Fidel: A Critical Portrait

by Tad Szulc

  Ángel Castro played with gusto the role of the landed Spanish-Cuban patriarch, an imposing figure almost six feet tall in a wide-brimmed hat covering his completely shaved head. Either his wife or one of the daughters would use a hand clipper to keep his head hairless and shiny. Until the age of forty, he had a beard, then shaved it off, too.

  Don Ángel was an incredibly hard worker who, even as a rich man, rose at dawn every day to take breakfast personally to canecutters and planters in his fields. On the eves of Christmas and other major holidays, he would sit at an outdoor table in front of the warehouse abutting the main residence to distribute vouchers to the workers for feast food as presents from the master. Despite this beneficent aspect of Don Ángel, the Castro children also remember him as a man of an extraordinarily violent temperament, given to unpredictable explosions—traits he passed on in full to his son Fidel.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Everything about Fidel Castro seems to be controversial, even the exact date of his birth. There has been for years a lively disagreement as to whether he was born in 1926 or 1927. The Commander in Chief himself swears that 1926 is the correct year—he once said laughingly that he actually wished he had been born a year later so that "I would have been an even younger chief of government, thirty-one years old and not thirty-two, when we won the Revolution." Even the Soviet press gave the wrong date in a lengthy biography published in 1963, and the error was maintained in Cuban newspapers reprinting it. This confusion seems to have stemmed from a change made in his school records when he lost three months of classes because of postappendectomy complications. In any case, when he was born at 2:00 A.M. on August 13, weighing ten pounds, Castro was named after Fidel Pino Santos, a very wealthy Oriente politician and friend of Don Ángel. The origin of his middle name, Alejandro, has been forgotten, but Fidel has used it as his nom de plume in anti-Batista newspaper articles after the 1952 coup, as his code name in clandestinity, and his nom de guerre in the Sierra (it may have reminded the historically minded Fidel of Alexander the Great).

  Fidel is both dramatic and mystical about the circumstances of his birth. He told Frei Betto, the Brazilian Dominican friar, that "I was born a guerrillero, because I was born at night, around two o'clock of the dawn. . . . It seems that night might have had an influence in my guerrilla spirit, in the revolutionary activity." By the same token, he attaches great importance to the number 26 in a very Cuban tradition of superstition and spiritism. The year of his birth was 1926, he points out that he was twenty-six years old when he launched his conspiracy against Batista in 1952 (Fidel also notes that fifty-two is the double of twenty-six). The assault on Moncada, the date having been chosen by Castro, was July 26, 1953, and his revolutionary movement became known as the 26th of July Movement. The Granma landing in Cuba was in 1956 (this date includes at least the numeral 6). His friends say that Castro often picks the twenty-sixth day of the month for major decisions and acts: In 1962, for example, he chose March 26 to deliver a crucial speech that served to destroy the challenge against him by the so-called Sectarians of the Communist party; on that day he emerged from self-imposed isolation (he had not been seen publicly for over a month) to strike the decisive counterblow. As Fidel once remarked, "There may be a mystery around [the numeral] twenty-six."

  The choice of first name for the future leader of the revolution was prophetically and politically felicitous: Fidel comes from the Latin word for "faithful," and has a good solid ring to it. In a nation where popular leaders are often known and called by their first names, and with Castro always orchestrating huge mass rallies, it is hard to imagine crowds chanting rhythmically the name of, say, Felisberto, Dagoberto, or even Ernesto. With Fidel he had a phenomenal political head start.

  His name is a matter of pride to him, and he remarks that "I'm entirely in agreement with my name, for faithfulness and for faith. . . . Some have a religious faith and others another [faith]; but I have been a man of faith, confidence, and optimism." Castro also observes that April 24 is the day of his saint—the day of San Fidel—and he says that this was the date "of my saint, because there is a saint called San Fidel; before, there was another saint, I want you to know it."

  He has gone to great lengths to make clear that while he was named after Fidel Pino Santos, this local millionaire never actually became his godfather. Interestingly, Castro says that the reason he was not christened until he was five or six years old (he is not certain which) was that it had been impossible to bring to Birán both the priest assigned to the region and the very busy Fidel Pino Santos. The question of whether his parents were married when he was born is not mentioned in Castro's rare and incomplete versions of his childhood, and he says that he was named Fidel because "they could wait six years to christen me, but they could not wait six years to give me a name."

  Castro has said that because he had not been christened, other children in Birán called him "the Jew." Though he did not know at the time what "Jew" meant, he realized it had a pejorative connotation for his not having undergone baptism. There is a black-beaked bird in Oriente known as a Judío (Jew), and at one point Fidel thought that for some reason he was being called that. With his selective memory, it is interesting that he remembers so well his trauma as an unchristened child. He was finally baptized at the cathedral in Santiago, where he was then living and going to school. His godparents were Luis Hibbert, the consul of Haiti, and his wife, Belén Feliú, both mulattoes. Belén, the sister of his primary-school teacher, taught piano. It is not even certain that Fidel's parents were actually present at the christening.

  His birth date makes Castro a Leo, and, interestingly, Simón Bolívar—the great South American Liberator whom Fidel is determined to emulate—also was a Leo, born on July 24, 1783. This fact is important in superstition-prone Cuba, where astrology, the occult, and even forms of black magic in Afro-Cuban santería rites are very much a part of life, scientific Marxist-Leninism or not, and Castro remains most aware of it. Finally, if one searches for historical analogies, it may be noted that, like China's Mao Zedong, Castro was the son of a very rich peasant, receiving the superb education denied to his father, and becoming a revolutionary and a Marxist.

  Myth-making official propaganda rejects a portrayal of the Castro family as nouveau riche and of Fidel's father as an uneducated man. The truth would not seem oppropbium in the Cuban rags-to-riches tradition of generations of immigrants, particularly in the new revolutionary age of the common man. But the Castro biography, republished in the official newspaper Revolución from the Soviet press, which had to obtain its data from Cuba, describes a young Fidel "spending hours in the company of his father, who tells him the tales of Independence and epic narrations of Troy and other ancient wars and their legendary heroes." Russian readers may well accept this, but it is entirely improbable. Don Ángel was a man of natural intelligence, interested in politics and public affairs, a careful reader of Havana newspapers to which he subscribed at the finca, a devoted radio listener, and, in his old age, a breathless fan of televised wrestling. Still, he was a person of few words and no-nonsense mien.

  Fidel's childhood appears to have been very pleasant and basically happy, certainly a privileged childhood even by the standards of affluent Cuban landowners of the day. The Castro children seem to have received much love from the parents, despite Ángel's outbursts of violence, and clearly they were spoiled. The seven children of Lina were close despite age gaps, and Juana Castro, the fifth child, says that Raúl was their mother's favorite (as well as hers) because he was "tender and loving." But there is no question that Fidel was the most assertive and combative, the one who always knew how to get his way. It is difficult to attribute his sense of rebellion to any childhood rejection or a hostile home environment.

  Family album photographs show Fidel at the age of three, looking most serious and composed in an elegant little boy's suit with short pants and a jacket with a large round collar. His hair is carefully parted on the right side, and he
holds a book in his left hand. His big brown eyes stare hard at the camera. In another picture, Fidel sits atop a wall, between his older sister Ángela and brother Ramón who are standing on the ground. Looming over them, he dominates the scene.

  At the age of four, Fidel entered the public grammar school in Marcané that Ángela and Ramón had already been attending. He learned to read and write before he was five years old, remaining at the local school until after his fifth birthday. There were fifteen or twenty pupils at what Castro called a "kindergarten." His parents decided at that point that he should transfer to Santiago, the capital of Oriente province, to study under the very disciplinarian Marist brothers. As Castro recalls it, his parents simply lost their patience with him over his disorderly behavior at the Marcané school. It appears that from a very young age Castro had to have his way and that he rejected all form of authority—though responding to acts of kindness and special attention directed at him. When he could not have his way, he struck back with violence—against his parents, teachers, siblings, and playmates.

  Fidel's happiest moments were spent outdoors, climbing hills, swimming in the Birán River, riding horses, and, when he grew a little older, hunting with a shotgun and a pack of four dogs. He was a natural athlete. His passion for active physical life—while still living at the finca and then during summer vacations at home from schools in Santiago and Havana—conditioned him from childhood to the future hardships of guerrilla life in the Sierra.

  He learned to shoot with his U-type shotgun and delighted in firing at almost any target he spotted. According to the brief section on his youth in the biography published in Revolución, Fidel liked to practice his aim on the finca's hens, "and if one of his sisters threatened to tell their mother on him, he would convince them to shoot, too, so that they couldn't say anything." No matter what he did, the Revolución biography reports—play, swim, study, or work on projects at home—"he never wants to lose and almost always arranges to win." This biography also reports Castro "constantly changes things from one place to another," and that at the dinner table, he "does thousands of combinations with a drinking glass," suggesting permanent restlessness, easy boredom, pedantry, and perfectionism—he seemed to want the glass to be placed just so.

  His sisters recall that Fidel once organized a baseball team in Birán, his father having let him order bats, gloves, and other equipment (baseball is Cuba's national sport). Characteristically, Fidel's preferred position was that of pitcher, though his very fast ball had little control. However, he was no sportsman; when his side was not winning, Fidel would simply halt the game and go home. He may have learned this sort of reaction from his father: The sisters remember that Don Ángel's favorite game was dominoes (now it is Fidel's too), which he played every night with one of his employees or with his wife, but when an argument developed or he was losing, he would grab the dominoes board and hurl it to the ground below the veranda where they sat. Then, there would be no dominoes game for a week or so.

  Fidel Castro himself is the foremost authority on the fact that he has always been violent, given to tantrums, devious, manipulative, and defiant of all authority. In a most remarkable conversation he held in 1959 with Carlos Franqui, then the editor of Revolución, Castro revealed his complicated personality at great length in one of the very few autobiographical interviews he has ever granted (but which was never published in Cuba).

  Fidel says of the Birán school that "I spent most of my time being fresh. . . . I remember that whenever I disagreed with something the teacher said to me, or whenever I got mad, I would swear at her and immediately leave school, running as fast as I could. . . . One day, I had just sworn at the teacher, and was racing down the rear corridor. I took a leap and landed on a board from a guava-jelly box with a nail in it. As I fell, the nail stuck in my tongue. When I got back home, my mother said to me: 'God punished you for swearing at the teacher.' I didn't have the slightest doubt that it was really true." In Castro's self-portrait between the ages of four and six, he acknowledges that "I had one teacher after another, and my behavior was different with each one." He adds: "With the teacher who treated us well and brought us toys, I remember being well behaved. But when pressure, force or punishment was used, my conduct was entirely different."

  Fidel's behavior was presumably tolerated because his father was wealthy and influential in the area, and Castro recalls that in general "everyone lavished attention on me, flattered, and treated me differently from the other boys we played with when we were children." These other children, he remarks, "went barefoot while we wore shoes; they were often hungry; at our house there was always a squabble at table to get us to eat."

  He is not certain whether he was dispatched to Santiago "because I caused too much trouble at home or because my teacher convinced my family that it would be a good thing to send me away to school." In any case, Fidel was five or six years old (he says he does not remember the exact age) when he and his older sister Ángela traveled by train to Santiago, clear across Oriente to the south coast, and a new phase began in his life. He remembers how "extraordinary" the big city appeared to him—"the station with its wooden arches, the hubbub, the people"—and that they went to stay that evening at the home of the sister of the schoolteacher from Birán and her Haitian husband who soon thereafter would become Fidel's godparents. Fidel recalls: "I remember that I wet the bed on the first night."

  In Castro's version of his young years, as given to Carlos Franqui in 1959, he was dispatched to Santiago to be enrolled in the Marist brothers' La Salle school, a private establishment for boys from affluent families. But in interviews granted in 1985, a wholly different story emerges. Thus Fidel claims that he did not attend school at all during the first two years in Santiago when he lived with his godparents, the Hibberts. Instead, according to this account, his godmother taught him at home, and the studies were confined to memorizing the four arithmetic operations from the back cover of a booklet (he says that he memorized them so well that now he can add, subtract, multiply, and divide as rapidly "as a computer") and to improving his orthography and handwriting; there were no books in the Hibbert household.

  It is hard to understand why Fidel's parents would have allowed such a state of affairs to exist, and it is just as odd that, as he tells it, it took his family a full year to realize how badly he was treated in Santiago. Castro now appears to feel very resentful about that entire period, portraying himself as a victim of a situation mysteriously concocted, it would seem, by his parents and the Hibberts. He uses expressions like "When they sent me away to Santiago—I was very small—I suffered such need and had so much work . . .," and a year later, "They sent me away again to the house in Santiago." There, Castro says, "I went hungry and I was the target of injustice," and it was a waste of two years "of a hard life, work, sacrifice." He goes on to complain "that I was the victim of some exploitation by this family that was paid by my parents to have us there."

  Without further explanation, Fidel tells of having entered La Salle in his third year in Santiago as a first-grade day student (in the Franqui version, he says he was immediately in "the first grade" at that school) and of having to make up for the lost years. He still lived with the Hibberts, returning home for lunch ("then, there was no more hunger") and enjoying "having professors, classes, companions with whom to play, and many other activities that weren't available to me when I was a solitary student learning arithmetics from the back of a booklet."

  But Fidel was soon unhappy again. For example, while boarders at La Salle were taken to the beach or out for walks on Thursdays and Sundays, Fidel, being a day student, was left behind and his life was "very dull." He began to despise the Hibberts. As he tells it, he was six or seven years old when he took matters into his own hands, "engaging in my first rebellion" and applying guerrilla tactics of sorts to compel his godfather into letting him be a boarder, too. One day, when Hibbert spanked him "on my rear end" for some infraction, Fidel proceeded to "rebel and insult everybody
, disobey all orders, shout, and say all the words that were forbidden." Castro says that "I behaved so terribly that they took me straight back to school and enrolled me as a boarder; it was a great victory for me." He was one of thirty boarders; two hundred boys were day students. It cost his father thirty dollars per month.

  At La Salle the boys had to observe a strict dress code, wearing suits and ties. There is a group photograph of the school's second grade with Fidel sitting in the front row, tie loosened, and a look of bored contempt painted on his face. There is nothing in his recollections to indicate that he felt unhappy being away from his parents at such a young age; he was obviously content taking care of himself. He does say that "on our first holidays, we went home for a three-month vacation; I don't think I've ever been happier; we hunted with slingshots, rode horseback, swam in the rivers, and had complete freedom during those months." But not a word about the family.

  When Fidel completed the third grade, Ramón and Raúl joined him at La Salle, where a special grade was created for the three of them to be together, seemingly incongruous because Ramón was ten, Fidel was eight, and Raúl was four. Castro explains that it was made possible because the family was rich.

  His stay at the Marist school was punctuated by these battles for his rights, and Castro goes out of his way to draw a picture of himself as an uncompromising and violent boy. He recalls, for example, beating up a schoolmate—the teacher-priest's pet—in a fight that followed a boat-ride argument. That evening, the priest summoned Fidel away during a solemn chapel service to ask him what had happened and, without awaiting an explanation, he "gave me a slap that just about stunned one side of my face. . . . I spun around, and he slapped my other cheek. . . . When he let me go, I was in a complete daze, I felt painfully humiliated." Castro continues: "Another time . . . we were marching in single file and he struck me again, this time on the head. Then, I promised myself not to let it happen again. We were playing ball one day. The kid who was at the head of the line always had the best position, and I was half arguing over first place with somebody else, when the priest came up to me from behind and hit me on the head. This time I turned on him, right then and there, threw a piece of bread at his head and started to hit him with my fists and bite him. I don't think I hurt the priest much, but the daring outburst became a historic event in school."