Fidel: A Critical Portrait
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Then it was on to Poland—and still another facet of European communism. This was a nation with viscerally anti-Russian (now anti-Soviet) traditions, a powerful nationalism, a formidable Roman Catholic church, a Western European culture, memories of the terrible destruction during its opposition to the Nazis in the war—and with a shockingly corrupt and inept Communist party. The party had so thoroughly antagonized the workers that despite the very real advances in education, public health, and living standards for the impoverished population under the socialist system, there had been violent uprisings. The last one had occurred only two years earlier in Gdańsk, the seaport, where the army and the police had had to fire on rioting workers, killing and maiming scores.
When Castro reached Warsaw, the nation lived in the relative calm between storms. Poland was the only Communist country with an articulate—and tolerated—presence of internal political opposition, and a lively and rich cultural life largely stemming from this phenomenon. Naturally, the political opposition had no access to Castro, and he would probably have disapproved of writers and artists to whom the building of socialism was not the only creative ambition. Despite Fidel's rich mind, the political and cultural barriers between the two nominally Communist states were too great for him to bridge. Thus, the visit was a standard affair, though, as usual, Fidel brightened it with his personality and attitudes. One evening, he took a walk to Warsaw's Old Town Square, stopping to chat with a flower vendor, and dropping in at a basement nightclub called Krokodyl where he promised the young patrons to send a stuffed crocodile from the swamps of the Zapata in Cuba. The youngsters loved it. That evening, a news story was sent out from Warsaw by an American wire service that Castro had suffered a heart attack, and Fidel sputtered in fury that it was another CIA provocation designed to destabilize Cuba—which was probably true.
In the coal region of Silesia, Castro put on the traditional black gala uniform of the miners and received the miners' medal. "If this tour continues at this rate, I'll wind up with as many medals as a hero of labor," he told the miners, winning laughter and applause. He evinced considerably less enthusiasm when he cried, "Long live Red Silesia!" Still in the miners' uniform, Fidel paid a visit the same day to Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and Brzezinka, Nazi concentration-camp sites. At Oświęcim he wrote in the visitors' book: "Capitalist and imperialist ideology was capable of reaching such extremes. . . . What I have seen today, reminds me of what the Yankees are doing now in Vietnam." In Cracow Fidel played basketball with the university team. In Gdańsk he toured the Lenin shipyards (where Solidarity would be born eight years later), then joined General Jaruzelski, the defense minister (who would liquidate Solidarity), at military maneuvers in the coastal area.
On June 13, Fidel Castro arrived in East Berlin, but it is unlikely he knew that it was the nineteenth anniversary of a bloody uprising by East German workers and students against Communist rule. Soviet tanks had put down that first postwar rebellion in Eastern Europe in 1953, a now-forgotten date. Met by East German leader Erich Honecker, Castro was visiting a very prosperous Communist country, contiguous to the Western world even in divided Berlin. He was taken to the Brandenburg Gate, which stands astride the line between the two Berlins, and he could not have missed the Berlin Wall the East Germans had erected in 1961 to prevent their fellow citizens from fleeing to the West. He did not mention the Wall in a speech to East German frontier guards, but he compared the Berlin border zone to the United States naval base at Guantánamo as a foreign enclave. In Merseburg Fidel walked down the street holding hands with schoolchildren, and at Moritzburg Castle he was the guest of the commander of the Soviet Army division stationed near East Berlin. There, his speech chronicled the use of freshly arrived Soviet arms in the Bay of Pigs battle. Castro told me in 1984, that East Germany was the country he admired most in the region: like Cuba, it had to live next to an enemy.
In Czechoslovakia, whose invasion by Warsaw Pact armies four years earlier Castro had rationalized and praised, he was most warmly greeted by the Communist party secretary general, Gustav Husak, the man in charge of "normalizing" the situation to suit the Kremlin. Husak awarded Castro the Order of the White Lion. The venerable Charles University, where the liberalizing spirit of the Prague Spring had been born among its philosophers, then granted him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa in Juridical Sciences. In black robes and cap, and amid medieval splendor, Fidel Castro, the philosopher of revolution, used the opportunity to lecture his audience on the ideological history of his Movement. Confusing the matter once more, he explained that the Moncada Program in 1953 "was not yet a socialist program," although it had been officially described as such in Cuba ever since 1961, when Fidel announced that his revolution was socialist in character. However, he said, "the revolutionary process of Cuba is a confirmation of the extraordinary force of the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin." And for the next hour, this man with great gifts of intellect and oratory rewarded one of the world's greatest universities with a tiresome recitation of Marxist-Leninist banalities, praise of the Soviet Union, and denunciations of "imperialism."
Castro landed in Moscow on June 26, his third time there, for a relaxed two-week visit. It marked the official end of a decade of Cuban-Soviet misunderstandings, a fact underlined by the presence of Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny at Vnukovo-2 Airport, and the award to Fidel the next day of the Order of Lenin. Apart from his meetings with the Kremlin leadership, Castro conferred with Defense Minister Grechko and the Soviet General Staff, again emphasizing the importance of the Cuban-Soviet military ties. He visited four Soviet cities, the space center, an aircraft plant, and agricultural stations, seemingly completely at home now in the Soviet Union. He flew home on July 5, and Cuba's membership in the CMEA, the Communist common market, was announced six days later.
International relations continued to keep Castro busy for the balance of 1972, and much of 1973, while the fragile economy at home seemed to be receiving less of his attention.
In December 1972, Salvador Allende came to Cuba to see Fidel, and they spent pleasant days in the sun chatting and sailing in a cabin cruiser. This was to be their last meeting.
On December 18, Castro was again in Moscow for a week's stay to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Soviet Union. During that week, he was able to put the finishing touches on five major economic and technical assistance agreements with the Russians. Thus, the Cuban debt of some $4 billion was deferred altogether until 1986—virtually a fifteen-year moratorium—and the Cubans would then have twenty-five years over which to repay it. The anticipated Cuban trade deficits in 1973 and 1974 (still not enough sugar was produced) were to be covered by separate credits. The volume of two-way trade between 1973 and 1975 was increased sharply, although no figures were given, which simply meant more Soviet aid to the limping Cuban economy. Additional credits of $390 million were earmarked for economic development. And Moscow agreed to "pay" still more for Cuban sugar and nickel so that the actual debt would rise more slowly. Back in Havana, Castro outlined these accords in a speech on January 3, 1973, commenting that Cuban-Soviet relations were "a model of truly fraternal, truly internationalist, and truly revolutionary relations. "
This was not hyperbole. By the mid-1970s, Cuba was receiving about one half of total Soviet economic aid to all the Third World (including Vietnam) as well as probably one half of Soviet military aid to those countries. Because Soviet and Cuban foreign policies were increasingly on the same track in the light of changing world conditions—and not because Moscow was forcing Castro to follow its line as it did in 1968—Fidel could conduct his relations with the Third World as he pleased. He was free to enhance the international standing that he had lost quite perceptibly after the 1962 missile crisis and after Che Guevara's death. Therefore, he literally had the best of all worlds.
In this sense, it should not surprise Americans, as it seems to, that Castro has no intention of ever trading his Soviet relationship for a relationship with the Uni
ted States. He knows that no American administration (or U. S. Congress) would provide him with the kind of massive economic and military aid he receives from the Soviets—with relatively few questions asked. Moreover, he realizes that the United States would require that he shed his Communist system and his Third World policies to qualify for even the most minimal assistance. Repeatedly, in public statements and in private conversations, Castro insists that apart from political and "moral" considerations, it would make no practical sense for him to sever his friendship with the Russians—even if this friendship has its very trying moments. It would certainly suit him to have easy trade with the United States as well as other arrangements helpful to the island's economy, but not at the price of renouncing his Soviet alliance, such a renunciation having long been an American condition for lifting sanctions against Cuba. He marvels privately that serious American officials and politicians are so naïve as to believe that Washington would be doing him a favor by establishing relations with Havana with basic preconditions. It is simply a perspective that continues to elude most Americans, and this is why all Washington's past attempts at negotiations have led nowhere—except for nonpolitical accords of mutual convenience.
With a free hand in the Third World, Castro began to concentrate on it (aside from his Latin American interests) with great seriousness in the early 1970s, making it a centerpiece of Cuban foreign policy in the ensuing years. After his first visit to Africa in the spring of 1972, in December on his way to Moscow, he stopped in Morocco to meet King Hassan; for his purposes, friendship with socialist Algeria did not preclude a rapport with the Moroccan monarchy. In September 1973, Fidel attended the Fourth Conference of Nonaligned Nations in Algiers, where he became acquainted with most of the Third World leaders, making new friends and a very good impression—even though he was criticized for defending the Soviet Union from accusations that it was as "imperialist" as America.
Then Castro flew to bomb-ravaged Hanoi on his first visit to Vietnam. He felt a special kinship with this country as a fellow victim of the United States. Vietnam peace treaties had been signed in January, and America was now out of the war. This was also his first time in Asia, but Fidel had no desire to go to China, an enemy of his Soviet and Vietnamese friends. He was in Hanoi the day Salvador Allende's regime was ousted by a military coup and the Chilean president was killed in his palace. With Allende's death, Castro lost a personal friend and a vital Latin American ally.
Fidel Castro received the ultimate accolade from the Soviet Union—and further recognition of his international standing—when Leonid Brezhnev arrived in Havana on January 28, 1974. Never before had the highest Soviet leader visited Latin America—and this was a special trip to Cuba, not part of a larger tour.
Brezhnev was Castro's guest for a week, paying him the special tribute of going to Santiago to see the former Moncada barracks (now a school) that Fidel and his rebel band had attacked on July 26, 1953, setting the Cuban revolution in motion. Then he drove with Fidel to the nearby El Siboney farm, where the rebels had assembled for the assault the night before. This was Castro's final vindication: The Russians would never again speak of Moncada as a "putsch" or an "adventure," since now they recognized the Marxist correctness of the Fidelista enterprise. In Havana Brezhnev and Castro addressed a million Cubans at a rally on Revolution Square under the statue of José Martí, then signed a grandiloquent Soviet-Cuban "Declaration" of principles. In his speech to Brezhnev, Castro did, in effect, confirm the belief that he was the Kremlin's spokesman in the Nonaligned Movement: "As we have expressed at the conference of nonaligned countries in Algeria, the very existence of the Soviet Union constitutes a brake on the militarist adventures of the aggressive forces of the imperialist world, without which they would have already launched a new effort to divide the planet, and would not have hesitated to invade countries possessing petroleum and other basic raw materials."
A great turning point in the history of the Third World, Africa, and revolutionary movements was the overthrow of the dictatorial regime in Portugal by left-of-center military officers in April 1974. Among the first moves made by the young officers were to announce the end of Portugal's hopeless and ruinous colonial wars and to promise independence as soon as possible for Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde Islands. The most important of these wars was fought in Angola, and in January 1975, the military government and the three rebel factions signed the Alvor agreement (named after the Portuguese town where they met), providing for Angolan independence on November 11.
Because Fidel Castro had had the foresight to support the Marxist MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) when he first met Agostinho Neto early in the 1960s, Cuba found itself in the extraordinary position of exercising a decisive influence on Angolan events. This, in turn, made the Cubans the most important outside force in African military politics, first in Angola and then in Ethiopia—a state of affairs that continued to prevail in the late 1980s. Fidel Castro was consequently elevated to the status of an unquestioned world leader, calling the shots in Africa and Central America, assuming the responsibility for formulating Third World economic policies toward the industrialized countries, and, of course, becoming more than ever an accursed obsession for the United States. At the same time, Castro stood on the threshold of formally transforming his revolution into a permanent and constitutional Communist institution. He was barely fifty years old.
CHAPTER
3
Contrary to widespread belief, it was Fidel Castro's idea—certainly it was not the Russians'—to engage Cuban combat troops in the civil war in Angola on an absolutely open-ended basis. The year 1986 began the second decade of the large-scale Cuban military presence there. Over 200,000 Cuban troops were rotated through Angola during the first decade, and Castro has pledged to rotate 200,000 more Cubans, if necessary. But contrary to Fidel's own assertions, it was not South Africa's armed intervention in the Angolan civil war that forced him to rush his forces to Angola. The truth is that Castro beat everybody to it, entering first the conflict in an impressive display of instinct, imagination, and daring.
After the Alvor agreement on independence, the Angolan civil war broke out among the MPLA and two rival movements. These were the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), led by Holden Roberto and backed by the United States, Zaire, China, and South Africa, and UNITA (National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola), headed by Jonas Savimbi and supported by the United States and South Africa. The FNLA and UNITA were obviously anti-Communist. Curiously, the Soviet Union withdrew its support for the MPLA, not trusting it politically and militarily, and Castro was its only faithful friend. He had trained MPLA guerrilla officers in Cuba, and when the internal power struggle erupted, he quietly dispatched 250 Cuban combat advisers in May 1975 to organize MPLA forces. Simultaneously, Flavio Bravo, one of the Castro brothers' oldest Communist friends, and now a top regime official, met in Brazzaville with the MPLA president, Agostinho Neto.
In July the MPLA requested additional aid as both the FNLA and UNITA began to acquire great new strength from United States equipment and advice (the CIA was reported to have spent $31 million in helping anti-Communist factions in 1974 and 1975, until Congress stopped this covert aid). In August South Africa and Portuguese mercenary units crossed from Namibia into southern Angola to protect a border hydroelectric station from the MPLA. Everybody seemed to be involved in Angola against the MPLA, the Cubans being its only, but increasingly effective, defenders. Late in September and early in October, three Cuban freighters delivered military detachments and arms to Angola, and, belatedly, Soviet arms began arriving through Brazzaville. In early October there were about 1, 500 Cuban Army personnel in Angola. On October 23, South Africans in force entered Angola in Operation Zulu, and Cuba responded with a troop airlift in "Operation Carlota." A full-fledged Cuban expeditionary force rushed units aboard Cubana Airlines transport planes through Conakry in Guinea (Fidel's friend President Sekou Touré coo
rdinated the operation). At first, the Cuban aircraft tried to refuel in Barbados and Trinidad without receiving permission, then Guyana authorized the refueling when the other countries refused.
There is no question that the Cubans saved MPLA from destruction. They helped it defeat its enemies in the crucial battle for the railroad terminal port of Benguela on November 5, and assured the capture of Luanda—threatened by Holden Roberto's FNLA—in time for Angolan independence on November 11. In February 1976, Castro had fifteen thousand troops in Angola, and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) recognized the MPLA as the government. Castro said that Cuban forces would remain in Angola as long as the MPLA needed them—they were there ten years later as the Angolan regime was unable to survive alone the onslaughts of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA, massively and openly backed by South Africa. In one of the ironies of Angola, Cuban units, because of their discipline, were assigned to guard the oil-producing installations of the American-owned Gulf Oil Corporation in the northern enclave of Cabinda. Then the Soviets quietly purchased the oil from Gulf on the high seas (through a broker in Curaçao), after which the tankers sailed to Cuba. It was much cheaper for the Russians to ship at least some of the oil to Cuba from Cabinda rather than from the Black Sea. The final irony was that when in 1985 South African commandos tried to blow up Gulf Oil's installations, Castro exploded in terrible rage publicly.