Island that Dared

by Dervla Murphy

  Several foreign statesmen and ‘famous names’, including Fidel’s old friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, pleaded for leniency. The Pope instructed his Nuncio to seek a meeting and to emphasise that to commute the death sentences would enhance Cuba’s image. During a two-hour discussion Fidel explained that, contrary to popular belief, his powers were limited; it wasn’t for him to reverse the unanimous decision of the Council of State. The Nuncio retorted that El Chef had enough moral authority to persuade the Council to think again. Fidel then conceded that his moral authority did exceed his formal authority under the Constitution – but in fact he himself agreed with the sentences.

  The interwoven Angola-Havana-Panama-Varadero-Havana-Angola plots and sub-plots and counter-plots are brilliantly unpicked and objectively analysed by both Leycester Coltman and Richard Gott. The non-fidelista Marifeli Perez-Stable deals with the episode more briefly and clumsily, under-exposing Ochoa’s wheeler-dealer career and thus presenting a partial account. The fidelista Isaac Saney skims over the whole crisis in two sentences, sounding uncomfortable and defensive. The chapter covering the Ochoa case in Castro’s My Life (the seven hundred and twenty-four-page result of two hundred hours of interviewing) shows Fidel at his most verbosely evasive and clarifies nothing.

  Who knew what – and when – about MC’s three-year involvement with drug-dealers? In Leycester Coltman’s view (not all would agree) –

  Castro’s attitude to drug-trafficking was pragmatic rather than moralistic. His concern was to avoid giving the Americans a weapon to use against him. Normally confident that nothing moved in Cuba without his knowledge, he was genuinely shocked to discover that de la Guardia’s men had been flouting his orders …

  The hardline Cuban-Americans rejoiced. ‘Told you so! He’s always been in the drug shit!’ More rational anti-Castroites refused to jump to conclusions; Fidel’s integrity was widely recognised, even by many of his enemies. A spokesman for Miami’s Drug Enforcement Agency, John Fernandez, (quoted in Time, 10 July 1989), stressed that ‘There is no reason to believe that Fidel Castro or people in the presidential palace were in sympathy with the smugglers’.

  For three decades the Revolution had been presenting itself as the medicine needed to purge Cuba of centuries of corruption. Richard Gott writes:

  Another senior general, José Ramon Fenandez … minister of education in 1989 … expressed his shock at the revelations. In his eyes it was unimaginable that Cuba could condone drug smuggling. It was also dismaying for old revolutionaries like him to have had revealed to them the scale of corruption and personal enrichment that appeared from the Ochoa affair to be endemic …

  To this day speculation persists about motive … Had Fidel seen Ochoa, the de la Guardias and their group as capable of clearing the way for Cuban versions of perestroika and glasnost?

  Merci remembered hearing about Ochoa’s approval of the Gorby reforms which Fidel abhorred. (In 1988 he saw exactly what was happening as Capitalism Rampant invaded the collapsing Soviet Union.) Said Eber, ‘Folks outside – and some inside – swear those four were killed to keep el chef in power. Looks to me he killed them to save the Revolution from capitalism. I hated those killings, round the world it made Cuba look bad. They showed Ochoa was right, we needed change. When we saw it not coming we left.’ As he reached for the rum bottle Merci restrained him and firmly announced that we must move, the bus journey home would take an hour. Before curling up on my sofa-bed (I had stymied the boys’ being ejected from their room) I packed my rucksack in readiness for an early flight to Italy via Gatwick.

  Chapter 17

  On 1 August 2006 I was at home in Ireland. Early that morning I switched on the World Service and heard jubilant cheering and chanting, car horns honking, toy bugles blowing, rattles clattering, raucous singing, whoops of glee. Vaguely I assumed the end of some big football match.

  The BBC reporter who explained this tumult couldn’t quite suppress his disgust. Thousands of Miami Cubans were thronging the streets of Little Havana celebrating the previous evening’s announcement that Fidel was undergoing emergency surgery and had temporarily handed power to his brother Raúl, his designated successor since 1959. Momentarily, I felt physically nauseated, as did millions who saw this spectacle on television. Even my detailed knowledge of the hard-liners’ vicious activities had not prepared me for such a public display of hatred. The cheering and flag-waving and dancing in the streets continued all night and into the next day, causing traffic gridlock. All age groups participated. Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with the skull and crossbones, the skull bearded … Many believed Fidel was already dead, the rest were confident he couldn’t possibly recover.

  The news itself was sad but unsurprising, the Miami reaction shocking and unCuban. Immediately after J.F. Kennedy’s death, when Fidel and the French journalist, Jean Daniel, were listening together to broadcasts from Dallas, a radio reporter talked excitedly of Jackie Kennedy’s blood-stained stockings and Fidel was angered. ‘What sort of mind is this? There is a difference in our civilisations after all. Are you like this in Europe? For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter. Not only does it mark the close of hostilities, it also imposes decency, dignity, respect …’

  Juanita, Fidel’s younger émigré sister, hadn’t spoken to either Fidel or Raúl for forty years. Now she unexpectedly went public. ‘These demonstrations were unnecessary. They don’t offer the world a good image of our cause, our country and the exile community as a whole. I don’t hate anybody and I’m taking the first step by talking about it and expressing concern over the future of Cuba. The hate exists on both sides. It’s time we stop the hate and start to love one another.’ While Fidel was addressing the General Assembly of the UN in October 1979, Juanita had denounced him on a US radio station as ‘a brutal despot’. But hearing of his illness she belatedly realised that family ties should prevail over political disagreements.

  USA Today reported – ‘Many Cubans on the island thought the Miami celebrations were in poor taste. A Havana waitress who wouldn’t give her name said, “We aren’t going to celebrate someone’s illness”.’

  On 30 July, the eve of Fidel’s collapse, Phillip Hart had a full-page article in the Sunday Telegraph, its lead-in eerily serendipitous: ‘As his eightieth birthday looms, Cuba is at long last breaking one of its biggest taboos – discussing the prospect of El Comandante’s death and what happens next.’ Phillip Hart got off to a confidence-shaking start by naming Bayamo as ‘the scene of an attack that he led on an army barracks on July 26, 1953’. There followed lots of nonsense (oft repeated during the months ahead) about ‘keeping the succession in the family’. And the free cataract operations provided in Cuba for thousands of penniless Latin American peasants were described as ‘a lucrative business for the regime’.

  Carlos Valegciaga, Fidel’s secretary, read his letter to the nation on TV on the evening of 31 July. Having reviewed his recent hectic journeys to and fro across Latin America the octogenarian admitted:

  Days and nights of continuous work with hardly any sleep, have caused my health, which has withstood all tests, to fall victim to extreme stress and to be ruined. An acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding has obliged me to undergo a complicated surgical operation. All the details of this health accident can be seen in X-rays, endoscopies and filmed material. The operation will force me to take several weeks of rest, away from my responsibilities and duties.

  As our country is threatened in circumstances like this by the government of the United States, I have made the following decision:

  1. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba to the second secretary, comrade Raúl Castro Ruz.

  2. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as Commander in Chief of the heroic Revolutionary Armed Forces to the same comrade, Army Gen. Raúl Castro Ruz.

  3. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as president of the Council of State and o
f the government of the Republic of Cuba to the first vice president, comrade Raúl Castro Ruz.

  4. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National and International Program of Public Health to Politburo member and Public Health Minister, comrade José Ramon Balaguer Cabrera.

  5. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National and International Education Program to comrades José Ramon Machado Ventura and Esteban Lazo Hernandez, members of the Politburo.

  6. I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National Program of the Energy Revolution in Cuba and cooperation with other countries in this field to comrade Carlos Lage Davila, member of the Politburo and secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.

  The relevant funds for these programs – health, education and energy – should continue to be assigned and prioritised, as I have been doing personally, by comrades Carlos Lage Davila, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers; Francisco Soberon Valdes, Minister President of the Central Bank of Cuba; and Felipe Perez Roque, Foreign Relations Minister, who have accompanied me in these duties and should constitute a committee for this purpose.

  From the international media came a spate of speculative ‘What Next?’ articles and interviews, mostly based on the assumption that Fidel had been running a one-man dictatorship until 31 July and therefore chaos was to be expected when he died. On 2 August a BBC reporter sounded surprised – ‘On the streets of Havana there has been a remarkable sense of calm, almost nonchalance, in the face of the dramatic news. People have been going to work as normal. Shops remain open. Cinemas are full.’ On the same date the US Coast Guard also sounded surprised – ‘We are on alert but so far have seen no sign of mass migration from the island.’

  Amos Rojas, of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, addressed those who were talking of joining Cuba’s dissidents, the moment Fidel’s death was announced, to resist ‘the remnants of the regime’. ‘Don’t attempt to leave,’ said Mr Rojas. ‘If there’s a problem on the island the Coast Guard will blockade it and we’re not going to let people go from here.’

  For the Independent (3 August), David Usborne reported, ‘A common theme of all the Cuban exile groups is that whatever plan the regime might have for engineering a seamless succession to brother Raúl … cannot be allowed to happen.’

  John Harris, who had recently been in Havana making a ‘Newsnight’ film on Cuba’s health service, wrote on the Guardian website: (1 August)

  Gazing into the post-Castro future, few would deny the imperative for fair elections and press freedom … There is, however, one caveat: anyone who would let loose a free market hurricane and sweep away Castro’s public services would be in deep, deep trouble.

  On 2 August Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly, described Miami’s street parties as ‘vomit-provoking acts led by mercenaries and terrorists’.

  On the same date Senator Robert Bennett, after a meeting with Bush II, quoted one of his President’s more profound comments – ‘I think all of us can say we had no idea this was coming. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  A defence official explained that because of tropical storm Chris (a teenaged hurricane) navy ships were not yet moving closer to Cuba. But a large number of vessels, from destroyers to frigates, were in range and ready to respond if the situation changed. Next morning the Houses’s three Cuban-American members, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the brothers Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, met with the National Security Council before flying to Miami.

  Rupert Cornwell, then the Independent’s man in Washington, wrote (3 August):

  Eastern Europe cast off Communism in 1989, and two years later the Soviet Union collapsed … but somehow Cuba avoided this fate. Separately, repression and human rights abuses are somehow easier to overlook in a sub-tropical setting than in the frozen wastes of Siberia.

  As though Cuba’s jailing of dissidents were analogous to Stalin’s death-camps Rupert Cornwell concluded:

  Washington will have a crucial role in ensuring an orderly return of the exiles, and disabusing them of the notion that power in a post-Castro Cuba is their birthright.

  For the Sunday Herald (6 August) Elizabeth Mistry interviewed Caleb McCarry ‘whose job description includes overseeing the post-Castro scenario on the island’. His mention of British government support surprised the journalist. In November 2005 he had met Lord Triesman of Tottenham, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean, and found him ‘very receptive. An undemocratic Cuba is a destabilising force in the region and we believe a democratic Cuba could once again be part of the international system. Britain shares a common goal of seeing Cuba become a democracy and shares our message that all democracies should be working together to support democracy in Cuba.’ This contradicted the Foreign and Commonwealth office’s stated position which prefers ‘constructive engagement rather than isolation’. Accordingly Robert Miller, director of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, submitted a request under the UK Freedom of Information Act ‘to determine the breadth and content of the discussion between our government and Caleb McCarry’. Yet again the Act didn’t work. Robert Miller told the Sunday Herald, ‘Over two hundred MPs have signed an early day motion criticising the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and I think the British people should be asking why our government is talking to a guy whose sole remit is regime change in another country.’ The F.C.O. refused to respond to the Sunday Herald’s enquiries about Lord Triesman’s meeting with McCarry.

  On Sunday 6 August, in Havana Cathedral, Cardinal Jaime Ortega led the congregation in prayers that ‘God accompany President Fidel Castro in his illness and illuminate those who have provisionally received the responsibilities of government’. Across the Straits, in Little Havana’s Peter and Paul Catholic church, an usher said, ‘We pray for Cuba and Cubans but not for its leader. The church asks us to pray even for our enemies but I don’t do it.’

  People asked me, ‘Are you going back now to see the changes?’ Very few seemed to know that change had been happening for more than a decade – since the early ’90s when Carlos Lage was chosen as (in effect) prime minister. For years Fidel had been shrewdly grooming a team (in our terms a Cabinet) of able and widely experienced younger men who would now be running the country under Raúl. I saw no reason to change my plans. Instead, I began to keep a sporadic ‘Cuba Diary’ as scraps of news and comment came to my attention.

  14 August. Yesterday Fidel celebrated his eightieth birthday. (Actually his seventy-ninth but more of that anon.) Cuban TV showed him talking and laughing with Raúl and his young (comparatively) friend Hugo Chavez, the Venezualan president who has long regarded Fidel as his mentor. He looked remarkably well, almost frisky in his red, white and blue Adidas jacket – which scandalised me. Good socialists don’t buy Adidas. His birthday message said: ‘I feel very happy. For all those who care about my health, I promise to fight for it. To say the stability has improved considerably is not to tell a lie. To say that the period of recovery will be short and there is now no risk would be absolutely incorrect. I suggest you be optimistic and at the same time always prepared to receive bad news. The country is running well and will continue to do so.’

  Those words told us that El Comandante was facing involuntary permanent retirement with his usual courage.

  An editorial in today’s Independent warns Bush II against the émigré pitfall – something I’ve been thinking about since the Little Havana street parties. Before reducing Iraq to anarchy the US invaders took advice from Iraqi émigrés, a coterie with their own agenda led by the convicted swindler Ahmed Chalabi. CANF cheered that illegal invasion and at once printed their ‘Iraq Today, Tomorrow Cuba!’ stickers. Caleb McCarry repeatedly talks of the need ‘to ensure that the Castro regime’s succession strategy does not succeed’. In a world where the Western version of democracy (multi-
party elections) frequently prolongs or causes bloody mayhem (Nigeria, Afghanistan, Georgia, Kenya, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Nepal and etc.) there is something peculiarly perverse about seeking to upscuttle a regime that has devised an orderly ‘succession strategy’. As the Independent notes, ‘The views of Little Havana are highly unlikely to represent the wishes of the majority in Cuba where Mr Castro … still seems a popular figure.’

  4 October. Today it came to my attention that Oswaldo Paya, founder of the Christian Liberation Movement and organiser of the Varela Project, congratulated Pedro Carmona in an open letter when it seemed Carmona had ousted the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez in a US-backed coup in 2004. The EU awarded Paya the 2003 Sacharov Human Rights prize and in December 2005 he was invited to London to attend a Foreign Office conference on human rights. Very sensibly, Havana denied him an exit visa. Would Washington allow a US citizen to travel to a foreign capital to encourage ‘regime change’?

  In February 2004 the Mississippi Consortium for International Development engaged Oswaldo Paya to co-ordinate several courses to ‘develop leadership’ for the soon-to-be-free (they hoped) Cuba. The MCID operates in several countries where the US wages ideological warfare: Angola, Nigeria, South Africa, Romania, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, the Ukraine. In Iraq this institution secured a five million dollar-contract for guiding the University of Mosul as it ‘developed leadership’ for Iraq and the Middle East generally. Two MCID representatives, travelling as tourists under the names Careen Bishop and Patricia Jernigan, have been visiting Cuba since 2002.