Will history absolve Fidel Castro?

Fidel Castro can easily be branded as a dictator who jailed dissidents or as a revolutionary hero who stood up to the Yankee giant next door. But the reality is a bit more complex.

I have three distinct memories of Cuba from the two brief trips I have made to the island.

While walking along the Malecon I met a middle-aged man who asked me where I came from and who not only knew where Malta is, but also knew a lot about Dom Mintoff and the island’s history. After eloquently lecturing me in perfect English on the virtues of socialism, he invited to his home in a rundown part of Havana. After sharing half a bottle of rum with him, I found myself surrounded by people from the neighbourhood telling me about their misfortunes.

Cuba is vibrant but full of contradictions. In the same way, Fidel Castro represents all the great hopes and disappointments of the left in the 20th century

Suddenly a storm started and I left in a rush, handing out some dollars and the man giving me a gift: a book on Cuban military history, which I lost on the way back.

Another distinct memory is that of a disturbed young man, who in very poor English started lamenting about life in Cuba. What struck me was his desire to talk to foreigners, even a bunch of leftists attending a youth gathering full of revolutionary fervour.

A third memory is spending time with my wife at Cafe Paris in Calle Opispo in Havana, watching male foreigners dating young Cuban women (most of which do not go with foreigner for money but for a night out)... On one occasion the woman literally took the money from the man’s wallet to make him buy CDs of Cuban music, in what struck me as a deft action of sheer redistribution.

Cuba is vibrant but full of contradictions. In the same way, Fidel Castro represents all the great hopes and disappointments of the left in the 20th century.

In the world of the Trujillos, the Papa Docs of Haiti, the Samosas of Nicaragua, Battista in Cuba itself, Pinochet in Chile, and all the gangsters supported by the Yankees, Fidel was an inspiration for all those striving for a better world.

1994: “What Fidel [Castro] has done for us is difficult to describe with words,” Mandela said. “First in the struggle against Apartheid he did not hesitate to give us all his help and now that we are free we have many Cuban doctors working here.”

Yet in power he behaved like a caudillo who jailed dissidents. But unlike other dictators in the continent he never behaved like gangster who pillaged his country’s wealth. In fact he changed his country from a bordello and a playground for the rich, to a place where everyone gets free healthcare and education. Nelson Mandela, whom Castro supported when the West scorned him, loved him. Both formed part of the same generation fighting crude racism and fascism. It is in this role, that history may absolve Castro. 

Surely Castro would have never made it to enter the fictional retirement home of Latin American dictators who lost power after falling out of favour with the USA, depicted in Garcia Marques’ masterpiece The Autumn of the Patriarch. Unlike them Fidel will not be forgotten as a footnote in the history of crime and brutality.

Yet life for free spirits in Cuba was hard. Even rock music was banned for a time and gays suffered repression for decades before the country changed and adopted LGBT rights before many others in the continent.

As a journalist and a democrat I cannot feel comfortable with the jailing of dissidents and the suppression of freedom of expression. In many ways Cuba is a panopticon where committees for the Defence of the Revolution are present in every neighbourhood. In this aspect Castro cannot expect history to absolve him.

Moreover dictatorship and repression were always justified by the hostility of the US giant, the assassination attempts on Castro and by the trade embargo. Just imagine Malta being excluded from trading with the EU: that is how Cuba has lived for decades. But with the embargo being slowly lifted (and the Rolling Stones playing their songs to the same masses who were banned from listening to them), what justification remains for dictatorship?

Despite his sharp insights and keen awareness of foreign affairs Fidel Castro’s world-view was increasingly becoming an anachronism and an exotic myth cultivated by well-meaning western romantics. Perhaps it was this realisation that times where changing, that ultimately led Fidel to hand over power to the more pragmatic Raul Castro.

While Fidel took power through a popular revolution in a region infested by the most notorious dictators, the 1990s saw the emergence of greater pluralism and democratically elected left wing governments in Latin America. Cuba was no longer isolated and emerged as a key player in the peace process in Columbia. Yet Fidel clinged on to a world pitting anti-imperialists against imperialist, in a world where politicians like Vladimir Putin defy these definitions.

Ironically it is now that things have taken a turn for the worse – with the left losing credibility in an Venezuela with Nicolas Maduro forgetting the basic rule that in a democracy power has to alternate at some time, the rise to power of the gangster elite in Brazil where Michel Temer took power after the impeachment of a democratically elected president; even in Nicaragua the ex-revolutionary Daniel Ortega has reinvented himself as a conservative and corrupt autocrat who increasingly behaves like the Somozas. The cherry on the cake is that the re-election of Donald Trump risks undermining Barack Obama’s more rational policies in the region.

The contrast between Obama’s nuanced reaction to Castro’s death which reiterated his policy of openness towards the Cuban people, and Trump’s belligerent reaction denouncing Castro for his brutality does not bode well. It will simply reinforce the siege mentality in Cuba.