A MERE SLIP OF A GIRL, EVA PURPOSELY STARVED HERSELF, PERHAPS AFRAID OF LOOKING, AND THUS BECOMING, LIKE HER FLESHY, MORALLY AMBIGUOUS, STOUT MOTHER.
Eva’s fortunes gradually improved. Movie stardom eluded her, but she did find success as a minor radio personality in Buenos Aires. The upper classes ridiculed her rural dialect and habit of mispronouncing words. However, her plain way of speaking endeared her to the poor and working class. Her fans loved that she spoke just like them. In 1944, Eva met Juan Perón, the newly appointed secretary of labor. The meeting—and a change in hair color—forever altered her life.
A MEETING OF THE MINDS
Juan Perón called her Evita, a diminutive meaning “little Eva.” Evita played an increasingly prominent role in Perón’s private and professional life. Within weeks of their meeting, she dispatched with his teenage mistress and moved him into an apartment next to hers.
Evita accompanied Perón everywhere, much to the chagrin of the military officers who reported to him. Argentine women were relegated to a subservient role. They could not vote and had no say in public policy. The officers objected to Evita’s presence during their meetings with Juan Perón. Their objections were noted, and promptly ignored.
Besides sharing his bed, Evita also shared Perón’s desire for power. Theirs was not a passionate love affair, however, but more of a meeting of the minds. She became his closest confidante and biggest supporter. Much of her radio show was now dedicated to promoting Perón and his political ideals. Evita flattered, built up, and advised Perón. He appeared to have complete trust in her. Together, they would change the face of Argentina—and, before they were done, nearly bankrupt the country.
POWER AND PERÓNISM
Argentina in the 1940s was a political powder keg, with various factions vying for power. The population increased each year, as immigrants flocked to the South American country; fifteen million people called Argentina home in 1945. In October of that year, Juan Perón was arrested and imprisoned by rival officers who disapproved of his support of the labor unions.
Evita organized a massive pro-Perón demonstration outside the prison. She rallied the country’s workers—the people whom the press and oligarchy disparagingly called los descamisados, “the shirtless ones.” Evita recast the derogatory term in a positive light. The shirtless ones, she declared, were the real heart and soul of Argentina. Thousands strong, los descamisados descended on the prison, shouting, “Perón! Perón! Perón!” Their numbers and cries struck fear in Perón’s captors, who released him for their own safety. From the balcony of the presidential palace, Perón greeted the demonstrators. He thanked them and pledged his undying support to the labor movement. Perón and Evita married several days later.
As a child, Evita wore simple pinafores and smocks hand-sewn by her mother. Later in life, she draped herself in dresses and gowns custom created for her by the most exclusive designers in the world, including Christian Dior.
In October of that year, Juan Perón was elected president, with strong support from the country’s labor unions. He promoted his own political movement, dubbed justicialismo, which mixed elements of both capitalism and Communism. His style of government would become known as Peronism. Critics have likened Perónism to fascism.
Evita, the poor, illegitimate girl from the Pampas became the first lady of Argentina. She relished the role and her popularity, which surpassed that of her husband. It was ironic: The stardom that had dodged her as an actress enveloped her now that she had given up acting. In fact, she would give her greatest performances as Evita Perón. She also made those who doubted her, those who had looked down upon her in judgment, pay for their sins. Snubbed by the British during a world tour, Evita promptly cut off British imports to Argentina and ejected all British citizens from her country.
As she rose to power, Evita never forgave the oligarchy for rejecting her. Those who had turned up their noses at her found themselves on the wrong end of the law. Their businesses were confiscated, their profits distributed to the poor. In one case, several landlords had their property seized and given to the tenants whom Evita believed they had exploited. Club owners who refused her admission to their establishments found themselves investigated for political sedition. Those who dared complain faced prison, or worse. It was not uncommon for vocal critics of the Peróns to mysteriously go missing.
Evita occupied many roles in her seven years as first lady. She was a politically savvy counselor to her husband, a glamorous international star, a seductress, a mother to the people, a champion of the poor, and a living saint who worked tirelessly to protect the lower classes and promote women’s rights. Through her efforts, women were given the vote, and hospitals, shelters, and charities flourished. Under Perónism laborers received better wages and more rights. But the good deeds and social reforms were eclipsed by nepotism, caprice, excess, revenge, and fascism. It was customary for the first lady to be appointed president of Sociedad de Beneficencia, a respected Argentine charity. However, the women who ran the charity disapproved of Evita and refused to offer her the position. Stung, Evita withdrew all government funding for the organization and formed her own charity instead.
Today, Evita remains the subject of much debate. Her life inspired numerous books and a hit Broadway play. Argentine writer Tomás Eloy Martínez described her as “the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America.”
Evita Perón died from cancer on July 26, 1952. She was thirty-two years old. An official day of mourning was declared. Buenos Aires closed down as thousands of people from all over the country flooded the streets to openly mourn the loss of the first lady. The lines to visit her body snaked for miles though the city. The mourning lasted for two weeks.
In 1955, Juan Perón was overthrown. The new government whisked Evita’s corpse away in the middle of the night. Those in power worried (perhaps rightly so) that her grave would incite conflicting political passions in the people. Her body was kept in a hidden location in another country. Twenty-six years after her death, Evita was returned to Argentina. Her body lies inside a glass casket, 20 feet (6 km) under ground in a specially designed vault in Reloceta cemetery in Buenos Aires.
In her short life, Eva Duarte Perón battled poverty and the shameful stigma of illegitimacy. She emerged victorious to claim her place as one of history’s most glamorous and enduring icons.
CHAPTER 15
FIDEL CASTRO
AN ILLEGITIMATE CHILD SPARKS A REVOLUTION—AND REINVENTS A NATION
1926–
THE BOY WHO GREW UP TO BECOME A SWORN ENEMY OF CAPITALISM AND A SELF-ANOINTED VOICE OF THE CUBAN PEOPLE WAS BORN INTO WEALTH BUT OUT OF WEDLOCK. THE INCONGRUITY OF HIS SITUATION SHAPED HIS CONTROVERSIAL VIEW OF POLITICS, AND OF THE WORLD.
THERE WAS A STIR OF ACTIVITY IN THE LOBBY OF THE COLEGIO DOLORES in Santiago, Cuba. A cluster of boys had gathered around the bulletin board. The excitement was palpable as Fidel Castro approached the group. He was the last to arrive at school that day, a not uncommon occurrence. His classmates ran to him, all talking at once, their voices colliding as they ushered him over to the bulletin board. There, pinned proudly by a teacher for all to see, was a letter from the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt—a letter addressed to Fidel Castro! Fourteen-year-old Castro beamed and puffed up his chest.
Plucky and seemingly often overconfident, Castro secretly sought acceptance and craved attention. He carried a burden that he never discussed—a burden that his classmates whispered about behind his back. The bolder ones dared to talk about it within his earshot: Castro was illegitimate. It was a scandalous matter in a Catholic school, and in a predominantly Christian country. The scandal of his birth was temporarily upstaged by the arrival of Roosevelt’s letter in the winter of 1940. That the president of the one of the most powerful countries in the world had written to Castro was a major social coup for the teenager. The prized missive was in actuality a generic form letter sent by someone on Roosevelt’s public relations staff
. But its impact on the school was as deep as if FDR had written it himself.
Fidel and Raul Castro talk politics and revolution in Havana, 1959. Nearly a half century later, Raúl Castro, known as the “softer” brother, was elected president of Cuba, after Fidel’s ailing health forced him to retire.
Printed on official White House stationery, Roosevelt’s letter thanked Castro for writing to him. Castro’s schoolmates were awed by the reply from the American president. More impressive, and amusing, however, was the moxie young Castro expressed in writing to Roosevelt, and the bold request he made.
“My good friend Roosevelt,” Castro wrote. “I don’t know very [good] English, but I know as much as write to you. I like to hear the radio, and I am very happy, because I heard in it, that you will be president of a new period … I am a boy but I think very much … If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green American, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill … and I would like to have one of them.”
Castro told a classmate he was inspired to write to Roosevelt after reading about the American’s election in the newspaper. The exchange made Castro a star at school. Castro was less enthused by the reply: Roosevelt had not sent him the ten-dollar bill he requested. Years later, when he became a thorn in the side of Roosevelt’s successor, Castro joked, “[T]here are people who’ve told me that if Roosevelt had only sent me $10 I wouldn’t have given the United States so many headaches!”
TRUTHS AND FICTIONS
The beard, the burly stature, the military cap and fatigues, the cigars—for half a century, Fidel Castro has been the face and voice of Cuba. No political leader is so inextricably linked to a country as Fidel Castro. His image and outsized personality are familiar to people around the world. But like many political icons, he has kept his private life far from the public eye. As a result he has been able to maintain fame—or infamy—without revealing much.
Castro is known for giving four-hour interviews and marathon speeches, including one that ran for seventeen hours. Yet for all that talking, he’s never mentioned or alluded to his illegitimacy, a factor that clearly must have had a tremendous impact on him, having grown up in such a Christian country. An intelligent, curious boy, Fidel was not oblivious to the knowing glances and clucking tongues of neighbors who watched as the family continued to grow, fully aware that the lady of the house shared Angel Castro’s bed but not his name. Most Cubans know very little about the man who figures so largely in their lives. His father, Angel Castro, was fond of saying, “A man is owner of his silence and prisoner of his words.”
Castro has played fast and loose with the details of his life, coloring, softening, and revising events to recast himself in a more favorable light. Nowhere is Castro’s revisionist history more evident than in Herbert L. Matthews’s biography of him. Matthews, long deceased, was a star reporter at the New York Times when he was thoroughly charmed, and duped, by the Cuban leader. What Matthews believed was the truth about Castro was actually Castro’s truth—reconfigured to advance his own agenda.
The biography, spoon-fed to Matthews by Castro, and Matthews’s misguided admiration, effectively ruined the reporter’s reputation, leaving a permanent stain on a once-stellar career. Matthews was just one of the myriad foreigners seduced by the charismatic, cunning former guerrilla leader with a knack for recasting his defeats into victories, and turning a blind eye to his personal failures. Television hosts Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar had also been taken in by Castro’s charms. President Harry S. Truman would come to regret his initial description of the revolutionary leader as a “good young man trying to do what’s best for Cuba.”
“One thing is certain: wherever he may be, however and with whomever, Fidel Castro is there to win,” said Nobel Prize–winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. “I do not think anyone in this world could be a worse loser. His attitude in the face of defeat, even in the slightest events of daily life, seems to obey a private logic: he will not even admit it, and he does not have a moment’s peace until he manages to invert the terms and turn it into a victory.”
CUBA’S FAMOUS SON IS BORN
Fidel Castro was born on the family sugar plantation in Birán, Cuba, in the early hours of August 13, 1926. “It was a conspiracy,” he declared in his autobiography. “I was born a guerrilla, because I was born at night.” He was the third child of Lina Ruz and Angel Castro; three more children were to follow. Neighbors noted the new addition to the Castro clan and gossiped about the fact that Angel Castro was still married to another woman. That woman, Maria Luisa, had borne him two children and left the house in humiliation after discovering her husband was carrying on an affair with Ruz, their teenaged maid. With Maria Luisa gone, Ruz promptly assumed her place as the female head of the household. This changing of the guard scandalized neighbors, in part because Angel Castro was not only already married but also a good twenty-five years older than his new paramour.
A Spaniard, Angel Castro had grown up poor in the impoverished, threadbare town of Galicia, in the northwestern part of Spain. In the nineteenth century, wealthy families often paid poor young men to serve in the military in place of their sons. According to Angel, he was paid to fight for Spain in Cuba’s second War of Independence. He returned to Galicia after the war, but was unable to find work in the failing town. His ambition and will to survive took him back to the Caribbean island, where he eventually found great success running a sugar plantation. By the time Fidel was born, his father’s plantation spanned nearly 2,000 acres, a sizable plot of land in an area where most people were too poor to afford shoes. Angel Castro made enough money to lease another 25,000 acres.
Angel Castro, a poor Spanish immigrant, found success and wealth running a sugar plantation in Birán Cuba. He employed most of the local residents.
Fidel Castro, right, is pictured here with his siblings Ramon and Angelita. The Castro family lived in a large house propped up on stilts; they were the wealthiest people in Birán.
Although wealthy, the Spanish immigrant was seen as an interloper because of his heritage, and the fact that he had fought for Spain, against Cuba, in the island’s struggle for independence. His flouting of marital conventions further underscored his status as an outsider. Angel Castro, however, was one of the richest men in the area, and the sole source of income, loans, and handouts for dozens of families.
Like his father, Fidel Castro was an outsider, envied for his wealth, and not considered a real member of the community. His childhood, much as his later life, was marked by contradictions. Fidel attended prestigious Catholic schools, and lived in a big house on stilts, and even had a radio and a phonograph—luxuries most of the neighbors could only dream about. The stilt house, though rustic and built by Angel Castro, was grand compared to the shacks and huts that dotted the nearby landscape and housed Fidel’s early playmates.
Lina ruz was a teenager when she was hired to work for the Castro family as a maid. Her affair with Angel Castro produced six children, including Fidel. The couple married when Fidel was a teenager.
Yet Castro did not fit in, and despite his bluster, he longed to be accepted by his peers. His did not take rejection well, although he was reticent about the alienation he felt. He used the surname Castro, like his siblings, but in reality he had not legally been given his father’s name. In a rare moment, he confided in a friend who hailed from an aristocratic family, “Rafael, you have a name. I don’t have a name. I have a negative name.” His younger brother, and future political successor, Raúl, was sensitive and cried easily as a child. Fidel, however, presented a tough exterior even in his youth. He was brash and strong and had an explosive temper, lashing out with fists, feet, and teeth when challenged.
As a child, Fidel Castro was competitive, clever, and occasionally short-tempered. He also loved being the center of attention. He’s seen here (second from right, facing the camera) with classmates in 1940.
There were no schools near the Castro plantation. Many resident
s were illiterate; few received any formal education. Recounting his childhood, Castro stated that he demanded to be sent to school, and that his parents acquiesced, allowing him to attend several distant Jesuit-run institutions. However, some biographers contend that the Ruz-Castro children were sent away to boarding schools because Angel Castro was wary of keeping his illegitimate offspring on the plantation, in full and constant view of the neighbors. According to this theory, the patriarch wanted to lessen the appearance of impropriety, because he was still legally married to Maria Luisa, who could technically return to claim her place as his rightful wife.
FROM THE PLANTATION TO THE SCHOOLROOM
“An excellent student and member of the congregation, he was an outstanding athlete … [who] won the admiration and affection of all,” Castro’s high school evaluation read. “He will study law, and we have no doubt that he will make a brilliant name for himself. Fidel has what it takes and will make something of himself.” The praise implied that Castro was an exemplary student; in fact, he neglected his studies year-round, was distracted in class, and often got into trouble. He was more interested in sports than books, and he was highly competitive.
CASTRO WAS DISINTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS, LEADING HIS PROFESSOR TO REMARK, “HE TRIED TO MAKE IT, NOT STUDY IT.”
Castro was also high-strung, and occasionally eccentric. He dove off cliffs into unknown waters, bragged constantly, and was hospitalized after injuring himself by riding his bicycle into a wall on a bet. His behavior led classmates and teachers to dub him loco Fidel. It was a designation he did not appreciate. While attending the exclusive Jesuit-run high school Belén, Castro attacked classmate Ramón Mestre for calling him crazy. Mestre was a better fighter; Castro resorted to biting his opponent. Enraged by his defeat, Castro got a gun and threatened to kill Mestre. A priest wrangled the weapon away from Fidel and diffused the situation. Many years later, when Castro came into political power, he imprisoned the boy who had bested him.
Great Bastards of History Page 19