Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant (12 page)
Read Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant Online
Authors: Humberto Fontova
Tags: #Politics, #Non-Fiction
Slap yourself and let’s continue: “To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane—or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research—we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity.”
Splash some cold water on your face and stick with me for just a little more: “It is still necessary to deepen his conscious participation, individual and collective, in all the mechanisms of management and production, and to link this to the idea of the need for technical and ideological education, so that we see how closely interdependent these processes are and how their advancement is parallel. In this way he will reach total consciousness of his social being, which is equivalent to his full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken.”
Throughout his diaries Che whines about deserters from his “guerrilla” ranks (bored adolescents, petty crooks, and winos playing army on the weekend). Can you blame them? Imagine sharing a campfire with some yo-yo droning on and on about “subjective aspirations not yet systematized” and “closely interdependent processes and total consciousness of social being”—and who also reeked like a polecat (foremost among the bourgeois debouchments disdained by Che were baths).
These hapless “deserters” were hunted down like animals, trussed up, and brought back to a dispassionate Che, who put a pistol to their heads and blew their skulls apart without a second thought. After days spent listening to Che and smelling him, perhaps this meant relief.
Who can blame Fidel for ducking into the nearest closet when this yo-yo came calling? Call Fidel everything in the book (as I have) but don’t call him stupid. Guevara’s inane twaddle must have driven him nuts. The one place where I can’t fault Fidel, the one place I actually empathize with him, is in his craving to rid himself of this insufferable Argentine jackass.
That Che’s Bolivian mission was clearly suicidal was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Fidel and Raul weren’t about to join him down there, but were happy to see him go. Two months later he was dead. Bingo! Fidel scored another bull’s-eye. He rid himself of the Argentine nuisance and his glorious revolution had a handsome young martyr for the adulation of imbeciles worldwide. Nice work.
Che Guevara was monumentally vain and epically stupid. He was shallow, boorish, cruel, and cowardly. He was full of himself, a consummate fraud and an intellectual vacuum. He was intoxicated with a few vapid slogans, spoke in clichés, and was a glutton for publicity. But ah! He did come out nice in a couple of publicity photos, high cheekbones and all. And we wonder why he’s a hit in Hollywood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CUBA BEFORE CASTRO
In 1955, a murderer and terrorist
was in a Cuban jail. I’ll let the prisoner himself, Fidel Castro, describe a Batista-era jail: “I feel like I’m on vacation!” No one ever got the same impression from one of Castro’s jails. It gets even better: “Tonight it’s angel hair pasta with calamari in red sauce and some Italian chocolates for dinner followed by an excellent cigar. Tomorrow morning I’ll be in the courtyard again lying in a lounge chair in my shorts feeling the sea breeze in my face. Sometimes I think I’m on vacation.”
1
was in a Cuban jail. I’ll let the prisoner himself, Fidel Castro, describe a Batista-era jail: “I feel like I’m on vacation!” No one ever got the same impression from one of Castro’s jails. It gets even better: “Tonight it’s angel hair pasta with calamari in red sauce and some Italian chocolates for dinner followed by an excellent cigar. Tomorrow morning I’ll be in the courtyard again lying in a lounge chair in my shorts feeling the sea breeze in my face. Sometimes I think I’m on vacation.”
1
Funny how the liberal media, which regularly ignores Castro’s gulag of torture and executions, invented a Batista that Castro wouldn’t recognize. “Batista murdered thousands,” wrote the incomparable Herbert Matthews in the
New York Times
in 1957, “usually after torture.”
New York Times
in 1957, “usually after torture.”
The
Chicago Tribune
’s Jules Dubois was more prosaic: “The Cuban dictator [Batista] is an egomaniac, a man of greed, a sadist. He crushes everyone who is an obstacle in his path. He orders the persecution, torture, assassination, and exile of his obstructionists. He directs the thought control of the entire population and insists upon the deification of his person and his relatives. He instills fear and total subjugation among his subordinates. He purges the judiciary to destroy the independence of the courts. He operates a police state with censorship of all media and limitless spies.”
2
Chicago Tribune
’s Jules Dubois was more prosaic: “The Cuban dictator [Batista] is an egomaniac, a man of greed, a sadist. He crushes everyone who is an obstacle in his path. He orders the persecution, torture, assassination, and exile of his obstructionists. He directs the thought control of the entire population and insists upon the deification of his person and his relatives. He instills fear and total subjugation among his subordinates. He purges the judiciary to destroy the independence of the courts. He operates a police state with censorship of all media and limitless spies.”
2
Then the sagacious Dubois caps it: “It was not until Fidel Castro came along that the people of Cuba found the leader to fight for their lost liberty.” Actually, it was not until Fidel Castro that inner tubes (for rafts) and ping-pong paddles (for oars) became the hottest items on Cuba’s black market—or that Cuba even needed a black market. It was not until Fidel Castro that Cuba experienced the highest rate of emigration, per capita, of any nation in the Western Hemisphere in the twentieth century. It was not until Fidel Castro that the police state painted by Dubois became a reality.
But from the
New York Times
to the
Los Angeles Times
, from CBS to CNN, from Harvard to Berkeley, liberal pundits and professors all assert that pre-Castro Cuba was a pesthole of grinding poverty, oppression, and hopelessness.
New York Times
to the
Los Angeles Times
, from CBS to CNN, from Harvard to Berkeley, liberal pundits and professors all assert that pre-Castro Cuba was a pesthole of grinding poverty, oppression, and hopelessness.
Colin Barraclough of Toronto’s
Globe and Mail
epitomizes these scribbling donkeys. “Fulgencio Batista presided over one of the most blood-soaked and corrupt, yet frighteningly successful, regimes of the century. Supported by an army of thugs and torturers, and aided by American mobster Meyer Lansky, Batista built an island of fantasy dedicated to the seven deadly sins. Batista’s thugs protected their patch with sadistic pleasure—the bodies of those who objected to the corruption or the opulence were often found hanging from lamp posts. By the late 1950s, an evening out could be a disturbing experience. Your driver could turn around at a stoplight and show you photos of bodies bloodied with bullets and young faces ripped apart by tortures so savage that the daiquiris, the sweet roast pork, the yummy yams, the fine Havanas, the hot sex, nothing tasted good any more.” Barraclough wrote this in 2004. Not content with denouncing Batista’s Cuba, the rest of the article promotes travel and trade to Castro’s Cuba.
Globe and Mail
epitomizes these scribbling donkeys. “Fulgencio Batista presided over one of the most blood-soaked and corrupt, yet frighteningly successful, regimes of the century. Supported by an army of thugs and torturers, and aided by American mobster Meyer Lansky, Batista built an island of fantasy dedicated to the seven deadly sins. Batista’s thugs protected their patch with sadistic pleasure—the bodies of those who objected to the corruption or the opulence were often found hanging from lamp posts. By the late 1950s, an evening out could be a disturbing experience. Your driver could turn around at a stoplight and show you photos of bodies bloodied with bullets and young faces ripped apart by tortures so savage that the daiquiris, the sweet roast pork, the yummy yams, the fine Havanas, the hot sex, nothing tasted good any more.” Barraclough wrote this in 2004. Not content with denouncing Batista’s Cuba, the rest of the article promotes travel and trade to Castro’s Cuba.
Just a reminder: Batista’s Cuba had the second highest per capita income in Latin America (higher than Austria’s or Japan’s ) as well as net immigration (in 1958, for example, the Cuban embassy in Rome had applications from twelve thousand Italians for immigrant visas).
3
Castro’s Cuba, on the other hand, has the highest political incarceration rate on earth (as of 1995, 500,000 prisoners had passed through Castro’s gulag, according to the human rights organization Freedom House.
4
Given Cuba’s population, Castro incarcerated at a higher rate than Stalin and is shunned even by Haitian refugees. But the only shortcoming of Castro’s Cuba, according to the
Globe and Mail
, is that “All car-rental companies are state owned and rates are exorbitant.” And, of course, the
Globe and Mail
criticizes the American trade “embargo.”
3
Castro’s Cuba, on the other hand, has the highest political incarceration rate on earth (as of 1995, 500,000 prisoners had passed through Castro’s gulag, according to the human rights organization Freedom House.
4
Given Cuba’s population, Castro incarcerated at a higher rate than Stalin and is shunned even by Haitian refugees. But the only shortcoming of Castro’s Cuba, according to the
Globe and Mail
, is that “All car-rental companies are state owned and rates are exorbitant.” And, of course, the
Globe and Mail
criticizes the American trade “embargo.”
Leftists just love how Castro has transformed Cuba, no matter what it’s done to the Cubans. Armando Valladares, who served twenty-two years in Castro’s dungeons before President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, wrote:
What shocked me the most about United Nations politics during my time there was the double standard of many governments. One of the most glaring examples was the attitude of the Spanish government under the leadership of Socialist president Felipe González. While I was in Geneva, friends in Spain sent me a copy of a confidential report on the violation of human rights in Cuba, prepared in secret by the Spanish Chancery itself. This report documented systematic torture, crimes, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Cuban political prisoners, including religious persecutions. But the Spanish foreign ministry’s official document concluded by stating: “But even so, we cannot condemn Castro because that would be proving the Americans right.”
“A week before this report was leaked to the Spanish press,” continues Valladares, “the Spanish Chancery issued a statement declaring that Spain did not believe that Cuba had human rights problems.”
5
5
Here you have it, friends. Castro gets away with his wholesale butcheries, lies, repression, and terrorism because for half a century now, his bearded and military-clad figure has symbolized anti-Americanism in its most virulent—hence appealing—form.
But a few facts: Back in the bad old Batista days, so many hundreds of thousands of Spaniards sought immigration to Cuba that flustered Cuban officials finally imposed
quotas
to stem this flood of Europeans wanting to live in Cuba. From 1910 to 1953, Cuba took in more than one million Spanish immigrants (along with 65,000 immigrants from the United States)—and Cuba’s population in 1950 was only 5.8 million.
6
Here’s another fact that explains all the immigration: In 1958, Cuba had almost double Spain’s per capita income. Quite a contrast from Castro’s paradise. And how about this: Today, Spain’s two biggest retail chains are owned (and were started) by Cuban exiles.
quotas
to stem this flood of Europeans wanting to live in Cuba. From 1910 to 1953, Cuba took in more than one million Spanish immigrants (along with 65,000 immigrants from the United States)—and Cuba’s population in 1950 was only 5.8 million.
6
Here’s another fact that explains all the immigration: In 1958, Cuba had almost double Spain’s per capita income. Quite a contrast from Castro’s paradise. And how about this: Today, Spain’s two biggest retail chains are owned (and were started) by Cuban exiles.
Here’s something else: When the right-wing Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, Fidel announced a national holiday—in honor of Franco, not in enmity. Something that many leftists don’t acknowledge is that Castro has stayed true to his fascist roots. Indeed, leftists like José “Pepe” Figueres of Costa Rica and Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela were Castro’s first and bitterest enemies in Latin America. They were socialists, all right—but they were pro-American socialists, hence instant foes. Franco, a genuine fascist with the blood of tens of thousands of Communists on his hands, was an instant friend, because of Spanish anti-Americanism.
All of this is no apology for Batista. Cuba’s prosperity (higher per capita income than Austria or Ireland,
double
Japan’s), its civil institutions (including a completely independent judiciary), and its free, vibrant, and sassy press were in spite of having a political hoodlum at the helm. But Batistiano
political
rule was benevolent compared to Fidelista
everything
rule.
double
Japan’s), its civil institutions (including a completely independent judiciary), and its free, vibrant, and sassy press were in spite of having a political hoodlum at the helm. But Batistiano
political
rule was benevolent compared to Fidelista
everything
rule.
Cuban Americans hear Batista compared to Castro in practically every political conversation: “Hey, both were dictators, right? And Cuba was horribly poor and exploited back then, right? So what’s the big deal? At least now the people have pride, free health care, free education . . .”
“At first I’d want to tear my hair out!” That’s Manuel Márquez-Sterling. His father, Carlos, helped write Cuba’s constitution in 1940 and was considered by many Cubans and by U.S. ambassador Earl Smith as the winner of Cuba’s last presidential election, in November 1958. Then Batista’s people got hold of the ballots and declared Batista the winner. The U.S. embassy conducted its own investigation and considered Carlos Márquez-Sterling the legitimate winner. So did Fidel Castro, who’d threatened to assassinate Carlos several times unless he withdrew his name from contention (he didn’t).
Castro knew damn well Márquez-Sterling would win. And he knew damn well this would blow Castro’s scheme of filling Cuba’s political power vacuum as the only “viable alternative to Batista.” (This Castroite fable is still nearly ubiquitous among Cuban “scholars.”) Having failed to intimidate Márquez-Sterling and botching a couple of assassination attempts against him, Castro’s armed goons simply rounded up all the ballots at gunpoint and burned them. So there, Márquez-Sterling, said the Castroites. See? We won anyway.
Márquez-Sterling was Batista’s best known and most vociferous political enemy in Cuba. His son Manuel was himself roughed up by Batista’s police. He bristles at the equation of Batista with Castro. “The comparison is ludicrous, preposterous, completely idiotic. It’s not even a case of apples and oranges. It’s grapes to watermelons. I’m a retired college professor. I dealt with some of America’s best-educated people. And I’d hear this outrageous idiocy repeatedly.
“Look, I finally said to all my students, faculty, cohorts, and friends. You find me a country—and not just in Latin America, but anywhere—that in its first fifty years of independence climbed to the world’s top 10 percent in almost every socioeconomic indicator, as Cuba did. Go ahead, show me one.
“In the late 1950s, Cuba had a
political
problem, not a socioeconomic one. Overall, Cuba was rich, her people healthy and well-educated. The Cuban peso was always on par with the U.S. dollar. Cuba’s gold reserves covered its monetary reserves to the last penny. But that’s only half the story, because Cuban labor laws were among the most advanced in the world. Cuban labor got a higher percentage of the national GNP than in Switzerland at the time.
political
problem, not a socioeconomic one. Overall, Cuba was rich, her people healthy and well-educated. The Cuban peso was always on par with the U.S. dollar. Cuba’s gold reserves covered its monetary reserves to the last penny. But that’s only half the story, because Cuban labor laws were among the most advanced in the world. Cuban labor got a higher percentage of the national GNP than in Switzerland at the time.
“And regarding that vaunted Castroite health care we hear and read about constantly, in 1957, Cuba’s infant mortality rate was the
lowest
in Latin America and the thirteenth lowest
in the world,
for heaven’s sake! Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal in that department. Now (and using Castro’s own inflated figures) it’s
twenty-fourth in the world
. And this with 60.4 percent of Cuba’s pregnancies ending in abortion (which skews infant mortality rates downward). In 1957, Cuba had twice as many physicians and teachers in relation to population as the U.S. It ranked first in Latin America in national income invested in education and its literacy rate was 80 percent. In 1958, Cuba even had more female college graduates (to scale) than the U.S.
lowest
in Latin America and the thirteenth lowest
in the world,
for heaven’s sake! Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal in that department. Now (and using Castro’s own inflated figures) it’s
twenty-fourth in the world
. And this with 60.4 percent of Cuba’s pregnancies ending in abortion (which skews infant mortality rates downward). In 1957, Cuba had twice as many physicians and teachers in relation to population as the U.S. It ranked first in Latin America in national income invested in education and its literacy rate was 80 percent. In 1958, Cuba even had more female college graduates (to scale) than the U.S.
“Before Fidel, Cubans were already among the healthiest and best-educated people in the world—and it didn’t require Hitler-level political executions and Stalin-level gulags to achieve. Back in the mid-1960s, my father, a Cuban scholar and political figure of wide reputation, the man who would have been Cuba’s president with honest elections, wrote a manuscript seeking to set the record straight about the Cuban revolution. In it, he stressed many of the things I’ve just catalogued. Well, no U.S. publisher would
touch
it.
touch
it.
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