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Fidel Alejandro Castro
Ruz (pron.
IPA:
[fidel alexandro kastro rus];
born August
13, 1926)
has been the president of Cuba
since 1959,
when, leading the 26th
of July Movement, he overthrew the regime of Fulgencio
Batista. In the years that followed he oversaw the transformation of
Cuba into the first Communist
state in the Western
Hemisphere.
Castro first attracted
attention in Cuban political life through his student activism.
His outspoken nationalism,
and radical critique of Batista and US corporate and political influence
in Cuba, brought a receptive following as well as criticism, together with
attention from the authorities. Later, his leadership of the 1953 attack
on the Moncada Barracks, subsequent exile, and eventual guerrilla invasion
of Cuba in December
1956 cemented
his fame worldwide. Since his accession to power in 1959, he has
maintained a high, and controversial, profile. Inciting much condemnation,
praise and debate, Castro is a highly controversial leader who is viewed
as a dictator
by some while others see him as a legitimate and popular leader.
Shortly after assuming
power, Castro declared his intentions not to have free and democratic
elections and publicly declared his Marxist-Leninist inclinations,
beginning a long period of confrontation with the United States and a
close partnership with the Soviet
Union (resulting in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis) until its collapse in 1991, and foreign intervention
in many countries of the third
world. Domestically, the Cuban economy is in shambles, with
deteriorating infrastructure and crumbling buildings, and the political
and social conditions rank Cuba as one of the most repressive and least
free nations on earth, alongside North Korea, Syria, and Sudan, according
to independent international agencies like Freedom House and Amnesty
International. In the event of his death or other departure, Castro has
ruled that he be succeeded in the totalitarian regime by Vice President, Raúl
Castro, his brother. The largest source of foreign currency for the
Cuban economy is, ironically, the dollar remissions sent by Cuban
Americans to Cuban relatives and friends.
According to Georgie Anne
Geyer (1991), one of Castro's first and most quoted biographers, the
dominating factor in Castro’s life is hatred for the United States,
a claim confirmed by his first wife and others (Raffy, 2003). His
antipathy toward America can be traced in significant part to his
childhood. Castro is the illegitimate child of Angel Castro (1875-1956),
an illiterate Spaniard from Galicia, Spain, who went to Cuba as a private
with the Spanish army to fight against the United States. He was the paid
substitute for the son of a wealthy Spaniard. The elder Castro fought in
that “splendid little war” against the Cuban George
Washington, José Martí, in the eastern-most province of Santiago (where
Martí died and three years later Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders
also fought); Castro studiously avoids talking about his father’s
participation in the war against Cuba’s founding fathers (Fuentes,
2004). After the Spanish defeat in 1898, Angel returned briefly to Spain
to find his fiancée married to someone else, whereupon he returned to a
prosperous Cuba in 1902. He initially worked providing Haitian laborers to
American-owned sugar mills northwest of the city of Santiago. He married a
school teacher, and began accumulating land in various legal and illegal
ways to grow sugar for the mills (Raffy, 2003; Pardo Llada, 1976, 1988;
Thomas, 1998). The Castro home was modeled on Galician farm structures and
life: a house built on posts so animals could shelter underneath, a large
kitchen table where meals were eaten standing up, minimal use of
silverware (Pardo Llada, 1976, 1988). In the early 1920s, a 14-year-old
girl named Lina Rúz (1905-1961) came to work as a servant, and the elder
Castro had seven children with her out of wedlock, of which Fidel was
third oldest (first Angela, then Ramón, later Fidel, Raúl, Juana, Emma,
and Agustina).
For several years, while
Angel Castro sought a divorce from his first wife (an unusual and
contentious event in a strongly Catholic country that created a big
scandal in the region), the children lived in foster homes or with the
maternal grandparents (Raffy, 2003; Pardo Llada, 1976; Fuentes, 2004).
Fidel was not baptized until he was eight, also very uncommon, bringing
embarrassment and ridicule from other children (Raffy, 2003; Fuentes,
2004). Angel Castro finally dissolved his first marriage when Fidel was 15
and married Fidel’s mother. Castro was formally recognized by his
father when he was 17, when his last name was legally changed to Castro
from Rúz, his mother’s maiden name (Raffy, 2003; Fuentes, 2004). At
the same time, Fidel changed his middle name to “Alejandro” (Alexander)
after reading about the Greek warrior in school.
As a child in rural Cuba,
Castro dealt with three conflicts: he was the son of a Galician immigrant
(Galicians in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America are often mocked for
their thick, “lispy” Spanish accents); he was an illegitimate
child who grew up in several foster homes and whom the Church refused to
baptize until he was eight (Catholic children are normally baptized
shortly after they are born and are then able to participate in communion
and confirmation); and he was from the country (a “guajiro” or
peasant) and often mocked by the more sophisticated city kids. Like
Mussolini, Castro became known for his wild behavior at school—he
once bit a priest for a supposed slight. He buried himself in school work
and sports. Although he was handsomely supported by Angel Castro into
adulthood and embraced Angel’s strong anti-American sentiments,
Castro’s relations with his father were always distant and strained
(Pardo Llada, 1976; Raffy, 2003; Geyer, 1991). The separation from his
father continued into adulthood—Angel refused to go to Fidel’s
wedding when he was 22 and died a few years later. By most accounts,
Fidel’s mother Lina Rúz was a strong, ambitious woman who was
protective of her children and interested in their educations; she was
particularly protective of Fidel (Fuentes, 2004; Pardo Llada, 1976, 1988;
Raffy, 2003). When Castro arrived in Havana as a student at Cuba’s
most prestigious preparatory school, Belén (“Bethlehem”), a
Jesuit-run school with 500 (during the early 1940s) of the sons of the
country’s elite, he was seen as highly intelligent and clever, a
quick thinker with a formidable memory; physically vigorous (“incansable”
or untiring, as one teacher said); resilient, impossible to ignore,
persistent in getting his way, willing to oppose adults; tall,
athletically gifted; quick to anger, aggressive, combative, and pugnacious;
verbally gifted, with a highly pitched voice; inclined to hide his family
background; (Castro’s deliberate ancestral vagueness resembles
Lyndon Johnson’s unrelenting efforts to hide his childhood and
adolescence—Caro, 1982); and driven to be the center of attention
and to win at all costs. According to a Galician Jesuit priest at Belén
with whom the young Castro enjoyed a close relationship, because of his
temperament and his unusual speech patterns (by Cuban standards), Castro
should have been born in Galician Spain (Raffy, 2003). His reserve, along
with his energetic outbursts, anger, and irrationality (rather than lose a
bicycle race to another student, he pedaled full speed into a wall,
resulting in a concussion and three days in Belen’s infirmary), set
him apart from his contemporaries.
Although the Cuban
economy after World War II was vibrant, the political system was
dysfunctional, and fighting among gangs of supposed university students
created considerable instability. He belonged to a group violent Havana
University students known as "Los muchachos de gatillo alegre”
or the “trigger happy boys” (Ros, 2003). Castro’s
university days were remarkable by their violence and his unsuccessful
efforts to lead different student organizations. It was as if he were
driven to be the center of attention at any cost, which of course made him
even less attractive to his classmates in the various gangs. However, his
gifts for self-promotion and capturing media attention were already
evident, inside and outside of Cuba. Most of his events, which the media
loved, were marked by violence and speeches denouncing corrupt politicians,
including his ill-advised plan to attack the Moncada garrison on July 26,
1953, a pointless and near suicidal action against dictator Fulgencio
Batista that resulted in the death of most of the attackers, except for
Castro and his younger brother Raúl. The Moncada assault was
characteristic of Castro’s desperate search for the center stage: he
wanted to be the principal opponent to Batista and to displace all the
better known and well-regarded politicians. Batista, the dictator who
seized power in a smooth and bloodless coup in 1952, had become
Castro’s designated enemy. Ironically, Batista allowed freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, and political opposition, which permitted
Castro to make headlines and gain a reputation as a Captain Thunder,
dancing on top of the volcano without getting burned. Another irony and
piece of good fortune for Castro was that Batista’s head of the
feared SIM (Servicio de Inteligencia Militar), was Castro’s
brother-in-law, Rafael Díaz Balart (Raffy, 2003; Fuentes, 2004). One of
Castro’s most prized possessions was a 12-volume set of
Mussolini’s speeches and writings (Pardo Llada, 1976). By the time
he and his guerrillas emerged from the mountains of eastern Cuba in 1959,
he had perfected Mussolini’s rhetorical gestures, plagiarized some
of his phrases, (e.g., “All within the revolution, nothing outside
the revolution, nothing against the revolution,” uttered during
Castro’s trials to censor Cuban writers, artists, and poets), and
his use of grand symbols and theater (e.g., the white doves sitting on his
shoulders during a widely photographed 1959 speech). Hitler created a
power base out of the alienated German lower classes and Castro played to
the farmers and the workers; while imposing social controls, he asked
“Elecciones, para qué?” or “Elections, for what?”
(Raffy, 2003; Szulc, 1986; Coltman, 2003). After assuming power, his
indifference to ordinary rules of adult behavior is seen in the fact that,
although he promised to be a good father for his own son Fidelito, he was
soon divorced and proceeded to have at least eight other children with
several women out of wedlock (Raffy, 2003; Fuentes, 2004).
Education
Castro was educated at Jesuit
and La
Salle Christian Brothers Schools [1]
[2])
private schools in Santiago
de Cuba and the Colegio
de Belén in Havana,
graduating in 1945.
He would later expel the faculty from Cuba, like many other priests and
religious figures, and have the schools property nationalized. After high
school, Castro enrolled at the University
of Havana to study law. Here he joined the Union
Insurreccional Revolucionaria (UIR, the Insurrectional Revolutionary
Union) an action
group led by Emilio
Tro [3],[4],
[5],
[6],
[7]
and became involved in political disputes that were often violent and
sometimes murderous.
Early political activity
In 1947
he joined the Partido
Ortodoxo (Orthodox Party, also known as the Partido
del Pueblo Cubano, Party of the Cuban People) and its campaign to
expose government
corruption and demand reform. In the summer of 1947, Castro, along
with Rolando
Masferrer, became part of the Caribbean
legion that attempted to travel to the Dominican
Republic and overthrow its government [8].
The attempt failed, however, when the Cuban police intervened. Fidel and a
few other escaped by rafting and swimming two miles before reaching land.
Because of this and his other activities, Castro became known through
local radio and the Alerta
newspaper.
In 1948,
Castro, already credited with a number of killings in Cuba (Geyer, 2002;
Ros, 2003; U.S. State Department 1950-1954), traveled to Bogotá
in Colombia
as a delegate of the Federacion
Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU, the Cuban University Student
Federation) for the ninth Pan-American
Union Conference. Some funding for Castro on this trip is understood
to have been provided by Juan
Peron. During his visit, however, the Colombian
Liberal Party leader Jorge
Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated. Castro, who according to the
Scotland Yard investigation and other sources had set up an appointment
with Gaitán at a time immediately before the Colombian leader was killed,
and participated in the violence the Bogotazo
that followed the assassination (Angel Aparicio Lourencio, 1975). Castro
who was and still is suspected of collaborating with the Colombian
Communist Party in this killing, had to flee the country. These claims
are controversial, most notably because Fidel was an admirer of Gaitán;
however, some maintain that Castro is also known to express admiration of
those e.g. Camilo
Cienfuegos he is believed to have ordered killed. The plane with which
Castro made his escape was provided by the Cuban president, Carlos
Prío Socarrás, even though Castro opposed Prío.
Putative early contacts
with influential people
During his early days
Fidel Castro can be said with some confidence to have been linked to a
number of influential and powerful people. These contacts include Fulgencio
Batista who was definitely close to his family.
The mysterious William
Wieland (aka (Guillermo) Montenegro, Wilheim Wieland) protégé of Sumner
Welles from the time of Fulgencio
Batista's first rise to power in 1933. Wieland was present (US consul)
during the Bogotazo
while it is said by some to be in contact with Castro. Wieland was a
highly influential U.S. State Department Official, variously and
conflictingly described as a Communist [9],
and as a CIA agent who appears to have aided Castro during the U.S. Arms
Embargo Against Batista (1958)[10].
Wieland was an active naysayer during the weak planning and execrable
execution of the Bay
of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and later was subject to various U.S
Government investigations (Holland, 2000). While historians have not yet
reached consensus; Wieland is commonly considered to have a left of center
record in Latin American matters [11].
and quite definitely linked to the influential bisexual underground groups
(Bancroft 1983 pp. 132-133) within the US State Department (Paz 2001 pp.
269,270; Welles, 1997). Some sources (citing 245:6572 "State
Department Security: The Case of William Wieland", 1962; 245:6573
State Department Security: Testimony of William Wieland", 1962;
245:6574 "State Department Security - 1963-65: The Wieland Case
Updated", 1963-1965 [12])
report that in the 1930s William Wieland, known in Cuba as Arturo
Montenegro, was intimate with Sumner Welles and his successor, Jefferson
Caffery, thus promoting his successful career [13].
Prior to his 1956 landing
Castro was said to be in contact with KGB
agent Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov in Mexico
City (see below). Other putative contacts include Rafael
Leónidas Trujillo. Castro received money and weapons from Carlos
Prío Socarrás whether this included CIA support is not clear.
First Marriage
That same year, 1948,
Castro married Mirta
Díaz Balart, a philosophy
student from another wealthy Cuban family, with whom he later had a son, Fidel
Castro which was later nicknamed Fidelito. It is said that Castro
fled out of the back door of the church of the Virgin of Charity because
some of his enemies were waiting for him [14].
Amongst the wedding presents received was a substantial gift (US$500
others say U.S. $1000) from Batista, who by then was both a retired
President and dictator with the rank of former general
in the Cuban army.
In 1950
Castro graduated and began practicing law in a small partnership, mostly
representing the poor. He had by now become known for his nationalist
views and his opposition to the United States' influence in Cuba. In 1951,
after the Partido Ortodoxo's founder Eduardo
Chibás committed suicide,
Castro unsuccessfully claimed leadership of the party and prepared to
stand for parliament
the following year. However, a coup
d'état led by Batista on March
10, 1952
overthrew Socarrás' government and the elections were canceled. Castro
broke away from the Partido Ortodoxo and, in court, charged Batista with
violating the Cuban constitution.
His petition was refused.
Attack on Moncada
Barracks
Castro recruited 1200 men
and spoke to each one personally. They planned to attack on Sunday July
26, 1953, only 6 of his men knew either the time or the location of this
attack. Despite his intense preperations many of the cars he used to
transport his troops got lost and didnt meet up at the scheduled time.
When Castros Car arrived at the barracks of Santiago in a clash of events
the driver of Castros car panicked and ending up hitting a curb. HIs
engine stalled and when the soldiers in the barracks hears this they were
alerted of the attack and started to shoot at Castro. Then the Barracks
alarms soundedin the building to alert all of the officers in the barracks
what was happening. The entire assault was over in less that a half an
hour. Though 4 of his men were killed Castro managed to escaped into the
mountains wounded and now as a guerrilla chieftan.
Castro responded to
Batista's coup by organizing an armed attack on the Moncada
Barracks, Batista's largest garrison outside Santiago de Cuba, on July
26, 1953.
The Céspedes garrison in Bayamo
was also attacked under the leadership of Antonio "Ñico"
Lopez. These attacks proved unsuccessful and more than sixty of the
one-hundred and thirty-five militants
involved were killed.
Castro and other
surviving members of his group managed to escape to the part of the Sierra
Maestra east of Santiago. Castro and his company were captured after a
patrol discovered them while they were sleeping. Although the official
attitude of the military was to capture Fidel alive, the real orders were
that the leader of the rebellion, Fidel Castro, was to be executed once
found. However, some say by a strange coincidence, none of the soldiers
recognized Fidel, except one person, the lieutenant who led the patrol
that captured Fidel. This lieutenant had been at the University of Havana
at the same time Fidel was a student there. While he was searching Fidel
for weapons, he whispered in Fidel's ear not to reveal his name, or he
would be shot. [1].
However, most credit the
good offices of Monseñor
Pérez Serantes [15]
[16],
[17]
as the main reason why the Castro brothers were not executed on capture as
was common for their fellow militants [18].
Yet, others suggest that Raul Castro's long relationship with Batista, to
the point that Raul is said by some to be Batista's godson [19],
and long established Castro-Batista family influences [20]
played a role.
During the subsequent
trial in August to October 1953, Castro delivered La
historia me absolverá (History Will Absolve Me, complete
translation) as his closing speech, in which he defended his actions
and declared his political views. He was sentenced to fifteen years in
prison.
While he was in prison,
Mirta Díaz-Balart divorced Castro and his enemies are said to have tried
to poison him (BBC claims over 600 often baroque and always failed
attempts on his life). Having served less than two years, however, he was
released in May 1955
thanks to a general amnesty
from a confident Batista. He went into exile
in Mexico
on July 7.
Some historians claim
that although Castro's group took part in the Moncada Barracks attack,
Castro himself was not involved in the fighting. They claim that Castro
and his inner circle hid at a nearby location, away from the bloodshed.
These claims, however, are highly disputed. [21]
It has also been claimed that Castro's unit targeted soldiers who were
sleeping or incapacitated in the barracks' infirmary. This claim has been
countered as an attempt by Castro's enemies to discredit him. In La
historia me absolverá, Castro said:
Everyone had
instructions, first of all, to be humane in the struggle... From the
beginning we took numerous prisoners - nearly twenty... Those soldiers
testified before the court and without exception they all acknowledged
that we treated them with absolute respect.... In line with this, I want
to give my heartfelt thanks to the prosecutor for one thing in the trial
of my comrades: when he made his report he was fair enough to
acknowledge as an incontestable fact that we maintained a high spirit of
chivalry throughout the struggle. [22]
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