Fidel Castro Read online

  Down with Batista, up with the people! 1959 was a brand-new year, and the people of Cuba—at least, the poorest among them—were hot with anticipation for a brand-new beginning. Gone were the years of oppression. Now was the time for all to prosper, not just the middle and especially the upper classes. But that was another story. For the peasants, a new day was about to dawn on a country that had for nearly a decade been oppressed by a tyrant who himself had been under the control of capitalist interests at any costs, including the prosperity and lives of his own people.

  All that was over now; even those who remained from the old regime had to respect the way the Rebels took back the country and fell in line. It was an “irregular” war, but Castro and his compañeros claimed victory without crossing lines. They abided by the laws of war, and for that, they had earned respect. As Castro said,

  “When an enemy comes to respect and even admire their adversary, you’ve won a great psychological victory. They admire you because you’ve managed to defeat them, because you’ve hit them hard but at the same time respected them, because you haven’t humiliated them, you haven’t insulted them, and especially because you haven’t murdered.”

  Castro stood firm in that notion. He and his guerrilla force never acted like terrorists. They weren’t traditionalists, but they played the game the right way.

  Speaking of playing the game the right way, it was time to get a new government in order. To that end, Castro had to evaluate what was already in place and decide who stayed and who didn’t. It’s surprising that the entire government was not overturned, but Castro was smarter than that. He knew, especially in terms of having gained respect from those who had opposed him, that some of these people would be assets to him. “I was able to overlook that political disloyalty,” Castro said. “There was no vanity in me whatsoever—what should and always did prevail was modesty and unity in the conduct of those who aspire to change society and the world. I employed calm and equanimity in seeking unity in very difficult circumstances.”

  Now that Cuba had no ruler, it was time for someone to be in charge, and naturally, because of his leading an army to overthrow Batista, most believed that Castro himself would be the one to take over. That wasn’t Castro’s plan, however. At least not right away. Castro said, “I had said that I had no desire to be president—I wanted to show that I hadn’t been in the struggle for personal interest. We also looked for a candidate, and we chose a magistrate who’d been against Batista, who’d actually acquitted revolutionaries who came before him in an important trial.”

  In fact, it was decided as early as April 1958 that this appointee, in whom Fidel had the utmost faith, would lead, but his reign would not last for long. Manuel Urrutia Lleó, a liberal Cuban lawyer and politician, had been a help to Castro in moving the revolution along in several ways. For one, in 1957, he had won a case in which he defended members of the movement who were being accused of being involved in anti-government activities. The following year, he traveled to the U.S. seeking support and managing to stop shipment of weapons to Batista and his men. Because of his actions, as well as his being an “educated liberal Christian,” he was considered a good choice to lead the country, especially when it came to diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, especially the United States.

  But as soon as he came to power, he started doing things the people were not crazy about, like closing brothels and halting the national lottery. The people weren’t happy, and neither was Castro. The next month, Fidel was installed as prime minister, and with that took most of the power of the president. They were opposed on almost everything, including elections (Urrutia was in favor, Castro opposed) and Urrutia was becoming less significant by the day. Then, when Urrutia was accused of being frivolous with money, including purchasing a luxury villa while peasants starved, as well as speaking out against communism, the handwriting was on the wall. Just six months in, he was done when his resignation was demanded by the head of the Sugar Workers. He resigned and left for the United States.

  Castro said, “The satisfaction of the struggle, pride in the struggle and its eventual success, victory, is a prize much greater than any government position, and when I said I wasn’t interested in being president, I did so after great deliberation.” But having been installed as prime minister almost immediately after the old regime was overturned, and ensuring that this position held as much, or, realistically, more than the position of president, it’s easy to understand why folks have been dubious of Castro’s intentions.

  In any case, in July 1959, after Urrutia’s farewell, Osvaldo Dorticós was appointed the new president. A wealthy lawyer who strongly opposed Batista, he, like Urrutia, was a friend to the movement. Already appointed minister of revolutionary laws in Castro’s cabinet, he had played an important role in re-writing the laws of Cuba and had proven to Castro to be a strength and not an adversary, someone who could act as a figurehead for the nation while Castro pulled all the strings.

  Dorticós handled the scene around the world, while Castro kept his focus on Cuba. It was Dorticós who represented Cuba in the Summit of Non-Aligned Nations in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1961, and in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in 1962 at the Summit of the Organization of American States. Most significantly, it was Dorticós who gave the historic, fear-inducing speech at the UN that Cuba was in possession of nuclear weapons, and hoped never to use them. But that’s another story …

  For the next nearly 15 years, Castro and Doriticos would rule together, with Castro firmly in charge of things. It wasn’t until 1976, when Castro implemented the new Cuban constitution, that Castro would become head of state and Dorticós would be demoted to president of the National Bank and a member of the Council of State, and Castro held absolute power in Cuba.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MILITARY TRIBUNALS

  “It wasn’t a Roman circus, you understand, it wasn’t a basketball stadium, and that was used [against us] by the empire’s publicity machine. We created tribunals that carried out our traditional trials and punished those who committed war crimes.”

  Castro’s military tribunals were a source of controversy and was part of the reason Castro and his followers were seen in a very negative light, as violence-craving animals who didn’t give fair trials and who reveled in the suffering of others. Not necessarily the case, though it was important to take action against those who had brutalized so many others. They needed to be brought to justice, for the good of the people. It had to happen, Castro said, “Because the crimes committed by Batista’s thugs and henchmen, those people who thought they could get away with anything, had been horrible. And if there were no lynchings, no bloodbaths, it was because of our insistence and our promise: ‘War criminals will be brought to justice and punished, as examples.’”

  So, to that end, while Batista hid out in the comfy embrace of his allies in the Dominican Republic, the people who worked for him and who followed him—hundreds of soldiers, policemen, and agents—paid for his sins, and their sins in following him. Brought up on charges that included torture and murder, these Batista supporters were publicly tried for human rights abuses and other war crimes.

  Fidel and friends did not take down all Batista supporters, but the ones who were pulled down came down with great impact. For example, La Cabana Fortress, an 18th-century fortress complex on the Harbor in Havana, was taken over by rebel forces in January 1959, and Che Guevara took charge for roughly six months of what was to now act as a military prison. Here, war criminals, informants, and others were tried and executed.

  While Raul Castro was third-in-command, and had been since Che came on board and worked his way to becoming second-in-command, displacing Raul, Raul had not had a lot of victories to claim in battle. But in Santiago, he made his mark. There, Raul Castro and his men seized the city, along with more than 70 of Batista’s men. The men were first captured and kept as POWs, and then, at Fidel’s behest and Raul’s command, were publicly executed.

  So some were tr
ied and convicted and executed, and some never even got a trial to begin with. Even when there were trials, however, there was controversy.

  It wasn’t so much that these trials were taking place that was the issue, however. It was the way it was happening. Castro pointed out that the methods were not unusual under the circumstance: “No one says that this may have been the only revolution in which the main war criminals were tried and brought to justice, the only revolution that didn’t rob or steal, didn’t drag people through the streets, didn’t take revenge, didn’t take justice into its own hands. No one was ever lynched here. Not that some people wouldn’t have liked to.”

  In fact, many were not tried at all, nor executed. Many of Batista’s men had actually been spared. Some were permitted to simply leave the country; others were exiled as military attaches. Yet others were allowed not only to stay, but were also given positions in the new regime, as pointed out in the previous chapter.

  Perhaps the biggest issue with the tribunals was the public nature of what was going on—that all these punishments for horrors were, in fact, horrors in and of themselves. The first trials were organized and put on at the Sports Palace stadium before an audience of 17,000 spectators. Castro said: “I think the error may have been in the manner, shall we say, that those trials were conducted, using public places and allowing the proceedings to be attended by a great number of our countrymen who were justly outraged by the thousands of crimes that had been committed. That might be in conflict, and in fact was in conflict, without our ideas of justice.”

  Many of the trials were carried out in a baseball stadium and anyone off the street could just come in and watch the action. Thousands of people crowded in to see justice done to their persecutors. That it had become a spectacle instead of a vehicle of justice was the crux of the criticism, or so Castro believed. “[The way the trials went over] was very much exploited in the United States. We lost no time in rectifying what was unquestionably a mistake. But those guilty of genocide were tried and punished according to laws that had been passed down long before the Revolution, during the war. We don’t regret having done it, although I do feel pity when I remember how bitter it must have been for [the accused] to experience the hatred that the people quite rightly felt for them because of their repugnant crimes.”

  As all this was going on, Castro knew it wasn’t going to last, and he knew the people, revenge-obsessed and bloodthirsty as they seemed, could not maintain this frenzied height of delight in the ghoulish punishments of their persecutors for long. As Castro related, “Thugs who commit monstrous crimes anywhere, almost everybody thinks should be severely punished, but when the time comes and the [criminal] is sentenced and is about to be executed, there are people who react with sadness and even with pity.” It was time to wrap it up.

  Eventually, the tribunals ended, and it was time to re-shape and restructure the government into something that Castro believed would truly benefit the people. Not all the people felt this way, however. As mentioned earlier, many in the upper and middle classes fled Cuba, not wanting to live in Castro’s Cuba, and feeling like it wouldn’t be long until he was overthrown by another uprising, and they could return. Many, if not most, of these Cubans never returned.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RELIGION, RACE, & REVOLUTION

  “I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.”

  Two hot-button topics that arise in regards to Castro’s Revolution are religion and race. Were Castro and his men anti-religion? Was racism an issue in the Revolution, and where did Castro and his followers stand on that?

  First, religion. Castro was born into a Catholic family. His mother, Lina, was very religious, and raised her children as such. The young Castro made all his sacraments, and was schooled by the Jesuits. But while he would “sort of” return to the faith later in life, religion had no place in Revolution. He was a strong believer in the division between church and state, and he felt that religious people did not have their priorities straight when it came to governing.

  Castro said, “The principle was established that religious believers would not be allowed to enter into the party’s ranks. Believers might be treated with every consideration and respect with regard to their political position, but they couldn’t become a member of the Party. And don’t think it didn’t take work, years, to come to the decision that we had to open the Party’s doors to religious nonbelievers.”

  For that, among other things, Castro was considered “godless,” and many believed his Revolution was anti-religious, versus what it was in reality: areligious, like asexual. It wan’t against religion; it just didn’t apply religion as a factor. It was especially part of how the United States attacked him. Castro said, “It was in the interest of the government of the United States to portray the Cuban Revolution as an anti-religious revolution, based on the conflicts that occurred in the first few years and forced us to take certain measures.”

  But because it was such an emotional issue for such a deeply Catholic nation, he got a lot of criticism for taking action against Catholic institutions, when in fact, it was all part and parcel of the bigger picture. Castro explained, “We nationalized all education, not just the Catholic schools. This is a radical, profound revelation, those are the words I use for it, and I can justify and show why—but there was not a single priest executed …” Castro went on to say that this was, in fact, one of the only revolutions in which priests were not executed.

  Later in life, Castro would become more flexible about religion in politics, and even come to embrace certain aspects of his own Christian upbringing. As early as 1992, he would begin referring to Cuba as secular, versus atheist. He would become interested in developing a new consciousness when it came to religious thinking, “built by adding together more than just one revolutionary thought and the best ethical and humane ideas of more than one religion, of all authentic religions … the sum total of the preaching of many political thinkers, of many schools and of many religions.” But for the time being, religion had no place in his Revolution.

  Race was another story, however. Race was part of the reason the Revolution needed to be fought, as there were no people as oppressed in Cuba as much as the blacks of the nation were oppressed. Castro spoke out regularly against racism, explaining that, “For us revolutionaries, fighting racial discrimination has been a sacred principle.”

  A little background on blacks in Cuba. During the slave trade, roughly 900,000 Africans were brought to Cuba, versus approximately 470,000 to what is now the United States—about twice as many. The population of Cuba during the Revolution and now reflects that, with blacks making up approximately 40 percent of the population. So they are barely a minority. Yet racism, especially pre-Revolution, had been rabid, and it was a huge fighting principle for Castro and his revolutionaries. He explained, “Scientific research has tried to show what the differences are between the various ethnic groups, and it hasn’t come up with anything, except little things that have nothing to do whatsoever with talent. Science has come to the aid of those who fight against racism. Yet while science has incontestably shown the true intellectual equality of all human beings, discrimination still exists.”

  So reradicating racism was one of the objectives of the Revolution. With the equality Castro and company fought so hard to instill, there could be no racism because all Cubans would be equal. Right? Not really. The effects did not impact racism as much as he would have liked, Castro said. “The Revolution, over and above the rights and guarantees achieved for all its citizens of whatever ethnic background or origin, has not had the same success in its fight to eradicate the differences in social and financial statuses for the black population of the country. Blacks don’t live in the best houses; you find that they still have the hardest, most physically wearing and often worst-paid jobs and that they receive much less help from their family members no longer in Cuba, in dollars,
than their white compatriots.”

  Castro had worked for decades to overturn racism in Cuba, but even today, with the population of blacks teetering over 50 percent, there are still issues. Castro said, “At the time we were naive enough to believe that decreeing total and absolute equality under the law would put an end to discrimination. Because there are two types of discrimination—one is subjective and the other is objective.” It was this subjective discrimination that Castro still rallied against more than forty years after the fight began. While the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States started to change opinions, there was still much work to be done.

  One of the main cause-and-effect issues Castro sees with regard to racism is that it promulgates crime. While there is racism, there is less opportunity for education for blacks. and while blacks are less educated, they are more inclined towards criminal activity. Castro explained, “You’d be amazed if you saw how many young people between 20 and 30 years old—and we’re doing further research on this—are in prison, where, despite the enormous number of professionals and intellectuals in this country, only 2 percent of those in prison are the children of professionals and intellectuals.” His point was that the more educational opportunities there are for blacks, the more inclined they will be to pursue professions like law and medicine, and the less likely they will end up behind bars having committed petty—and not so petty—crimes to try to survive.

  Castro said, “We have discovered that there is an inverse relation between knowledge, culture, and crime; for example, the greater the knowledge, culture, and access to university education, the less crime.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CASTRO’S SOCIAL REFORM

  “At the time, no one believed in any program put forth by any Cuban revolutionary, because lots of them had put forth programs and none of them had followed through on them, Our problem, actually, was that we over-followed through on them.”