Fidel: A Critical Portrait

by Tad Szulc

  Does Fidel Castro have doubts and fears, and can he share them with another human being? Celia Sánchez died of cancer in January 1980, and her passing was not only a personal and emotional tragedy for Fidel, but it deprived him of a safe haven—the opportunity occasionally to be himself as Fidel and not as Commander in Chief. Watching him, almost motionless, hour after hour, listening to hundreds of speeches at the conferences on external debt he had organized in Havana during 1985, it seemed as if Castro was seeking refuge in this environment from pressures elsewhere; perhaps it was an illusion. Still, in a variety of surroundings, Fidel Castro appears a lonely man—frustrated one day, triumphant the next, but lonely, and still searching for something that is impossibly elusive. He might be pondering about the past and the future—and about the verdict of the generations to come. Indeed, he expressed this concern in two sentences at two very crucial moments of his life:

  Addressing the judges trying him for the assault on Moncada, the moment of the revolution's birth in 1953, Fidel Castro said: "Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me!"

  Speaking about the creative process to Cuban artists and writers in 1961, the year he triumphed at the Bay of Pigs and declared himself a Marxist-Leninist, Fidel Castro said: "Do not fear imaginary judges we have here. . . . Fear other judges who are much more fearsome, fear the judges of posterity, fear the future generations who, in the end, will be responsible for saying the last word!"

  Notes

  In writing Fidel, A Critical Portrait, I have relied on four principal categories of source material, which are discussed here in detail. The four categories are: interviews and conversations in Cuba; interviews and conversations in the United States; Cuban newspapers and periodicals, before and after the revolution; and books and other texts published in Cuba and elsewhere.

  I believe that an explanation of the sources and material will be more useful to readers and other researchers than the masses of footnotes that would otherwise have been required. Moreover, some passages and sections are composites of two or more interviews or conversations, occasionally incorporating information from published sources, and it would be neither practical nor helpful to try to identify individual references and quotations. Except for specific identification in the actual text, no data are provided on Castro speeches to which references or allusions are made; given the extraordinary number of speeches he has delivered in his life (plus the fact that some of his texts are not available at all, and some only in the form of fragments), it would have been an onerous and pointless task to catalogue all the references.

  Finally, the Chapter Notes are provided as a general guide to the Portrait in terms of identifying types and groups of the source material.

  I. Interviews and Conversations in Cuba

  The bulk of the original material in Fidel, A Critical Portrait came from tapes as well as informal interviews and conversations I conducted in Cuba in 1984 and 1985—including long discussions with President Castro in both years. In his case, I have also drawn on my notes from interviews and conversations we had during 1959, and in the course of a tour of the Bay of Pigs battlefield in his company in June 1961.

  Formal, taped interview sessions were held during 1985, with seventeen close associates and comrades of Fidel Castro; seven of them were interviewed on two or more occasions. All the interviews were conducted in Spanish, and I translated into English from tape transcripts the portions and quotations appearing in this book. Following is the list of these interviews, with the identification of the subjects:

  José R. Fernández, vice-president of the Council of Ministers; minister of education; Alternate Member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist party

  Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, vice-president of the Councils of State and Ministers; member of the Political Bureau

  Vílma Espín Guilloys, president of the Federation of Cuban Women; member of the Council of State and Political Bureau (wife of Raúl Castro)

  Pedro Miret Prieto, vice-president of the Council of Ministers; member of the Council of State and Political Bureau

  Armando Hart Dávalos, member of the Council of State; minister of culture; member of the Political Bureau

  José R. Machado Ventura, member of the Council of State; member of the Political Bureau and of the party secretariat

  Jorge Enrique Mendoza Reboredo, editor of the Communist party organ Granma; member of the party's Central Committee

  Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, Commander of the Revolution (one of three Rebel Army officers honored with this title); member of the Central Committee; until 1986, vice-president of the Councils of State and Ministers, interior minister, and member of the Political Bureau; demoted without explanation by the Third Party Congress

  Guillermo García Frías, Commander of the Revolution; member of the Central Committee; until 1986, vice-president of the Councils of State and Ministers, minister of transport, and member of the Political Bureau; demoted by the Third Party Congress

  Fabio Grobart, cofounder of the Cuban Communist party in 1925; member of the Central Committee; chairman of the Institute for the Study of Marxist-Leninist Movement in Cuba; Hero of the Cuban Revolution

  Blas Roca Calderío, member of the Central Committee; until 1986, vice-president of the Council of State and member of the Political Bureau; retired because of age by the Third Party Congress; secretary general of the Popular Socialist Party (Communist) until the creation of the new Cuban Communist party under Fidel Castro in 1965

  Melba E. Hernández, member of the Central Committee; Heroine of the Cuban Revolution (one of two women participating in the Moncada attack)

  Faustino Pérez Hernández, member of the Central Committee; cabinet minister in the first revolutionary government; one of Fidel Castro's two companions after the Alegría de Pío defeat

  Universo Sánchez, director of the Environment Protection Office; one of Fidel Castro's two companions (with Faustino Pérez) after the Alegría de Pío defeat

  Antonio Nuñez Jiménez, vice-minister of culture; former executive director of INRA; chronicler of Fidel Castro's postwar years

  Alfredo Guevara, Cuba's Ambassador to UNESCO; Fidel Castro's university friend; companion at Bogotá uprising in 1948

  Conchita Fernández, Fidel Castro's private secretary in the postwar years

  Additionally, interviews were taped with Norberto Fuentes, a Cuban journalist and chronicler of the revolution, and with seven citizens in the villages of the Sierra Maestra who played central roles in assuring the survival of Fidel Castro and his companions during the first year of the guerrilla war (these accounts total 210 pages of transcript).

  All the above tapes and transcripts were donated to the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

  Taped interviews with President Castro were conducted in and near Havana in January 1984, and the transcripts total 315 pages. Interviews and conversations in February and May 1985 were of an informal nature, not being taped. In every case, I made detailed notes after these meetings. Transcripts of the 1984 Castro interviews also are at the University of Miami. Taped interviews conducted in Cuba added up to 1, 964 pages. Apart from the 1985 conversations with President Castro, literally scores of other informal discussions with Cuban personalities would have provided thousands more pages of transcripts; the material was preserved in my notes—some of which must remain confidential.

  Among these informal conversations, mention should be made of many meetings with Eugenio Rodríguez Balari, president of the Institute of Consumer Affairs; Pedro Álvarez Tábio and Mario Mencía, historians of the pre-1959 period of the revolution; Ernesto Guevara Lynch, the father of the late Che Guevara; Manuel Moreno Fraginals, a leading Cuban historian who knew Fidel Castro as a student; Pastor Vega, a major Cuban cinema director; Luis Baez and Gabriel Molina, editors of Granma; and Lionel Martin, an American author and journalist who has lived in Cuba since 1961. Many conversation partners to whom I am greatly in debt for their time and patience, will not be men
tioned here in order to respect their privacy. Among my American friends, Henry Raymont, a colleague and an outstanding expert on Cuba, was a very special adviser.

  I have dwelt so much on interviews and conversations in Cuba because they are crucial in any historical or biographical undertaking about the revolution and its figures. This is so because no coherent or comprehensive body of revolutionary literature or history exists in Cuba. As will be seen in the section on books in these Notes, the available works are fragmentary, and historical objectivity is not their best facet. Within the senior ranks of the Cuban bureaucracy, there is strong opposition to a historical reconstruction of the revolution, particularly when it is attempted by foreigners. Ironically, an example of such resistance is the Historical Division of the Council of State, under the Council's secretary, Dr. José M. Miyar Barrueco. For this reason, interviews become absolutely essential, and it must be emphasized that in my case the access resulted from personal instructions by President Castro.

  II. Interviews and Conversations in the United States

  As in Cuba, interviews in the United States, principally with Cuban exiles, were essential in reconstructing much of the life of Fidel Castro. Most of them were conducted in Miami, touching chiefly on Castro's youth.

  José Ignacio Rasco and Juan Rovira provided important insights on young Fidel at the Belén College in Havana. Rasco, Enrique Ovares, and Max Lesnick contributed information on Castro's university days. Ovares was an invaluable source on Castro's involvement in the Cayo Confites expedition and the Bogotá uprising (he was there with Fidel and Alfredo Guevara). Max Lesnick's recollections and interpretations formed a bridge between Castro's activities at Havana University and the start of his revolutionary career. Raúl Chibás, the brother of the late Eddy Chibás, the founder of the Ortodoxo party in 1947, spent several days with me in Miami, sharing his memories of Fidel Castro. He knew Castro as a political leader at the university, a young Ortodoxo politician, and then as the chief of the revolution. Chibás was twice in the Sierra Maestra with Castro, serving as the treasurer of the 26th of July Movement, and, later, as director of Cuban Railways.

  There are 329 pages of transcripts of these taped interviews as well as tapes at the University of Miami.

  Other important interviews in Miami and Washington, D. C., were informal in character, and the material was consigned to my notebooks. Most of these conversations were confidential.

  III. Cuban Newspapers and Periodicals

  The Cuban press before the revolution was extremely important not only in re-creating the political mood of the era, but also for tracking Fidel Castro's public career. The first reference to him in a Havana newspaper appeared in 1944, and news stories about him and articles by him became increasingly frequent over the years, up to the eve of his victory.

  This material is identified in the Portrait whenever it is relevant; it did not seem useful to include it in the Chapter Notes. The best Cuban press sources were the weekly magazines Bohemia and Carteles, and the newspapers Diário de la Marina, El Mundo, El País, La Calle, and Alerta. Nearly complete collections of these publications are at the Library of Congress in Washington, the University of Miami, and other universities in the United States. Prerevolutionary university publications, such as Saeta and Mella, are very difficult to locate. Newspaper collections from the prerevolutionary period are to be found at the José Martí National Library in Havana, but they are very incomplete, and access is controlled by the authorities. Moreover, no copying equipment is publicly available in Cuba; research in this area is incomparably easier in the United States. Prerevolutionary university publications seem to have been lost, and Cuban researchers seek to obtain copies from the United States.

  For the first revolutionary period, the principal Cuban newspaper sources are Revolución of the 26th of July Movement and Hoy, the Communist organ; they were merged into Granma in 1965. All the other Cuban daily newspapers disappeared by 1961. Revolución, Hoy, and Granma are useful as repositories of speeches by Castro and other revolutionary figures, and for official news, reportage, and editorials. Bohemia is the most interesting magazine, publishing fragments of revolutionary history. Verde Olivo of the Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces and Moncada of the Ministry of the Interior provide much of the ideological line. References to items from these publications are made in the Portrait when relevant. Fairly complete collections of Cuba's postrevolutionary press exist at the Library of Congress, the University of Miami, etc.; in Havana, access to this material is rather difficult. The few extant collections of Lunes de Revolución, the first-rate literary supplement launched in 1959 and stopped in 1961, are in private hands in Cuba. They exist in the United States.

  IV. Books

  A bibliography at the end of this volume lists the most helpful and interesting Cuban, American, and European books on Fidel Castro and Cuba. Most of them are obtainable at the Library of Congress and university libraries in the United States.

  As noted above, however, there is an astonishing paucity of serious and useful and up-to-date books about the Cuban revolution—and especially about Fidel Castro. His own speeches are available in a large number of incomplete or excerpted editions in Cuba and the United States, but none of these are much help to a biographical researcher.

  Most of the material about Castro is confined to the previctory period. In my opinion, the most valuable book is Moncada: Premier Combat de Fidel Castro, by the French biographer Robert Merle, published in 1965 (and sadly not available in English). Merle interviewed the Castro brothers and most of the survivors of the Moncada attack when their memories were still fresh. Lionel Martín, the American journalist who knows Castro as well as any foreigner, has written a helpful account of his youth and war years in The Young Fidel, but historians may find problems with Martin's ideological interpretations, especially on Castro's relations with the Communists; still, it is the only chronicle of this kind. The very long introduction to Castro's Selected Works, 1947–1958 is a helpful sketch of Fidel against the background of his time.

  Fidel Castro himself tells interesting tales about his childhood and youth in Diary of the Cuban Revolution by Carlos Franqui, the first editor of Revolución, who taped a series of interviews with him in 1959. Franqui's volume, which is essential for the study of the Sierra War, also contains important correspondence of Fidel Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, Celia Sánchez, and others. In 1985, Fidel Castro gave a series of extremely lengthy interviews to a Brazilian Dominican friar, Fret Betto, on the subject of religion. Published in book form in Havana and Rio de Janeiro, these interviews provide fascinating glimpses of Castro's young life as seen by him; references to this text are identified in the Portrait and the Chapter Notes.

  Mario Mencía, the Cuban revolutionary chronicler, is the author of two very readable books: one, the account of the preparations for the attack on Moncada, and the other, the story of Fidel Castro in prison (the latter is available in English as Time Was on Our Side). Inevitably, they reflect a strong ideological bias, but nothing better is available, Mencía's third book, covering the period between Fidel's imprisonment and the landing in Cuba, has not been issued as of 1986, although it is completed. Marta Rojas, a Cuban journalist who covered Castro's trial in 1953, has written three books on Moncada and the judiciary proceedings that offer useful facts and impressions. Antonio Nuñez Jiménez describes selectively Castro's first year in power in En Marcha con Fidel, but the book's sycophancy makes it almost unreadable. In terms of Castro's personality, interviews with him by Lee Lockwood in Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel, published in 1967, may be the best material of this kind.

  Important insights into Castro appear in books by the French journalist K. S. Karol in Los Guerrilleros en el Poder, and by the late French agrarian scientist René Dumont in Cuba est-il Socialiste? These critiques are from the Left, and even mention of these books is banned in Havana. Comments on Castro by U. S. Ambassador Philip W. Bonsal in Cuba, Castro and the United States remain very valid.<
br />
  So fallow, however, is the field of biographical work on Fidel Castro that the researcher is forced back to original interviewing, with its advantages and its drawbacks.

  Chapter Notes

  Book One: The Man

  CHAPTER 1

  19–20 The account of Fidel Castro after the Alegría de Pío battle is taken from interviews with Faustino Pérez and Universo Sánchez.

  20–21 The author's conversations with Castro, January 1984; February 1985

  21 The visits by Communist emissaries to Castro in Mexico are discussed in detail in Book III.

  22 Castro brought up nationalism and patriotism in his speech on October 10, 1978, the hundredth anniversary of the first independence war.

  22 The Bolívarian theme was constant at 1985 conferences in Havana on the question of Latin America's external debt.

  24 In Fidel y la Religión, by Frei Betto, published in Havana in 1985

  25 Castro wrote of Robespierre in a wartime note to Celia Sánchez.