Fidel Castro responded Monday to President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba with a long, bristling letter recounting the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba, writing that "we don't need the empire to give us any presents." 
 
 The 1,500-word letter in state media titled "Brother Obama" was Castro's first response to the president's three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries' history of Cold War hostility. Obama did not meet with the 89-year-old Fidel Castro on the trip but met several times with his 84-year-old brother Raul Castro, the current Cuban president. 
 
 Obama's visit was intended to build irreversible momentum behind his opening with Cuba and to convince the Cuban people and the Cuban government that a half-century of U.S. attempts to overthrow the Communist government had ended, allowing Cuban to reform its economy and political system without the threat of U.S. interference. 
 
 Fidel Castro writes of Obama: "My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics." 
 
 Castro, who led Cuba for decades before handing power to his brother in 2008, was legendary for his hours-long, all-encompassing speeches. His letter reflects that style, presenting a sharp contrast with Obama's tightly focused speech in Havana. Castro's letter opens with descriptions of environmental abuse under the Spaniards and reviews the historical roles of Cuban independence heroes Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez. 
 
 Castro then goes over crucial sections of Obama's speech line by line, engaging in an ex-post-facto dialogue with the American president with pointed critiques of perceived slights and insults, including Obama's failure to give credit to indigenous Cubans and Castro's prohibition of racial segregation after coming to power in 1959. 
 
 Quoting Obama's declaration that "it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind," the man who shaped Cuba during the second half of the 20th century writes that "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States." 
 
 Castro then returns to a review of a half-century of U.S. aggression against Cuba. Those events include the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against the island; the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the U.S. 
 
 He ends with a dig at the Obama administration's drive to increase business ties with Cuba. The Obama administration says re-establishing economic ties with the U.S. will be a boon for Cuba, whose centrally planned economy has struggled to escape from over-dependence on imports and a chronic shortage of hard currency. 
 
 The focus on U.S-Cuba business ties appears to have particularly rankled Castro, who nationalized U.S. companies after coming to power in 1959 and establishing the communist system into which his brother is now introducing gradual market-based reforms. 
 
 "No one should pretend that the people of this noble and selfless country will renounce its glory and its rights," Fidel Castro wrote. "We are capable of producing the food and material wealth that we need with work and intelligence of our people." 
 
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 Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein ||||| HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro has responded to President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba with a long, bristling letter recounting the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba and says "We don't need the empire to give us any presents." 
 
 The 1,500-word letter in state media Monday is Castro's first response to Obama's three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries' history of Cold War hostility. Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro but met several times with his brother Raul Castro, the current president. 
 
 Fidel Castro, 89, writes about Cuba's history, starting with Spanish colonialism up to the Bays of Pigs invasion. 
 
 He says of Obama "My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics." ||||| PANAMA CITY U.S. President Barack Obama met Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday in the highest-level talks between the two countries in nearly 60 years, and the two men agreed to push ahead on improving relations after decades of hostility. 
 
 Describing their private meeting as "historic," Obama said the two countries can end the antagonism of the Cold War era, although he said he would continue to pressure the communist-led country on democracy and human rights. 
 
 ‎"We are now in a position to move on a path toward the future," Obama told Castro as they met in Panama, where they were both attending a summit of leaders from across the Americas. 
 
 Speaking to reporters later, Obama made plain the two countries would still have their differences. 
 
 "We have very different views of how society should be organized and I was very direct with him that we are not going to stop talking about issues like democracy and human rights and freedom of assembly and freedom of the press," he said. 
 
 The two men agreed in December to move to normalize relations, including seeking to restore diplomatic ties that were broken off by Washington in 1961. 
 
 Obama said he decided to overturn longstanding U.S. policy on Cuba because the old approach of open hostility and economic sanctions had failed to force through major changes on the island and it was time to try something new. 
 
 Since then, he has relaxed some restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba. 
 
 At their 80-minute meeting on Saturday, Obama and Castro sat side by side in polished, wooden chairs in a small conference room. The mood cordial but businesslike. 
 
 Both wore dark suits and each nodded and smiled at some of the comments made by the other in brief statements to reporters before they began their talks. 
 
 Castro said he would continue to take steps toward normalizing relations with Washington, and was open to discussing human rights and other issues. 
 
 "So we are willing to discuss everything, but we need to be patient, very patient. Some things we will agree on; others we will disagree," said the 83-year-old leader, who took over as president of Cuba in 2008 when his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped aside because of ill health. 
 
 CAUTIOUS REFORMS 
 
 Raul Castro has already undertaken some market-style reforms to try to strengthen Cuba's economy but he is moving cautiously and he has made clear that he has no intention of allowing an end to communist rule. 
 
 The last time the leaders of the two countries held a substantive meeting was in 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was U.S. president and Fulgencio Batista was the U.S.-backed dictator in power in Havana. That meeting was also in Panama. 
 
 The Castro brothers toppled Batista in a revolution on January 1, 1959 and relations between the United States and Cuba quickly deteriorated. 
 
 Fidel Castro became a Cold War ally of the Soviet Union and the rivalries took the world to the brink of a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. 
 
 Now that relations are improving, Obama is close to removing Cuba from a U.S. list of countries that it says sponsor terrorism. 
 
 A senior U.S. official said Obama will make his decision in coming days and that efforts to reopen Cuban and U.S. embassies should be concluded relatively quickly. 
 
 Since 1977, the two countries have maintained contact through interests sections in Havana and Washington and in recent years they have cooperated on migration, drug trafficking and other issues. 
 
 Castro's government has called Cuba's inclusion on the state terrorism list a hindrance to restoring diplomatic ties. 
 
 Cuba was first placed on the list in 1982 when it supported Marxist rebellions in Latin America but that backing stopped with the end of the Cold War. The only other countries currently on the list are Iran, Syria and Sudan 
 
 Obama, a Democrat, has faced some criticism inside the U.S. Congress for his dramatic shift on Cuba policy. Critics say he has given up too much without first insisting on political reform on the island. 
 
 Obama said on Saturday that the new policy has majority support among Americans and the overwhelming backing of Cubans. 
 
 "The Cold War is over," he told reporters. 
 
 In the United States, polls show that support for a more collaborative relationship with Havana has grown steadily in recent years, even in the Cuban-American community that for decades fiercely opposed Fidel Castro and overwhelmingly opposed ties with Havana. 
 
 Obama can continue to ease specific sanctions but the trade embargo against Cuba can be overturned only by the Republican-controlled Congress. 
 
 The president's changes to Cuba policy are part of a broader approach of being open to finding common ground with traditional foes of the United States. Despite criticism from opponents, his government has pushed for the negotiations between Iran and major powers aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Dave Graham and David Alire Garcia; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Kieran Murray and Frances Kerry) ||||| The White House today offered a more detailed look at President Obama's itinerary for his historic visit to Cuba next week and the trip to Argentina that will follow. 
 
 Accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters, as well as the President's mother-in-law, Obama will arrive in Havana Sunday afternoon, March 20. With his family he will tour Old Havana, including the Roman Catholic cathedral there, where the President will be met by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who helped facilitate negotiations that led to the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations in December 2014. 
 
 Monday, March 21, Obama will lay a wreath at the Jose Marti memorial, then meet Cuban President Raul Castro to discuss the progress of normalization. White House officials confirm Obama will not meet with Castro's older brother, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. 
 
 After meeting with Raul Castro, Obama will then attend a gathering of Cuban entrepreneurs as well as U.S. and Cuban-American business leaders. That evening, he'll attend a state dinner at the Revolutionary Palace. 
 
 Tuesday morning is slated for what Obama aides call the most important event of the visit, a speech "to the Cuban people" delivered by Obama at the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso. Aides say they expect the speech - in which Obama will address the issue of Cuba's human rights record. among other matters - to be broadcast island-wide, and that so far Cuban officials have not objected to that. 
 
 After that speech, Obama will meet with members of Cuban civil society, including rights activists (whom the White House has not yet named). 
 
 Before leaving Havana on Tuesday, Obama will attend a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national all-star team. 
 
 Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine will also visit Cuba next week, marking the first time a Miami-Dade County mayor has traveled there. 
 
 From Havana, Obama and family will fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they'll be met by recently elected President Mauricio Macri. It will be the first bilateral visit by a U.S. president in almost 20 years - and comes the same week Argentina observes the 40th anniversary of a U.S.-backed military coup that sparked the country's infamous Dirty War, which murdered thousands of mostly young leftists. So as not to be present in Buenos Aires on Thursday March 24, the actual anniversary - protesters said it would be an affront to Dirty War victims' families - Obama will make a visit to Bariloche in southern Argentina.
– No one expected President Obama to meet with Fidel Castro during his historic visit to Cuba last week. But while Obama was chatting up and taking in a baseball game with brother Raul Castro, the 89-year-old former revolutionary was penning what the AP calls a "long, bristling letter." "We don't need the empire to give us any presents," Fidel writes in the 1,500-word missive Monday in El Granma, the newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party, per Politico. In his "El Hermano Obama" ("Brother Obama") essay, Castro launches into a Cuban history primer, including Spanish colonialism, then addresses its interactions with the US, such as the doomed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, US trade embargo against Cuba, and Obama's relative youth—all in what the AP calls reminiscent of the lengthy, "all-encompassing" speeches Castro used to deliver. Going over Obama's speech with a fine-toothed comb, Castro rails against his rival's supposed insults and rolls his eyes at Obama's statement that "it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind." "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States," Castro writes. Moving onto the Bay of Pigs, he notes, "Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded." And as for Obama speaking at all about Cuba and its people, Castro offers this dig: "Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama. Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old." He gives a final piece of advice to Obama: "My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics."