Rethinking Fidel Castro (continued)

A considerable amount of terror has been part of Castro's Cuba for more than thirty years. In 1967, Castro admitted in an interview in Playboy (January 1967, p.74) that there were twenty thousand "counter-revolutionary criminals" in Cuban prisons. Many were serving twenty-five-year terms. In 1986, two books by former long-term prisoners spelled out in convincing detail the brutal mistreatment of political prisoners in Castro's gulag: Against All Hope by Armando Valladares and Twenty Years and Forty Days: Life in a Cuban Prison by Jorge Valls. According to the reputable Americas Watch Committee, "Over time evidence accumulated that Cuba held more political prisoners as a percentage of population than any other country in the world. . . . Only South Africa, Indonesia, and possibly the People's Republic of China came close. Neither the Soviet Union nor any other country in the Soviet bloc approached Cuba's distressing record⁴."

By the time Castro launched his insurrection, he already displayed symptoms of megalomania. He was convinced that he was engaged in a historic mission. Like Moses or José Martí he would lead his people out of bondage. Once in power, he felt impelled to liberate the oppressed peoples of Latin America. And in middle age, he sent Cuban armies to support revolution in Africa. There is an additional component of Castro's personality that helps explain his amazing success as a leader. It is his charisma, a mysterious but real, almost hypnotic power, which attracted the intense, unquestioning loyalty of his earliest followers and then captivated the great mass of the Cuban people. Combining his charisma with a rare oratorical virtuosity, Castro could hold a million people spellbound for hours at a time. He had surpassed anybody in previous Cuban history as the anointed leader of the Cuban people. To be effective, the charismatic leader must also have convincing credentials, and in this too Fidel Castro was well equipped. He was the warrior-hero who risked his life in an apparently hopeless struggle to overthrow tyranny and, by a miracle, managed to survive. After undergoing incredible hardships, he emerged as the supreme military and political leader of a victorious insurrection. He was the right man in the right place at the right time and with the right message.

Castro, of course, was not raised in a vacuum. He was brought up in a country that had produced José Martí, a revered intellectual giant and martyred freedom fighter; a country that had undergone a great political and social upheaval during his childhood; a country in which a Communist party had briefly flourished; a country dominated by a foreign power. Traditions of nationalism and of striving for political and social reform molded a significant part of Cuban culture that Castro's generation had absorbed. And there was, in addition, the Hispanic precedent of caudillismo (strongman leadership), which was to serve Castro in his exercise of power.

The collapse of constitutional government in 1952 ignited violent resistance, particularly among Cuban youth. The aims of the resistance, including those voiced by the young Castro, were typically Cuban: a restoration of constitutional government; elimination of corruption; implementation of economic and social reforms; and, as a minor theme, a more equitable relationship with the United States. Except for a minuscule and largely discredited Communist party (at the time calling itself the Popular Socialist party), conspicuously absent from any dissident program at the time was anything remotely resembling a Marxist-Leninist orientation or the slightest reference to the Soviet system as a model for Cuba. In other words, there was nothing to suggest that objective or subjective conditions existed that could lead to transforming Cuba almost overnight into a Marxist-Leninist state allied with the Soviet Union.

That this historically unprecedented phenomenon occurred can be attributed only to Fidel Castro. At what particular time he conceived the option of fundamentally restructuring Cuban society and Cuba's foreign relations is a matter of speculation. According to his claim in a speech on July 26, 1988, he had been "thinking about the Revolution even before March 10, 1952 [the date of Batista's coup]. . . .

Starting our from the principles of socialism, of Marxism- Leninism . . . we said: There are objective conditions in Cuba for a revolution, what's missing are subjective conditions. . . . We were thinking of a profound revolution that sooner or later had to become a socialist revolution" (Granma Weekly Review, August 7, 1988). In that case, he cunningly kept it a secret, making deceptive statements for many years. Thus, in a press conference in New York on April 23, 1959, some three months after taking power, he said, "We want to establish in Cuba a true democracy with out any trace of Fascism, Peronism, or Communism. We are against any kind of totalitarianism⁵."" Yet we know that early on, Castro was attracted to what he called "utopian socialism⁶. Later, as a university student, he did some reading of Marx, Engels, and Lenin and became acquainted with a few Communist students. However, he never joined the party or any of its affiliated organizations and wisely kept them at arm's length.

In Mexico, while preparing for his return to Cuba, he read Stalin--apparently after Khrushchev's revelations of Stalin's crimes. Nevertheless, his attitude toward the Soviet despot was positive, consistent with his admiration of Robespierre⁷. While denying any leaning toward communism during and for two years after his insurrection, at no time did he establish the credentials of an anti-Communist or condemn the Soviet Union. One may conclude that even before raking power, he was intellectually and emotionally prepared for the socialist or Communist revolution he was to launch early in the sixties.

Another significant aspect of his early political orientation was his deep-seated hostility toward the United States. Later, that became a considerable asset in drawing support from Latin American radical nationalists. Gabriel García Márquez was quoted in 1990 as saying that "Castro is the necessary thorn in the lion's paw." If it were not for this visionary leader's defiance of the empire, "the United States would be into Latin America all the way to Patagonia⁸.

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