Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant

by Humberto Fontova

  One former guerrilla comrade, Huber Matos, (who later served twenty-five years in Castro’s dungeons for the crime of having taken Castro’s “democratic” and “humanistic” blather seriously) remembered what Fidel was like in “combat.” “Fidel and I were on a hill in the Sierra and a Batista plane suddenly appeared—but way off, looked like a speck. Well, it dove and started shooting, strafing something below it. The plane was so far off and doing so little shooting I thought nothing of it,” recalls Matos. “So I continued talking while watching the plane. Well, I’d been talking for quite a while and hadn’t heard a word from Fidel—which is extremely strange. So I look around.... Where in the hell?

  “Fidel was nowhere to be found. So I went back to the cave that served as our little encampment at the time—and there he was, huddled at the far side, trying to drink coffee with his hands shaking like castanets.”3

  That’s the real Castro, but the useful idiots keep lining up to praise him. Take Norman Mailer’s breathless ode to Fidel: “You are the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the Second World War. It’s as if the ghost of Cortez had appeared in our century riding Zapata’s white horse.”4

  Take the perfumed love letter that Frank Mankiewicz, George McGovern’s campaign manager, wrote about the Maximum Leader: “One of the most charming men I’ve ever met! Castro is personally overpowering. It’s much more than charisma. Castro remains one of the few truly electric personalities in a world where his peers seem dull.”5

  Take leftist professor Saul Landau: “As Fidel spoke, I could feel a peculiar sensation in his presence. It’s as if I am meeting with a new force of nature. Here is a man so filled with energy he is almost a different species. Power radiates from him.”6

  Castro the cowardly murderer—the real Castro—gives that spirit to the Castroite military. When it was sent to Angola, it emulated Che Guevara in desastre (disaster) and fracaso (complete failure) in its fight against the Unita (pro-Western) Angolan rebels and the South Africans (mostly black troops, by the way). Castro sent fifty thousand troops to Angola and got routed by the South Africans, who never had more than four thousand. According to Castro air force defector Rafael del Pino, Cuban MiGs actually had orders to avoid dogfights—to skedaddle at top speed—at the mere sighting of a South African Mirage. The MiGs’ strict role was ground support, which is to say, strafing and bombing defenseless villages. In any other role they were blown from the skies like skeet.7

  One story in Cuban defector Juan Benemelis’s book Castro: Terror and Subversion in Africa was a gem. A few weeks after getting to Angola, the swaggering Cuban general Raul Diaz Arguelles snapped on his holster, affected a Pattonesque scowl, and mounted an armored vehicle with some fellow officers. They were off to the front. They’d arrived to kick enemy butt. They’d show Unita’s Jonas Savimbi and those South Africans the tactical brilliance of Castroite officers. Within hours a South African patrol ambushed him. With a well-aimed bazooka blast they sent the mighty Arguelles and his toadies spinning through the air like those human cannonballs you see at the circus, which is fitting. Castroite commanders have always been more clowns than soldiers. They make Groucho Marx in Duck Soup look like Hannibal.

  The few Castroite victories in Angola came from saturation barrages of Soviet rockets and artillery against poorly armed villagers, and in some cases, the Castroites used poison gas. As reported by Evans & Novak in 1988, quoting Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx, senior United Nations consultant on chemical warfare, “There is no doubt of it: Cubans used nerve gases against the troops of Mr. Jonas Savimbi in Angola.”

  In 1936, Benito Mussolini used gas against Ethiopians and caught hell from the League of Nations. Castro does the same—Angolan civilian casualties ran to half a million—and the League’s successor appoints him to its Human Rights Commission!

  Outside of the United Nations, the media, and liberal bastions, the Castroites always lose. In Nicaragua, a handful of Contras with a trickle of American aid sent the Castroites scurrying home. In Grenada, U.S. Marines and Rangers swept the floor with them. And the list of routs goes on. Three thousand Castro troops served with the Syrians in the Yom Kippur War, five hundred of them manning T-55 tanks along the Golan Heights. Yet within a week of its lightning surprise attack on Israel to storm its capital, the Syrian government was scrambling to evacuate from its own capital, Damascus. The Israeli forces (a tiny fraction of the Syrian/Cuban forces’ size) counterattacked, blasted Castro’s tanks into a smoldering scrap pile, and rolled over them like a speed bump.

  What accounts for such unconquerable imbecility? How does one explain so incessant a string of blunders by such an endless parade of donkeys as those who infest Castro’s military, you ask? Can’t a few competent commanders emerge? Wouldn’t the law of averages allow for it?

  First off, Castro’s troops are hapless draftees who probably detest the regime as much as anyone in Miami. They have no stake in its wars. But mainly, it’s the rampant megalomania and paranoia of their commander in chief that accounts for the Cuban military’s astounding stupidities and failures. Communist armies in general and Castroite armies in particular promote officers not on battlefield merit but strictly on political reliability, which is to say on lackeyism and cowardice.

  Some say there was an exception in Arnaldo Ochoa. He was supposedly a “brilliant” commander in Angola, but in the Castroite military “brilliant” actually means “not quite a complete moron.” Call him a Cuban McClellan. There were hints that he possessed courage and could think for himself. In 1989, Castro got wind of these alarming rumors and sprang to action. He slapped Ochoa with bogus charges of smuggling and murdered him in front of a firing squad.

  This Communist promotion policy acts as a foolproof filter against courage, brains, intrepidness—the very things valued by the armies of free nations. Saddam Hussein’s army did the same.

  But Fidel has taught the world that reality doesn’t matter. Murder, impoverish, tyrannize a country’s people at your peril, but proclaim yourself a Communist, and the international liberal jet set will just love you.

  And so will America’s self-proclaimed “black leadership,” which somehow knows more about Cuba than all those neighboring Haitians who pile aboard floating junk heaps hoping to make it to Florida, where, if they survive the journey, might make a living scrubbing congealed grease and burnt macaroni off pots for minimum wage. Don’t these Haitians realize that Shangri-La lies a scant sixty miles to their west?

  Haven’t they heard Jesse Jackson singing the praises of the Maximum Leader? These Haitians must be oblivious to TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson: “Cuba has universal health care and education and an infant mortality rate half that of Washington, D.C.”8 They probably missed Robinson proclaiming: “Whatever kind of race problem still exists in Cuba is dwarfed by the race problem that we have to contend with in the United States.”

  Didn’t they hear pastor Calvin Butts welcome Fidel to Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, saying: “It is in our tradition to welcome all who are visionaries, revolutionaries, and who seek the liberation of all people. God bless you, Fidel!”

  Regarding the Harlem church lovefest, I’ll quote directly from the People’s Weekly World: “The mainly African American audience, which included New York Democratic representatives Charles Rangel and Nydia Velasquez, enthusiastically greeted the Communist leader with a ten-minute standing ovation. Chants of ‘Cuba, si! Embargo, no!’ resounded from the rafters and sent a strong message of protest to New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.”

  Then the walls shook with shrieks of “Fidel! Viva Fidel!” You see, Elombe Brath, head of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition and chair for the meeting, asked the audience, “Who would you rather come to Harlem? Fidel or Giuliani?”

  “Fidel!” they erupted. “Fidel! Viva Fidel!”

  (Funny how, judging by emigration, poor black Haitians seem to prefer Giuliani.)

  Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel might be useful idiots for Fidel, but back in 1959,
Harlem’s representative in Congress, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., knew better. He counseled the U.S. State Department: “If I were an American businessman I would pull out as fast I could.... Those who think Che Guevara is just a nice guy are badly mistaken. He’s a definite Communist. . . . And he and Castro are already cooking up invasions of neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic.”9 Congressman Powell had just returned from a visit to Cuba and was reporting his concerns to the State Department.

  The facts about Cuba’s dictator stack up, but so do the liberal waffles. Starting in 2002, with the “lift the embargo” campaign under full steam, American “fact-finding” missions started popping up in Havana almost weekly. Governor Jesse Ventura, Senator Chris Dodd, former president Jimmy Carter, and many others gathered valuable info and insights, had eye-opening encounters, and concluded that lifting the embargo would work inexorably toward Castro’s doom.

  In summer 2002, the Center for International Policy organized a fact-finding junket for the likes for the likes of Congressman Ed Pastor (D-Arizona), Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-California), Congressman Cal Dooley (D-California) and former secretary of agriculture (under Clinton) Dan Glickman. Here are some of the facts found.

  “The fact-finding trip gave us all a broader view of the situation in Cuba. Castro remains a striking and charismatic figure at age seventy-seven. He was hospitable and curious.... Cuba has offered to help the U.S. with drug interdiction and has made important breakthroughs in biotechnology research that could benefit Americans.... Universal health care and education have been hallmarks of Cuban society.” Whoo-boy! I can see Fidel barricading himself in his bunker already.

  Indeed, the Maximum Leader was still convalescing from the savage blows delivered by that brute Illinois Republican governor George Ryan in an earlier “fact-finding” mission. Here’s how Chicago Sun-Times reporter Michael Sneed saw that meeting: “Castro joked as the two men blissfully bantered while the rest of the group gawked and gulped over the dinner table.”

  President Castro had to lift himself from the mat again after the merciless pummeling dished out by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and his dauntless sidekick, lawyer Michael Smerconish. These two went on a “fact-finding” mission a month after Ryan’s. “The conversation was spellbinding!” gushed Smerconish. “Castro was vibrant, animated, courteous. Castro’s laugh broke up the room. He was fully engaged. He was the opposite of today’s sound-bite, blow-dried politicians. No subject was off-limits.”

  But whoops! One of the “fact-finders” slipped up and broached a touchy matter.

  “Torture?” Fidel quickly frowned. Then he quickly smiled. “Is there any proof of torture in Cuba? We don’t have much money, but we will give you all that we have if you can prove anyone has been tortured here in the past forty-five years. There are no missing people in Cuba.” Everyone laughed and the subject was immediately dropped.

  Steven Spielberg visited Havana in fall 2002. He called his meeting with “president” Castro “the most important eight hours of my life.” I had to laugh at the AP story about this meeting. It said Spielberg met with Cuban Jews, “who had dwindled from 15,000 before the revolution to 1,300 afterward.” Dwindled—don’t you love that word? So innocuous. Most of that dwindling happened between 1959 and 1962. Think it might have had something to do with Communism?

  At about the time Spielberg was enjoying “the most important eight hours” of his life, a peaceful Cuban dissident named Juan Carlos González Leiva had a different experience. “An officer sat on my chest, wrapped my head in my sweater, and started hitting me on the forehead with a blunt instrument, giving me a five-stitch wound.” González Leiva is blind, by the way.

  So are most fact-finders. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsored a “fact-finding” junket in summer 2002. Its intrepid and indefatigable chairman uncovered this gem: “I was impressed with Cuba’s commitment to literacy and health care.”

  So there you have it. Fidel Castro takes a First World country and turns into a Fourth World basket case and is cheered for his commitment to literacy and health care!

  He tortures black political prisoners—and gets the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP singing his praises!

  He drives out the same percentage of Jews from Cuba as Hafez Assad drove out of Syria—and he gets liberal American Jews drooling all over him!

  He spends four decades executing and jailing dissident journalists and running a Soviet-style propaganda machine over the airwaves and the presses—and gets fawning interviews, smooches, and lovefests by the Beltway media!

  His firing squads pile up thousands yelling “Long Live Christ the King!”—and the National Council of Churches does his bidding in the U.S.!

  He takes power in an armed coup, jails and executes every political opponent, bans elections—and is a hero of the United Nations!

  For liberals, Castro can do no wrong. He’s super Fidel.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CASTRO’S TUGBOAT MASSACRE

  In the pre-dawn darkness of July 13, 1994, seventy-four desperate Cubans—old and young, male and female—snuck aboard a decrepit but seaworthy tugboat in Havana harbor and set off for the United States and freedom. The tug’s name was 13th of March, a name that will lives in infamy for all Cuban Americans—and for all lovers of freedom and decency.

  The wind was howling that ugly night. Outside the harbor, in the darkness, an angry sea awaited. But these desperate people didn’t have the luxury of canceling or postponing. Planning the escape had taken months. Castro’s pervasive police and assorted snitches hadn’t spotted it.

  The lumbering craft cleared the harbor. Five-foot waves started buffeted the tug. Mothers, sisters, and aunts hushed the terrified children, some as young as one year old. Turning back was out of the question.

  With the 13th of March a few miles into the turbulent sea, thirty-year-old Maria Garcia felt someone tugging her sleeve. She looked down; it was her ten-year-old son, Juan. “Mami, look!” He pointed behind them toward the shore. “What’s those lights?”

  “Looks like a boat following us, son,” she stuttered while stroking his hair. “Calm down, mi hijo. Try to sleep. When you wake up, we’ll be with our cousins in a free country. Don’t worry.”

  Little Juan wasn’t the only one who saw those lights. Others stood on the tug’s stern, pointing and frowning. Soon two more sets of lights appeared. “Mami! There’s more!” Juan gasped. “And they’re getting closer! Look!” Little Juan kept tugging at his mother.

  “Don’t worry, son,” she stammered again. In fact, Maria suspected the lights belonged to Castro patrol boats coming out to intercept them. And they were closing fast. Soon they had rumbled up to the lumbering tug.

  Castro patrol boats they were indeed—fire boats, technically, armed with powerful water cannons. The escapees figured it was back to Cuba and probably jail.

  Instead—whack! The closest patrol boat rammed the back of the tug with its steel prow—its passengers were knocked around the deck like ninepins. An accident, right? Rough seas and all.

  “Hey, watch it! We have women and children aboard!” Women held up their squalling children to get the point across.

  The Castroites thought they made nice targets for their water cannons. The water blast shot into the tug, swept the deck, and mowed the escapees down, slamming some against bulkheads and blowing others off the deck into the five-foot waves.

  “Mi hijo! Mi hijo!” Maria screamed as the water jet slammed into her, ripping half the clothes from her body and ripping Juan’s arm from her grasp. “Juanito! Juanito!” She fumbled frantically around her, still blinded by the torrent. Juan had gone spinning across the deck and now clung desperately to the tug’s railing ten feet behind Maria as huge waves lapped his legs. “Dios mio!”

  These people grew up in Cuba. So unlike the New York Times, The Nation, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and much of Hollywood, they never mistook Fidel Castro for St. Francis of Assisi. But still—could it be that women a
nd their children were being deliberately targeted?

  The escapees grabbed beams, rails, arms, legs, anything to keep from going over. Maria and a crewmate managed to grab Juan and yank the sobbing child aboard. The cannon still swept the deck as men shoved women and children into the tug’s hold. Soon the other two patrol boats were alongside.

  One of the steel boats turned sharply and rammed the tug from the side. The other rammed it from the front. The one from behind slammed them again. The tug was surrounded. The ramming was no accident. Castro’s patrol boats were acting on orders.

  “What are you doing?” the enraged men yelled from the battered tug. “Cobardes! We have women and children aboard! We’ll turn around! Okay?”

  The Castroites answered the plea by ramming them again. This time, the blow from the steel prow was followed by a sharp snapping sound from the wooden tug. In seconds the tug started coming apart and started to sink. Muffled yells and cries came from below. The women and children who scrambled into the hold for safety were in a watery tomb. With the boat coming apart, the water rushed in around them. Some were able to grab their children and swim out. But not all.

  Soon water filled the hold completely. “I was completely blind!” recalls Maria. “I was completely underwater, fumbling around, grabbing for anything near me, trying to find Juan. I was submerged, so my screams were like those in a nightmare where you scream in terror but nothing comes out.... Soon I grabbed an arm and I felt some arms and legs wrap around my neck and chest from behind me. Just then we popped to the surface. It was little Juan gripping my body from behind!”

  “Hold tight, mi hijo! Hold tight!” Maria yelled between coughing up sea water. “Don’t let go!” Juan was coughing and gagging too, but still gripping his mother tightly, almost choking her.