Para Vera Menezes, Virgilio Pereira de Almeida, Cecilia Mollica, Alexandre Freitas, Clecio Dias, Ana Karina Bortoni Dias, Larissa Bortoni
Santiago de Cuba
Nov 6 1940
Mr. Franklin Roosvelt,
President of the United
States
My good friend Roosvelt:
I don’t know very English, but I know as much as write to you.
I like to hear the radio, and I am very happy, because I heard in it, that you will be President for a new (período)
I am twelve years old. A am a boy but I think very much, but I do not think that I am writting to the President of the United States.
If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter, because never , I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them. My address is:
Sr. Fidel Castro
Colegio de Dolores.
Santiago de Cuba
Oriente. Cuba
I don’t know vey English but I know very Spanish and I suppose you don’t know very Spanish because you are American but I am not American.
(Thank you very much)
Good by. Your friend
Castro
Fidel Castro
If you want iron to make sheaps(rasurado) ships I will show to you the biggest ( minas) of iron of the land. They are in Manjarí. Oriente Cuba ( From the book “Cartas extraordinárias – correspondência inesquecível de pessoas notáveis, org. Shaun Usher, Companhia das Letras, 2013. A gift from my dear friend Vera Freitas)
Obs. I find this letter fantastic both historically and linguistically. Note that the author was very young, 14 years old, and not twelve as he says.
