Fidel Castro Page 10

  There was that, and there was also information that was leaked to the States about everything and anything going on in Cuba, that Khrushchev had armed Cuba to help them protect themselves from another U.S. invasion. “Those who were disaffected by the Revolution would send messages any way they could to the United States, informing their family members and the [government] functionaries of the movements they were observing. The press wasn’t long in echoing the rumors.”

  So Cuba had nukes, they were mad at the capitalist world, and they had Soviet support for whatever they wanted to do. It created a precarious situation for the U.S. and the world at large. Castro asked for Khrushchev’s support and he had it. Though Castro said, “I added that it would be inconsistent of us to expect the maximum support from the USSR and the rest of the socialist camp should be attacked by the United States and yet refuse to face the political risks and the possible damages to our reputation when they needed us. The ethical and revolutionary point of view was accepted unanimously.”

  The crisis, sparked by this knowledge, would last 13 days in October 1962. It was essentially a standoff, and the world feared the outcome. The USSR would be shipping more nukes to Cuba, and the U.S. planned to block the shipment from coming through. Cuba and the Soviet Union would not accept what they perceived as “outright piracy,” and promised to retaliate. Castro said, “This was no longer a question that had to do with tactics or strategy. It was a decision that had to do with the willingness, or lack thereof, to maintain a firm stance in the situation that had emerged.”

  As the tension mounted, what had been a three-headed monster was reduced to two when Kennedy reached out to Khrushchev, without Castro, to make an arrangement, despite the fact that Khrushchev had already assured the U.S. in a letter that there would be no way the USSR was going to back down from what he called “an act of aggression propelling humankind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.” Namely, the aggression of the U.S. to blockade a vessel from the Soviet Union to Cuba, no matter what the contents of that vessel might be. It was a violation for the U.S. to interfere with “navigation in international waters and air space,” and it would not be tolerated. Castro never believed Khrushchev would bend. He recalled: “… it was a very tense moment. And we ourselves thought that conflict was inevitable … It never occurred to us to give in to the adversary’s threats.”

  But it had occurred to Khrushchev, and, Castro felt, behind his back. On October 23, Soviet ships headed towards the blockade as the world sat back, helpless to prevent the inevitable nuclear war about to occur.

  Finally, on October 28, 1962, Khrushchev reached an agreement with Kennedy whereby he would destroy USSR missiles in Cuba if Kennedy agreed to dismantle U.S. missiles in Turkey and Italy. And that was it. The Soviet ships turned around and the crisis was averted. But not without bitterness on Castro’s part. He felt betrayed by Khrushchev; left out and belittled. While the two would see their way back to the camaraderie they had enjoyed, the initial blow of what Castro saw as a betrayal would burn for quite some time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CASTRO AND KENNEDY

  “[Kennedy] spoke on television 22 October, at 7 p.m. His speech was carried by every network, with a great sense of drama, and at that point the world became aware that there was this crisis and that we were on the brink of a nuclear war. And he also announced a naval blockade of Cuba, in order to prevent the arrival of more missiles.”

  The relationship between Fidel Castro and American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is not an easy one to define; namely because there was no “relationship” between them. In the two conflicts that are pretty much the most significant of the rulership of both leaders, one who would lead more than four decades and one who would lead less than four years, there wasn’t direct contact between them. Castro negotiated with the CIA on the terms for releasing prisoners after the Bay of Pigs invasion; and Castro was left out of the negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though it had come out later that both men were open to discussions, it just never happened. Perhaps had Kennedy lived, things would have been different between Cuba and the U.S. today. Perhaps some middle ground could have been reached, communication opened, embargoes lifted. But that was not to be.

  One really couldn’t draw the assumption that the Bay of Pigs invasion would not have happened had Kennedy been at the helm while the Cuban Revolution was happening, but Castro managed to do just that. He respected Kennedy, and truly believed that Kennedy would have been more rational and balanced when it came to the situation in Cuba, and how it might have impacted the United States. Castro cited that Kennedy, even giving the official go-head on the attack on the Bay of Pigs, was the one who ended it. “[A]t that moment, Kennedy showed himself to be reasonable—he refused to complicate things; he gave the order to suspend the ‘reconnaissance’ flights, the low-level espionage flights, and also ordered that Operation Mongoose be halted.”

  Yet Kennedy and his influence cannot be discounted in the shaping of Fidel’s experience as a leader. Despite that the two major incidents involving the United States, the two major threats on Cuba, had transpired during Kennedy’s rule, Castro had an enormous amount of respect for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in the face of anything he was handed. Castro said, “… President John Kennedy, a guy with a great deal of talent, really, had the misfortune to inherit the expedition against us, the Playa Girón invasion—he inherited it and he let it take place. He was brave in defeat; because he assumed all responsibility for it, he put it this way: ‘Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.’”

  That same elegance that earned Castro’s respect, however, also made him know that with those words, Kennedy would be berated or worse by his own people, the American capitalists who opposed Castro and everything he stood for. Castro said, “All of that created an intense hatred of Kennedy on the part of all the adversaries of the Cuban Revolution, because he didn’t give the order for the fleet to step in during Playa Girón to help the mercenaries, and he didn’t take advantage of the October crisis to intervene against us as many generals and many of our enemies were advising him to. That may be who was behind the conspiracy to assassinate him. Although I have no proof, I am making deductions about what may have happened. I daresay that it’s true though—there are many, many reasons to be suspicious.”

  Interesting that Fidel could see that Kennedy would make enemies who would want him removed, even as some have suggested that Castro himself not only knew that the assassination would occur, but that he might even have had a hand in it, even as an accomplice. It has been suggested that Lee Harvey Oswald came to Cuba and got assistance from Castro to carry out Kennedy’s murder. As Castro clearly understood that Kennedy was not behind the conflicts between the U.S. and Cuba, and that Kennedy probably would not have acted in the way he did had the cart not already been in motion, it does seem far-fetched that someone who might come to have some sympathy and understanding for Cuba would have something to do with his removal.

  Castro doesn’t give those conspiracies much weight. In fact, Oswald had attempted to come to Cuba, and he was refused. Castro said, “Thank goodness we didn’t give that guy permission to visit Cuba. That would have been a tremendous manipulation, a tremendous provocation, because provocation—because they could have used that to implicate Cuba. Actually, when the investigation was being carried out, we gave them all the information we had.”

  Of course, just because Castro didn’t let Oswald into the country before the assassination didn’t prove he had any knowledge of the plan to take down Kennedy, nor does Castro believe that Oswald was the only assassin. Castro said, “With the expertise I had acquired in sharpshooting, I can’t imagine that with a rifle with a telescopic sight such as he had, you can fire, load, and fire gain in a matter of seconds. Because when you shoot with a telescopic sight, if the weapon moves a fraction of an inch, you lose your target.” He added, “Firing three times in a row, so accura
tely, somebody who almost certainly didn’t have much experience—that’s very difficult.”

  During Kennedy’s term, Castro’s opinion of him never wavered, even when he experienced Kennedy trying to enforce, unsuccessfully, some of Castro’s planned reforms throughout Latin America, including widespread agrarian reform. Kennedy may have been trying to do what he thought was right, but it didn’t work. Castro said, “… many Latin American rulers stole all the money they could and the Alliance for Progress didn’t solve a thing. Still, it was an intelligent reaction on Kennedy’s part—he was a man of unquestionable intelligence.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  REACHING OUT TO LATIN AMERICA AND BEYOND

  “Current and future generations of Cubans will continue on, no matter how great the difficulties may be, fighting tirelessly to ensure that the Revolution is always as invulnerable politically as it is militarily and will soon be economically. We will continue to fight. We will continue to resist. We will continue to defeat every imperialist aggression, every lie in their propaganda, every political and diplomatic maneuver.”

  While Castro’s main concern had always been the health and well-being of his beloved Cuba, as a true revolutionary he knew it was important to try to help the greater good, to improve the world, by spreading the healing fundamentals of his revolutionary ideas beyond Cuba, and enriching Latin America as a whole while he was at it. He said, “More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger, and 790 million of them live in the Third World.”

  As Castro explained, “Back at that time, in the ’60s, no one in Latin America maintained diplomatic relations with us—Mexico was the only one. At that time, we observed all international rules of conduct. We did, of course, want revolution; we desired it out of doctrine, out of conviction. But we observed international law. And I maintain that revolution can’t be exported, because no one can ‘export’ the objective conditions that make revolution possible. That has always been our premise and we still think that way.”

  Castro contends that his main objective was to help, not to take over, though his actions were not always perceived in the way he intended they be perceived. For example, when he went to Buenos Aries in the early 1960s, the homeland of his comrade, Che Guevara, to discuss how best to take advantage of the Alliance for Progress in Latin America, he didn’t quite meet his objectives. “I didn’t have much international experience, except all the things I’d read throughout my life and of course my own meditations on the subject. Nor did I have much experience with Latin America, but I presented this plan there anyway.”

  His ideas did not go over as planned and he backed down. Then President Kennedy came back with another way to present the plan. Castro said of his own agenda, “The plan would’ve helped avoid many tragedies on this continent.” He contends that it would have been the best-case scenario, even as a short time later, “Kennedy picked up the idea and poised his own Marshall Plan for Latin America—the Alliance for Progress: agrarian reform, fiscal reform, housing and construction …” That, as history shows, was also not a success, with many countries stealing and misappropriating funds.

  But Fidel was undeterred. Just because all the facts pointed to this being a time ripe for change in Latin America didn’t mean the people were ready or willing to embrace revolution, and Fidel accepted that, to a point. As he explains, “Sometimes objective conditions exist for revolutionary change but the subjective conditions aren’t there. It was the factors of a subjective nature that prevented the revolution, at that time, from really spreading the method of armed struggle was proven.”

  That didn’t mean Castro turned his back on those who didn’t readily jump on the revolution train. Not even in a small way. Fidel remained stalwart in helping the unfortunate, and readily gave aid even when it wasn’t being asked. Castro said, “I should say we contributed a great deal to the unity of those people in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in Guatemala. To the Sandinistas, who were divided; the Salvadorians, who were divided into something like five organizations; the Guatemalans, who were equally fragmented. Our mission, as we saw it, was to unite, and we managed to unite, really. We have shown our solidarity, and we have give some modest aid to the revolutionaries of Central America. But showing solidarity and giving some form of aid to a revolutionary movement doesn’t mean you’ve exported revolution.”

  In this frenzy of wanting to change the world one nation at a time, Fidel Castro kept a cool, calculating head; not so the case for Che Guevara, however. Che was anxious—almost too anxious—to revolutionize Bolivia, and his fervent intent was starting to make Castro nervous. “We suggested that he needed more time, not to get impatient,” Castro said. But Che was insistent, and Castro understood why. He recalled, “He knew what life as a guerrilla was like; he knew you needed to be a certain age, and although he overcame all his own shortcomings and had a will of iron, he knew that if he waited much longer, he wouldn’t be in the best physical condition.”

  Castro knew that this was not the time to start monkeying around in Bolivia, however. There was more organizing that needed to be done, more groundwork to be laid. So he tried to distract Che from Bolivia with another still incredibly worthy cause: He sent him to the Congo.

  The Congo Crisis began in 1960 and ran until 1966. The Congo was desperate to gain independence from Belgium and when all was said and done, more than 100,000 would be killed, including Prime Minster Patrice Lumumba. This was a crisis after the Revolutionaries’ own hearts, and a perfect place for Che to be while more preparations were being made for Bolivia. Castro said, “When Che got impatient and wanted to leave, I said to him, ‘The conditions aren’t ready.’ I didn’t want him to go to Bolivia to organize a tiny group. I wanted him to wait until a larger force had been organized.”

  So off to the Congo Che went. It would not be the last time Cuba came to the aid of Africa, but this mission was important. Che arrived in the Congo in April 1965 and led the Cuban operation there. The operation was a disaster, which Che would later attribute to the Congolese army. Most of his men were killed, and he returned to Cuba with six other survivors barely six months later.

  Castro said, “[Che] ran up against very great obstacles in Africa … At a certain point all kinds of people, mercenaries started cropping up: whites, South Africans, Rhodesians, Belgians, and even counter-revolutionary Cubans who were working for the CIA. The African forces weren’t prepared. Che wanted to teach them how to fight, explain that there were [sic] sometimes more than one way to do something, that there were variants.”

  Now Castro had an impatient Che to contend with, and a situation in Bolivia that wasn’t ready for him. It didn’t matter; Castro could not stop him. What would stop Che, however, was that he and his men were grossly unprepared to take on the cause there, and Che did not have his asthma medication, which meant he would not be in his top form on top of everything else.

  On October 8, 1967, Che and his men were captured. Castro said, “Che wasn’t a man to allow himself to be captured, but a bullet had ruined his rifle, and the enemy soldiers, very close by now, wounded him. He was wounded and weaponless, and that’s why they captured him … The next day, 9 October 1967, at noon, he was cold-bloodedly executed. I’m certain he never flinched, never trembled once, because when he was faced with a situation of dangers was when he stood tallest.”

  Even without his beloved comrade at his side, however, Castro remained faithful to the cause of Revolution. Over the next decades, he and his brother Raul would keep Cuba under control, despite the most of the world being against them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CASTRO AND THE FALL OF THE USSR

  “History will pronounce the final judgment on him. I do not want to be Gorbachev’s judge. I can only say that during the time I knew him, he behaved in a friendly manner toward me. He seemed to want to improve socialism, even if the final result was different. He wrote it in his book Perestroika too, making it clear that he was not against socialism, indeed he
wanted more socialism. It seems to me, however, that now there is less socialism than ever in the former USSR—and indeed the USSR does not even exist anymore. Someone once said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  For decade of his reign, Fidel and Cuba were intensely dependent on the USSR for survival—for protection and economics. The agreements made between Khrushchev and Castro during Castro’s 1963 visit to the Soviet Union stood the test of time. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the relationship was strong, even with Gorbachev at the helm, at least for a while. Castro said, “There were good relations with [Mikhail] Gorbachev. Raul had known him for years … I talked to him quite a bit, I met him, conversed with him often … With us he was very friendly, he behaved like a friend, really, and one could see his respect for the Cuban Revolution.”

  It seemed the Soviet Union would always be there for Cuba. Castro never imagined in a million years that the Soviet Union could implode the way it had. But that was the reality of the legacy Gorbachev had somehow managed to create, and then abandon with his resignation the day before the dissolution became formal on December 26, 1991.

  A little background: The Soviet economy had been stagnant since the 1980s, and Gorbachev had tried to revive it by increasing liberalization, but his plan backfired. Without the one-party structure that had sustained the nation, disputes began to spark, nationalist movements among the republics caused discord, and various revolutions led to more democracy, which the USSR could not sustain. Castro said, “I can’t say that Gorbachev played a conscious part in the destruction of the Soviet Union, because I have no doubt that Gorbachev’s aim was to struggle to perfect socialism.” Except that wasn’t how things turned out.