Fidel Castro a dictator or revolutionary? A necessary differentiation by someone who knew him
The passing of the iconic Cuban leader Fidel Castro, one of modern history’s giants, has reminded the world of what great leadership is really all about. These essays in his honor on TGP seek to shed light on a trajectory often denied by the imperial media.
Fidel’s name means “Loyal” in Spanish, and that he was, throughout his life, to his revolutionary ideals of social justice, equality, anti-imperialism and people’s democracy. In a world dominated by the squalid and ignoble ideology of capitalism embedded in American culture, Fidel personified humanity’s aspiration to something superior, the Quixotesque impulse to fight injustice and self-seeking literally against impossible odds. In practice, not in romantic fantasy, Fidel and his closest comrades personified the Impossible Dream.
Upon his death, his legions of detractors, from the filthy U.S. media sycophants to the empire’s politicians and reactionaries worldwide —including hate-filled rabidly deformed emigrés who have poisoned US politics for generations—are busily trying to tarnish his legacy, as they have done since he burst on the stage of history in the 1960s. Indeed, their joy at his passing, their dancing on his grave, only certifies their self-inflicted ignorance and moral degeneracy.
Fortunately most Cubans, despite the erosion of revolutionary fervor due to the hardships imposed by the decades-long siege laid by the empire, and the innocence of the younger generation, remain believers in the goals of fidelismo and the revolution, bruised but not beaten, still marches on. The real test will come when the underhanded, corrosive influence of capitalism and consumerism force a re-entry of “Privatisation” and individualism into the lives of most Cubans, and starts to dismantle the socialist edifice that the revolutionaries built at so great a price. May long live Fidel Castro’s legacy and the noble ideals of the Cuban revolution! —P. Greanville
By Deena Stryker
The Duran | Thu, 01 Dec 2016
Fidel Castro was a revolutionary not a dictator. Most Cubans understand this even if Westerners don’t. His actions were always focused on improving the lives of Cubans – which is the opposite of what dictators do. If he had sometimes to act in an authoritarian way it was because the US left him no choice.
After watching CNN, MSNBC, France 24 and RT report on the death of Fidel Castro, their adjectives ranging from ‘despot’ and ‘dictator’ (US) to ‘revolutionary’ (France) to ‘world revered leader’ (RT) let me take a moment to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fidel Castro did not pull off a one-man coup, as did Fulgencio Batista not once, but twice. Batista was a dictator whose goons tortured and killed those who protested his rule under a US tutelage that benefited only the 1%. Fidel, Raul and Che gathered 80 men who fought a two-year war in the mountains against Batista’s better-armed military, beating it fair and square, forcing him to flee to the Dominican Republic and later to Portugal, where he lived until his death in 1973.
SIDEBAR
BATISTA WAS A RUTHLESS TYRANT AND A US REGIONAL HENCHMAN—(SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA):
“The Dictator from Cuba arrives. Washington, D.C., Nov. 10. Col. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s Dictator, arrived in Washington today, he was met at the Union Station by General Malin Craig, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, who invited the Colonel to the Capitol, and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, as well as a hundred Cubans who bowed to the Colonel as he passed thru Union Station, left to right. Sumner Wells, Batista, Craig, and the Ambassador from Cuba Dr. Pedro Fraga, 11/10/38” (Title from unverified caption data received with the Harris & Ewing Collection.)
Back in power, and receiving financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government,[5] Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[6] Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land.[7] As such, Batista’s increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba’s commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts.[6][8] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing up to 20,000 people.[9][10][11][12]
The summary executions that soon became the only thing Americans were told about the Cuban revolution were in fact not carried out by Fidel, but, as both admitted to me, by Raul and Che, in the same spirit in which the Ceausescu’s (husband and wife) were executed in Romania when their Communist dictatorship fell — as ‘people’s justice’. According to Che, Batista’s crimes were known by all, and the new regime had more important things to do than set up trials in which negative testimonies would have been overwhelming.
Cubans today are mourning Fidel because they know he wasn’t in it for the money, but because he was determined to make life better for them while never bowing to their powerful neighbour. Every channel I heard noted that he had outlasted eleven US presidents, all but the most recent ones having unsuccessfully plotted and schemed to eliminate him.
One story I was told during my two year stay in Cuba was of an infiltrator into the rebel army who slept next to Fidel and confessed the next morning that he had been sent to kill him, but could not do it once he got to know him.
The simple funeral of Comandante Fidel.
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]aving experienced the energy and charisma of this man, I was not surprised, and I believe these traits go far to explain why his death caused sincere mourning among Cubans young and old. Fidel literally incarnated the Cuban energetic love of life.
Call it paternalism if you like, the overwhelming majority followed him through thick and thin because he not only prioritized schools, hospitals — and the arts! — he taught them through example to be proud of who they were: the only people on earth to have successfully resisted the United States, from Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick to JFK’s Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Seeing Raul’s emotion as he announced the death of his brother on television reminded me of how special the relationship between them was: the younger one revered the older one as much as the Cuban people did, but he was no minor figure: he created and led a people’s army that quickly became self-sufficient in food and offered higher education to many of its recruits, ultimately becoming president.
Some will say that ‘the Castro brothers ruled with an iron fist’, but how else does one resist the most powerful nation the world has ever known? They arrested (and often rehabilitated) those who tried to sabotage their efforts, because failing to do so would have turned Cuba into another Haiti, as most Cubans – better informed than most Americans in matters that really count – know full well.
Cubans crying in Havana, especially the younger ones, do not want to see their country once again turned into a playground for the US 1%.
Americans who refer to Fidel Castro as ‘a brutal dictator’ refuse to see their own government’s school-to-prison pipeline, or the fact that instead of taking political prisoners, it assassinates its opponents with drones.
Dictators are in power for themselves, while revolutionaries, most of whom are born into the upper class, take power for the Other. Their authoritarianism stems from the refusal of the 1% from which they emerge to share — as stunningly illustrated by those who are dancing in the streets of Miami—hoping to turn the clock back in the land they abandoned.
The passing of the iconic Cuban leader Fidel Castro, one of modern history’s giants, has reminded the world of what great leadership is really all about. These essays in his honor on TGP seek to shed light on a trajectory often denied by the imperial media.
Fidel’s name means “Loyal” in Spanish, and that he was, throughout his life, to his revolutionary ideals of social justice, equality, anti-imperialism and people’s democracy. In a world dominated by the squalid and ignoble ideology of capitalism embedded in American culture, Fidel personified humanity’s aspiration to something superior, the Quixotesque impulse to fight injustice and self-seeking literally against impossible odds. In practice, not in romantic fantasy, Fidel and his closest comrades personified the Impossible Dream.
Upon his death, his legions of detractors, from the filthy U.S. media sycophants to the empire’s politicians and reactionaries worldwide —including hate-filled rabidly deformed emigrés who have poisoned US politics for generations—are busily trying to tarnish his legacy, as they have done since he burst on the stage of history in the 1960s. Indeed, their joy at his passing, their dancing on his grave, only certifies their self-inflicted ignorance and moral degeneracy.
Fortunately most Cubans, despite the erosion of revolutionary fervor due to the hardships imposed by the decades-long siege laid by the empire, and the innocence of the younger generation, remain believers in the goals of fidelismo and the revolution, bruised but not beaten, still marches on. The real test will come when the underhanded, corrosive influence of capitalism and consumerism force a re-entry of “Privatisation” and individualism into the lives of most Cubans, and starts to dismantle the socialist edifice that the revolutionaries built at so great a price. May long live Fidel Castro’s legacy and the noble ideals of the Cuban revolution! —P. Greanville
By Deena Stryker
The Duran | Thu, 01 Dec 2016
Fidel Castro was a revolutionary not a dictator. Most Cubans understand this even if Westerners don’t. His actions were always focused on improving the lives of Cubans – which is the opposite of what dictators do. If he had sometimes to act in an authoritarian way it was because the US left him no choice.
After watching CNN, MSNBC, France 24 and RT report on the death of Fidel Castro, their adjectives ranging from ‘despot’ and ‘dictator’ (US) to ‘revolutionary’ (France) to ‘world revered leader’ (RT) let me take a moment to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fidel Castro did not pull off a one-man coup, as did Fulgencio Batista not once, but twice. Batista was a dictator whose goons tortured and killed those who protested his rule under a US tutelage that benefited only the 1%. Fidel, Raul and Che gathered 80 men who fought a two-year war in the mountains against Batista’s better-armed military, beating it fair and square, forcing him to flee to the Dominican Republic and later to Portugal, where he lived until his death in 1973.
SIDEBAR
BATISTA WAS A RUTHLESS TYRANT AND A US REGIONAL HENCHMAN—(SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA):
“The Dictator from Cuba arrives. Washington, D.C., Nov. 10. Col. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s Dictator, arrived in Washington today, he was met at the Union Station by General Malin Craig, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, who invited the Colonel to the Capitol, and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, as well as a hundred Cubans who bowed to the Colonel as he passed thru Union Station, left to right. Sumner Wells, Batista, Craig, and the Ambassador from Cuba Dr. Pedro Fraga, 11/10/38” (Title from unverified caption data received with the Harris & Ewing Collection.)
Back in power, and receiving financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government,[5] Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[6] Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land.[7] As such, Batista’s increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba’s commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts.[6][8] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing up to 20,000 people.[9][10][11][12]
The summary executions that soon became the only thing Americans were told about the Cuban revolution were in fact not carried out by Fidel, but, as both admitted to me, by Raul and Che, in the same spirit in which the Ceausescu’s (husband and wife) were executed in Romania when their Communist dictatorship fell — as ‘people’s justice’. According to Che, Batista’s crimes were known by all, and the new regime had more important things to do than set up trials in which negative testimonies would have been overwhelming.
Cubans today are mourning Fidel because they know he wasn’t in it for the money, but because he was determined to make life better for them while never bowing to their powerful neighbour. Every channel I heard noted that he had outlasted eleven US presidents, all but the most recent ones having unsuccessfully plotted and schemed to eliminate him.
One story I was told during my two year stay in Cuba was of an infiltrator into the rebel army who slept next to Fidel and confessed the next morning that he had been sent to kill him, but could not do it once he got to know him.
The simple funeral of Comandante Fidel.
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]aving experienced the energy and charisma of this man, I was not surprised, and I believe these traits go far to explain why his death caused sincere mourning among Cubans young and old. Fidel literally incarnated the Cuban energetic love of life.
Call it paternalism if you like, the overwhelming majority followed him through thick and thin because he not only prioritized schools, hospitals — and the arts! — he taught them through example to be proud of who they were: the only people on earth to have successfully resisted the United States, from Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick to JFK’s Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Seeing Raul’s emotion as he announced the death of his brother on television reminded me of how special the relationship between them was: the younger one revered the older one as much as the Cuban people did, but he was no minor figure: he created and led a people’s army that quickly became self-sufficient in food and offered higher education to many of its recruits, ultimately becoming president.
Some will say that ‘the Castro brothers ruled with an iron fist’, but how else does one resist the most powerful nation the world has ever known? They arrested (and often rehabilitated) those who tried to sabotage their efforts, because failing to do so would have turned Cuba into another Haiti, as most Cubans – better informed than most Americans in matters that really count – know full well.
Cubans crying in Havana, especially the younger ones, do not want to see their country once again turned into a playground for the US 1%.
Americans who refer to Fidel Castro as ‘a brutal dictator’ refuse to see their own government’s school-to-prison pipeline, or the fact that instead of taking political prisoners, it assassinates its opponents with drones.
Dictators are in power for themselves, while revolutionaries, most of whom are born into the upper class, take power for the Other. Their authoritarianism stems from the refusal of the 1% from which they emerge to share — as stunningly illustrated by those who are dancing in the streets of Miami—hoping to turn the clock back in the land they abandoned.
Deena Stryker ABOUT THE AUTHOR BY THE AUTHOR CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness I began my journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbudos were Communists before they made the revolution ('Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young'). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, I wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union ("Une autre Europe, un autre Monde'). My memoir, 'Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel', tells it all. 'A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness', which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and 'America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World" is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill'.
Born in Phila, I spent most of my adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, my latest being Cuba, Diary of A Revolution
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