herbert Matthews
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since February 2006. (help, talk) |
Herbert Lionel Matthews (1900 – 1977) was a reporter [1] for the New York Times said to be the first to report Fidel Castro was alive in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Matthews wrote a good number of books and quite a few books describe his activities (see below).
Matthews was a graduate of Columbia University. It is said that he co-opted the interview with Castro taking it from Ruby Phillips the Bureau Chief in Havana. Cuban exile author Teo Babun ("The Cuban Revolution: Years of Promise") mentions in a C-SPAN2/BookTV segment that "Castro 'smuggled' Matthews in early 1957, into the Sierra Maestra in eastern Cuba" to cover the ongoing and subsequent coup of Batista. He also said that Che Guevera later commented, "The presence of a foreign (American-preferred) journalist was more important for us than a military victory." (15m30s point in BookTV video.)
Comparing Matthews reports on the Cuban circumstances of the late 1950 with of those of Phillips [2] suggests that Matthews was indeed quite partial to Castro [3] and that he used his more senior position in the New York Times to elevate Castro to higher perceived status in the resistance to Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship and to low peddle Batista's proclamations that Castro was a communist [4]. Matthews has been compared to Stalin apologist Walter Duranty [5] a fellow journalist on the New York Times staff.
[edit] Partial bibliography
- Depalma, Anthony 2006 The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times. PublicAffairs Perseus Publishing New York ISBN 1-58648-332-3
- Koch, Stephen 2005 The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles. Counterpoint Press, New York ISBN 1-58243-280-5
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel 1961 The Cuban story. G. Braziller ASIN: B0007DNCMS
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel 1961 The yoke and the arrows; A report on Spain G. Braziller; Rev. ed edition ASIN: B0007DFF7I
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel -1964 Return to Cuba. Stanford U, Institute of Hispanic American & Luso-Brazilian Studies, A Special Issue Of ‘Hispanic American Report’ Stanford, Ca
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel – 1969 Castro: A Political Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel – 1969 Cuba. New York: The Macmillan Co. London: Collier-Macmillan
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel 1969 Fidel Castro. Simon & Schuster, Clarion Book New York
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel 1973 Half of Spain Died: A Reappraisal of the Spanish Civil War. New York, Scribner, 1973
- Matthews, Herbert Lionel -1975 Revolution in Cuba: An Essay in Understandings. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
