Fidel
Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who
governed the Republic of Cuba for 47 years as Prime Minister from 1959
to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2006.
Fidel Castro
The son of a wealthy landowner, Fidel Castro turned his back on a
life of privilege to lead a left-wing revolution in Cuba that endured
for decades and was shaped by his political cunning, keen sense of
destiny and boundless ego.
Castro, who has died at the age of 90, was at once idealistic and
pragmatic, sharply intelligent and reckless, charismatic and intolerant.
Critics saw in him a stubborn bully who violated human rights,
jailed his critics, banned opposition parties and wrecked Cuba’s
economy.
Admirers saw a visionary who stood up to U.S. domination of Latin
America, brought healthcare and education to the poor, and inspired
socialist movements across the world.
Even before leading the 1959 revolution that propelled Cuba toward
communism and onto the Cold War stage, Castro saw greatness in himself.
From an early age, he admired history’s boldest figures,
particularly Alexander the Great, and believed he and his rebels were
part of that tradition.
“Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the moment,” he said in 1959.
Castro toppled the unpopular U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista
by uniting a disparate opposition and outsmarting a bigger,
better-equipped Cuban military.
His alliance with the Soviet Union put him at the centre of the
Cold War, most notably when the 1962 Cuban missile crisis took the world
to the brink of nuclear war.
He was a global celebrity, his beard, military fatigues and big Cuban cigars making him instantly recognisable.
He owed his prominence in part to geography. Looking to bolster an
ally just 90 miles (140 km) from Florida, Moscow helped him build
socialism by giving him billions of dollars worth of aid and favourable
trade, from oil to tractor parts.
But Castro also mined Cuban nationalism and Latin American pride, stirring resentment of U.S. power and influence.
He managed to preserve his revolution despite constant U.S.
hostility even when Cuba reeled from the collapse of the Soviet Union in
the early 1990s, showing the vigour of a man who intended to die in
office.
Instead, almost killed by a serious intestinal illness, he was
forced to step aside in 2006 and he formally handed over to his younger
brother, Raul Castro, in 2008.
In his final years, Castro wrote opinion columns for Cuba’s state
media but was rarely seen. His famously long speeches gave way to
silence, at least in public, and comfortable tracksuits replaced the
stiff black boots and crisp military attire.
On Dec. 17, 2014, Raul Castro cut a deal to restore diplomatic ties
with the United States. Six weeks later, Fidel Castro offered only
lukewarm support, raising questions about whether he approved of ending
hostilities with his longtime enemy.
PERMANENT STRUGGLE
Known by the militaristic title of “El Comandante,” in some ways
Castro was always replaying the exhilaration of revolt, exhorting Cubans
to fight one battle after another, from confronting U.S. hostility to
boosting potato production.
He survived numerous assassination attempts and outlasted nine U.S.
presidents in power, seizing control of Cuba while Dwight Eisenhower
occupied the White House and stepping down during George W. Bush’s
second term.
Throughout, Castro lectured Cubans.
A magnificent orator who instinctively altered his cadence to fit
the moment, he re-trod history and delved deep into detail about Cuban
independence heroes, plans to “perfect” the revolution and the declared
evils of U.S. imperialism.
Tall and physically commanding, fastidious in his attire, he often
built to a crescendo of indignation, gesturing firmly with
long-fingered, well-manicured hands.
“We shall endeavour to be brief,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, then set a record for U.N. speeches by talking for nearly 4-1/2 hours.
Castro never allowed statues of him to be erected or streets to be
named after him, saying he did not want a cult of personality.
Nevertheless, the cult was everywhere. His image and words were posted
on billboards and his name was invoked at every public event.
Most Cubans, whether for or against him, refer to him simply as “Fidel.”
He was a night owl. He would keep foreign guests waiting until late
at night and then summon them for talks. Even his critics would
sometimes find themselves oddly charmed by such encounters.
Tad Szulc, a biographer, called him “Cuba’s great master of political seduction.”
EARLY YEARS
Born on Aug. 13, 1926, Castro grew up as a privileged son on his
father’s plantation in the eastern village of Biran, where his playmates
were children of impoverished workers living in thatched huts with dirt
floors. He said the economic injustice he witnessed there inspired a
life-long sympathy for the poor.
He attended the Jesuit-run Belen School in the capital and then
studied law at the University of Havana, plunging into the violent
politics of the time and starting his drift leftward.
Long-winded, intolerant and – unusually for a Cuban – awkward on
the dance floor, he was not embraced by his fellow students at first but
eventually emerged as a leader.
He took part in an aborted 1947 plan to overthrow Dominican
Republic dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and was at a youth conference
in Colombia when riots broke out and some 2,000 people died.
After law school, he decided to run for Congress in 1952. When
Batista staged a coup and halted the elections, Castro began plotting
armed rebellion.
In 1953, he led a raid on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city
of Santiago de Cuba. Dozens of followers died and he, Raul Castro and
others were captured and imprisoned.
“History will absolve me,” he declared at his trial.
Pardoned in 1955, he went into exile in Mexico where he met
Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Together with Raul, they
trained a rebel band that in 1956 returned to Cuba aboard an overcrowded
yacht called Granma.
Ambushed at the landing by government troops, only 12 of the 82 rebels on board made it to the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains.
Castro denied Batista’s claims that he was a communist but decades
later he told Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet in a book “100 hours
with Fidel” that by 1952, “I was already a convinced Marxist-Leninist.”
Whatever the evolution of his views on communism, he was determined
to throw off American influence in Cuba. When U.S.-supplied aircraft
bombed his rebels in 1958, he vowed revenge.
“I have sworn that the Americans will pay very dearly for what
they are doing,” he said in a letter to close friend and aide Celia
Sanchez.
“When this war has ended, a much bigger and greater war will
start for me, a war I shall launch against them. I realise that this
will be my true destiny.”
U.S. ENEMY
Washington viewed him as a potential enemy even before his rebel army forced Batista to flee Cuba on New Year’s Day, 1959.
It took just two years for the relationship to unravel as Castro
nationalised swathes of the economy and introduced a broad agrarian
reform. Thousands escaped the island, starting what became a bitter
bulwark of opposition in Florida.
In April 1961, when his military crushed a CIA-backed invasion by
Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, he declared Cuba socialist and allied
himself with the Soviet Union.
Moscow put nuclear missiles on the island in 1962, touching off a 13-day superpower showdown known as the Cuban missile crisis.
In an Oct. 26 cable to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Castro
seemed convinced the Americans would invade Cuba and suggested the
Soviets “eliminate this danger” with an act of “legitimate
self-defence.”
Khrushchev felt Castro was advocating a pre-emptive nuclear strike
and rejected it, telling him he was satisfied with U.S. President John
F. Kennedy’s pledge not to invade.
The Soviets withdrew the missiles and Washington secretly agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey, ending the crisis.
The United States imposed its trade embargo on Cuba in 1962 and the
CIA admitted trying to kill Castro in the early years of his rule.
Plots or plot ideas included trying to get Castro to smoke a
poisoned cigar and taking advantage of his love of diving with an
exploding seashell, or poisoning a diving suit.
Castro revelled in his status as an elusive target.
“I’m really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least
having a neighbour – the greatest power in the world – trying to kill me
every day,” he said at a 2006 summit in Argentina, where crowds greeted him like a rock star.
While the embargo was economically devastating, it allowed Castro
to shift blame for chronic economic problems away from the system he
built and onto the United States.
He cast the fight as a David and Goliath story.
Philip Bonsal, U.S. ambassador to Cuba in 1959, later described
Castro as a “phenomenally gifted, erratic and unscrupulous autocrat who
‘freed his country from American imperialism’ only to reduce it to a
satellite of Moscow.”
REVOLUTION
In a country that was prosperous by Latin American standards but
riven by inequality and illiteracy and with an unsavoury reputation as a
brothel and gambling-rich playground for Americans, Castro sought to
build a socialist society.
His government trained thousands of doctors and provided free
schooling, changes that have endured well into the 21st century, even as
the state’s role in the economy was reduced in recent years.
Those gains came at considerable cost to personal freedoms. Dissent
was stifled in a one-party state with no free press, and the state’s
long arm reached deep into Cuban lives.
Throughout, Castro was a mentor to left-wing leaders and a friend
to intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, although
others abandoned him in horror.
He helped Marxist guerrillas and revolutionary governments around
the world, sending troops to Angola in the 1970s to support a left-wing
government over the initial objections of Moscow.
Cuba helped defeat South African insurgents in Angola and win
Namibia’s independence from South Africa in 1990, adding pressure on the
apartheid regime.
After Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, he repeatedly
thanked Castro. The Cuban leader was also a hero to Sandinista rebels
who took power in Nicaragua in 1979.
COMMUNIST OUTPOST
After the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1991, it seemed Castro’s communist rule would not survive.
Cubans endured prolonged power cuts and shortages of food and
basics such as soap. Ever stubborn, Castro implored them to endure the
“special period” for the sake of the revolution.
He undertook some reforms, allowing foreign investment and mass
tourism from Canada and Europe, and tapping exile dollars by allowing
Cubans more contact with their relatives abroad.
He also let the most disgruntled leave in a chaotic exodus of
makeshift boats that forced U.S. President Bill Clinton to agree to more
orderly migration.
Castro was quick to see a potential ally in late Venezuelan leader
Hugo Chavez and courted him well before he won power. When Chavez took
office in 1998, Castro had a new source of cheap oil, providing a huge
boost to Cuba’s economy.
Little was known about Castro’s personal life but even among his
critics, few accused him of using power for personal gain. His tastes
tended toward the ascetic.
He lived in a compound in western Havana and had nine children with
five women including five sons with his common-law wife Dalia Soto del
Valle, who lived with Castro at the end.
His eldest son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart is a Soviet-trained nuclear
scientist from the Cuban leader’s only acknowledged marriage. Daughter
Alina Fernandez, whose mother was a Havana socialite who Castro had an
affair with while underground in the 1950s, escaped from Cuba disguised
as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic of her father.
In one of two documentaries about him, U.S. director Oliver Stone
suggested to Castro that he was a “caudillo,” or Latin American
strongman.
Castro, who always prickled at suggestions of cruelty, rejected the term. “I am a kind of spiritual leader,” he said.
*This article culled from NAN, written by Daniel Trotta was published by Reuters.
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