Dec. 11, 1964 - Fidel Castro’s economic czar, Maj. Ernesto (Che) Guevara (right), said defiantly in the U.N. General Assembly today that no nation, not even the powerful United States, can dictate “what type of weapons” Cuba keeps on its territory.
The Cuban minister of industry delivered a lengthy tirade against “U.S. global aggression,” apparently unaware of the bazooka shell explosion that took place outside the U.N. while he was speaking. Only a muffled sound reached the Assembly hall.
U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson lost no time in replying to Guevara, whom he referred to as “a man with a long Communist revolutionary record in Latin America.” He said Guevara’s “traditional charges” were as untrue as ever.
Guevara did not specify the kind of weapons Cuba now had in its arsenal, only that they were needed “for legitimate defense” in the face of “provocations of the Yankees.”
Guevara, garbed in his familiar army fatigue uniform, addressed the Assembly under maximum security precautions.
He accused the U.S. of aggression in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Cyprus, and the Congo.
Guevara termed the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base a “nest of thieves” and an entry point into Cuba of spies and saboteurs. He accused the U.S. Navy of piratical raids on Cuban and other ships and stormed at U-2 flights over the island as violations of Cuban airspace.
Following his address, Guevara brushed off the bazooka episode.
“The explosion gives the whole thing more taste,” he said with a wave of his cigar in the delegates’ lounge.
“What do you believe was the motive?” a reporter asked.
“Why don’t you ask the man who planted the bomb?” he retorted.
New York Police Commissioner Michael Murphy assured Mayor Wagner this afternoon that “a full and intense Police Department investigation to seek out and apprehend the perpetrators” of today’s firing of a bazooka shell “is under way.”
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