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Obituary: Fidel Castro

26 November 2016
From the section Latin America & Caribbean

Fidel Castro ruled Cuba as a one party state for almost half a
century.

As communist regimes collapsed across the world, Castro kept the red
flag flying right on the doorstep of his greatest enemy, the United
States.

A divisive figure, his supporters praised him as a champion of
socialism, the soldier-politician who had given Cuba back to the
people.

But he faced accusations of brutally suppressing opposition and
pursuing policies that crippled the Cuban economy.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on 13 August 1926, the
illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, Angel María Bautista Castro y
Argiz, who had emigrated to Cuba from Spain

His mother, Lina Ruz González was a farm servant who became his
father's mistress, and later, after Fidel's birth, his wife.

Castro attended Catholic schools in Santiago before going on to the
Jesuit-run El Colegio de Belen in Havana.

However, he failed to excel academically, preferring to spend his time
in sporting activities.

It was while studying law at Havana University in the mid-1940s that
he became a political activist, honing his skills as a passionate
public speaker.
Marxism

His targets included the Cuban government, led by the president Ramon
Grau, which was mired in accusations of corruption.

Violent protests became the order of the day and Castro found himself
targeted by the police.

He also became part of a plot to overthrow Rafael Trujillo, the
right-wing leader of the Dominican Republic but the attempt was
thwarted after US intervention.

In 1948 Castro married Mirta Diaz-Balart, the daughter of a wealthy
Cuban politician. Far from encouraging him to join the country's
elite, he turned increasingly to Marxism.

He believed Cuba's economic problems were a result of unbridled
capitalism that could only be solved by a people's revolution.

After graduating Castro set up a legal practice but it failed to
prosper and he was continually in debt. He remained a political
activist, taking part in a series of often violent demonstrations.

In 1952 Fulgencio Batista launched a military coup which overthrew the government of the Cuban president, Carlos Prío.
Attack

Batista's policy of closer ties with the United States and the
suppression of socialist organisations ran counter to Castro's
fundamental political beliefs.

After legal challenges had failed Castro formed an organisation called
The Movement, which worked underground in a bid to overthrow the
Batista regime.

Cuba had become a haven for the playboy rich, and was run largely by
organised crime syndicates. Prostitution, gambling and drug
trafficking were endemic.

In July 1953 Castro planned an attack on the Moncada army barracks
near Santiago in order to seize weapons for use in an armed uprising.

The attack failed and many revolutionaries were killed or captured.
Castro was one of a number of prisoners who went on trial in Sep 1953.

Castro used his court appearance to expose atrocities committed by the
army which further raised his profile, particularly among members of
the foreign press who were allowed to attend the hearing.
Guerrilla warfare

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In the event he was released
in a general amnesty in May 1955 having served just 19 months in
relatively comfortable conditions.

During his short time in prison he divorced his wife and immersed
himself in Marxist texts.

As Batista continued to crack down on his opponents, Castro fled to
Mexico to avoid being arrested. There he met a young revolutionary
named Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

In November 1956 Castro returned to Cuba with 81 armed companions on
board a leaking cabin cruiser designed to carry just 12 people.

The party took refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains. From this base
Castro launched a two-year guerrilla campaign against the regime in
Havana.

On 2 January, 1959, the rebel army entered the Cuban capital and
Batista fled.

Hundreds of Batista's former supporters were executed after trials
that many foreign observers deemed as less than fair.
Ideology

Castro responded by insisting that "revolutionary justice is not based
on legal precepts, but on moral conviction".

The new Cuban government promised to give the land back to the people
and to defend the rights of the poor.

But the government quickly imposed a one-party system. Hundreds of
people were sent to jail and labour camps as political prisoners.
Thousands of mainly middle class Cuban's fled into exile.

Castro insisted his ideology was, first and foremost, Cuban.

"There is not communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and
social justice in a well-planned economy," he said at the time.

In 1960, Fidel Castro nationalised all US-owned businesses on the
island. In response, Washington put Cuba under a trade embargo that
was to last into the 21st century.
Invaders

Castro claimed he was driven into the arms of the Soviet Union and its
leader, Nikita Khrushchev, although some commentators say he entered
the USSR's embrace willingly.

Whatever the motive, tropical Cuba became a Cold War battleground.

In April 1961, the US attempted to topple the Castro government by
recruiting a private army of Cuban exiles to invade the island.

At the Bay of Pigs, Cuban troops repulsed the invaders, killing many
and capturing 1,000. Fidel Castro had bloodied the nose of a
superpower and it would never forgive him.

A year later, American reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet
missiles on their way to sites in Cuba. The world was suddenly staring
into the abyss of all-out nuclear war.

"A series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that
imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than
to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western
hemisphere," warned President John F Kennedy.
Bizarre

The superpowers stood eyeball to eyeball, but it was President
Khrushchev who blinked first, pulling his missiles out of Cuba in
return for a secret withdrawal of US weapons from Turkey.

Fidel Castro, though, had become America's enemy number one. The CIA
tried to assassinate him, most infamously with Operation Mongoose.
Getting him to smoke a cigar packed with explosives was one idea.

Others were even more bizarre, including one to make his beard fall
out and make him into a figure to be ridiculed.

The Soviet Union poured money into Cuba. It bought the bulk of the
island's sugar harvest and in return its ships crammed into Havana
harbour, bringing in desperately needed goods to beat the US trade
embargo.

Despite his reliance on the Soviets' help, Castro put Cuba at the head
of the newly-emerging Non-Aligned Movement.
Shortages

However, he also took sides, especially in Africa, sending his troops
to support Marxist guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique.

By the mid-1980s, however, global geopolitics were shifting. It was
the era of Mikhail Gorbachev, glasnost and perestroika, and it proved catastrophic for Castro's revolution.

Moscow effectively pulled the plug on the Cuban economy by refusing to
take its sugar any more.

Still under the US embargo and with its Soviet lifeline cut off,
chronic shortages and empty shelves in Cuba were inevitable. Tempers
grew shorter as the food queues grew longer.

The country Fidel Castro called the most advanced in the world had, in
fact, returned to the age of ox-drawn carts.

By the mid-1990s, many Cubans had had enough. If earlier waves of
exiles had been as much about politics as economics, thousands were
now taking to the sea in a waterborne exodus to Florida and the dream
of a better life. Many drowned but it was a crushing vote of
no-confidence in Castro.
Caribbean communism

Yet Cuba registered some impressive domestic achievements. Good
medical care was freely available for all, and Cuba's infant mortality
rates compared favourably with the most sophisticated societies on
earth.

In later years, Castro seemed to have mellowed. 1998 saw a
ground-breaking visit by Pope John Paul II, something which would have
been unthinkable even five years earlier.

The then Pope condemned Cuba for its human rights abuses, embarrassing
Castro in front of the world's media.

Fidel Castro had created his own unique brand of Caribbean communism
which, in his last years, he was forced to adapt, slowly introducing a
few free-market reforms to save his revolution.

On 31 July 2006, just days before his 80th birthday, Castro handed
over power temporarily to Raul after undergoing emergency intestinal
surgery.

His health continued to deteriorate. Early in 2008, Castro announced
that he would not accept the positions of president and commander-in
chief at the next meeting of the National Assembly.

In a letter published in an official communist newspaper, he was
quoted as saying: "It would betray my conscience to take up a
responsibility that requires mobility and total devotion, that I am
not in a physical condition to offer."

He largely withdrew from public life, writing articles published in
the state media under the title Reflections of Comrade Fidel.

He re-emerged in July 2010, he made his first public appearance since
falling ill, greeting workers and giving a television interview in
which he discussed US tensions with Iran and North Korea.

The following month Castro gave his first speech to the National
Assembly in four years, urging the US not to take military action
against Iran or North Korea and warning of a nuclear holocaust if
tensions increased.

When asked whether Castro may be re-entering government, culture
minister Abel Prieto told the BBC: "I think that he has always been in
Cuba's political life but he is not in the government. He has been
very careful about that. His big battle is international affairs."

President Obama's announcement in December 2014 of the beginning of an
end to US trade and other sanctions saw the beginning of a thaw in
what had been half a century of hostile relations between the two
countries.

Castro welcomed the move stating it was it was "a positive move for establishing peace in the region", but that he mistrusted the US
government.

While many Cubans undoubtedly detested Castro, others genuinely loved
him. They saw him as a David who could stand up to the Goliath of
America, who successfully spat in the "Yanqui" eye.

For them Castro was Cuba and Cuba was Castro.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-10744408
--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

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