Charismatic but enigmatic

If destiny had played it straight, Fidel Castro would have died a violent death. With almost 700 assassination attempts, mostly by the CIA, he would have been one of modern history’s most charismatic martyrs, perhaps far more than his fellow comrade, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.

Instead, he died the other day, at age 90, a visible, painful death in slow motion, like a horse in the desert. Fate seems to have denied one of world’s most resilient and daring guerillas an instant, blazing death; and, instead, wilted him down to a doddering shadow of the heroic fighter that he was in his long gone jungle days in Sierra Maestra. 

But Castro tricked fate in his own stealthy way, or so he thought. He never got out of his army fatigue throughout his 63 years as Cuba’s `Maximo Lider’. That was perhaps his way of proving that he lived and died as a fighter in fatigue and an evergreen revolutionary.

But as fate must surely show its sleight of hand, Castro’s obsession with the olive green uniform had turned Cuba into a military state, with the army becoming a major stakeholder in running everything in the Cuban state, including its economy. Like it is said about the erstwhile Prussia, and now about Pakistan, Cuba is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country.

In other words, Castro’s militarism was working against his country’s evolution from an insolent military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista to a humanist socialist society that the Cubans were longing for. As it turned out, there was little to choose between Batista’s in-the–face, some say more honest, dictatorship, and Castro’s Bonsai Socialism.

Castro’s curse was he could never grow out of his guerilla days in the mountains. He was fixated on his class enemies – imperialism, capitalism, the US, and the western world, in general.  As Henry Kissinger once quipped, he was fighting his class enemies even while attending a cabinet meeting.

Castro was convinced that the Cubans would always need him as their redoubtable Commandante. Not that he didn’t prove it when it needed proving, like the Bay of Pigs, the ‘invasion’ by the Cuban Americans, and even when the Soviets betrayed him over the Cuban missile crisis.

But unbeknown to the Cubans, while the world was serenading him as a revolutionary, Castro was herding his people into mental stockades, ostensibly, to protect them against class enemies.  In the name of anti-Americanism, Castro had turned Cuba into a Plato’s Cave from where no one was allowed to leave and see the sunlight.

Was Castro a Communist, at all? Addressing his first victory rally in Havana in January 1959, Castro had explained what kind of Cuba he wanted. David Attwood’s arresting documentary, ‘Fidel and Che’ quotes him: “Neither Capitalism, nor Socialism or Communism, but revolutionary humanism is what Cuba is going to follow”.  Lest anyone should think he was being ambiguous, Castro clarified: “Our revolution is as Cuban as our land. Not a red revolution, but a green revolution”.

Eventually, Castro did become a reluctant Communist under pressure when Moscow came to his rescue to get him out of an asphyxiating US embargo. But again, not surprisingly, he also became a reluctant capitalist when in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cubans took to the streets. He allowed limited private enterprise and legalised US dollar in Cuba.

But there was one man who could foresee the foul winds coming Cuba’s way – his cabinet colleague, Che Guevara. French intellectual and a friend of the revolution, Regis Debray, talked about how Castro and Che ‘fought like school boys’ over the role of the Soviets in Cuban affairs. Che always believed that seeking Soviet help would destroy the revolution. 

When the two couldn’t agree, it was Che who had to opt out. After a long night of fighting, Che handed over a letter to Castro and left for Africa to pursue his global revolution. He had extracted one promise, though, from his leader. His letter wouldn’t be published until his death.

He betrayed Che
A few days later, addressing the Cubans in Havana, Castro read out the letter. Che was still on his way to Africa. Oliver Stone, who made a documentary on Castro, said that was one betrayal the gentleman  revolutionary couldn’t explain despite repeated prompting.

Castro was also the child of irony. The man, who lived and fought to build a Socialist Cuba, ended up building a durable dynasty.  After 50 years of helming the nation, when he finally handed over reigns to his successor in 2006, was it accidental that it turned out to be his own brother, Raul? 

Was Castro carefully cultivating his sibling to take over? Was that why he let a more charismatic Che go away with a hug and a kiss? And, even more intriguingly, was that a silent military coup the two brothers, both still in uniform, were staging after their first violent coup against another military dictator like Batista? No answers, yet.

Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France and declared him the emperor on the French calendar date of 18 Brumaire, 1799. Much later, on the same date, another (Louis) Napoleon, less important, and much less charismatic, staged a similar coup, prompting Karl Marx to famously lampoon in his celebrated essay ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’ about history repeating twice – first as tragedy and second time as farce. 

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)