Rethinking Fidel Castro (continued)

On June 5, 1958, half a year before toppling the Batista regime, he wrote in confidence to his intimate companion Celia Sánchez: "When this war is over, a much longer and bigger war will begin for me: the war which I will make against [the Americans]. I realize this will be my true destiny⁹." Was he already contemplating a strategy of attracting the support of the Soviet Union to assure the fulfillment of his "true destiny"? In a speech carried in the April 3, 1959, issue of Havana's El Mundo, he declared, "This revolution will take its place as one of the greatest political events in history." At the time, his boast appeared to be the product of an overheated imagination.

The publication at the end of 1988 of the memoirs of Alexandr Alexeev, who had been the first Soviet ambassador to Cuba, has shed new light on the chronology of Castro's decision to move Cuba toward socialism and an alliance with the Soviet Union. Alexeev reveals that he first met Che Guevara in Havana on October 12, 1959. According to Alexeev, Che told him that "in his personal opinion, in order to win freedom and independence for Cuba there was no other path except the construction of a socialist society and the establishment of friendly relations with the countries of the socialist commonwealth." Three days later, Alexeev met with Fidel Castro. Although Castro was not as explicit as Che, his remarks indicated a similar point of view. He told Alexeev that "Cuban public opinion was still subject to the influence of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda and as yet was not ready to reestablish diplomatic relations with the USSR." To remedy the situation, Castro proposed that "a Soviet trade exhibit, which at the time was on display in Mexico, be put on display in Havana¹⁰."

Thus, it was not the Soviets but Castro who initiated the project. The exhibition opened in Havana in February 1960, with the presence of Anastas Mikoyan, the number two man in the ruling Soviet hierarchy. According to Alexeev, he had "the warmest . . . relations with Fidel. . . . It was then that the Cubans actually began to believe that the USSR would selflessly assist Cuba¹¹." One could also add that it marked the beginnings of what would turn out to be one of the great ironies of our times, when the Soviet Union abandoned Cuba some thirty years later and then vanished from the international scene altogether.

I believe that Castro had set his course to the extreme left no later than mid-October 1959. His determination of that direction helps explain the urgency and ferocity with which he turned against the anti-Communist Huber Matos, an able and loyal comandante in the Sierra. In the trumped-up trial, Castro personally charged him with treason and dictated a sentence of twenty years. It also accounts for Castro's seemingly irrational refusal soon after taking power to consider any proposal that could lead to an amicable settlement of his quarrel with the United States. As Heberto Padilla, Cuba's preeminent poet in exile, laments, "It was the start of the fatal process which . . . turns the revolutionary party into a bureaucratic caste and its leader into a Caesar¹²""

Castro's strategy of using the cold war to enlist the support of the Soviet Union in order to move Cuba out of the orbit of the United States bears the stamp of genius and of his propensity to take great risks. The implementation of his strategy was another extraordinary feat of timing, both within Cuba and on the international scene. He bolstered his stature of hero and redeemer by providing the Cuban masses overnight with substantial economic and social benefits, paid for by state funds accumulated under capitalism and, at the same time, arousing their sense of nationalism. Step by step he manipulated a sometimes reluctant Kremlin to assume the role of his protector. When he finally declared at the beginning of December 1961 that he was a "Marxist Leninist" and would remain one for the rest of his life, he had successfully locked Cuba into a new system of domestic and international relations.

It was an incredible tour de force. Less than three years had passed since he took power in a country where, at the time, in the words of the late President Osvaldo Dorticós, "a large part of our population--let us mention this with complete frankness--even a large part of our workers were frightened by the very word socialism¹³."

Castro's failures, like his triumphs, bear the imprint of his monumental ego, his reckless self-confidence and, most important, his unchallenged authority. Consider, as an example, his disastrous project to produce a ten-million-ton sugar harvest in 1970, Castro's "sugar atomic bomb." It was a personal decision made without paying any attention to his sugar experts, who knew it could not be done. The wild project was motivated by a quixotic dream of gaining control of the world sugar market. That he survived the ensuing economic catastrophe was another tribute to his charismatic grip on the Cuban people.

Castro's survival has been due, in large part, to his great skill in fostering Cuban nationalism, that is to say, anti-Americanism. The history of prerevolurionary Cuba supported him, and U.S. hostility since the early sixties reinforced the fear of Yankee imperialism. Throughout the years, Castro and his public relations experts have made sure that Cubans did not forget the humiliations of the Platt Amendment, the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, or the more recent Bay of Pigs invasion. In addition, the United States has been blamed for the need to maintain a powerful military establishment, and the trade embargo has been cited over and over as the reason for economic failures.

At the same time, nationalism has served another important purpose. By combining nationalism and socialism, Castro legitimized socialism. Year after year Castro has repeated in his speeches to the Cuban people that socialism, or communism and Marxism-Leninism, was not imposed from the outside. Thus, Castro managed to "cubanize" socialism, much as Mao Zedong "sinotized" Marxism. Castro and Mao stand in contrast to the tyrants of the erstwhile Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, who had been imposed by Moscow. For Castro, only through socialism can Cuba maintain its independence--"socialismo o muerte." Otherwise, it would once again become a mere appendage of the American empire and a happy hunting ground for thousands of returning Cuban exiles from Miami. Castro's argument has an effective appeal for some older Cubans who remember prerevolurionary Cuba but is less effective among younger Cubans, who associate steadily declining standards of living and the less and less tolerable regimentation of their personal lives with the socialism they have known under Castro.

During my visit to Havana at the close of 1989, I noted that Cuba's economic crisis was the worst the country had experienced since Castro came to power. Nevertheless, it was apparent that he remained firmly in control. The magic of his charisma, what García Márquez called "his terrible power to seduce his listeners¹⁴," had not diminished. I felt at the time that if a plebiscite were held in Cuba, like the one ending General Pinochet's rule in Chile, Castro's leadership would in fact be confirmed. It seemed to me that economic conditions would have to get much worse before Castro's survival would be threatened. Yet two years later they did get much worse. His survival as Cuba's leader has now come very much into question.

Recent visitors report that the scarcity of raw materials, particularly petroleum, formerly supplied by the Soviet Union and East European satellites, has forced the shut down of factories and the abandonment of building projects. It appears, for example, that the uncompleted nuclear energy plant at Juraguá, in south central Cuba, under construction since 1985 with the help of some two hundred Soviet technicians, will remain unfinished. That may be a blessing in disguise, given that the safety of a Soviet-designed plant employing inexperienced Cubans would be questionable at best. Its proximity to Florida, the direction of the prevailing winds, and its location in a coastal area frequently swept by hurricanes and tidal waves have been matters of concern in the United States for some time.

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