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Rethinking Fidel Castro (continued) This brings us back to the personality disorder that Castro displayed as a child and throughout the rest of his life. He has had an uncontrollable compulsion to lead and to dominate--the results of an innate conviction of his superiority and of his destiny to make history. Until the collapse of communism in most of the world, his mission was to liberate the oppressed masses of the Third World. Now with equal pride, he has taken on another historic role: the last Communist who refuses to surrender to imperialism. Watching him on TV in my hotel room in 1989, he looked older by all of the quarter century that had passed since I had last seen him. He was sixty-two years old. The trim, handsome lines of his face had become flabby. His black beard had turned nearly entirely gray, and his formerly flat abdomen was now a rounded potbelly. On the other hand, his mind was as nimble as ever, projecting sincerity while concealing cunning calculations. The modulation of his high-pitched voice, his piercing black eyes, the prominent eyebrows he raised or lowered to make a point, and the wild flinging of his arms were all still there. Castro remained the supreme virtuoso of political oratory. It now seems highly improbable that the Cuban Revolution and its creator, Fidel Castro, can survive. Although one cannot predict how much longer the regime will last, the end will come sooner rather than later. It is to be expected that the transition to a multiparty and private enterprise system will be difficult in Cuba as in all the former Communist party states, though with variations in some particulars. For example, Cuba is culturally a homogeneous society and, thus, has no basis for ethnic conflict. On the other hand, the removal of Fidel Castro and his brother from power, likely a prerequisite for transition, will create a power vacuum that did not exist in Europe, with the possible exception of Ceausescu's Romania. This difference could easily lead to violence, as ambitious and hitherto frustrated generals with combat experience in Angola and Ethiopia compete to fill the vacuum. Cuba, moreover, is saturated with weapons and full of men and women who know how to use them. All in all, it is unlikely that the transition will be peaceful. As a result, the future of Cuba could pose some unpleasant problems for the United States. On the one hand, one could anticipate a mass exodus of Cubans seeking safety or reunion with relatives in the United States, adding strains on an already overburdened immigration and welfare system. Moving in the other direction a significant number of long-exiled Cubans, many of whom are now American citizens, might attempt to return home, recover their expropriated properties, and develop investment opportunities. These elements would add to the confusion and conflicts during the transition period. Under these circumstances, there might well be pressures within both the United States and Cuba for American military intervention to restore law and order. There would, of course, be resistance in the United States to such a policy as well as strong opposition in Latin America. Privately, the Presidents of Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia tried to impress on Castro and others at the Guadalajara Summit the need for a peaceful transition in Cuba to avoid the possibility of American intervention, which could provoke serious domestic problems in their respective countries. Nevertheless, both the American concern over Cuba's strategic location ninety miles south of Florida and the abiding US eagerness for commercial opportunities in Cuba have deep historic roots. As early as 1803, soon after the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson expressed a strong interest in acquiring the island, and he continued to promote the idea after leaving the presidency in 1809. More recently, the Soviet attempt to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, along with forty-three thousand Soviet troops to defend them, served as a reminder that US interests are not removed from the fate of the island. I left Cuba on December 5, 1989, with a heavy heart. During our extended stay in Cuba in the 1960s, Edith and I had become fond of the Cuban people and their beautiful island. The physical deterioration of Havana, the increased deprivations of the inhabitants, and the likelihood of an even bleaker future for them depressed me greatly. Cuba is a vivid green all year long, with an abundance of bright flowers blooming in all seasons. The sun shines three hundred days a year. It has magnificent, easily accessible beaches. Because of the trade winds, its tropical climate is mild, ideal for human habitation. There is no need for indoor heating or winter clothing, an advantage that Cuban socialism has had over its former benefactors in Eastern Europe. In my experience, the Cuban people are as congenial as their natural environment. They display a friendly warmth and seem naturally convivial. Cubans are a physically attractive people, proud in bearing, open in gesture. I found them singularly lacking in ethnic or religious bigotry. (I encountered no slur term for Jew in Cuba, which may be a unique phenomenon in the Christian world. Jews in Cuba are usually called Polacos, because most came from Poland after the First World War, but there is nothing derogatory in the term.) Even those most affected by Castro's anti-American propaganda seemed always to distinguish between the American government and individual Americans. Never once did Edith and I encounter hostility because of our nationality. We led a full social life, contrary to our experience in Moscow, where we were in near isolation from the Russian people. I fondly remember participating in the weekly chamber music sessions at our home with Cuban and foreign musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra. To be sure, we had encountered ominous symptoms of the dark side of socialism, especially in the later sixties. Critical discourse, except among trusted friends and relatives, had to be muted. We knew the prisons were filling up. It was like a black shadow partially obscuring the sun. The recurrent shortages of consumer goods were annoying. I recall how difficult it was to get enough gasoline for a friend to drive me to the airport when I left Cuba in the spring of 1968. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that in the sixties most Cubans still had hope. They remembered the evil days under Batista. Despite the difficulties, probably a large majority of Cubans felt that the Revolution had improved the quality of life. Castro was erratic and could be cruel, but few doubted his dedication to the common welfare. And Cubans had national pride in their defiance of the mighty Yankees, a feat that no other Latin American country had achieved. At the same time, confidence grew in the continuing economic and military support of the powerful Soviet Union. No one suspected the future collapse of the great benefactor or dreamed of Castro's irrationality when confronted with that catastrophe. At the close of 1989, in contrast, I found the popular mood one of deep discouragement, perhaps born of suppressed anger after decades of seemingly unending and increasing austerity. I could see the toll being paid in the weary and cheerless faces I passed on the street. Cuba's whole body language had changed. Habaneros seemed to plod along glumly, contrasting with my memories of their earlier brisk walk and animated conversation. I wondered how they managed to carry on. Apparently, life in some respects was still tolerable. The weather was still warm and beautiful beaches were still close by. Lovers, as always, embraced along the Malecón, the embankment bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Via television and American and Western European movies, Cubans could vicariously enjoy the pleasures of affluent society. There was plenty of first-rate baseball, to which Cubans are passionately addicted, and admission was free. The great and welcome distraction of 1991 was the Pan American Games, held in Havana for the first time. Thus, Cuba has its version of bread and circuses, a formula that worked in ancient Rome. But with diminishing rations of bread, the formula is not doing well. Young Cubans especially are skeptical. More than half the population is too young to remember the Batista dictatorship. For this half, only the present and future matter. It was not so long ago when Castro promised a bright future. Now his favorite slogan is "Socialism or Death." I cannot imagine any young Cuban, or even many older Cubans, prepared to die for socialism. Yet, I fear that some--perhaps many--will die in the task of liberating Cuba from socialism. That was the saddest thought of all as I departed from Cuba, probably never to return. 1 See Georgie Anne Geyer. Guerrilla Prince: The Real Story of the Rise and Fall of Fidel Castro (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1991), the most comprehensive and authoritative biography so far. return to section 2 See Carlos Franqui, Diario de Ia revolución cubana (New York: Seaver Books, 1980). Biographical data provided by Franqui are from the tape-recorded conversations between Castro and Franqui, which were the beginning of a projected autobiography that was never completed. The twenty-eight-page transcript takes Fidel through 1948. Additional data supplied by Franqui are from Fidel's correspondence from prison on the Isle of Pines (renamed the Isle of Youth after the Revolution). return to section 3 Cited by Heberso Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other: A Memoir (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), 238. return to section 4 Jorge Valls, Twenty Years and Forty Days: Life in a Cuban Prison, an Americas Watch Report (New York: Americas Watch, 1986), iii. return to section 5 Herbert L. Matthews, Fidel Castro (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969),161. return to section 6 Franqui, 17. return to section 7 Franqui, 153. In Mexico, Franqui found Fidel and Che studying Stalin's Fundamentos del Leninismo (Foundations of Leninism). According to Franqui, Fidel expressed "una opinión lapidaria," i.e., bedrock approval, of Stalin's iron-fisted rule of the USSR. return to section 8 Anthony Day and Marjorie Miller, "Gabo Talks," Los Angeles Times Magazine, Sept. 2, 1990. return to section 9 Cited by Jorge Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuban Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), 30. return to section 10 Alexandr Alexeev, "The Caribbean Crisis: As It Really Was," Ekho Planyeti (Moscow) no. 33 (Nov. 1988): 26-27. Years later, Castro was more explicit "To be a free and independent country... we had to sweep away the capitalist system" (speech on July 26, 1990, Granma Weekly Review, Aug. 5, 1990). I am grateful to James G. Blight for bringing the Alexeev article to my attention. Alexeev, incidentally, fully corroborates Carlos Franqui's insightful discussion of Mikoyan's visit. See Franqui. Diario, 128-29. return to section 11 Alexeev, 26, 27. return to section 12 Padilla, 181, 182. return to section 13 Cuba Socialista, no. 1 (Sept. 1961): 28. return to section 14 Cited by Robert McCrum, Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 17, 1991, 22. return to section 15 Halperin, Taming of Fidel Castro, 241. See also chapters 29, 30, and 31 on Castro and the Jews (236-55). return to section
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