Book Review - Five Stars
The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman
A biographical look into a highly intelligent charismatic self-centered narcissist who was possessed with the uncanny ability to be pitied for his actions while portraying opponents as persecutors. Considering his high-powered political enemies persistent efforts to eliminate him, he actually lived to die of old age, and he left a legacy of lengthy accusatory speeches to posterity.
Castro told Alfredo Guevara: “I would be a Communist if I could be Stalin.”
Will Rogers said after visiting the Soviet Union in 1926 “Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.”
Excerpts:
Most of Castro’s contemporaries at Belin college, both pupils and teachers, would become his political enemies when he turned Cuba into a Communist state. Many went into exile. Some spent long years in prison. But there is a surprising degree of convergence between their recollections of Castro as a schoolboy and his own reminiscences in old age. As a teenager he had been subject to conflicting influences. He had a mother who was warm, extrovert and loving, always ready to support and defend him. But he had been taken away from his home at an early age and spent many years in the environment of an all-male boarding school, where he learned to be hard and emotionally self-reliant.
With Mirta, Fidel was usually loving and protective, in a courtly Spanish manner. It soon became apparent, however, that his personality and lifestyle were highly unsuited to married life. Like many idealistic and charismatic people, he was at the same time monumentally egocentric. He could wax indignant about the downtrodden and oppressed in general, while showing no concern for the sensibilities of the particular people closest to him. He often failed to turn up to meals at home, preferring to spend his evenings at the Ortodoxo party headquarters or in cafeterias frequented by fellow students. If he did come home, he would often bring a bunch of political followers, and expect Mirta to cater for them. If he had money, he would spend it on his political projects rather than on his wife and home.
Castro maintained the contempt for money which he had shown as a student. At home in Oriente his father owned virtually everything and he could simply take or borrow what he wanted. When he needed to buy something he asked his father for money, but felt little gratitude when he received it. At school the Jesuits had taught that it was spiritual values that mattered and that worldly goods were a snare and delusion. At the university he had spent much of his time denouncing the greed of money-grubbing politicians, unscrupulous businessmen and exploitative landowners.
Castro may have been privately pleased at Batista’s coup. He had for years been advocating the revolutionary path to power. It would be easier to justify the violent overthrow of a military dictator than of a democratically elected government, however flawed.
The head of the Caribbean desk in the State Department said that many people thought Batista was a son of a bitch, but American interests came first: “At least he is our son of a bitch.”
He was especially infuriated by Americans who referred to the condemned men as “Batista supporters”, implying that support for Batista was their only crime. “We are not executing innocent people or political opponents. We are executing murderers.” He accused the Americans of hypocrisy, saying that Batista did not give his opponents any sort of trial: he just had them killed, and there were no protests in the United States. “They did not write against the dictator, because the dictator was nothing more than the servant of their economic interests. Who are they to protest, who had war criminals in their service?”
After nine months in power, Castro had made a lot of enemies. He went everywhere with a team of bodyguards. Even his closest associates seldom knew where he intended to spend the night. His security services were receiving numerous reports of plots to kill him. Groups of anti-Communist rebels, some supported by the CIA, had established guerrilla bases in the mountains of central Cuba. Thousands of middle-class people, including much-needed doctors, engineers and other professionals, were moving to Florida, hoping and expecting to return when the disastrous Castro government collapsed.
Brazilian observer made a speech obliquely but clearly criticizing Cuba for interfering in the affairs of other countries. Qaddafi applauded the Brazilian loudly. But now Castro played his trump card. He had once been well disposed to Israel, and an admirer of its military prowess. But Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and its ever-closer alliance with the United States, had led him to change his mind. He now stood up and announced that Cuba was breaking diplomatic relations with Israel. It was a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Arab countries. Qaddafi rose and embraced Castro warmly. From then on they were friends. No East European country had broken relations with Israel. So perhaps, Qaddafi no doubt thought, Castro was non-aligned after all. In justifying his condemnation of Israel, Castro would always start by emphasizing that he felt no hostility towards the Jewish people:
inks with Cuba fifteen years earlier had mostly restored at least commercial ties. Presi
We repudiate with all our strength the ruthless persecution and genocide that Nazism unleashed in its time against the Jewish people. But there is nothing more similar in contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide being carried out by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people. Piece by piece the Palestinian lands, and territories belonging to neighboring Arab countries, have been seized by the aggressors, who are armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons of the United States arsenal. United Nations resolutions have been contemptuously ignored or rejected by the aggressors and their imperialist allies. Can anyone doubt that the United States plays a fundamental role in preventing a just settlement in the region, by aligning itself with Israel, by supporting it, by working towards partial solutions that favor Zionist objectives, and by safeguarding the fruits of Israeli aggression at the expense of the Palestinian people? Castro’s change of position on Israel looked to many people in the West like cynical opportunism. But most Arabs, like Qaddafi, welcomed the change without worrying too much about Castro’s reasons or motives. Castro made the most of his new popularity in the Arab world. He flew from Algiers to Baghdad, before continuing to India and Vietnam. In New Delhi he heard that in Chile Allende had been overthrown and killed in a military coup.
Castro felt vindicated in his view that to achieve socialism in Latin America without an armed revolution was virtually impossible. The military caste, trained in the United States and backed by the CIA, would always act to bring down a socialist government,
With Castro consolidated in power, and the economy growing, many Americans began to question whether there was any point in maintaining the trade embargo against Cuba.
The Latin American countries which had followed the United States lead in breaking ldent Nixon said: “There will be no change towards that bastard while I’m President.” But Nixon was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal. The more pragmatic President Ford, and later President Carter, were willing to look at the possibility of normalizing relations with Cuba.
Applying double standards: Through the International Monetary Fund, they demanded that other countries must eliminate their budget deficits, while themselves running the world’s biggest budget deficit. Belonging to the world’s only superpower, they took it for granted that their way of life was superior to all others, and that they were helping humanity by spreading their own values and methods. With rare exceptions, they felt no need and no incentive to find out about other countries and other cultures. They shut themselves off from ideas or information which challenged their comfortable assumptions. “They are afraid of ideas, of words, they are afraid of the truth.” The US Congress was constantly insisting that more information should be broadcast from the United States to Cuba, by television as well as radio. But it was the Americans who needed information. “It is the most ill-informed population in the world. Statistics and surveys show that a huge number of Americans do not even know where Latin America is, nor what are the capitals of Mexico or Brazil, and they confuse Argentina with Brazil, Brazil with Colombia, and so forth. There is generalized ignorance. They know nothing at all about Cuba, but they want to inform us!”
