Fidel Castro is a Communist Icon, the previous dictator of Cuba, and the villain behind the Cuban Missile Crisis. And because of his involvement in that event and the complete takeover of Cuba, many see Castro as a monster. However, the dreaded Commie might have been a lot more relatable than the average person may believe. Fidel Castro was actually, like many of us, in love with dairy, more specifically, ice cream. The man could have 18 full scoops of ice cream after a wholesome lunch. What a god. 

Castro’s love for ice cream was brought to life in 1966 when he opened Coppelia, an ice cream parlor as large as an entire city block. At one point, his love for dairy even managed to interfere with a diplomatic delegation. A French ambassador was visiting Cuba and Castro brought out some Camembert, a famous type of French cheese, that was made out of Cuban milk. The ambassador ate some cheese and stated that it was “not too bad.” This comment legitimately offended Castro and the two got into an argument about which country makes better cheese. It became clear to the dictator that he could not convince the Frenchman that he makes better cheese, so they went on with the deligaton. After this, though, Castro had a new goal in mind.

The native dairy industry in Cuba was never particularly strong because the indigenous cows in Cuba could withstand the scorching heat of Cuba but were bred mainly for meat and produced little milk. In response to this, Castro had thousands of Canadian cows imported to Cuba that could, in theory, produce exponentially more milk than the Cuban cows. This was not the case though as the Canadian cows were under a lot of stress due to their bodies not being adapted to the hot Cuban climate. To fix this problem, this man made an entire air-conditioned facility for the Canadian cows to live in. But that didn’t work either because the cows were basically just in a massive metal box and the facility would have been too expensive for the country to maintain. So as a last ditch effort, Castro decided to breed the native Cuban cows and the Canadian cows with the goal of creating a milk-pumping, heat-resistant super cow. Almost all of the genetic hybrids were failures except for Ubre Blanca, the one cow that lived up to the Communist’s dreams. Ubre Blanca could live in the Cuban heat, and produced 110 liters of milk every day and still holds world records for her impressive amount of stored milk. Castro became extremely protective of his favorite cow. He would have armed guards outside of her special stable at all times. The stable, itself, was special because it played soothing music every time Ubre Blanca was milked which happened 4 times a day. And just as another precautionary measure, all of the cow’s food was tested on other animals before she ate it just in the event that someone tried to poison her. When she died in 1985, Castro erected a life-size marble statue of her, encased her real body in wax, put the body on display in a museum, and froze her eggs in the hopes of one day cloning her: the madman. 

It’s obvious that Fidel Castro might not have been as bad as everyone once assumed. As you can clearly see, the man cared for animals and loved ice cream like most other people on the planet, so much so, that the United States once planned on assassinating the man by poisoning his milkshake. If the assassin had slipped the cyanide pills into Castro’s milkshake as planned, he probably would have been glad that he died drinking a product of dairy. That’s dedication.