Fidel Castro E-Book

Volker Skierka

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 810

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Fidel Castro is one of the most interesting and controversial personalities of our time – he has become a myth and an icon. He was the first Cuban Caudillo – the man who freed his country from dependence on the USA and who lead his people to rediscover their national identity and pride.

Castro has outlived generations of American presidents and Soviet leaders. He has survived countless assassination attempts by the CIA, the Mafia, and Cubans living in exile. He has become one of the greatest politicians of the 20th Century. His biography, and the history of his country exemplify the tensions between East and West, North and South, rich and poor.

As Castro's life draws to a close, the question as to what will become of Cuba is more important that ever. Will Castro open Cuba to economic reform and democratization, or stick to his old slogan socialism or death?

In this remarkable, up-to-date reconstruction of Castro's life, Volker Skierka addresses these questions and provides an account of the economic, social, and political history of Cuba since Castro's childhood. He draws on a number of little-known sources, including material from the East German communist archives on Cuba, which were until recently inaccessible.

This is an exciting, painstakingly researched, and authortiative account of the life of one of the most extraordinary political figures of our time.

Leseprobe

Contents

A Note of Thanks

Acknowledgments

Preface to the English Edition

1 The Heroic Myth

2 The Young Fidel

Among Jesuits

Among gangsters

3 The Young Revolutionary

Storm and stress: Moncada

“Che,” the Argentinean

Stormy crossing on the Granma

A guerrillero in the Sierra Maestra

321 against 10,000

4 The Young Victor

Communists and “barbudos”

1,500 revolutionary laws

5 Old Enemies, New Friends

The great powers at the gates

The CIA, the Mafia, and the Bay of Pigs

Fidelismo

“Mongoose” and “Anadyr”

Thirteen days on the brink of a third world war

Three gamblers

6 The Long March with Che

Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

The new man

The demise of Che

7 Bad Times, Good Times

War and peace with Moscow

Ten million tons

Into the Third World

The revolution devours its children

8 Alone against All

Exodus to Florida

Rectificacion and perestroika

The Soviet imperium collapses

The brother’s power

War economy in peacetime

9 The Eternal Revolutionary

Class struggle on a dollar basis

Cuba and the global policeman

Castro, God, and the Pope

Freedom or “socialismo tropical”

10 Don Quixote and History

Notes

Bibliography

Index

For Annette

Copyright © this translation Polity Press 2004.

Originally published under the title FIDEL CASTRO Eine Biografie

© 2001 by Kindler Verlag GmbH Berlin (Germany)

© 2001, 2004 by Volker Skierka, Hamburg (Germany)

First published in 2004 by Polity Press.

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skierka, Volker, 1952–

[Fidel Castro. English]

Fidel Castro : a biography / Volker Skierka; translated by Patrick Camiller.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7456-3006-5 (hb : alk. paper)

1. Castro, Fidel, 1926– 2. Cuba – History – 1933–1959.

3. Cuba – History – 1959– 4. Heads of state – Cuba – Biography.

I. Title.

F1788.22.C3S5413 2004

972.9106′4′092–dc21 2003013215

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

A Note of Thanks

My interest in Fidel Castro, one of the most fascinating of all twentieth-century personalities, was first awakened in 1990, when I traveled from Havana to Santiago de Cuba and visited his remote and idyllic birthplace near Birán in eastern Cuba, only to be cordially but firmly sent on my way by men in uniform. The idea of this book eventually began to emerge after another trip to Cuba, for the weekly Die Zeit and the Berlin Deutschlandradio station, in connection with the papal visit in early 1998. It occurred to me then that there was virtually a US monopoly on reference material concerning Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Since much of the existing literature betrayed all manner of prejudices, and since there was growing interest in the subject in Europe, I therefore thought that the time had come to investigate the character and life of Fidel Castro within a European perspective.

Uwe Naumann enthused himself and myself for what was initially conceived as quite a small volume. It has since grown larger, and this too is thanks to Uwe Naumann. In his role as editor, he proved a patient yet demanding adviser and companion, one I could scarcely value more highly.

Nina Grabe from Hamburg did me a great service with her competent work on the bibliography and index, as well as her copy-editing of the text. The librarian Brigitte Waldeck and the Latin American expert Wolfgang Grenz, both from the Institut für Iberoamerika–Kunde in Hamburg, generously helped me locate a large amount of reference material. I would also like to make special mention of the unbureaucratic support given me by Frau Kmezik from the Political Archive of the Foreign Office in Berlin, Frau Sylvia Gräfe from the Stiftung Archiv und Massenorganisationen der DDR at the German Federal Archives, and the specialists responsible for the papers of the former East German State Security. Numerous people with whom I had contact during my trips to Cuba were also of great assistance. Although I lacked support in official quarters, I was able to gain access in other ways to invaluable source material. I should also stress, however, that the Cuban embassy in Berlin made considerable efforts to supply me with up-to-date material and to help organize my trips to Cuba. Dr Georg Treffz and Dr Reinhold Huber, former ambassadors in Havana of the Federal Republic of Germany, gave me a great deal of advice and practical support at every level.

I am exceptionally grateful to Jürgen Meier-Beer, whose critical advice, as the first reader of the manuscript, helped me decisively in completing the final draft. I am glad that Susanne Gratius from the Institut für Iberoamerika–Kunde in Hamburg took the trouble to go through the galleys. I shall never forget the critical companionship and advice of numerous friends, and would like to thank them all in singling out Wilhelm Wiegreffe and Axel Schmidt-Gödelitz from our “Gödelitz Rambling Society.”

My greatest thanks, however, are due to my family: to my wife Annette for her always intelligent, stimulating and encouraging companionship in the course of the project, and to our two daughters Antonia-Sophie and Isabel-Marie for their loving patience and forbearance.

Volker Skierka

Acknowledgments

The author and publishers would also like to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC for Herberto Padilla, “Instructions for Joining a New Society,” from A Fountain, A House of Stone: Poems by Herberto Padilla, translated by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman. Translation copyright © 1991 by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Preface to the English Edition

It is not easy to write the biography of a still living figure from contemporary history, especially when, like Fidel Castro, he still guides the fate of his country with unbroken authority. No cooperation was received, nor indeed to be expected, from the Cuban revolutionary leader. But that also had its advantages, since it meant that he did not make the slightest attempt to influence the content or even express any wish to give it the kind of imprimatur that usually harms a book’s credibility. The author’s first close personal encounter with his subject occurred only in February 2002 in Havana, a year after publication of the first German edition.

It looks today as if 2003 will be an important year in Cuban history, marking as it does two anniversaries that play a significant role in Cuban national consciousness: the birth 150 years ago, on January 28, 1853, of the national hero José Martí, who led the island into its victorious struggle for liberation from Spain; and the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, a hundred years later on July 26, 1953, when a hundred offspring of the middle classes signaled the birth of the second Cuban Revolution which, less than six years later, would lead the island out of its dependence on the power that took over from the Spanish almost immediately after their defeat in 1898, the United States of America.

Although Fidel Castro, 77 in 2003, has aged together with his revolution, he continues in the new millennium to claim a role for himself not only as initiator of the revolution, spiritual heir of Martí and therefore savior and protector of national independence, but also as a steadfast guide for the socialist future of Cuba after his death. Thus in 2002, when an opposition group took the bold initiative of collecting signatures in favor of greater political openness, reforms, and free elections, he simply had the socialist form of state hammered into the Constitution as irreversible, at a time when three-quarters of the population of 11 million or more had been born since the victory of the revolution in 1959.

The highly individual, socialist-nationalist “fidelista” system, whose development was not at all to Moscow’s liking, persisted into the new millennium as the most stable conception of anticapitalism since World War II – even though it showed some cracks and was crumbling at the edges, and even though it was increasingly doubtful whether Castro’s charisma and historical authority would long survive him. As it happened, Castro’s Cuba also gained new popularity in 2003 from the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of Che Guevara, that eternal cult figure of the Cuban Revolution and trans-ideological pop hero, who was killed in the Bolivian jungle in 1967 and had once been his closest comrade and friend. For some time Castro has been the world’s longest-serving head of government, and despite numerous assassination attempts he has outlasted nearly all his opponents, as well as their successors.

For all its exemplary achievements in social and educational policy and in speaking up for the interests of the Third World, Cuba’s political system did not appear in the eyes of the First World to meet the standards of a pluralist society. Yet the European countries, which had become indispensable economic partners for Cuba, made considerable efforts to reach a modus vivendi with the regime. Whereas the USA since the early sixties pursued an absurd embargo and thereby strengthened Castro’s system – the opposite of its intended result – most countries of the Old World plus Canada wagered on “gradual change through rapprochement,” especially after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet withdrawal from Cuba; this was supposed, even in a period of growing economic problems, to open a way out of the isolation inflicted on Cuba by itself and by others. The EU thereby showed a greater awareness of its responsibility to the Cuban people than did the successive governments in Washington. In fact, after decades of fruitless debate, the United States still has no convincing idea for a post-Castro Cuba.

In May 2002 Nobel prizewinner Jimmy Carter finally attempted to break down the rigid US posture towards Cuba, becoming the first (former) US president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to make a trip of several days to the island. Hopes began to grow for an easing of internal and external tensions when Castro, as a kind of welcoming gift, ordered the release of prominent dissident Vladimiro Roca two months before the end of his five-year sentence. Moreover, like Pope John Paul II in 1998, Carter was able to criticize the lack of civil liberties and to argue for democratic reforms, in a Spanish-language speech at Havana University that was broadcast uncensored on Cuban state television. After the revolution of 1959, he complained, Cuba “adopted a socialist government where … people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements.” Its “constitution recognizes freedom of speech and association, but other laws deny these freedoms to those who disagree with the government.” While also criticizing the human rights situation in the United States, where the death penalty was applied much more harshly than in Cuba, Carter advised the Cuban government, as a gesture of good will, to accept the demand of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights for an observer to be allowed into the country.1

In a discussion afterwards, the visitor even referred to the “Varela Project” (named after a Catholic priest from the nineteenth-century independence struggle), a petition for greater civil liberties that had been submitted to the National Assembly together with a list of 11,000 signatures, about which the Cuban media had maintained almost total silence. Carter praised Osvaldo Payá’s initiative in using a right granted to citizens under the Constitution to propose new legislation, which amounted to a demand for freedom of association, speech and publication, an amnesty for political prisoners, permission for private enterprise, free choice of occupation, and a new election law. In December 2002 Payá, a member of the oppositional Christian Liberation Movement, was awarded the EU Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought at a ceremony in Strasbourg. The Cuban government naturally countered by organizing its own collection of signatures, in which 98.9 percent of people on the electoral register were officially reported to have declared that the country’s economic, political, and social system was “inviolable.” This laid the basis for a decision a few days later by the Cuban Parliament to make socialism an irreversible part of the Constitution. But, although this “neutralized” the main thrust of the “Varela Project” at the time of Carter’s visit, the fact that the government had not prevented the collection of signatures raised hopes that greater tolerance would be shown towards critics of the regime. “When Cubans exercise this freedom to change laws peacefully by a direct vote,” Carter suggested, “the world will see that Cubans, and not foreigners, will decide the future of this country.”2

Like the Pope before him, Carter also criticized US policy towards Cuba and called on Washington to abandon an attitude that had borne no fruit for more than 40 years. “It is time for us to change our relationship… . Because the United States is the most powerful nation, we should take the first step. First, my hope is that Congress will soon act to permit unrestricted travel… and to repeal the embargo.”3 But Carter’s appeal was hardly likely to be taken up: the Bush family is traditionally linked to Castro’s most violent opponents in the United States, and the president’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, has long had the closest of contacts with militant Cuban exile circles. In a move designed not least to take the wind out of Carter’s sails, the White House immediately announced that it intended to step up the economic pressure on Cuba and to increase its political isolation. Already, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Cuba had been bracketed together with Taliban-style “rogue states” and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And, before Carter left for Havana, a top State Department official had raised the stakes by spreading the rumor that Castro was developing biological weapons. No evidence, even fabricated or “sexed up,” could be produced for such an allegation; Castro even invited Carter to have inspections carried out by experts on weapons for mass destruction. In the end, both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell could do nothing other than dissociate themselves from the claim.

The extent to which Castro, with his lifelong consistency, can be a bearer of hope for people in Latin America and the Third World was once more demonstrated during his 48-hour visit to Buenos Aires in May 2002 to attend the inauguration of Argentina’s newly elected president, Néstor Kirchner. The trip to the homeland of his old comrade-in-arms, Che Guevara, turned into a triumphal march. The media vied with one another in reporting the visit, so that behind the scenes the generals began to murmur about the new president and had to be called to order by him. Kirchner seemed as surprised as Castro. Thus, when the news spread that the Máximo Líder intended to give a speech to 800 invited guests in the great hall of the law faculty, tens of thousands of people hurried to turn up there, bringing the city center to a halt and almost making it impossible for Castro himself to get through. In the end, the event had to take place several hours late and in the open air, spontaneously broadcast live on radio and television. Castro temporarily put in the shade not only President Kirchner but also two other guests present in Buenos Aires: Brazil’s new and popular president, Lula da Silva, and the despotic Venezuelan leader and friend of Castro’s, Hugo Chávez. After several decades, and in an age when ticker-tape welcomes are a thing of the past because the streets can no longer be lined with enough people, Castro alone can still attract a large enough crowd even on a trip abroad. All he has to do is let himself be seen – his long, tiring speeches notwithstanding.

The trip to Argentina took place at a time when the world political situation and the battered international reputation of the Bush administration had to some extent made the climate in Latin America more friendly to Castro. At a time when security and familiar bearings were increasingly being taken away from people, especially in the Third World, Castro again suddenly came through as a man who had remained true to himself and whose astute analyses and criticisms somehow struck many as well-grounded – even if things were more complicated than he made them out to be. Has not the neoliberal economic policy ordered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which was supposed to bring Latin America higher growth and greater economic and political stability, ultimately had the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer? After the bacchanal of privatization, which often mainly enriched the privatizers and their cronies, are not Argentina and many other countries now left with empty coffers to pick up the pieces? Everywhere people are seething, because the clever prescriptions ordered by the First World are having no effect. For a long time there has been a new leftward tendency in these countries. The election of the left-wing workers’ leader and friend of Castro’s, Lula da Silva, to the Brazilian presidency is one expression of this trend, as was that of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In Peru the supposedly defeated terrorist organization, Sendero Luminoso, is stirring once again. The US-backed “Plan Colombia,” with its large dollar resources to stem the drugs trade and the limitless violence in that country, has all but broken down. Central America is facing complete economic bankruptcy. Many grand promises and hopes that Washington offered these countries through long years of civil war to keep them politically compliant have come to nothing. Even well-disposed Latin Americans therefore thought it simply grotesque when the government of Bush, Jr, asked for trouble by appointing as its top official on Latin America the militant Cuban exile Otto Reich, a man infamous from the days of Bush, Sr, in connection with the US-funded contra mercenaries in Central America. Sure enough, these premonitions were confirmed when it became clear that the US embassy in Caracas had been mixed up in an attempted putsch by pro-US economic circles against the undoubtedly autocratic and, even inside Venezuela, rather unappealing President Chávez – an adventure that failed because of the amateurish way in which it had been prepared.

Relations with the European Union, culminating after long negotiations in the opening of an EU mission in Havana, could not have worked out better at the start of Castro’s historic year 2003. But perhaps everything went too well, perhaps everything was too friendly and free of conflict. In a pattern familiar from Moscow, any political spring in Cuba has been followed in the past by a sudden return of the ice – in order to maintain an ideological distance and to prevent a flagging of principles. And, this time too, there was a startling change of direction, at once disturbing and difficult to understand. In March, no sooner had the world’s attention been diverted by the first American air raids on Baghdad than it was reported in the press that 75 oppositional journalists, writers, librarians, and other intellectuals had been arrested in Cuba. Within little more than two weeks, they were convicted as “mercenaries in the service of the Empire” (that is, the United States) and sentenced to terms of 10 to 26 years in prison, which were immediately confirmed by the relevant courts of appeal. A total of 1,454 years imprisonment, as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung pointed out. A few days later, death sentences were carried out on three men who, in another brief trial, had been convicted of attempting to divert a ferry with 50 passengers from Havana to Miami. (A unit of Cuban special forces had intervened to end the hijacking.)

The execution of these draconian sentences was a source of consternation, especially for those in the international community and human rights organizations, who for some time had thought that the Cuban state was willing to deal more leniently with critics and to forego applying the death penalty. Recent condemnations of Cuba by these institutions have turned out to be correspondingly moderate. The European Union, in particular, was largely agreed that Havana did not actually need to resort to such measures, because the people in question did not pose any real danger to the system and the government. There was also the unsavory detail that the groups in which the dissidents circulated had without exception been infiltrated by state security agents working in the respective professions, who had pretended to be dissidents, or even published material as “journalists “ on the Internet, and were now fêted as heroes by the government. Criticism poured in from all sides, including from people friendly or generally well-disposed to the regime. Many deplored what had been done, seeing it as an expression not of strength but of weakness and lack of confidence. Those who, against strong resistance, had managed to break down aversions abroad and to promote a rapprochement with Cuba now saw themselves as having been duped and robbed of the fruits of their patient, well-meaning labor.

Castro could not have given the United States a better present. The Bush administration immediately announced a further intensification of sanctions, and the EU scarcely had any choice but to react accordingly. In a statement categorically demanding the release of the prisoners, Brussels announced that no more ministers or high government officials from the EU should travel to Cuba until the human rights situation had improved. Cultural exchanges were also to be frozen, and in future dissidents would be included on the guest list for embassy functions. Economic sanctions, on the other hand, were explicitly ruled out. These altogether moderate sanctions, necessary for the EU to save face, sparked a furious reaction in Havana. A crowd of hundreds of thousands, headed by Castro himself, marched to protest against the measures in front of the embassies of EU countries (most notably, Spain and Italy). The EU’s decision to include dissidents on embassy guest lists so infuriated the Cuban leadership that it announced for its part that it would not send government representatives to any official event to which critics of the regime had also been invited.

The disproportionate Cuban response during this period, against internal opponents as well as criticism from outside, started a guessing-game as to whether something more might lie behind it. There was even hushed speculation that dramatic events might be in the offing, and that the Cuban leadership was trying to intimidate or lock away critics of the regime as a precautionary measure. Again and again there have been rumors of this kind. But in 2003 crystal-ball gazers were even whispering that Castro might soon hand over his official duties to a successor and retire into old age as the superintendent father of the revolution.

It is possible that more was involved than one was initially prepared to believe. After all, Cuba could not afford the conflict with the European Union, either politically or economically; and closure of the EU mission in Havana, which was also within the realm of possibility, would have caused almost irreparable longterm damage. Or was the Cuban behavior simply provoked by covert action on the part of the “arch-enemy,” going beyond the bounds of the acceptable? Already in January 2003 there was much evidence of such activity: diplomatic and journalistic circles were increasingly speaking of provocations by the US mission in Havana, which had gone far beyond what was customary in international diplomacy, with the intention of sooner or later forcing the Cubans to respond. Journalists did not even exclude the possibility that James Cason, head of the United States Interests Section, would be expelled from Havana, since he had the appearance of being not so much a diplomat as a representative of the hardline anti-Castro Mafia in Miami.

Wayne Smith, a Cuba expert who had himself been head of the Interests Section in Havana during the Carter era, seemed to share this view. Although he too deplored the Cuban reaction and evidently considered it overdone, he wrote in an article that appeared in The Nation on May 12, 2003:

Why the crackdown? In part, it was a reaction to growing provocations on the part of the Bush Administration, which had ordered the new chief of the US Interests Section, James Cason, to hold a series of high-profile meetings with dissidents, even including seminars in his own residence in Havana. Given that Cason’s announced purpose was to promote “transition to a participatory form of government,” the Cubans came to see the meetings as subversive in nature and as highly provocative. And, in fairness, let us imagine the reaction of the Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security if the chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington was holding meetings with disgruntled Americans and announcing that the purpose was to bring about a form of government – a socialist government – in the United States. He would have been asked to leave the country.

Smith also referred to the character of US propaganda over the previous months, in which Cuba, without any supporting evidence, had been labeled part of the “axis of evil.” Equally unproven was the claim that Cuba had been producing biological weapons and was therefore a potential threat to the United States. All this, Smith argued, following the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, naturally raised the question: “Who knows? We may be next.”

Nevertheless, Cuba’s harsh response landed it in the same deadend as in previous decades. Familiar low-level provocations were met with knee-jerk reactions that betrayed a lack of self-confidence and command of the situation, as well as threatening to forfeit the sympathy of well-wishers. It is striking, however, that the UN Commission on Human Rights has avoided outright condemnation of recent Cuban policies and remained content, as in 2002, to demand that Cuba allow a human rights representative to visit the country. In any event, it would harm the cause of dissidents to allow oneself unthinkingly to be used for the aims of a US government which, not for the first time, has played a cynical game with innocently trusting critics of the regime and, together with the Cuban state apparatus, turned them into martyrs. In this connection Osvaldo Payá, who has been left untouched by the Cuban authorities, stressed in his criticism of the arrests and jail sentences that he rejected any US financial support for Cuban dissidents.

It was thought that Castro had for some time been above such games, that he was prepared to give up his pathological fixation on the United States and to turn his gaze towards Europe, the homeland of his ancestors. Thus, when the Americans decided to intern more than 600 Taliban fighters from Afghanistan at Guantánamo in eastern Cuba (where the US has run a Marine base for the past 100 years under an agreement with Cuba that is extremely questionable in international law and has never been recognized by the Castro regime), everyone expected loud protests from Havana. But, instead, the Cubans reacted in an unusually calm and quick-witted manner, asking Washington to allow their famously well-trained doctors to provide the prisoners with medical care under the law.

And so, the wheel turned full circle in the anniversary year of 2003, insofar as things were the same as before. David against Goliath. While the Europeans to a large extent (including on the issue of dissidents) hoped for “change through rapprochement,” and while the Americans fine-tuned an embargo that could hardly be tuned any further, Castro soldiered on largely unimpressed by all the hostility shown towards him, in the hope that posterity would reward him for an ascetic life devoted to the revolution. “History will absolve me,” he confidently asserted in October 1953, when he was sentenced for the attack on the Moncada Barracks. It remains to be seen whether it will absolve him. But, with or without absolution, one thing is certain: he will go down in history as one of the few revolutionaries who remained true to his principles.

Volker Skierka

1

The Heroic Myth

“One thing is certain: wherever he may be, however and with whomever, Fidel Castro is there to win. I do not think anyone in this world could be a worse loser. His attitude in the face of defeat, even in the slightest events of daily life, seems to obey a private logic: he will not even admit it, and he does not have a moment’s peace until he manages to invert the terms and turn it into a victory.”1 The man who wrote these words is the writer Gabriel García Márquez, a longstanding friend of the Máximo Líder. They give us some idea of what may have driven Fidel Castro for more than half a century to outlast his various enemies, opponents and critical friends: namely, a wish to be proved right, to be morally as well as politically victorious. No self-doubt: “his” Cuba for the Cubans! The final verdict on his “mission” would rest with history alone – although Castro also tried from the beginning to keep the last word for himself and to anticipate the verdict of history. In 1953, at his trial for the abortive attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba which launched his career as a professional revolutionary, he concluded his famous defense plea with the certainty: “History will absolve me!” For García Márquez, “he is one of the great idealists of our time, and perhaps this may be his greatest virtue, although it has also been his greatest danger.”2 Yet an even greater danger has always been lurking in the background: the danger of isolation. For only in isolation is there no possibility of contradiction.

With an iron will Castro has survived generations of American presidents, Soviet general secretaries, international leaders of states and governments, democrats and potentates, until he has become by far the longest-ruling “number one” of the twentieth century and one of the most interesting figures of contemporary history. Bearded, always dressed in his green uniform, a hero and object of hate in one: this is how the world knows him. Against no one else are so many murder plots supposed to have been hatched. Leaders who are so unyielding, so “unpolitical” in their refusal to compromise, do not usually survive for long in that part of the world; they tend to be overthrown or killed. The fact that Castro is still alive is little short of a miracle. It is due to the alliance of his own well-trained instinct with a ubiquitous security apparatus that is considered among the most efficient in the world. From soon after his twentieth birthday Castro had assassins and conspirators on his trail: political gangsters at Havana University in the late 1940s, henchmen of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, traitors in his own ranks, big landowners evicted during the Castroite revolution in 1959, Cuban exiles in Florida working hand in hand with the CIA and the Mafia. Their bosses, most notably the legendary Meyer Lansky, lost a fortune estimated at more than US100 million in hotels, clubs, casinos, brothels and other such establishments – a good tenth of the value of US assets taken over by the Cuban state. That a stubborn farmer’s son from the underdeveloped east of the island simply came and took away this lucrative paradise and sink of iniquity from the fine, upstanding United States; that he went on to humiliate the “Yankees” and President Kennedy in the eyes of the world when they attempted an invasion with exiled Cuban mercenaries in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs; that Soviet nuclear missiles installed for his sake in Cuba nearly led in 1962 to a third world war – these deep narcissistic wounds will never be forgiven, even after his death, by the great power to the north.

There are scarcely any photos that show Castro laughing. Yet the Cubans are a spirited people full of joie de vivre. Gabriel García Márquez described Castro as “one of the rare Cubans who neither sing nor dance.”3 He is said to have a good sense of humor – but it is as if he has forbidden himself any public display of laughter or pleasure. Such things are secret, and it is a state secret whether there is a private Castro behind the political Castro. Information about himself and his family is filtered for public consumption, becoming partly contradictory or inaccurate. On the whole, then, not much can be gleaned about his personal life. We know that his marriage came to an early end, that he had a few passionate affairs such as those with Natalia Revuelta (once the most captivating woman in Havana) and Marita Lorenz (a German captain’s beautiful daughter who was later contracted by the CIA to assassinate him). He has one son from his marriage, Fidelito, a nuclear scientist with a doctorate, as well as several children born out of wedlock and a host of grandchildren. In each case, so it is said, he is a kind yet strict father or grandfather – yet Alina, his daughter by Natalia Revuelta, keeps tormenting him with her hatred. It is well known that Castro likes to go swimming and diving; that he enjoys baseball, sleeps little and has a mania for working at night; that he had to give up smoking cigars for health reasons; that he lives an ascetic existence with few material demands, but is fond of ice cream and likes to cook spaghetti for himself. When García Márquez once found him in a melancholic mood and asked what he would most like to do at that moment, Castro astonished his friend with the answer: “Just hang around on some street corner.”4 Did he ever think that perhaps he ought to have become a baseball player? He certainly had the opportunity. For in his student days, he was such a good pitcher that the New York Giants offered him a professional contract. Had he accepted, part of world history would have taken a different course.

Instead, this son of a big landowner from eastern Cuba felt called to lead a handful of comrades – including the Argentinean Che Guevara, later deified as a pop icon of the sixties generation – in a movement to bring down the dictator Batista. Since 1959 Castro has ruled his people like a large family, with the stern hand of a patriarch. The whole island is his “latifundium.” He wants to be seen not as its owner, however, but as its trustee. Under his rule, sweeping reforms have made Cuba’s health and education systems unparalleled in Latin America and beyond; and for the first time Cubans have been able to develop a national identity, even maintaining it through a period of political and economic dependence upon the Soviet Union. These achievements, and not just the ever-present straitjacket of state security, may be one of the reasons why Castro’s system has been able to last so long despite its lack of democratic and material freedoms. For decades now the majority of Cubans have lived with a split mentality: on the one hand, a love–hate relationship with the United States and a longing for the life conjured up by the glitter of Western globalization; on the other hand, admiration and respect for Fidel as their patron even in times of greatest hardship.

Although Fidel Castro seems to have taken more after his father, we should not underestimate the influence that his mother’s strict Catholicism and his long years at a Jesuit boarding school had upon his essential character. It is no accident that he has repeatedly drawn parallels between early Christianity and his understanding of socialism, even if he has long been in conflict with the official Church. In this way, he has over the years developed an “ideology” of his own that involves more than just the adoption of Soviet-style Communism. His Caribbean model of socialism is “Castroism,” or, as Cubans say, “Fidelism” – a pragmatic mixture of a little Marx, Engels and Lenin, slightly more Che Guevara, a lot of José Martí, and a great deal indeed of Fidel Castro. Martí was the Cuban fighter who, in the late nineteenth century, launched the decisive struggle for the country’s independence from Spain; Castro identified with him from early youth and always saw himself in the role of his heir and descendant. “He knows the 28 volumes of Martí’s work thoroughly,” writes García Márquez, “and has had the talent to incorporate his ideas into the bloodstream of a Marxist revolution.”5 Martí, who was killed in the early months of war in 1895, was spared from seeing how the United States eventually intervened and, after the Spanish defeat in 1898, established its own dominance over the island. But on the day he died, he wrote with great concern to a friend: “Belittlement by a mighty neighbor who does not really know us is the worst danger for our American continent.”6 Precisely this is the deeper cause of the Cuban–American and indeed the Latin American dilemma, and it will remain such after Castro himself has departed from the scene.

2

The Young Fidel

Among Jesuits

The name of the Cuban citizen Fidel Castro first entered the White House files in 1940. On November 6 of that year the young boarder at the Jesuit Dolores College in Santiago de Cuba sent a three-page letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt congratulating him on his re-election. Before signing off with a bold flourish, “Goodby Your friend,” he added a personal request: “If you like, give me a ten dollars bill american, because I have not seen a ten dollars bill american and I would like to have one of them.”1 In the letter Castro stated that he was 12 years old – a claim which, if true, would have meant that he was two years younger than he is officially reported to be.2 He received no reply from the president, only a letter of thanks from the State Department. Nor did it contain a ten-dollar bill. No one could then suspect that the boy would grow up and confiscate everything that the North Americans owned in Cuba.

At the very time when Fidel Castro was penning his lines to Roosevelt, the man who 12 years later would embody his enemyimage of an American lackey was making his debut as Cuban president: Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, the son of a mulatto worker from Banes, not far from Castro’s own birthplace in Oriente province. Born in 1901, Batista had a reputation for being shifty, ruthless, and open to bribery. In 1933, after the fall of the dictator General Gerardo Machado, this former military stenographer had organized a revolt in a political arena already dominated by corruption and violence. At first he kept in the background, but as the American man he controlled the country’s direction and advanced to become chief of the general staff. His path crossed with that of the Mafioso Meyer Lansky, and their friendship would later mark the political landscape.

In the space of seven years Batista got through seven puppet presidents, until no real alternative remained but to have himself elected to the highest state office. During the four years from 1940, he was Roosevelt’s right-hand man on the sugar island, whose economy was completely dependent on the trickle from the United States. One of the members of the government coalition was the pro-Moscow Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) – a situation accepted by Washington in the context of wartime alliances. At that time Cuba had the most progressive Constitution in Latin America, even if important parts of it (such as the redistribution of land owned by US corporations) were not implemented. After a time-out lasting eight years, when the presidency was assumed by the equally corrupt Ramón Grau San Martín (1944–8) and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948–52), Batista seized power on March 10, 1952, just before presidential elections were due to be held, and established a dictatorship that played into the hands both of his friends around Meyer Lansky and of the government in Washington. On January 1, 1959, he was finally overthrown and chased from the country by a young revolutionary called Fidel Castro.

Castro’s origins had pointed to anything but a revolutionary career. “I was born into a family of landowners in comfortable circumstances. We were considered rich and treated as such. I was brought up with all the privileges attendant to a son in such a family. Everyone lavished attention on me, flattered, and treated me differently from the other boys we played with when we were children. These other children went barefoot while we wore shoes; they were often hungry; at our house, there was always a squabble at table to get us to eat.”3

Information issued by the Cuban Council of State declares that the future revolutionary and head of state was born on August 13, 1926; he saw the light of day around two in the morning, weighing just under ten pounds. According to his siblings, Ángela and Ramón, he was already the third natural child of the 50-year-old landowner, Ángel Castro y Argiz, and his housekeeper and cook, Lina Ruz González (who was roughly half his age). Like his brother and sister, he was given the name of a saint, Fidel, and a middle name Alejandro. In fact, Fidel is derived from , the Spanish word denoting faith or fidelity, loyalty and dependability. “In that case,” he once said, “I’m completely in agreement with my name, in terms of fidelity and faith. Some have religious faith, and others have another kind. I’ve always been a man of faith, confidence and optimism.” In fact, “the origin of the name [wasn’t] so idyllic.… I was called Fidel because of somebody who was going to be my godfather.” This was Fidel Pino Santos, a friend of his father’s, “something like the family banker. He was very rich, much richer than my father. People said he was a millionaire.… To be a millionaire in those days was something really tremendous.… That was a time when people used to earn a dollar or a peso a day.”