Fidel Castro Read online

  Now, as 1992 loomed, Cuba was looking at a chaos where they once had a stabilizer; here was a communist empire that was now shattered to bits. Castro said, “When the Soviet Union and the socialist camp disappeared, no one could have wagered one cent on the survival of the Cuban Revolution.”

  Those who bet against them would be wrong, but it would take some doing to get Cuba back on strong legs. While the Eastern Bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance provided Cuba 63 percent of its imported food, 86 percent of imported primary goods, and 75 percent of manufactured goods, and purchased 63 percent of Cuba’s exported sugar, 72 percent of nickel exports, and 95 percent of its tropical fruit, as well as purchased sugar at prices substantially higher than the world market prices, the fall of the USSR should have meant the fall of Cuba. But no. Cuba knew it had to open to trade with other nations, and made concessions to do so. In doing so, while there may have been some hardship and adversity involved, they managed to hold on.

  Still, it was a blow to Cuba, having the superpower they depended on dissipate and disintegrate as it did, and it was hard not to put the blame somewhere. Castro explained, “I’m not interested in defending any of the bad things that the Soviets did. I should make that clear. I came to think, and I still think this way today, that without the accelerated industrialization that country was forced to engage in, largely because of the west, which blockaded them, invaded them, and made war on them, the USSR would never have been saved by Nazi onslaught; they’d have been defeated. In the middle of the war, they were able to transport factories and set them down right there in the snow and start production without even a roof over them—it was a great feat, maybe one of the greatest feats in that war in which so many previous political mistakes had been made, that is where I would be most critical of the errors they made.”

  Still, it was shocking that a nation that had always proven so resourceful could not get out of their own way when it came to growing their economy. As Castro related, “What’s curious is that the USSR had more research centers than any other country, carried out more research projects, and, except in the military spheres, applied fewer of its own findings to the benefits of its own economy.”

  If anything, the fall of the USSR was an educational experience. Not only did it force Cuba to reach out to the rest of the world and expand their relationships, but it forced them to look within to how they were advancing, especially when it came to computer technology in Cuba. Castro said, “[I]t’s a lack of vision. It’s shocking, sobering, while the Yankees, on the other hand, developed computers as fast as they could.”

  Did Castro ultimately blame Gorbachev for the fall of the USSR? He almost had to. “[A]t one point of his leadership I had a terrible opinion of everything Gorbachev was doing,” Castro said, despiteliking Gorbachev and thinking he was trying. “But he couldn’t manage to find solutions to the big problems his country had … He couldn’t prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union; he didn’t know how to preserve it, keep it a great nation and a great power. On the contrary, his errors and later weaknesses contributed to [the collapse].”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EMIGRATION ISSUES

  “In 1958, the official number of Cubans officially registered in the United States stood at about 125,000, including descendants [of immigrants]. That was before 1959, not long after the end of the war, fascism, the Holocaust, all of those things. Each year, they would issue 2,000 or 3,000 visas, if that many. Power, wealth—many people brought up to worship in the United States, and above all, to idealize (remember this, it’s important) the automobile, resources, salaries, in a Cuban population who had little or no education and in which over 30 percent were either illiterate or semiliterate.”

  The emigration situation has long been a source of confusion, aggravation, and resentment between Cuba and the rest of the world. It is interesting to note, however, that the situation is not all the doing of Fidel Castro. In fact, there’s a long history of emigration issues, beginning with the situation that arose of people shipping their kids into the United States during Operation Peter Pan.

  As a result of all those unaccompanied minors popping up in Miami in the early 1960s, in October 1962, the U.S. halted all flights between Cuba and the U.S. The emigration was out of control and could not be monitored. “So,” Castro said, “there was no longer any possibility of travel, and many families became separated. Many of the parents who’d sent their children up there were still thinking that the Revolution was going to fail, and some of them were separated forever.”

  It wasn’t just the kids that were creating an issue, though. There was an exodus of all ages from Cuba at overthrowing of the Batista regime. Scores of middle- and upper-class people flocked to the United States to, as they believed, wait out the unrest. They believed the U.S., or somebody, would unseat the new rebel-ruled regime. It never happened, and the Cuban population exploded in Miami, with emigres thinking they’d only stay months now looking to stay forever. So illegal departures from Cuba, those that were not explained to and authorized by the government, were halted.

  But that couldn’t last forever; there had to be some kind of agreement put in place for Cubans to leave the country, to travel to the United States, or anywhere, for that matter. “So then an agreement was reached with the United States,” Castro explained. “Every person who applied, who had some notion of going to the United States, could do so legally. We ourselves obtained that permission.”

  Things quieted for a while; then came the Carioca exodus. The early 1960s were a time of struggle while the Revolution settled in. There was fallout from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Missile Crisis; specialists were leaving the country, trade was stifled, food and other stuff were being rationed. People lost faith that any of this was ever going to work out. Castro said, “The Carioca exodus happened in October 1965. And shortly afterwards, in November 1966, the Americans—I honestly don’t know why—passed the Adjustment Act.”

  The Adjustment Act, or, formally, the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act, which was passed on November 2, 1966, and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, essentially made anyone who came into the United States by legal means, and had resided in the States for at least a year, permanent resident status.

  There wouldn’t be another significant emigration crisis again until the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was in office.

  In 1980, there was another mass exodus from Cuba, this one also spurned by a sharp economic turndown in the Cuban economy. The “Mariel Crisis” was named for the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration of Cubans that left Cuba via Mariel Harbor between April and October of 1980. The Cuban government allowed anyone who wanted to leave to do so, and the American government granted them entry, though there was backlash when it was discovered that most of the refugees who had entered had come from prisons or mental institutions. Both governments agreed to shut it down, though not before 125,000 Cubans had come to Florida.

  In 1984, the Reagan Administration granted passage again between Florida and Cuba. Castro said, “He was flexible in that, because of his interest in returning the ‘excludables.’ Reagan was interested in an agreement on the so-called ‘excludables,’ some of the people who’d left in the Mariel exodus in 1980 and the United States wanted to return to us … The American authorities would issue up to 20,000 visas a year [under the agreement], which would ensure that the number of people wouldn’t have to put their lives in danger to make the trip.”

  Sounded like a good agreement, except that, Castro complained, the Americans did not hold up their end of the bargain. Castro said, “… the most visas they ever issues totaled no more than a thousand and something …” So much for Castro thinking relations could improve between the United States and Cuba. In fact, seen though Castro’s eyes, the situation would only get worse.

  Following the fall of the USSR in 1991, there was another, expected, economic downturn, until Cuba could get in place the other trade agreements it knew it had to establish
to survive. Rationing became de rigueur once again, and once again, Cubans fled. Castro said, “The exodus of 1994 was brought on by the Soviet crisis, the fall of the USSR, the beginning of the special period in Cuba. And during that time, the United States was issuing fewer than 1,000 visas a year …” With President Bill Clinton leading the nation, Castro said, “In 1994, fewer than 1,000 people were allowed to leave the island legally with visas, and then about 5,000 or 6,000 left illegally, in order to take advantage of the Adjustment Act—despite Reagan’s promise to issue up to 20,000 visas a year.”

  People thought they could go to the United States, stay a year, and always be able to stay. The trouble was, they needed those visas to stay that year, and they weren’t getting them. Castro said, “The Adjustment Act has caused the loss of no one knows how many lives—thousands of lives. They never even report all the names of the people who reach [the United States], whether anyone died [in the crossing]—never! Cuba is the only country in the world that brutal law is applied to!”

  Castro has his own system in place for people leaving Cuba. He said, “For over 40 years, every person who leaves Cuba is an ‘exile,’ an ‘enemy of the socialist regime.’” Once you were gone, for Castro, it seemed you were dead; except then why make exceptions? It was a very confusing situation, but the issues and the animosity were not Castro’s alone. He explained, “For coming to Cuba or for any other violation of the blockade, an American citizen can be sent to prison. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s a fine of up to $250,000 for visiting Cuba without permission. The fine can be as much as a million dollars in the case of a corporation.”

  This was the case in the early 2000s; there had been another exodus, mainly of young people, under Raul Castro’s reign. In June 2010, U.S. and Cuban officials sat down to discuss the issue more closely, but the situation would not be quickly resolved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CASTRO IN AFRICA

  “I should tell you that while Cuba was in Angola and Angola was being invaded by South Africa, the United States made arrangements to transfer to South Africa racist, fascist South Africa—several atomic bombs, similar to those it exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which means that this war in Angola—this is something that people often forget—was fought by Cuban and Angolan soldiers against an army and a government that had right atom bombs, provided by the United States through that great supporter, that eternal supported of the blockade, Israel … [W]e took all precautions … that the South Africans were going to drop a nuclear weapon on our troops.”

  Che had been sent to the Congo in the mid 1960s, both to distract him from his fixation on Bolivia, and also to help the Congolese people fight for their independence from Belgian rule; overthrowing imperialism being a cause close to the Revolution’s heart. The situation in the Congo had been a mess, however, and Che returned after only several months of fighting. Later, he would address the UN. As Castro recalled, “In [Che Guevara’s] speech to the UN General Assembly on 11 December 1964, he had strongly denounced the American and Belgian aggression against the Congo. He said something like this—I am quoting from memory, ‘Every free man in the world must be ready to avenge the crime committed against the Congo.’”

  Che’s foray into the Congo wasn’t the first and wasn’t Cuba’s final foray into Africa, however. Recalled Castro, “In 1961—not two years after [our] victory, when the people of Algeria were still fighting for their independence—a Cuban ship took weapons to the Algerian patriots. And on its return to Cuba, brought back about 100 children who had been orphaned and wounded in the war.”

  It wasn’t only soldiers who were sent to Algeria. Castro said, “Several Cuban doctors were sent to Algeria to help the people there. And that was the way we started, 44 years ago, what is today and extraordinary medical collaboration with the nations of the third world.”

  After the intervention in the Congo, the Cubans would return, this time to deal with the bleak situation in South Africa. One of the most significant conflicts in Africa that Fidel got Cuba involved in was the Angola Civil War. In November 1975, Cuba joined the leftist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and by the end of 1975, the number of troops in Angola was more than 25,000. Castro said, “If you’re weak with security, you’re defeated. You have to be willing to send in all the forces needed, then an additional number of forces, twice or even three times the original number.”

  Castro was fully committed to the situation in Angola, and his devotion would win him a lifetime friendship with Nelson Mandela, himself a revolutionary who had been imprisoned for fighting for his beliefs, who ultimately came to power. Said Castro of his and Cuba’s involvement in Angola, “Our collaboration with the independence struggle in Angola and Guinea-Bissau began in 1965, and it consisted essentially of preparing fighting units and sending in instructors and material aid.”

  After one of the bloodier battles in Angola, Cuba opened its arms and its borders to children who had been affected in the Cassinga Massacre. As Castro recalled, “It was one of those actions on that war with the most causalities, counting both dead and wounded. But the massacre was stopped, and the hundreds of surviving or wounded children were brought to Cuba to recover. They were later enrolled in school, where they received their primary and middle school education. Some of them later graduated from Cuban universities,” he said. In fact, he said, “In 1978, … the survivors of the Cassinga Massacre arrived, the great majority of whom were children.”

  Castro’s devotion to helping out in Africa seems to stem from his ever-abiding sense of injustice and wanting basic human rights for all, though tinged with wanting to go against what the Americans and Europeans were doing. Castro said, “… I don’t think Cuba’s heroic solidarity with our sister nations in Africa has been well enough recognized. That glorious page of our revolutionary history deserves to be known, even if only to encourage the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are internationalist combatants … Nor, in my opinion, are people sufficiently knowledgeable about the history of Europe’s imperialist and neo-colonial looting and pillaging of Africa, with, of course, the full support of the United States and NATO.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CUBAN ECONOMICS

  “The country resisted, and it made considerable progress on the social front. Today, it has recovered more of its nutritional requirements and is making rapid progress on other fronts. And even under those conditions, the work done and the awareness created for years produced a miracle. Why did we resist? Because the Revolution had, has, and increasingly will have the support of a nation, an intelligent populace which is increasingly untied, educated, and combative.”

  Since the Revolution, Cuba has struggled with economic downturns on several occasions, though not necessarily more than other countries may have. Some of these downturns are directly related to policies, and politics; others have to do with the state of the world.

  First, some background on Cuban economics since the country won its independence. The Cuban War for Independence in the 1890s marked one of the first economic downturns, as Cuba struggled to break free from Spain and the sugar plantation, many American-owned at the time, suffered—and with it, the Cuban economy.

  During World War I, the demand for sugar rose, and Cuba became a major supplier and enjoyed a prosperous number of years, but the economy tanked again after the war when the demand leveled off. The sharp economic downturn suffered by the rest of the world as a result of the war didn’t help matters any, as Cuban sugar farmers, now in deep debt, lost their farms to foreclosure. The banks also found themselves in dire straits.

  By the late 1920s, the economy was back on an upswing, but not for everyone. Student groups, including Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU) (the Federation of University Students), a group that Castro himself would become involved in, were formed, as was a desire on behalf of those not succeeding to do something about corruption in the government under President Gerardo Machado. Labor unions
were started and the Communist Party of Cuba was formed in 1925 as a result of workers seeking revolution.

  A situation of political unrest and a labor strike in 1933 led to U.S. intervention, via an ambassador sent from FDR. Machado was overthrown, Batista took control of the army, and Ramon Grau become the new head of the government, though his leadership would be short-lived because it wasn’t recognized by the U.S. government. Batista appointed Carlos Mendieta, who was recognized, and the economy stabilized.

  Then Batista came to power for the first time. Under Batista, the economy was good. During this presidency, he promoted social welfare and even had the support of the Communist Party. After his run, however, he went into exile in the U.S., first depleting the treasury and making it difficult for the newly elected president, Ramon Grau again, to govern.

  This period, the early 1940s, is significant here as Castro was in school at the time, forming his ideas about the world and how things should be running, especially when it came to Cuba. The Grau government was corrupt, and essentially took money from the people. He was “replaced” via military coup, with Batista taking over and the economy thriving for those in power, and squashing others. This was where Castro came in.

  The first years of the Revolution were not easy economically as social reform and nationalization were being ironed out, but soon the economy was back on its feet. Castro made friends with the USSR in the 1960s, and despite cutting off trade with the U.S. and others, and with some dips here and there, kept the Cuban economy stable over the years. When sugar prices dropped, the economy grew with tourism and through other means throughout the 1970s and 1980s.