Before Fidel there was Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt dictator who used his military to control the country. He had overthrown Gerado Machado, another dictator. I was a kid when Castro took over Cuba. At first, most Americans were for him. They thought he was a democrat fighting for freedom and justice and they hated Batista who was close to the American Mafia. Soon, though, the truth became known. Even before he announced he was a Marxist-Leninist, he was killing his enemies in grotesque public firing squads. Then things got worse.
There is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions here, for Fidel had special qualities that could have served something positive and creative. Seems that in our world, you can only have one of two opinions of him: he was a despot; he was a revolutionary hero. The facts support the first opinion more than the second. I had known his chief architect who had built many of the modern public buildings in the early 60’s before escaping to America for his life. Fidel liked to kill people, put them in prison and lose the keys, control the press, intimidate the population, give the longest winded speeches in history, and he almost guided the world into a nuclear war. He tried to export his type of revolution to the third world, mostly in Africa.
Yet he created a fairly good medical system, produced the highest literacy rate in the world, and created other social benefits. Of course, the Cuba’s with their high literacy rate could only read what Fidel approved. I think he had a brilliant mind. But that only made matters worse given he was a total ideologue.
My co-author for our book IDENTITY, Dr. Wayne Andersen, had been on a fact-finding trip to Cuba, and had met with Castro. Dr. A said, “My experience with him confirms he was long winded, prone to talking in the abstract, and although he used physicians as ambassadors of health to different countries, the medical delivery system in Havana was quite dated and not close to our standards. He was brilliant but also twisted! A presence yet a threat to mankind. Suppression is what I felt while I was in Cuba.”
Castro’s worldview was so abstract, theoretical, dogged, and entrenched, with all his intelligence; he was self-defeating in his claim for a better world. This is the problem with true believers. They must make the world in their own image, ignoring reality whenever it contradicted the party line.
In little Havana, the Cuban part of Florida, the news was greeted with celebrations on the streets, Champaign bottles popping, and wild dancing, hugging, and breathing a sigh of relief. In the real Havana, things are quite different. Some people are saying it feels like they’ve lost their father.
Here was a man who could have been great. Was it his megalomania that turned him into a ruthless despot who trampled rights and freedoms? Reminds me of what Robert Frost taught us in his poem: A Semi-Revolution…
A Semi-Revolution
Robert Frost
I advocate a semi-revolution
The trouble with a total revolution
(Ask any reputable Rosicrucian)
Is that it brings the same class up on top.
Executives of skillful execution
Will therefore plan to go half-way and stop.
Yes, revolutions are the only salves,
But they’re one thing that should be done by halves