In the National Archives of the United States, there are reams and reams of letters that people have sent to the occupant of the Oval Office over the years. The Archives are working tirelessly to digitize those letters. With permission, any American can access these records and see what people wrote to the various Chief Executives. Sometimes, people from other countries wrote to the American President.
We don’t know why the boy from the Caribbean island wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Perhaps, as children do, he simply wanted to express his admiration for a man who seemed to be so inspirational at a time when the world was going mad with economic disaster and world war. For many, FDR represented one of the last bulwarks against the fascism that was sweeping the globe from Japan to Paris in the war’s first full year. Roosevelt had been recently re-elected for an unprecedented third term, and some breathed a sigh of relief that he was still in control of the last great democracy on earth save Great Britain.
The boy, aged 12, took a pencil and wrote the great man to express his admiration and to ask a favor. The letter begins, “Mr. Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, my good friend Roosevelt.” In broken English, he wrote to say that he had heard about FDR’s election win, and he expressed that he “was very happy to hear” the election results over the radio. It was that medium of radio that Roosevelt had utilized to speak directly to the people during the Great Depression and throughout the 1930s in a series of talks called the Fireside Chats. Those talks to the American public resonated beyond the US borders, carried by the airwaves into the Latin American sphere and the island nations like the one the boy came from.
In his letter, the boy’s grasp of English is obviously limited, but his admiration for the American President shines through. He admits that, “I don’t know very English,” and when he congratulates FDR on his reelection, the lad doesn’t know the English word “term.” So, he inserts his native Spanish word “periodo” instead. It’s an earnest and honest letter as well. Near the end, the boy makes an interesting request, however. He asks the American leader for a new $10 bill. He calls the note a “green American,” probably somehow confusing the term “greenback” as slang for an American bank note. He adds, “because never, I have not seen one,” the boy says by way of explanation.
It could be that the boy wrote the letter as part of a school exercise in his homeland. The letter is written on school stationery, and it has the school’s address in the upper left-hand corner. When he asks for the $10 bill, he repeats the address of the school as where the gift could be sent. Then, as the letter drew to a close, the boy reiterates that his English knowledge is limited, but he says that perhaps Roosevelt’s knowledge is Spanish was limited as well. “You are American,” he said, “but I am not American.” “Good by,” he says by way of signing off. And then, the boy signs the letter.
“Your friend,
Fidel Castro.”
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