Death of a revolutionary hero

“The day I die, nobody will believe it,” Fidel Castro once said, but when late on Friday evening, Cuban President Raul Castro solemnly declared the death of his brother, nobody doubted the news. 

“The commander-in-chief of the Cuban revolution died at 10.29pm tonight,” Raul Castro said in a televised broadcast. 

Fidel Castro, who led Cuba from 1959, when his rebels toppled the regime of then-dictator Fulgencio Batista, until 2008 when he stepped down due to ill health, has been a symbol of revolution and anti-imperialism the world over.

The man who predicted that history would absolve him after being arrested and imprisoned for a failed full-frontal assault on the Moncada army barracks in Cuba’s second city of Santiago in 1953, is revered as much as he is reviled.  

Castro mythically survived more assassination attempts than anyone else in modern history but he resisted the forces of American imperialism and capitalism which have today breached the walls of his historical allies in Moscow, Beijing and most of South America. 

For many supporters his greatest legacy is free healthcare and education, which have given Cuba some of the region’s best human development statistics. 

Despite the US embargo ordered by Dwight D. Eisenhower 56 years ago, Cuba has a literacy rate and low infant mortality rate which is equal to or better than that of most developed countries.

In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund named Cuba the only country in the world to achieve “successful sustainable development”, in large part because of the island nation’s approach to agriculture.

But Castro will also be remembered for stifling government controls that – along with the US blockade – have strangled the economy, leaving most Cubans scrabbling for decent food and desperate for better living standards.

His detractors also pigeonhole Castro as a dictator who quashed dissidents, jailed homosexuals and repressed freedom of speech.

All of the above is inexcusable, even if his supporters claim the context of the embargo and the Cold War. Castro was above anything else a pragmatist who turned to the Soviet Union after the embargo meant that Cuba lost its main source of income i.e. the sale of sugar to the US. 

He then set his sights on the Soviet Union, which sustained the Cuban economy and allowed Castro to implement his extensive social programmes.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro – a self-declared Marxist-Leninist – was willing to experiment with capitalism and free enterprise. 

Many Cubans still revere Fidel Castro as revolutionary hero who would defend his people against imperialism and greed and a champion of equality and environmental justice

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us any more,” Castro admitted in 2010, startling a US journalist.

The loss of Soviet financial assistance also saw Cuba open its doors to tourism and allowed Spanish, Italian and Canadian companies to develop resort hotels and vacation properties, usually in association with the Cuban army.

He survived long enough to see his brother Raul negotiate an opening with the outgoing US President, Barack Obama, in December 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. 

After outlasting nine US presidents, he cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence.

Yet his greatest achievement is that of keeping the spirit of the revolution alive in Cuba and beyond. Castro is a symbol of resistance. Despite all efforts by the US to weaken his rule by hitting the Cuban economy, Castro used this to his advantage. 

It was more than repression and fear that kept him and his government in power for so long. Many Cubans still revere him as they did on the day he victoriously drove into Havana alongside Raul, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and their band of bearded rebels on 1 January, 1959; a revolutionary hero who would defend his people against imperialism and greed and a champion of equality and environmental justice.

Cuban internationalism 

After taking power, Castro used Cuban troops to support revolution in Africa and throughout Latin America. And as his brand of socialist internationalism evolved from military intervention to humanitarian aid, Castro’s relevance is as important as ever.

At a time when the world is witnessing the rise of authoritarianism and right-wing parties, progressive internationalism could be the antidote and an inspiration to a comatose left.

Among others, Castro championed the Palestinian cause and Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

“We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist-orchestrated campaign,” Mandela said when he visited Cuba in the early 1990s. “We, too, want to control our own destiny.”

To this day, hundreds of Cuban teachers and doctors work in Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras and countless other countries around the world. 

Following Castro’s death, Cuban blogger Harold said “He had the ability to face – together with his people – the most powerful enemy on earth. And I think [his] ideas will live on forever.”

No one is sure if the force of the revolution will fade away without Castro but his impact on Latin America and the rest of the world has the earmarks of immortality. The power of his revolution remains inescapable, not only in Cuba but also throughout Latin America. 

Recently, Castro spoke of his preoccupation with the challenges confronting humankind, including the risks posed by global warming, food scarcities and the proliferation of weapons. 

In his last speech to his Communist party comrades in April of this year he said “the time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervour and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them.”