on the other hand... "...On January 1, 1959, Castro's forces entered Havana and on January 5 the liberal law professor José Miró Cardona created a new government with himself as prime minister and Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president. On January 8 Castro himself arrived in Havana and assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In February, however, Miró resigned and Castro assumed the role nearly a month later after initially rejecting the offer; and in July, Urrutia resigned and was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, a lawyer more sympathetic to Castro's ideology. Initially the United States was quick to recognize the new government. On April 15 Castro went on a famous twelve-day unofficial tour of the US, where he met Malcolm X, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while staying in a cheap hotel in Harlem - an example of his tendency to 'mix with the people', as he later also did in Panamá, where he used the service entrance of the hotel more than the front door. He subsequently visited the White House and met with Vice President Richard Nixon. Sometime during this period Castro spoke for his first time to members of the Council of Foreign Relations..." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_castro