"I received your letter dated October 30. You present the matter in such a way that you really consulted with us before withdrawing strategic missiles ... I do not know what news you received, but I am only responsible for the message I sent on the evening of 26 October and you received on October 27th.
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In Cuba, there was only one kind of anxiety: a military alarm ... The danger could not frighten us, because we have long felt how it hangs over our country.
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The news of the sudden and practically unmotivated decision to withdraw the missiles caused tears in many Cubans and Soviet people, who were ready to die with their heads held high. You probably do not know how determined the Cuban people are to fulfill their duty to the Motherland and to humanity.
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You, Comrade Khrushchev, think that we selfishly thought about ourselves, about our selfless people, ready to sacrifice themselves, and of course, not blindly, but fully realizing what danger they are exposing themselves to?
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We knew that we would be destroyed, as you hint in your letter, in the event of a thermonuclear war. Nevertheless, we did not ask you to withdraw the missiles. We did not ask you to yield.
I understand the matter in such a way that if aggression is unleashed, it is impossible to concede to the aggressors the privilege of deciding when to use nuclear weapons.
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I did not suggest to you that at the height of the crisis the USSR should attack. I suggested that after the imperialist attack the USSR should act without hesitation and in no case should it make a mistake by allowing the enemies to strike it first.
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I took up this business, not paying attention to how sensitive it is, obeying the duty of a revolutionary and experiencing the most disinterested feeling of admiration and love for the USSR.
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Not a part of the Cuban people, as you have been informed, but the overwhelming majority of Cubans are now experiencing unspeakable bitterness and sadness.
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The imperialists are again talking about the occupation of our country, claiming that your promises are ephemeral. But our people are eager to resist, perhaps more than ever, relying on themselves and their will to win.
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We will fight against hostile circumstances. We will cope with the difficulties and withstand. At the same time, nothing can destroy the bonds of our friendship and the endless gratitude of the USSR.
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With brotherly greetings,
Fidel Castro "
Fidel about perverts:
"What problem has arisen here? In the early years we were forced to carry out an almost complete mobilization of the country in view of the inevitable US aggression. Compulsory military service was introduced."
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There were groups that, on principle, do not recognize a banner or a weapon. Some people used this as an excuse to reject mobilization.
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This is how the situation arose with homosexuals who were not called up for military service. We had to deal with a sharp rejection of homosexuality in our society, after the victory of the Revolution, we strongly felt the element of male superiority and the mood of opponents of the presence of homosexuals in military units prevailed.
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Due to these factors, people were not drafted into the army. However, this became an additional annoyance factor. Homosexuals found themselves excluded from such an intense process of self-giving. Some have used this argument to criticize homosexuals.
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From these categories (those who were not subject to conscription), the Military Units for Assistance to Production were formed, to which the mentioned persons were sent. This is how it was. "
Fidel on Marxism and Christianity:
“At the university, the leftists looked at me like a stranger, saying:“ The son of a landowner and a graduate of the Jesuit College of Bethlehem must be a hard-core reactionary ....
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... More than 30 years ago I came into contact with Liberation Theology. I met with many priests and pastors of various ranks, gathering them at the Cuban embassy. And then, after several hours of discussion, I put forward an idea that had ripened for a long time - about the union of believers and not believers, that is, Marxists and believers in support of the Revolution.
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As the Sandinistas said, "Christianity and the Revolution - there is no contradiction here"?
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We started talking about this much earlier, because the Sandinista revolution won in 1979, and I defended this idea everywhere I went: in Chile, when I visited Salvador Allende in 1971, and even in Jamaica, when I visited Michael Manley in 1977. year. I proclaimed that the revolutionary change needed in our hemisphere requires an alliance of Marxists and Christians.
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We had a chaplain in the Sierra Maestra, a Catholic priest who joined the rebels. He even rose to the rank of major and wore a dark olive uniform. Father Guillermo Sardinas, well-known and beloved by all. Not that my comrades were zealous Catholics, but almost everyone here was baptized, and the unbaptized, as I said, were called "Jews."
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I told you that this was not only a matter of principle, but also of elementary common sense: a priest who would be shot by the revolutionaries would immediately fall into the category of great martyrs, this would be a gift to the empire and an insult to many honest believers in Cuba and in the world.
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During the 1789 revolution, the French killed each other because ordinary priests were on the side of the revolution, and the church hierarchs were on the side of feudal power. Events of this kind also took place during the October Revolution.
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In 1910, the revolution began in Mexico, a real social revolution - not a socialist, but a deep social revolution - and there they killed each other, making no exception for the priests.
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Then the Spanish Civil War broke out. The Spaniard is very religious, most of the Spaniards were in favor of the republic, and the priests were shot from both sides.
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We are the exception. And this proves that we were guided by certain ethical principles. This is essential. "
As it is written in the annotation, “Fidel Castro. My Life ”- the first autobiography of the Commander of the Cuban Revolution; 100 hours of interviews, resulting in an exciting, sincere and frank monologue about the time and about himself of the most controversial political leader of the second half of the 20th century.
The book is unique in that for the first time Fidel Castro himself talks about his family, about not a simple childhood, about the storming of the Moncada barracks, about the legendary Che Guevara, about the Cuban missile crisis and the Cuban revolution.
Indeed, this is a rather candid interview, taken intermittently by a French journalist from 2003 to 2005, shortly before Fidel's 80th birthday. The interview covers the entire period of the commander's life, so it turned out to be somewhat cumbersome. The frequent repetitions that are needed in oral speech to emphasize the main thing are somewhat tiring when presented in writing. But these shortcomings are compensated by interesting facts and the utmost clarity with which Castro communicates his position, his vision of the situation.
The main focus of the book is on the Cuban Revolution, the confrontation of the island state with a powerful superpower, which is at hand. Resisting military invasion, economic blockade, subversive and terrorist activities. A struggle in which the country not only survived, but also managed to save its face.
A country that resists aggression, relying not so much on weapons as on the patriotic attitude of its people, on the education of the concepts of justice, freedom and brotherhood. It is expensive to have your own opinion in the modern world. And this position is not the last merit of the former and current leaders of Cuba.
Another goal of the book was to try to solve the "Fidel Castro riddle". How did it happen that a child, who was born in the wilderness of the countryside, to rich but conservative and poorly educated parents, was raised by Spanish Jesuits-Francoists in Catholic educational institutions intended for children of the elite, and sat on the university bench side by side with their offspring the big bourgeoisie, eventually became one of the most prominent revolutionaries of the second half of the XX century?
Part of the interview is devoted to the ongoing changes in the country, which Fidel Castro dreamed of from the very beginning of his coming to power - the creation of a new type of society with less social inequality, healthy and better educated, without discrimination, with a comprehensively developed culture accessible to the entire population.
A lot of interesting information can be gleaned from the book. For example, how the Texas flag of the slave-owning south of the United States became the national flag of Cuba since 1868. Or how José Martí, the Spanish poet and writer, became the national hero of Cuba.
“Marty's main merit is as follows: the Cuban liberation war, which lasted from 1868 to 1878, ended; he, a young intellectual and patriot, poet, writer, is fascinated by the idea of the struggle for the independence of Cuba; He was only 25 years old when this struggle ended, and he begins to take the first steps and ultimately unites and guides the veterans of that brutal and glorious Ten Years War. There is nothing more difficult in the world than leading war veterans, especially if the one who set out to bring them together is an intellectual who lived in Spain, and even did not participate in that war. Marty managed to combine them. This is talent, this is ability! "
Many kind words are dedicated to Ernesto Che Guevara, an Argentine doctor, and in the future Castro's associate, whom Fidel met in Mexico during his exile.
“Che aroused sympathy among people. He was one of those people who immediately evoke sympathy, his naturalness, simplicity, friendliness and dignity attracted people to him. He worked as a doctor in one of the centers of the Social Insurance Institute, doing research - I don't know, either in the field of cardiology, or allergy, because he himself was allergic. Our small group in Mexico loved it. Raoul managed to make friends with him. I met Che when I came to Mexico. He was then 27 years old. "
“Che studied and practiced, but as a military doctor he was there with us and turned out to be an outstanding doctor, healed our comrades. He had one characteristic that I appreciated the most among his many virtues. In the vicinity of the Mexican capital is the Popocatepetl volcano. Che was preparing the equipment - this mountain is high (more than five thousand meters), with eternal snow on the top - he began the ascent, made great efforts - and did not reach the top. Che suffered from asthma. Asthma canceled all his attempts to climb the mountain. A week later, he again tried to reach the top of Popo, as he called this mountain-volcano, and did not succeed. He never visited the top of Popocatepetl. However, Che again set off to make another attempt, and, probably, his whole life did not leave the desire to conquer Popocatepetl. Che made heroic efforts, although he did not succeed in reaching the alluring summit. This showed Che's character. "
"When we were still a very small group, every time a volunteer was required to complete a certain task, the first one always offered himself to Che."
Regarding the stories about Che.
“A period came when the National Bank was left without funds, the available funds were extremely small, because the reserves were stolen by Batista, and the National Bank needed a leader. At that moment, a revolutionary was needed. Che was a tried and tested man, talented, disciplined and incorruptible, and he was appointed president of the National Bank of Cuba.
In this regard, anecdotes appeared. Enemies are always trying to make fun of us, we joke too; however, the anecdote, which had a political connotation, was about the fact that one day I said: "We need an economist." At the same time, confusion arose, and they decided that I said: "We need a communist." That is why they called Che, since he was a communist. The error, they say, came out.
And Che was just the person we needed in this post, don't even hesitate, because Che was a revolutionary, a real communist and an excellent economist. Yes, because an idea makes an excellent economist that a person who leads the front of the country's economy, in this case leads the front of the National Bank of Cuba, wants to implement. So, in his double incarnation of a communist and an economist, Che was at his best. Not because he was a certified specialist, but because he read and observed a lot. Whatever business Che Guevara did, he performed it extremely conscientiously. I have already spoken about his perseverance, willpower. Whatever task was posed to him, he was able to cope with it. "
Of interest is the story itself about how 19 people who survived after arriving in Cuba from Mexico (a total of 89 fighters sailed on the Granma, including Fidel, Raul, Che) and who entered the battle and who only 12 remained after the betrayal ( !), were able to organize a partisan movement and in 3 years liberate Cuba from the Batista regime with its 80,000-strong army.
Or about the terrorist actions of supporters of Batista and the CIA, especially after the failed US invasion of Cuba in Playa Giron in 1961.
“From November 1961, after Playa Giron, to January 1963, that is, in fourteen months, a total of 5,780 terrorist attacks were committed against Cuba, including 717 serious attacks on Cuban industrial equipment, which resulted in the death of 234 people. The total result of this terrorist activity was 3,500 dead and more than 2,000 injured. Cuba is one of those countries in the world that has had to face organized terrorism.
During Nixon's presidency, in 1971, the swine plague virus was thrown into Cuba, according to a CIA source, via a container. And we had to sacrifice over half a million pigs. This virus of African origin was completely unknown on the island. It was implemented twice.
And there was something worse: the Dengue virus type 2, which causes hemorrhagic fever, which is often fatal to humans. This happened in 1981. More than 350 thousand people were infected, of which 158 died, including 101 children. This virus strain was then completely unknown in the world. He was taken out to the laboratory. The head of the Florida-based terrorist organization Omega-7 admitted in 1984 that they had spread this deadly virus in Cuba with the aim of causing as many casualties as possible. "
“Not to mention the assassination attempts on us. In total, more than 600 different assassination plans have been registered. "
Also about relations with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the world was on the brink of a nuclear war.
“At that moment of greatest tension, the Soviet side is sending a proposal to the United States. Khrushchev does not consult with us about this. They propose removing missiles from Cuba if the Americans remove their Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Kennedy compromises on October 28. And the Russians decide to withdraw the SS-4 missiles. This seemed to us absolutely incorrect. Has caused a storm of indignation. "
“We learned from news reports that the Soviet side had offered to withdraw the missiles. Without any discussion with us! We did not oppose any solution because it was important to avoid a nuclear conflict. But Khrushchev had to tell the Americans: "This should also be discussed with the Cubans." At that moment he lacked endurance and firmness. The Russians should have consulted with us as a matter of principle.
Then the terms of the contract would probably be better. Cuba would not have had a military base at Guantanamo, and spy flights at high altitude would not have continued. All this touched us. We protested. And even after the agreement, they continued to shoot at planes flying at low altitudes. The Americans had to stop them. Our relations with the Russians have deteriorated. This affected our relationship for several years to come. "
“There was nothing illegal in our agreement with the Soviet side, given that the Americans deployed Jupiter missiles of the same class in Turkey, and even in Italy, and no one was trying to bomb these countries or invade their territories.
The problem was not legality, everything was perfectly legal, but the incorrect political conduct of this case by Khrushchev, when he began to build theories about offensive and non-offensive weapons. In political struggle, one must not lose face by resorting to hypocrisy and lies.
The content of the Soviet-Cuban agreement was completely legal, I repeat, legitimate, even justified. This was not illegal. It was wrong to resort to lies for the purpose of disinformation, which gave Kennedy courage. At that time he had real proof that the Americans had already obtained from the air, with the help of his U-2 spy plane, which invaded Cuban airspace, and he was allowed to. If you are deploying surface-to-air missiles, you must not allow spy planes to fly over the territory you have chosen to defend. The United States does not allow any aircraft to fly over their territory, and they would not allow a Soviet observation aircraft to fly over their missiles in Italy and Turkey. "
“In October 1962, we didn’t exactly allow it, we didn’t take measures to prevent the removal of missiles, since we would have come into conflict with both superpowers. We had control over the country, here without our decision nothing will budge, but it would be unreasonable, it did not make sense. "
And get information about the base at Guantanamo.
“The United States, which occupied Cuba after its capture in 1898, insisted that an“ amendment ”be made to the Cuban Constitution of 1901 - the“ Platt Amendment ”, named after the American Senator who proposed it. It significantly limited the sovereignty of the new Cuban republic, gave Washington the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the island, and obliged the Cuban state to cede a number of coal bases to them for refueling American ships. One of these "coal bases" became, beginning on June 2, 1903, the Guantanamo Naval Base, which the United States still occupies against the will of Cuba. Not so long ago, it became the object of attention from the world press due to the fact that the government of George W. Bush turned it into a center for the illegal detention of alleged Islamic terrorists subjected to US military torture and other torture. "
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about the author
Nikolay Tsybin
PhD in Physics and Mathematics
It's never too late to learn, it's always stupid not to learn
The French philosopher Régis Debre, a colleague of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the 1960s, in his book "Praise to Our Masters" gives the following story. Edgar Degas said that in early childhood, his mother brought him to the house of Madame Le Ba, the widow of the great Jacobin. Seeing the portraits of Robespierre, Couton, Saint-Just on the walls, the pious Madame Degas exclaimed in horror: "Why, they were monsters!" “No,” the hostess replied calmly. "They were saints."
This dilemma becomes the most important in the historical assessment of any revolutionary, especially a figure of such a scale as Fidel Castro, who not only changed the fate of Cuba and in many respects Latin America, but also left his mark on the world history of the second half of the twentieth century. Fidel turns to history directly in his famous speech at the trial after the failed assault on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953: "Condemn me, I don't care: history will justify me!" Undoubtedly, the main judgment of history is still ahead, but so far, it must be admitted, she disposed of Fidel's fate not very mercifully. “If Fidel Castro had died 10 or 15 years ago, the world would have said goodbye to a historical figure of a completely different scale than the one who left this world today,” writes a commentator for the Spanish newspaper El Pais. A brilliant politician, forced in 2006 due to a sharply deteriorating health to yield power to his brother, Raul Castro, Fidel for 10 years turned into a ghost, into a shadow of himself. The Comandante became a feeble old man with a fading gaze, who from time to time tried to interfere in politics and published reflections that were no longer of interest to anyone.
Existential choice
Perhaps this can be considered a payback for the existential choice that Fidel himself made. A year before the desperate expedition of Cuban revolutionaries on the boat Granma, he delivers a speech in New York in which he says: "In 1956 we will be either free or martyrs." During the unsuccessful landing of the detachment on the coast of the Cuban province of Oriente, only 20 of 82 people survived, the rest died immediately or were captured and killed by the troops of the dictator Batista. In two years, a handful of people led by Fidel Castro accomplishes the impossible - turns into a rebel army that overthrows the dictatorship and enters Havana in triumph on January 1, 1959. Fidel turned out to be a brilliant subverter of the Marxist-Leninist dogmas of the time. He showed that one should not wait for the "maturation of objective and subjective conditions" for a revolution, that a united and resolute minority can radically change the situation in the country and overthrow an authoritarian regime that seemed unshakable. The unexpected, incredible victory of the Cuban revolution for several decades determined the fate of hundreds of Latin American revolutionaries who tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to repeat the Cuban experience in their countries.
Fidel became a brilliant exponent of the social revolution that was awakened by his personal subjective action. This revolution was engendered by desperate injustice, deepest inequality that corroded Cuban society, half of which was doomed to inescapable poverty, to daily humiliation and trampling on human dignity, to remain victims of the tyranny of the rich and powerful all their lives. The desire of the humiliated for justice and equality made the Cuban revolution invincible in the first, decisive years of its existence. It was a liberating revolution - not inspired by anyone, unlike any of its predecessors, which shook the world with its authenticity. The Cuban revolution became a breath of freedom for the socialist world, coinciding in time with the Khrushchev thaw. Twice in the early 1960s, people spontaneously, without any kind of order, took to the streets of Moscow en masse, meeting Yuri Gagarin in April 1961 and Fidel Castro in April 1963.
Fidel's leadership was undeniable, personal charm, gift of speech - bewitching. He was able to keep electrified crowds of people on the Revolution Square in Havana for hours on end. “Awesome! The real Mussolini! " - the Italian writer Alberto Moravia, who until the end of his life remained an anti-fascist, a supporter of Fidel and revolutionary Cuba, said about him without a shadow of irony.
Great War with America
Fidel Castro was a man of unconditional personal courage: he himself led the armed response to the CIA-organized invasion of Playa Giron in April 1961. This victory became a turning point for Cuba: Fidel proclaims the socialist character of the Cuban revolution, anti-Americanism becomes its main dominant.
If Fidel's Marxism was largely forced due to dependence on Soviet economic aid, then his anti-Americanism was deep and genuine, defining his attitude and personality structure in many respects. In a famous 1958 letter to Celia Sanchez, he says: “When this war [against the Batista dictatorship] is over, a much longer and greater war will begin for me: a war that I will start against them [the Americans]. I think this will be my real destiny. " This was undoubtedly related to the unique - even in Latin America - situation in which pre-revolutionary Cuba was. Arthur Schlesinger, assistant to President John F. Kennedy, described his experience as follows: “I was fascinated by Havana, but I was horrified that this delightful city was turned into a large casino and brothel for American business people.<…>My compatriots walked along its streets, taking girls of 14 years old with them and for fun throwing coins into the street crowd to watch the fight of people trying to grab them. I asked myself if Cubans, seeing this reality, can treat the United States differently than with hatred. "
I must say that Fidel not only retained this hatred until the end of his life, but also managed to use it to strengthen the revolutionary and especially his personal power. In general, he was distinguished by an exceptional ability to turn the weaknesses of the enemy in his favor. For half a century, the "frontal" and stupid American policy towards Cuba - an unsuccessful military invasion, numerous sabotages, attempts to assassinate Fidel and, most importantly, a trade embargo - gave Fidel Castro a unique weapon for uniting the population, an excellent and effective excuse to explain all the internal difficulties the intrigues of US imperialism. Barack Obama became the first US president to try to break this vicious circle: he eased the embargo, in December 2014 restored diplomatic relations with Cuba that were severed in January 1961, and in March 2016 made the first visit of an American president to the island in 80 years. The reaction of the “disappearing” Fidel, who was gradually leaving for another world, was unchanged: “We do not need handouts from the empire!”
Denial of freedom
The great Latin American writer Gabriel García Márquez, a longtime friend of Fidel Castro and his unconditional supporter, explained his interest in the Cuban leader to his Soviet friend Kiva Maidanik: "Unlike Che Guevara, who preferred martyrdom to destruction * by power, Fidel chose the latter." Most likely, it was not even a choice: he was primarily a man of power, a man initially focused on conquering power and maintaining it at any cost. The 1956 dilemma (“become free or martyrs”) turned out to be false: having won power, Fidel Castro renounces freedom and, in particular, his promise to hold free elections within 18 months. Power, won with such difficulty, was to be directed towards the implementation of those social transformations for which so many revolutionaries' lives were laid. "First the revolution, then the elections!" - says Fidel. The revolution begins with an agrarian reform - the confiscation of large latifundia and sugar factories, many of which belonged to the Americans. This was followed by a campaign to eradicate illiteracy, the creation of a free education and health care system for the population, which has truly become one of the best in the world. After the failed attempt to invade Playa Giron, the Cuban authorities are embarking on a large-scale nationalization of all industry, transport and agriculture. The Cuban economy is becoming socialist, that is, state-owned.
The rejection of freedom - first political and economic, and then, from the late 1960s - early 1970s cultural and spiritual - in the name of social justice was not perceived tragically by the majority of the Cuban population, which, before the revolution, in fact, lived outside society and often outside the state. The revolution raised millions of people to a normal life and human dignity: their children went to school, they saw a doctor for the first time in their lives and got a poor, but human housing and job. At the same time, the revolution destroyed the way of life, the usual standards of consumption, and then the habitat of hundreds of thousands of other people - the Cuban middle class. It was these people who initiated the mass emigration of Cubans from the island - to the USA, Canada, Spain, Latin American countries. For half a century, this stream does not dry up: people who grew up after the revolution, and their children at the first opportunity, flee from the Island of Freedom legally and illegally, using all available means - from rafts to inflatable boats, since the Florida Peninsula is "only" 90 miles away off the north coast of Cuba. The country, in the words of the Cuban writer Luis García Mendes living in Chile, has grown from the world's largest sugar exporter to the largest exporter of Cubans.
The two million Cubans living in the diaspora, despite the island's population of 11 million, is probably the most brutal and infallible sentence to the system that has developed in Cuba after the revolution. The state economy has once again demonstrated its insolvency. In Cuba, this was compounded by what might be called Fidel's voluntarism. His unshakable belief in the effectiveness of subjective action, which became his strength during the revolutionary war, turned into a weakness in peaceful life. Attempts to preserve the economic and political independence of Cuba gave rise to the illusion of a "great leap forward" - the safra of 1970, when practically the entire population of the island was thrown into collecting 10 million tons of sugar cane. The failure of this undertaking led to the final reversal of the Cuban economy towards the Soviet model and the growing dependence of Cuba on Soviet oil supplies in exchange for sugar. The collapse of the USSR and the end of Soviet subsidies led to a dire economic and social situation in Cuba (officially the 1990s were declared a "special period in peacetime"), when most opponents of the Cuban regime were confident that it would collapse. But he held out and, since the early 2000s, found a new economic foothold in Venezuelan oil, generously supplied to Cuba by the Hugo Chávez regime in exchange for Cuban doctors and teachers in the impoverished rural areas and urban slums of Venezuela.
One must think that the dependent, dependent nature of the Cuban economy oppressed Fidel. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cubans tended to explain their problems by the fact that they were forced to copy the Soviet model, that "everything bad" they had was Soviet. It must be admitted, however, that it was precisely such a system that best suited the needs of preserving power, and above all of Fidel's personal power. The system was dilapidated, becoming less and less attractive culturally and ideologically, more and more repressive - politically. The country became unable to breathe, but Fidel's power remained unshakable. He decided to allow or prohibit private restaurants, hotels and hairdressers, to publish or not to publish books and films, to punish or pardon the increasingly active Cuban dissidents.
* The Spanish word "desgaste" is difficult to adequately translate into Russian; it means "deterioration", "deterioration", "deterioration".
Loneliness of power
For half a century, one person determined the fate of an entire, albeit small, country. From the very beginning, he did not separate his own fate from the fate of the country, but the longer he was in power, the more the fate of the country seemed to him a part, a continuation of his own fate. A man who came to power for the sake of freedom and social justice, more and more obviously headed a regime, the essence of which was the self-preservation of power, power for the sake of power. Fidel Castro's personal power. All those who seemed to him to be possible rivals in the struggle for this power were cut off, removed from government posts in the course of permanent purges. The most dangerous, according to Fidel, rivals were sent into political or de facto oblivion. In 1959, the hero of the revolutionary war, the commander of the revolution, Uber Matos, who objected to the communist, in his opinion, deviation of the victorious revolution, "for incitement to mutiny" was imprisoned, from which he was released 20 years later, in 1979. In 1989, the General of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Arnaldo Ochoa, the commander of the Cuban forces in Angola, the official Hero of the Republic of Cuba, was shot on charges of organizing a drug trafficking network that used Cuban airfields to transport Colombian cocaine to the United States. In a country where nothing happened without Fidel's sanction, this verdict was perceived as a reprisal against a popular military man and, at the same time, as an attempt to blame him on the accusations of links with the Medellin drug cartel brought forward by the American administration against the Cuban authorities.
Fidel was sinking more and more into the loneliness of power. When the need for a successor became urgent, it turned out that Fidel could only be replaced by his own, but already very elderly brother. Both in the behavior of Fidel, and in his personal life, and especially in the transfer of power, the textbook features of the Caribbean dictatorships, described in the books of the classics of the great Latin American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, were more and more visible. The man who led the great revolution to victory, striving for freedom and renewal, spent almost half a century at the head of the longest Latin American dictatorship. The colossal will to power devoured a man who had outlived himself: his departure from power marked his political death, which occurred 10 years before his biological one.
Fidel Castro was neither a monster, much less a saint. He gave his life to the most powerful of human passions - the desire for power. Mario Vargas Llosa refused to justify the story. Time will tell what her final verdict will be.
Tatiana Vorozheikina -
specially for "New"