Fidel: A Critical Portrait

by Tad Szulc

  President Prío was inaugurated on October 10, 1948, a national holiday, opening a period of corruption and mismanagement in Cuba that would exceed even Grau's time in power. Fidel Castro, however, succeeded in ignoring this occurrence, at least for a while. Two days later, on October 12, he married Mirta Díaz-Balart, the pretty, dark-haired philosophy student he had met several years earlier through her brother, Rafael, also at the law school; the two men were friends.

  Like the Castros, the Díaz-Balart family was from Oriente, and the wedding took place at their home in Banes, not far from Birán. The Díaz-Balarts were wealthy, with heavy political connections in Santiago and Havana, and, except for Rafael, less than enthusiastic about Mirta's marriage to the twenty-two-year-old Fidel. They disapproved of his politics and most likely, of his family background.

  Virtually nothing is known of the circumstances of this marriage, which was fated to be destroyed by politics within five years. By all accounts, Mirta was deeply in love with Fidel, and his friends say that she was the only woman in whom he was interested as he divided his time between his studies and politics. Yet this does not explain why Fidel and Mirta were married so young, particularly when he was still in law school and all his free time was consumed by politics and revolutionary dreams. A curious parallel, or coincidence, appears here between the lives of Fidel Castro and José Martí. Both were married at a very young age, and Martí never could spare time for his wife and family. Castro, as it would turn out, had no time for his family either—despite his great emotional attachment to his son.

  Fidel and Mirta traveled to the United States for their honeymoon, an interesting choice, given his anti-American sentiments. Perhaps he wanted to follow, even briefly, in the footsteps of Martí, who had lived for years in New York, or he was simply fascinated by the United States. In any event, the young Castros remained on the mainland for several weeks, including a New York stay, at which time Fidel apparently gave some thought to trying for a scholarship at Columbia University. It is said that it was in a New York bookshop that Castro purchased a number of books by Marx and Engels, including Das Kapital.

  CHAPTER

  7

  A political career and a professional career, both in earnest, were Fidel Castro's most urgent priorities. He realized that his frantic activities in so many directions had interfered with his serious political and professional progress, and now he had to concentrate on systematic party work and on law courses. But his ideological preoccupations never left him.

  Castro would say later that at the time of Bogotá, "I was almost a Communist, but I was not yet actually a Communist," which is one of those obfuscating phrases he delights in throwing out. He would complain that it was "a great calumny" to blame the Colombian or the Cuban Communist parties, or the international Communist movement, for the terrible uprising. As far as he was concerned, "the whole people fought" in Bogotá, including Liberals, leftists, and Communists. And after so many years, there is no reason to doubt his basic conclusions.

  Back in Havana, however, he must have been shocked to discover that the Cuban Communist party sharply criticized his "adventurism" and "putschism" in participating in the Bogotá street fighting. The Communist Alfred Guevara was in Bogotá with Fidel in his capacity of FEU official, but he never stirred out of the boardinghouse during the disturbances; obviously Guevara knew the party line and impulsive Fidel did not.

  Whether Castro seriously regarded himself as "almost a Communist" or not in the aftermath of Bogotá, the Communists distrusted him absolutely and would do so until the eve of his revolutionary victory ten years later. Looking at Castro's intricate ideological positions and maneuverings, the unfolding of his beliefs and allegiances after Bogotá suggests quite plainly that he drew a fundamental distinction between Marxism, socialism, and communism on the one hand and the traditional Cuban Communist parties on the other. This is a point, as so many other points about Fidel, that the United States and the Soviet Union alike have had difficulties in grasping for a quarter-century.

  Meanwhile, Fidel Castro settled down to married life, somewhat incongruously. Their home was a room at a small inexpensive hotel at 1218 San Lázaro Street in downtown Havana, one block from the university. While convenient for Fidel, it must have been confining for Mirta. While she still attended some classes at the philosophy school, and went on seeing her friends and family, Fidel was rarely in attendance. If he was not studying or politicking at the university, he was at the Ortodoxo party headquarters at 109 Paseo de Prado, the lovely, broad avenue linking the seaside Malecón Boulevard at the harbor with the National Capitol, for meetings with opposition politicians. Castro always cultivated pivotal Ortodoxo figures to keep open his political electoral options, and at that time he was already thinking of running for office. The rest of his day and night hours were consumed by other political meetings, occasional involvement in street disturbances if they were politically profitable, and voracious reading.

  Fidel and Mirta lived at the hotel for a full year, presumably because they could not afford to rent a house or an apartment. His allowance from Don Ángel in Birán was around eighty pesos monthly (eighty dollars), which was probably just enough for the hotel room and the full service that came with it, including some meals. Not working, he had no other income. Mirta's family was quite wealthy, but chances are that the proud Fidel would not let his in-laws help support him, and his wife must have been loyal enough to agree. She was accustomed to great comfort, yet she did not appear to mind the hotel life with Fidel—her love compensated for deprivation and his absences. And Mirta would endure much more sacrifice in the near future.

  In his fourth year at the law school, Castro received high grades in courses on labor legislation, and only passing grades in a property and real estate course which may have been a clue to his interests.

  In Havana political violence continued in all its dimensions, and Fidel Castro was in the thick of it. The Havana bus company again demanded a fare increase, and the Prío government approved it on January 20. The FEU at a university meeting split over whether students should return to the bus-fare battle in the streets. The FEU's Struggle Committee was for it, but the leadership opposed student action, fearing a campus invasion by the police. The profight faction led by Fidel insisted that the FEU's prestige was involved in the protest. On January 24 thousands of students gathered on the campus, preparing to march downtown. But police cruisers surrounded the university, and policemen fired their guns at the students. With Castro in the vanguard, students responded with a barrage of stones and tomatoes. Then, the student committee printed fifty thousand leaflets (this was Castro's idea) urging Habaneros to boycott the buses.

  In March 1949 an incident occurred in Havana that added to the bitterness against the United States, an incident that Cubans in general and Fidel Castro in particular never forgot, explaining why anti-American sentiment tended to rise rather than diminish with the passage of time.

  On the evening of March 11 the statue of José Martí in Havana's Central Park was desecrated by a group of inebriated United States Navy sailors on shore liberty. At least one sailor urinated at the base of the statue, and another sat on Martí's sculpted head. Venerated as Martí is in Cuba, an infuriated crowd gathered quickly, and the sailors were saved just in time by the police, who took them to a station. Presently, the U.S. naval attaché and a Shore Patrol arrived at the station to take the sailors back to their ship. There was no effort by the Cuban authorities to lodge any charges against the men.

  The word of the profanation spread instantly throughout Havana, and there was immediate reaction by students led by Fidel Castro, whom a friend had located by telephone. Castro and a number of students appointed themselves as a guard of honor, guarding the Martí statue all night as a patriotic gesture, and making plans for an anti-American demonstration the following day. The student protest in front of the American embassy on March 12 was directed by Castro and his friends Baudilio Castellanos, Alfredo Guevara,
and Lionel Soto, the university's principal activists.

  The American ambassador in Havana, Robert Butler, who fully understood the gravity of the Martí incident, came out to speak to the students and apologize for the sailors. Just then, police riot squads commanded by Havana's new police chief, Colonel José Caramés (who as university district police commander the previous year had broken up the bus-fare demonstration during which Castro was injured by truncheons), attacked the students with extraordinary brutality. Fidel again was beaten up. Caramés's actions presumably served to show the United States how efficiently Cuban authorities could protect the embassy, but contemporary accounts indicate that Butler himself was taken aback by this violence.

  The ambassador then drove to the Foreign Ministry to deliver official U.S. apologies to Foreign Minister Carlos Hevia, but the students followed him. Finally, Butler had the opportunity to try to explain the incident, reminding the students of the American friendship for Cuban in the name of which, he said, the United States had helped win independence for the island in 1898. Given the Cuban-American history, starting with the military occupation and the imposition of the Platt Amendment, this was not the most felicitous way of pacifying the students; they made this clear by shouting Butler down. While the ambassador went on to Central Park to place a wreath at the Martí statue (this, too, was a very obvious and patronizing gesture, since the Cubans wanted instead that the sailors be punished, at least by the U.S. Navy), Castro, Guevara, and Soto made the rounds of Havana newspaper offices. They delivered a statement, published the next day, charging that it was "a shame for Cuba" to have a police chief who instead of preventing American sailors from desecrating Martí's monument, chose "to attack those who defended our honor." Cubans have assured that the incident will never be forgotten: In his postrevolution film on the modern history of Cuba, Viva la República, director Pastor Vega has included old newsreel footage of the demonstrations, with a very clear explanation of what had happened that day.

  Though Castro took advantage of every conceivable public situation to assert his political engagement and his leadership aspirations, the Martí statue events being a perfect example, he devoted much of his time to regular political activities on many fronts. He had to build up a reputation beyond that of a patriotic or socially inspired agitator and revolutionary. Consequently, Fidel made an effort to become known in the impoverished working-class districts of south Havana—both on behalf of the Ortodoxo party and its youth branch, and on his own to prepare his candidacy in the next congressional elections—visiting homes, stores, and repair shops on the miserable, narrow streets. Castro wangled invitations to speak on the COCO radio network several times a month, preaching social justice and honesty in politics, and clearly he wished to remain identified with Eddy Chibás, who despite his defeat in the presidential elections remained very popular and planned to run again in 1952. In May, for instance, Chibás issued a documented report on Batista's personal enrichment during his presidential term, attracting great attention throughout the country. Fidel knew the senator was a political virtuoso, that his "honesty" campaign was having a growing impact on President Prío's corrupt administration and believed Chibás would win the presidency in the end. Therefore, he watched the master closely, studying his techniques, and preparing to adapt them for his own future use.

  On another level, Castro was active in the University Committee for the Struggle Against Racial Discrimination. In a country as racist as Cuba in terms of the ruling white establishment (even poor whites were often against the blacks and mulattoes in the heavily mixed Cuban society), opposition to discrimination was not a popular cause, but Castro embraced it from the outset. There is every reason to believe that Castro was always personally opposed to racial discrimination, and he realized that the kind of mass political or revolutionary movement in Cuba that he was already urging could never develop without major support from nonwhite Cubans. Events would prove him right, but despite his efforts Castro has not been able even a quarter-century after the revolution to eradicate visceral racism among white Cubans. As a racially mixed society, Cuba resembles Brazil the most in Latin America, and despite the existence of severe anti-discrimination laws in both countries, the whites have not by and large shed their sense of superiority. It comes out in casual remarks, jokes, and subtle societal attitudes. Possibly, mixed friendships cannot be forced.

  On September 1, 1949, Fidel Castro became a father with the birth of Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, immediately known as Fidelito. At the time of Fidelito's arrival, his parents still lived in the hotel room on San Lázaro Street, and it was many months before they could arrange to move to a small, modest apartment on Third Street. In the affluent residential district of Vedado, the building was only one block from the Malecón and the sea, and across the street from the Fifth District police station. The new Castro residence was still very far from luxurious, as Fidel basically depended on the allowance from his father. He was too busy in politics to work after his university classes, and Mirta had to watch every peso. All the furniture for the apartment, simple as it was, had to be bought on an installment plan.

  About the same time, Fidel persuaded his parents to let his brother Raúl come to Havana. Raúl had done so badly at Belén College that Don Ángel made him come back home and work with Ramón, the eldest brother, at the farm's office. Fidel thought that Raúl, being highly intelligent (his Belén problem had been his hatred of discipline and particularly of prayer), should be given another chance. Consequently, Raúl returned to Havana late in 1949, hoping to be ready to enter the university the following year. This move would have important implications on the Fidelista revolutionary future.

  In the meantime, corruption and gangsterism were soaring under Prío, the violence rising again in and out of the university. Justo Fuentes, a top FEU leader, was killed in April by unknown gunmen. Castro was threatened innumerable times (some of his friends think that he rented the apartment facing the police station as a security precaution for his family and himself). Finally, Eddy Chibás went on the radio late in September to charge that corrupt members of Prío's Auténtico political party controlled the political gangs shooting it out in Havana streets.

  Prío's response was to solve the violence problem with what Cubans called the "gangs' pact," which, in effect, meant that the president bought all the gangsters. It was a much more creative idea than simply putting them on the payroll: Prío's concept was to negotiate a peace pact with the principal organizations, spreading government appointments (with attendant payments and shakedown possibilities) among them on the condition that there would be no more violence. Moreover, none of the gangsters would be charged with crimes or arrested.

  This was virtually turning the Cuban government over to the gangs, and the students, supported by the main opposition political parties, were the first to set in motion a plan to denounce the secret pact before the public. To this end, the Ortodoxo party Youth Section and the Social Youth branch of the Communist party joined in organizing the "30th of September Committee," named after Rafael Trejo, the first student leader to be killed by the Machado dictatorship on that date in 1930. In this committee, Fidel Castro would soon play a crucial and dramatic role.

  Fidel was not among its founders, and had not been considered for membership because of his earlier ties with UIR, ties that for all practical purposes ended in 1947 after the assassination of Emilio Tró, the UIR's chief. The principal leaders of the new student committee were Max Lesnick, national director of the Ortodoxo Youth Section, and Alfredo Guevara, still president of the philosophy school and university representative of the Communists' Socialist Youth. Between them, Lesnick and Guevara controlled student politics in 1949 because they represented the most cohesive and best-organized political entities in Cuba, and they got along extremely well personally.

  This was the only instance in which Chibás and the rest of the Ortodoxo party leadership accepted collaboration with the Communists, and the accord was confined
to the university. Earlier that year, Chibás had once more turned down a Communist offer for electoral alliances in the 1950 and 1952 congressional races. The senator was increasingly anti-Communist,and Castro, who thought his party could profit from Communist support, lacked sufficient influence to change the Ortodoxo position.

  Even then he was an advocate of the unity of all opposition groups, believing that once the common enemy is defeated, the ultimate leadership among the new victors will sort itself out—preferably in favor of the faction Fidel personally favored. Still, Castro was careful not to go too far in pushing cooperation with the Communists; politically he did not need to be identified with them. Helping him in this regard was the party's own reluctance and reservations concerning its relationship with him.

  Castro had a pleasant relationship with Alfredo Guevara, who had been with him in Bogotá, and the other Communist leaders in the group, Lionel Soto and Antonio Nuñez Jiménez. Although he had closer personal links with the three Communists, Fidel chose to approach Lesnick first to be invited to join the 30th of September Committee. Lesnick, now exiled in Miami, recalls how Castro instantly turned into the hero of the new movement, and what happened subsequently:

  "Fidel came to see me at the university to say that he wanted to join the committee. Well, it seemed absurd to me: Fidel, who was involved with the gangs, accused of being one of those who participated in it. The Thirtieth of September Committee could not welcome him. . . . I told him, look, Fidel, I cannot decide alone on this, and he asks me to propose his name to the committee. There were ten or twelve of us who were important [in the committee], but fundamentally it was Alfredo Guevara and I, the two chiefs of the Ortodoxo-Communist pact at the university."

  Lesnick agreed, and Fidel met with him and Alfredo Guevara at Lesnick's apartment on Morro Street, near the presidential palace, to request that he be admitted to the committee. Max Lesnick continues: "Alfredo and I then started coming up with impossible conditions. No member of the committee may be armed when he goes to the university, and Fidel always carries a pistol. Fidel says, 'Well, I won't carry it anymore.' The second condition was the endorsement of the [Ortodoxo-Communist] pact, which demands that all those covered by the 'gangs' pact' must be denounced, and their official posts revealed. So Fidel says, 'Well, I'll sign the document.' Then Guevara asked who should be chosen to make the denunciation before the FEU, and he answered, 'I shall do it.' "