Fidel: A Critical Portrait

by Tad Szulc

  As part of the war effort, Cuba under Batista had granted military bases to the United States, including the big Guantánamo naval base in Oriente, reaffirming once more the island's immense strategic importance in the Western Hemisphere. Batista also agreed to sell Cuba's entire 1941 sugar crop to the Americans for less than three cents a pound, a very low price indeed. Like so many thoughtless American policies toward Cuba, this was taking advantage of the little country, and was one more reason for rising resentments among the new generation. At Havana University, for example, an "Anti-Imperialist League" was organized even before the war ended, not because of any specific American acts, but on general principle.

  The economic relationship between the two countries was regulated by the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreement, which gave the United States total control over the insular market. This agreement was the quid pro quo for the Roosevelt administration to abrogate the already embarrassing Platt Amendment of 1902. Both moves stemmed directly from the overthrow of the threateningly radical first Grau regime by the Batista army, but as far as most thinking Cubans were concerned, Cuba still had to live with its "Platt mentality inferiority complex." This meant that Washington could go on doing what it pleased in Cuba. The corresponding psychological phenomenon in Cuba was "historical fatalism," a feeling that Cubans could never do anything with their own country without North American approval. History and Castro would defeat this fatalism once and for all.

  The extent to which the adolescent Fidel Castro, completing his studies with the Jesuits at Belén during the war years, was aware of all these political pressures is most uncertain. There is nothing in the record and nothing in the recollections of his former teachers and fellow students to suggest the slightest curiosity on Fidel's part in Cuban and world politics. In fact, Castro would say later that he was a political illiterate until he entered the university. Yet, as one of his contemporaries has remarked, "Fidel has fantastic political radar," and it is entirely possible that events in Cuba during his time at Belén had not gone wholly unnoticed by this "political animal" from Birán.

  In any case, Belén gave Fidel Castro an extraordinary sendoff. His basketball coach and teacher, Father Francisco Barbeito, wrote in the school's year book: "Always Fidel distinguished himself in all the subjects related to letters. He was excelencia [in the top ten of the graduating class] and congregante [a student who regularly attends prayers and religious activities] and a true athlete, always defending the banner of the Colégio with pride and valor. He has known how to win the admiration and affection of all. He will make law his career, and we do not doubt that he will fill with brilliant pages the book of his life. He has excellent qualities. . . . He has the timber, and the artist will not be absent."

  Castro was not number one in the graduating class, but it is remembered that he received the biggest and warmest ovation from his fellow students when he was summoned to be handed his diploma. The life of Fidel Castro would progress from ovation to ovation.

  CHAPTER

  4

  If, as he says, Fidel Castro was politically illiterate before he entered the university, his education in this field developed with lightning speed. Enrolling in Havana University's law school in October 1945 (students then entered directly the faculties from which they hoped to graduate in their chosen professions), Castro almost immediately plunged into politics. He had just turned nineteen during the summer vacations in Birán, and his political innocence indeed seemed nearly total, but the savage environment he found at the university forced him into active involvement.

  The political situation at Havana University reflected the overall state of affairs in Cuba, though it was inevitably accentuated and aggravated by youthful passions and their manipulation by professional politicians. Ramón Grau San Martín, the physician who headed the short-lived radical junta in 1933–1934, was elected to the presidency in 1944 as the candidate of the opposition Auténtico party (claiming it stood for the ideals of José Martí), principally because Batista let him win. In the postwar democratic climate, Batista chose not to put up a military-supported successor and retired to Daytona Beach, Florida, to continue building his personal fortune while keeping an eye on Cuban politics. Grau, increasingly moving to the right and forgetting his dedication to social reforms, allowed his regime to wallow deeper and deeper in corruption and chaos.

  Corruption and brutal political rivalries led to a generalized violence throughout the island that Grau could not or would not stem. Havana University turned into a battlefield among armed gangs whose origins went back to the anti-Machado "action groups" of the 1930s, and whose leaders now sought a new generation of recruits. It was impossible for politically conscious students to stay away from these confrontations; in Cuba the university was the steppingstone to national political careers. Still, it was extremely difficult to define the programs or ideologies of the different factions roaming the university "hill" in the center of Havana and the broad expanse of stairs leading down from the faculty buildings—the famous escalinata where most of the political rallies were held.

  Under the circumstances, Fidel Castro, the new law student, had a wide choice of allegiances both ideologically attractive ones or those merely a political convenience. There are reasons to believe that he did a certain amount of shopping around at the outset, avoiding for a time becoming clearly identified with any of the factions. His instinct for elusiveness was already asserting itself, allowing him a way of maintaining his freedom of action as long as possible.

  Political identities and loyalties could be highly volatile in the crucible of the university battles, and radical shifts were part of the scene. Only the Communists on the campus, those admitting to membership in the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) or in the Socialist Youth (JS) and those concealing it, were rock-solid and disciplined in the face of rising attacks on the party by the Grau government.

  Castro was not a member of the party, and it is very hard to reconstruct precisely his political profile during his university years in the light of his diverse activities and positions and variety of personal friendships and relationships. Essentially, he was engaged in creating a personal reputation and myth as rapidly and as dramatically as possible, exhibiting both his flair for the spectacular and his attraction to the limelight. Castro has said almost nothing publicly about his university period, apart from accounts of his conversion to Marxism. However, on a visit to his alma mater immediately after his revolutionary victory in 1959, he described Havana University in his day as having been more dangerous than the Sierra Maestra. Like most activist students then, Fidel never ventured anywhere without a gun on him.

  From the first day on campus, Castro is remembered as a serious and intense young man, over six feet tall, powerfully built, and very excitable and violence prone. Though his face was still boyish, he had a presence that could not be ignored. While most students wore guayaberas or sports shirts appropriate to Havana's heat and humidity, Fidel often made a point of wearing a dark wool suit and a necktie as if to set himself apart from the crowd by an aristocratic elegance. It was all part of his myth-building, and he would say in 1959 that "I was the Quixote of the university, always the target of cudgel blows and gunfire" in the midst of the waves of gangsterism.

  Aside from myth creation, Fidel Castro was an extremely attractive person, appealing to men and women alike. His almost Greek profile, his tall Spanish hidalgo carriage, his piercing brown eyes, his physical courage in university melees, and his powers of persuasion quickly pushed him to the front ranks of popularity. Fidel's athletic prowess, particularly as a high jumper and 400-meter track runner, added to his growing reputation. Now he had to address himself to active involvement in university politics, and to become known beyond the students' escalinata in Havana. Social-background considerations did not matter at the university, as they did at Belén, which allowed Castro to take full advantage of his talents.

  Havana University was composed at the time of thirteen schools, ranging f
rom law to medicine and architecture, and each school annually elected its president. The University Students' Federation (FEU) was the mainstay of student political activity and had a great deal of influence in Cuban politics. The president of the FEU and other top officials were elected by the presidents of the thirteen schools. The presidents of the individual schools were elected by delegates from each class year (i.e., the four years of the law school or the six years of the architecture school), and the year delegates were chosen by delegates from each academic course who had to be selected by the students attending those courses. Basically this was a very democratic procedure, but all these elections were part of the larger Cuban political process by which everybody, from the government to the Communists and the gangster groups, tried to exert influence with votes, money, and muscle.

  Because the university was autonomous and self-governing—neither the police nor the army could enter the campus—this "sacred hill" in the heart of Havana was a sanctuary for politicians and political gangsters of all persuasions. Even those gangsters who were not students had the run of the university grounds. Students who were not part of the FEU leadership or even federation members might be closely associated either with gangster groups, which inevitably called themselves "revolutionary" to improve their image, or with established political parties. Shoot-outs on and off the campus and brutal beatings were routine occurrences in which rival police units participated under one pretext or another, often gunning for each other. It was truly impossible to establish anyone's political identity with complete assurance, and this was particularly true of Fidel Castro as he battled his way through the jungle of university and Havana politics.

  Castro fought hard for an elective post in the FEU, but the only time he succeeded was in 1945 when he was chosen a delegate from one of the courses in the first year of law school, shortly after he entered the university. This was the lowest elective position in the FEU structure, and apparently Fidel could never muster support for the presidency of the law school. If he had, it would have made him a member of the federation's governing body and opened the way to the chairmanship of the FEU. The student-elected president of the law school that year was Baudilio Castellanos, a childhood friend from Birán and a personal friend to this day.

  The most plausible explanation of Castro's failure to be elected to any significant university post is that he was constitutionally unable to be a team player—in politics as in sports—and therefore none of the politically organized student groups wanted to risk supporting him. He was too unreliable and unpredictable. Ironically, even the Communists at the university, including his best friends, refused to back him in elections, notwithstanding their personal admiration for him.

  In a speech after the revolution, Castro recognized that at the university "my impetuosity and my determination to stand out led me to combat" and that "my frank character made me enter rapidly into conflict with the milieu, the venal authorities, the corruption, and the system of bands that dominated the universitary environment." This view of himself is corroborated by his friends and contemporaries of all political denominations. Castro's savagely independent attitudes during his entire university career suggest that his basic passion for independence has never been extinguished and that despite today's formal ideological commitments he will always remain his own man.

  Enrique Ovares, who served five years as president of the architecture school and three terms as FEU president, says that "Fidel could never be elected president of the [law] school" because he would not work with others. In a lengthy interview in Miami in 1984, Ovares, meticulously objective about Castro even after the years he spent in his prisons, said that on the surface it seemed "inexplicable" that Fidel could not win a major election. "At that time," he said, "Fidel indisputably had great dedication, had a series of leadership traits that could already be seen, and he had political ideas even if they were a bit anarchist. . . . He did not know well what he wanted, but he expressed himself well, and he had people who followed him." Ovares is also convinced that the Communists, well entrenched in the university in the mid-1940s though weak elsewhere in Cuba, refused to support Castro for office because they knew they could not control him. "Anybody who followed closely Fidel's political process as a student knows that Fidel at no time maintained relations with the Communists. Fidel was an individual who, because of his ideological formation, was a negative type for the [Communist] party because he was an individual who would say 'white' today, and 'black' tomorrow, and 'gray' the day after. He was totally independent, he could not be controlled."

  In 1947, when Ovares was running for his second term as FEU president, he won in a 7–6 vote by the presidents of the individual schools, with the Communist leader of the school of philosophy and letters casting the decisive vote. On the defeated slate, Fidel Castro ran for the post of FEU secretary, and Humberto Ruíz Leiro, a Catholic student leader, was the presidential candidate. According to Ovares, who had Communists on his slate, Castro went with the Catholic faction when he realized that he would not have Communist backing if he joined the Ovares group, and he campaigned intensely for the Ruíz Leiro ticket. Ovares insists that Castro never had Communist support at the university, and that the Communists allied themselves with the victorious presidential ticket because "it was convenient for them to have me there." He says that although he was opposed to communism, he believed that there should be room for all tendencies in the FEU, and the Communists knew "they would get in. Fidel would have never let them come in, and that is why the Communists never supported Fidel."

  That Fidel Castro was indeed too independent for the Communists is confirmed in considerable detail by Alfredo Guevara who is one of the most intriguing figures in Cuban revolutionary politics, and one of the men most trusted by Castro over the forty years of their friendship. Alfredo Guevara (no kin to Argentina's Che Guevara), presently the Cuban ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, has spoken freely of his university time with Castro.

  Guevara entered Havana University at the same time as Castro, but enrolled in the school of philosophy and letters because he and his friends Lionel Soto Prieto and the late Mario García Inchaústegui arrived with the extraordinary idea of "capturing the FEU." Guevara and soto were of humble social origins (Guevara's father was a Havana railroad locomotive engineer) and had graduated from a public school where they directed an anarchist-minded student association. But at the university they began to shift their ideas to what Guevara calls "socialism," and soon both became members of Communist Youth (JC).

  Guevara picked the philosophy school because women were in majority among the students, and he calculated correctly that he could be elected president there more easily as part of the takeover plan. The law school adjoined the philosophy school, and almost immediately he began hearing of an interesting student named Fidel Castro next door. Marching over to the law school, he found Fidel standing in the patio surrounded by students listening to him. Guevara's interest was in "leadership" affairs, and he introduced himself to Castro who impressed him greatly. But Guevara has said, "At that moment I had prejudices against Fidel, because I came from a public school, a poor student from the Havana institutes, and he came from a religious school. . . . from Catholic priests. For me in those days, a religious school and a man of religion were the same thing . . ." Despite this, Guevara concluded that Castro was "a volcano," that he could block his Communist group, "and therefore we have to conquer or vanquish him." He says that he felt that "here I have found a boy who will be José Martí or the worst of the gangsters because I saw in him a man of action, and for me the image of men of action was one of gangsters fighting. . . . But I wanted to conquer him. But the problem was that we tried to organize political meetings the way we did at public school, having one person speak, then another, and another, so that we could capture the meeting in the end. But Fidel, who had no arrangements with us, whom we did not know, would start speaking on his own after everything had been organized, and he changed everything." />
  This experience was evidently the first indication to the Guevara Communist group that Castro could not be trusted and thus should not be supported politically. In the 1947 FEU elections, it was Guevara who beat Castro for the post of federation secretary when Fidel ran with the Catholics against the Ovares ticket. Moreover, Guevara admits that for a period he was not certain whether Castro would even become a "socialist." He says that "I knew there was honesty in him, and a nationalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary, and radical position, but I was not sure he would attain socialism."

  Guevara may have had this preliminary assessment of Castro, and the Communists may have refused to support him, but this did not interfere with the formation of personal friendships. In Cuba, as in much of Latin America, deep political differences do not preclude friendly relations. Havana University was, after all, a small place, and outstanding students tended to gravitate toward each other even if they differed ideologically. Enrique Ovares, an anti-Communist, says that in the 1940s "it was the era of hatred against Nazism and falangism, and more or less all the Cuban political leaders were people of the left. . . . To be on the left, then, was a normal and logical thing, apart from the age of the kids at the university. They were full of ideals, and one really believed that all these things proposed in theory by the socialists and the Communists could be achieved . . ."