Contents
A Note of Thanks
Acknowledgments
Preface to the English Edition
1 The Heroic Myth
2 The Young Fidel
Among Jesuits
Among gangsters
3 The Young Revolutionary
Storm and stress: Moncada
“Che,” the Argentinean
Stormy crossing on the Granma
A guerrillero in the Sierra Maestra
321 against 10,000
4 The Young Victor
Communists and “barbudos”
1,500 revolutionary laws
5 Old Enemies, New Friends
The great powers at the gates
The CIA, the Mafia, and the Bay of Pigs
Fidelismo
“Mongoose” and “Anadyr”
Thirteen days on the brink of a third world war
Three gamblers
6 The Long March with Che
Moscow, Beijing, and Havana
The new man
The demise of Che
7 Bad Times, Good Times
War and peace with Moscow
Ten million tons
Into the Third World
The revolution devours its children
8 Alone against All
Exodus to Florida
Rectificacion and perestroika
The Soviet imperium collapses
The brother’s power
War economy in peacetime
9 The Eternal Revolutionary
Class struggle on a dollar basis
Cuba and the global policeman
Castro, God, and the Pope
Freedom or “socialismo tropical”
10 Don Quixote and History
Notes
Bibliography
Index
For Annette
Copyright © this translation Polity Press 2004.
Originally published under the title FIDEL CASTRO Eine Biografie
© 2001 by Kindler Verlag GmbH Berlin (Germany)
© 2001, 2004 by Volker Skierka, Hamburg (Germany)
First published in 2004 by Polity Press.
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Skierka, Volker, 1952–
[Fidel Castro. English]
Fidel Castro : a biography / Volker Skierka; translated by Patrick Camiller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7456-3006-5 (hb : alk. paper)
1. Castro, Fidel, 1926– 2. Cuba – History – 1933–1959.
3. Cuba – History – 1959– 4. Heads of state – Cuba – Biography.
I. Title.
F1788.22.C3S5413 2004
972.9106′4′092–dc21 2003013215
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk
A Note of Thanks
My interest in Fidel Castro, one of the most fascinating of all twentieth-century personalities, was first awakened in 1990, when I traveled from Havana to Santiago de Cuba and visited his remote and idyllic birthplace near Birán in eastern Cuba, only to be cordially but firmly sent on my way by men in uniform. The idea of this book eventually began to emerge after another trip to Cuba, for the weekly Die Zeit and the Berlin Deutschlandradio station, in connection with the papal visit in early 1998. It occurred to me then that there was virtually a US monopoly on reference material concerning Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Since much of the existing literature betrayed all manner of prejudices, and since there was growing interest in the subject in Europe, I therefore thought that the time had come to investigate the character and life of Fidel Castro within a European perspective.
Uwe Naumann enthused himself and myself for what was initially conceived as quite a small volume. It has since grown larger, and this too is thanks to Uwe Naumann. In his role as editor, he proved a patient yet demanding adviser and companion, one I could scarcely value more highly.
Nina Grabe from Hamburg did me a great service with her competent work on the bibliography and index, as well as her copy-editing of the text. The librarian Brigitte Waldeck and the Latin American expert Wolfgang Grenz, both from the Institut für Iberoamerika–Kunde in Hamburg, generously helped me locate a large amount of reference material. I would also like to make special mention of the unbureaucratic support given me by Frau Kmezik from the Political Archive of the Foreign Office in Berlin, Frau Sylvia Gräfe from the Stiftung Archiv und Massenorganisationen der DDR at the German Federal Archives, and the specialists responsible for the papers of the former East German State Security. Numerous people with whom I had contact during my trips to Cuba were also of great assistance. Although I lacked support in official quarters, I was able to gain access in other ways to invaluable source material. I should also stress, however, that the Cuban embassy in Berlin made considerable efforts to supply me with up-to-date material and to help organize my trips to Cuba. Dr Georg Treffz and Dr Reinhold Huber, former ambassadors in Havana of the Federal Republic of Germany, gave me a great deal of advice and practical support at every level.
I am exceptionally grateful to Jürgen Meier-Beer, whose critical advice, as the first reader of the manuscript, helped me decisively in completing the final draft. I am glad that Susanne Gratius from the Institut für Iberoamerika–Kunde in Hamburg took the trouble to go through the galleys. I shall never forget the critical companionship and advice of numerous friends, and would like to thank them all in singling out Wilhelm Wiegreffe and Axel Schmidt-Gödelitz from our “Gödelitz Rambling Society.”
My greatest thanks, however, are due to my family: to my wife Annette for her always intelligent, stimulating and encouraging companionship in the course of the project, and to our two daughters Antonia-Sophie and Isabel-Marie for their loving patience and forbearance.
Volker Skierka
Acknowledgments
The author and publishers would also like to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC for Herberto Padilla, “Instructions for Joining a New Society,” from A Fountain, A House of Stone: Poems by Herberto Padilla, translated by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman. Translation copyright © 1991 by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Preface to the English Edition
It is not easy to write the biography of a still living figure from contemporary history, especially when, like Fidel Castro, he still guides the fate of his country with unbroken authority. No cooperation was received, nor indeed to be expected, from the Cuban revolutionary leader. But that also had its advantages, since it meant that he did not make the slightest attempt to influence the content or even express any wish to give it the kind of imprimatur that usually harms a book’s credibility. The author’s first close personal encounter with his subject occurred only in February 2002 in Havana, a year after publication of the first German edition.
It looks today as if 2003 will be
an important year in Cuban history, marking as it does two anniversaries that play a significant role in Cuban national consciousness: the birth 150 years ago, on January 28, 1853, of the national hero José Martí, who led the island into its victorious struggle for liberation from Spain; and the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, a hundred years later on July 26, 1953, when a hundred offspring of the middle classes signaled the birth of the second Cuban Revolution which, less than six years later, would lead the island out of its dependence on the power that took over from the Spanish almost immediately after their defeat in 1898, the United States of America.
Although Fidel Castro, 77 in 2003, has aged together with his revolution, he continues in the new millennium to claim a role for himself not only as initiator of the revolution, spiritual heir of Martí and therefore savior and protector of national independence, but also as a steadfast guide for the socialist future of Cuba after his death. Thus in 2002, when an opposition group took the bold initiative of collecting signatures in favor of greater political openness, reforms, and free elections, he simply had the socialist form of state hammered into the Constitution as irreversible, at a time when three-quarters of the population of 11 million or more had been born since the victory of the revolution in 1959.
The highly individual, socialist-nationalist “fidelista” system, whose development was not at all to Moscow’s liking, persisted into the new millennium as the most stable conception of anticapitalism since World War II – even though it showed some cracks and was crumbling at the edges, and even though it was increasingly doubtful whether Castro’s charisma and historical authority would long survive him. As it happened, Castro’s Cuba also gained new popularity in 2003 from the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of Che Guevara, that eternal cult figure of the Cuban Revolution and trans-ideological pop hero, who was killed in the Bolivian jungle in 1967 and had once been his closest comrade and friend. For some time Castro has been the world’s longest-serving head of government, and despite numerous assassination attempts he has outlasted nearly all his opponents, as well as their successors.
For all its exemplary achievements in social and educational policy and in speaking up for the interests of the Third World, Cuba’s political system did not appear in the eyes of the First World to meet the standards of a pluralist society. Yet the European countries, which had become indispensable economic partners for Cuba, made considerable efforts to reach a modus vivendi with the regime. Whereas the USA since the early sixties pursued an absurd embargo and thereby strengthened Castro’s system – the opposite of its intended result – most countries of the Old World plus Canada wagered on “gradual change through rapprochement,” especially after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet withdrawal from Cuba; this was supposed, even in a period of growing economic problems, to open a way out of the isolation inflicted on Cuba by itself and by others. The EU thereby showed a greater awareness of its responsibility to the Cuban people than did the successive governments in Washington. In fact, after decades of fruitless debate, the United States still has no convincing idea for a post-Castro Cuba.
In May 2002 Nobel prizewinner Jimmy Carter finally attempted to break down the rigid US posture towards Cuba, becoming the first (former) US president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to make a trip of several days to the island. Hopes began to grow for an easing of internal and external tensions when Castro, as a kind of welcoming gift, ordered the release of prominent dissident Vladimiro Roca two months before the end of his five-year sentence. Moreover, like Pope John Paul II in 1998, Carter was able to criticize the lack of civil liberties and to argue for democratic reforms, in a Spanish-language speech at Havana University that was broadcast uncensored on Cuban state television. After the revolution of 1959, he complained, Cuba “adopted a socialist government where … people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements.” Its “constitution recognizes freedom of speech and association, but other laws deny these freedoms to those who disagree with the government.” While also criticizing the human rights situation in the United States, where the death penalty was applied much more harshly than in Cuba, Carter advised the Cuban government, as a gesture of good will, to accept the demand of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights for an observer to be allowed into the country.1
In a discussion afterwards, the visitor even referred to the “Varela Project” (named after a Catholic priest from the nineteenth-century independence struggle), a petition for greater civil liberties that had been submitted to the National Assembly together with a list of 11,000 signatures, about which the Cuban media had maintained almost total silence. Carter praised Osvaldo Payá’s initiative in using a right granted to citizens under the Constitution to propose new legislation, which amounted to a demand for freedom of association, speech and publication, an amnesty for political prisoners, permission for private enterprise, free choice of occupation, and a new election law. In December 2002 Payá, a member of the oppositional Christian Liberation Movement, was awarded the EU Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought at a ceremony in Strasbourg. The Cuban government naturally countered by organizing its own collection of signatures, in which 98.9 percent of people on the electoral register were officially reported to have declared that the country’s economic, political, and social system was “inviolable.” This laid the basis for a decision a few days later by the Cuban Parliament to make socialism an irreversible part of the Constitution. But, although this “neutralized” the main thrust of the “Varela Project” at the time of Carter’s visit, the fact that the government had not prevented the collection of signatures raised hopes that greater tolerance would be shown towards critics of the regime. “When Cubans exercise this freedom to change laws peacefully by a direct vote,” Carter suggested, “the world will see that Cubans, and not foreigners, will decide the future of this country.”2
Like the Pope before him, Carter also criticized US policy towards Cuba and called on Washington to abandon an attitude that had borne no fruit for more than 40 years. “It is time for us to change our relationship… . Because the United States is the most powerful nation, we should take the first step. First, my hope is that Congress will soon act to permit unrestricted travel… and to repeal the embargo.”3 But Carter’s appeal was hardly likely to be taken up: the Bush family is traditionally linked to Castro’s most violent opponents in the United States, and the president’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, has long had the closest of contacts with militant Cuban exile circles. In a move designed not least to take the wind out of Carter’s sails, the White House immediately announced that it intended to step up the economic pressure on Cuba and to increase its political isolation. Already, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Cuba had been bracketed together with Taliban-style “rogue states” and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And, before Carter left for Havana, a top State Department official had raised the stakes by spreading the rumor that Castro was developing biological weapons. No evidence, even fabricated or “sexed up,” could be produced for such an allegation; Castro even invited Carter to have inspections carried out by experts on weapons for mass destruction. In the end, both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell could do nothing other than dissociate themselves from the claim.
The extent to which Castro, with his lifelong consistency, can be a bearer of hope for people in Latin America and the Third World was once more demonstrated during his 48-hour visit to Buenos Aires in May 2002 to attend the inauguration of Argentina’s newly elected president, Néstor Kirchner. The trip to the homeland of his old comrade-in-arms, Che Guevara, turned into a triumphal march. The media vied with one another in reporting the visit, so that behind the scenes the generals began to murmur about the new president and had to be called to order by him. Kirchner seemed as surprised as Castro. Thus, when the news spread that the Máximo Líder intended to give a speech to 800 invited guests in the great hall of the
law faculty, tens of thousands of people hurried to turn up there, bringing the city center to a halt and almost making it impossible for Castro himself to get through. In the end, the event had to take place several hours late and in the open air, spontaneously broadcast live on radio and television. Castro temporarily put in the shade not only President Kirchner but also two other guests present in Buenos Aires: Brazil’s new and popular president, Lula da Silva, and the despotic Venezuelan leader and friend of Castro’s, Hugo Chávez. After several decades, and in an age when ticker-tape welcomes are a thing of the past because the streets can no longer be lined with enough people, Castro alone can still attract a large enough crowd even on a trip abroad. All he has to do is let himself be seen – his long, tiring speeches notwithstanding.
The trip to Argentina took place at a time when the world political situation and the battered international reputation of the Bush administration had to some extent made the climate in Latin America more friendly to Castro. At a time when security and familiar bearings were increasingly being taken away from people, especially in the Third World, Castro again suddenly came through as a man who had remained true to himself and whose astute analyses and criticisms somehow struck many as well-grounded – even if things were more complicated than he made them out to be. Has not the neoliberal economic policy ordered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which was supposed to bring Latin America higher growth and greater economic and political stability, ultimately had the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer? After the bacchanal of privatization, which often mainly enriched the privatizers and their cronies, are not Argentina and many other countries now left with empty coffers to pick up the pieces? Everywhere people are seething, because the clever prescriptions ordered by the First World are having no effect. For a long time there has been a new leftward tendency in these countries. The election of the left-wing workers’ leader and friend of Castro’s, Lula da Silva, to the Brazilian presidency is one expression of this trend, as was that of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In Peru the supposedly defeated terrorist organization, Sendero Luminoso, is stirring once again. The US-backed “Plan Colombia,” with its large dollar resources to stem the drugs trade and the limitless violence in that country, has all but broken down. Central America is facing complete economic bankruptcy. Many grand promises and hopes that Washington offered these countries through long years of civil war to keep them politically compliant have come to nothing. Even well-disposed Latin Americans therefore thought it simply grotesque when the government of Bush, Jr, asked for trouble by appointing as its top official on Latin America the militant Cuban exile Otto Reich, a man infamous from the days of Bush, Sr, in connection with the US-funded contra mercenaries in Central America. Sure enough, these premonitions were confirmed when it became clear that the US embassy in Caracas had been mixed up in an attempted putsch by pro-US economic circles against the undoubtedly autocratic and, even inside Venezuela, rather unappealing President Chávez – an adventure that failed because of the amateurish way in which it had been prepared.
Fidel Castro Page 1
