The most flamboyant UN visit ever was the Cuban leader's 11-day jaunt in 1960, two years after he came to power.
He and his 90 green-fatigues-clad guerrillas were booted from the sedate East Side Shelburne Hotel by managers who complained about cooking in the rooms and demanded a $10,000 security deposit.
Castro threatened to pitch tents in Central Park. “We are mountain people. We are used to sleeping in the open air,” he said.
Instead he went to the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, ( where he was met by cheering crowds and held highly publicized powwows with Malcolm X, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and poets Allen Ginsburg and Langston Hughes.
Castro and his men ran up a $1,700 room-service bill for steaks, rum, cigars and - some said - female companionship of the blond and redhead variety.
The Daily News reported that “a hotel employee said Fidel himself had a visitor from 2 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. ... an attractive bosomy blonde. The employee did not know whether they discussed high international policy.”
His invective-filled speech to the UN lasted four hours, 26 minutes - still a record. Pro- and anti-Castro youths brawled in a West Side restaurant and a 9-year-old girl was shot dead.
//
September 19, 1960: Castro Moves to Harlem, Eisenhower Calls Visiting Heads of State ‘Troublemakers’
http://thisdayinthe60s.blogspot.com/2006/09/september-19-1960-castro-moves-to.html
//
I always remember when I met with Malcolm X at the hotel Teresa, because he was the one who gave us support and made it possible for us to be accommodated there. We had two choices: one was the patio in the United Nations; when I told this to the Secretary General he was horrified at the thought of a delegation camping in tents there; and then we received Malcolm X's offer, he had talked to one of our comrades, and I said: "That is the place, Hotel Teresa." And there we went. - Fidel Castro
(snip)
We followed Malcolm and his aides, Joseph and John X, down the ninth-floor corridor. It was lined with photographers disgruntled because they had no glimpse of the bearded Castro, with writers vexed because security men kept pushing them back.
