The following year — after he had nationalized American businesses in Cuba and joined Moscow on the other side of the Cold War — Castro would visit again, and the reception would be bitterly divided. But in 1959 he was still something of a mystery man, coy about his ideology and allegiances, a voluble populist in fatigues. He encountered mostly adoring crowds and bedazzled press coverage.

I was a fourth grader in California when Castro first took Manhattan, but 36 years later, as foreign editor of The New York Times, I was his designated greeter when he visited the newspaper’s old home on 43rd Street. By then, of course, there were few illusions about El Comandante. He had helped bring the world to the edge of nuclear war; he was a relic of a discredited creed; and his regime’s response to independent journalists and other dissenters was rigorous censorship and incarceration. He had been the target of punishing sanctions and assassination plots.

Still, celebrity is its own credential. He didn’t feed the elephants in 1995, but he still managed to draw cheering crowds in Harlem and the South Bronx. He was feted in the homes of trade-hungry business executives. At the U.N. his speech was more heartily applauded than President Clinton’s.