Editor's note: After a daring escape attempt in 1989, celebrated Cuban journalist Norberto Fuentes was imprisoned by his former friend Fidel Castro. Twenty years later, Fuentes has gotten his revenge: by telling the history of the revolution in Castro's own voice. Fuentes' new book, "The Autobiography of Fidel Castro", has just been published. This three-part series describes how he came to write it.
On August 31, 1986, following a seventeen-hour journey from Havana, with a layover in Sal Island, Cape Verde, Fidel Castro arrived in Zimbabwe. He settled into the house in the outskirts of bucolic Harare, a house which had been procured and prepared for him and later became the permanent residence of the Cuban ambassador. There was a walled garden that stretched to the front door and the house was still, the day was tranquil, when Fidel came out to the yard, wearing a purple bathrobe that came almost all the way down to his slippers. He took a few steps, his hands in the pockets of his robe, when he noticed a dozen or so collaborators milling around the parking area on the other side of the wall and went back in the house. Then out came Colonel Joseíto--José Delgado--the head of his security team, who pleaded: "Dammit, caballeros, clear out and stop looking over here, so that he can believe he is alone." In the whole of my experiences with or close to Fidel, this was the most pathetic. Here was a man who knew solitude was an impossibility, yet seemed happy to have the illusion of it--an illusion guaranteed by an entourage of Special Troops rangers from Havana armed with portable anti-aircraft rockets.
Implicit in this scene, that certain pathos--a term I am not using pejoratively--reveals a man permanently defending his perimeter. Fidel has developed a set of ideological criteria explaining that privacy is political (although he would like to turn it into a security matter)--and that, in his own words, it is better not to mix politics and his personal life. But his true concern is having the world's best bodyguard service. Ideas and bodyguards, logically, that later serve to protect him during his escapades at his chain of mysterious security houses around the country.
He defends this bastion of privacy even more vehemently when it comes to his family: his wife Dalia, and the five children they have together in descending order: Alex, Alexis, Alejandro, Antonio y Ángel. Sometimes, in recent years, photos of his nuclear family have been published outside Cuba, and the establishment explains with resignation that such a thing is normal. In reality, despite the few photos published in gossip magazines outside of Cuba, Fidel's Personal Security service successfully kept pictures of his sons out of the press until they came of age.
And it's not just the press. Even Raúl Castro hasn't had access. Raúl was wildly happy the day that his son Alejandro, who was already more than 20 years old, was finally able to meet some of his cousins, two of Fidel's sons, very casually at a party. It was a glorious moment for the Army General and Head of the Armed Forces (and current President of the Republic). When he found out, he called in all his subordinates and sent for vodka to toast the occasion.
The public explanations for Fidel's behavior are many but mostly they boil down to the CIA. But I would say--based on my close range observations--that the real reason is the one revealed by Colonel Joseíto that morning in Harare. Feeling alone. Castro is a man who distracts observers in a constant, methodic way, a man outfitted in an enigmatic shell, who counts on the State's entire repressive apparatus to achieve his objective.
This, of course, is an enormous problem for a biographer and the main challenge that led me to write "The Autobiography of Fidel Castro". I had wanted to write a book about the Cuban Revolution, but I understood that it was going to be something more complicated than an academic endeavor. It couldn't just be one more book on Fidel Castro, many of which already clutter the shelves. Before I knew how to proceed, I had to make my way through a field of contradictions and learn some basic lessons. The first is that the only way to narrate history is without moral judgment. I have always maintained the conviction that a novel is as valid an instrument for knowledge as essays or History; but it is difficult to write a novel without moral judgment. The second is the old Hemingway adage that one must write in the first person to be believable. At some length, I came to a simple literary conclusion: this was the ship that could only be sailed from the captain's deck. The story Cuban Revolution had to be told--could only be told--through this character.
Norberto Fuentes: Fidel Castro, Above and Beyond the Call of Duty (Part III of III)
The Castros, and by extension the Revolutionary Cuban Government, had insulted their greatest emissary, and yet it was García Márquez who did the scraping and accommodating.
Norberto Fuentes: Saturday Night with Fidel Castro (Part I of III)
I felt very close to Castro, but my admiration for him and his achievements didn't seem to be enough. He was desperate to be fussed over. For me to fuss over him, over Fidel Castro.
Cuba gives US diplomat access to arrested American
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Red Glare
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