Fidel Castro's Rise to Power in Cuba and the Complex Legacy of a Revolutionary Leader

Fidel could be cruel, but he could also be amicable. He's given millions of people a decent life. He believes that he has the true path to the egalitarian nirvana, and that those who oppose him, therefore, are enemies. A man with exceptional leadership skills and an equally exceptional actor. He was admired and hated. But the man behind the facade of the revolutionary leader remained a great unknown entity. Who was Fidel Castro? January 1959. The most exciting times in the history of Cuba. Fidel Castro and his fighters will enter Havana as the victor.

They chased the dictator Batista out of the country. Now everything seems possible. A young country where a bunch of young people now call the shots. All gather around the leader Fidel Castro, a 32-year-old lawyer. He is the man of the hour, and during these days is demonstrating his sure instinct for staged scenes. Peace doves land on him. Fidel Castro as savior.

The thing with the white dove was a show. They prepared that with Castro's girlfriend Celia in the camp. They probably wanted to give the impression that they were committed to peace. I know some skeptics said, oh, it was a trained dove. My response to that was, that's even more impressive. You mean, during the two years they've been up there fighting this guerrilla war, they've been training that dove to come back and land on his shoulder? That's politics.

Comrades, I ask you to please calm down. To be as calm as possible. That's no way to lead a revolution. Half a century after the beginning of the revolution, this enthusiasm had degenerated to a gesture. Among the clackers, Margot Honecker, the widow of the defunct East German head of state. A revolution retired from public life. Their leader, an ossified monument.

Fidel Castro came from the world of the large landowner. His father had an affair with the cook. She gave birth to Fidel in 1926. He grew up with his brother Raul in luxury. And yet he was different from the rest. At school, I developed a rebellious attitude against injustice. Several times during my childhood I experienced things that I felt were very unfair.

I experienced these kinds of things over and over again. Hence, one can say that these experiences at school made me rebellious. I felt the feeling of things that seemed unfair to me and that stimulated in me a feeling of rebellion. Fidel was raised Catholic, attended a Jesuit school and transferred from there to university in the capital. Behind its beautiful façade, Havana was a hotbed of vice for the prudish Americans in those days, dominated by corrupt governments and by the mafia.

A large part of the population, however, lived in poverty. Again, Castro was outraged, this time about the wrongs that others suffered. The law student denounced the corruption and called on Cubans to be proud of their nation. A leftist nationalist, a hothead, a man women liked. Fidel Castro was one of the handsomest men in the university.

Moreover, Fidel had yet another important attribute. He was an excellent speaker. Castro developed a sense of what people wanted to hear. A populist was born. A philosophy student soon succumbed to Castro's charisma as well. The girl came from a good family, like himself. Mirta Díaz-Balat.

She was the wife of the dreams and aspirations of Fidel Castro. Graceful and voluptuous. Supposedly he later regretted not having treated her better. 1948 they got married. Befittingly the couple spent their honeymoon in Florida and then travelled on to New York. There Castro bought Capital by Karl Marx, but did not read to the end. He was fascinated by someone else, former US President Roosevelt. As a student, Castro had congratulated him on his re-election in a letter and begged him for a $10 bill. At that time, Castro fell drawn to the US.

He was a good baseball player and thought of switching to the American League as a professional. A brief flirtation with the big neighbor. The Yankees, the most famous baseball club in the US and in Cuba, that Fidel Castro also liked, made him an offer. And Fidel said he would like to study the American baseball techniques. But Castro, now a father, changed his mind. He stayed in Cuba and became a lawyer for the poor. But he wanted to do more, dreamed of a coup and sought allies. And he found one in the wife of a physician whom he promptly fell in love with.

My husband and I invited him to dinner. For three or four hours, we discussed his plan to create a revolutionary movement. To do this, he was looking for support in the form of money, weapons and organizational help. Castro's plan was bold. He wanted to overthrow Batista, the dictator who ruled Cuba as an American colony and cashed in together with the mafia. Santiago de Cuba, July 1953. It's carnival, and Castro believes that the military is not so vigilant now.

With a troop of scantily armed followers, Castro wants to take the Moncada barracks, the second largest garrison of Cuba, and trigger a national uprising. The attack fails. The military captures most of the troops, and more than half will be massacred. Fidel Castro has overestimated his strength. He himself escapes a hail of bullets until he is caught and thrown into prison. From there he organises the reconstruction of his troops and writes tender letters to Nati, his new love.

Fidel's letters are very beautiful, very emotional. Our relationship was sentimental, passionate and more intellectual than other relationships. Since a falling out with her father, she's lived in Florida. For all his appreciation of women, he is very impatient. He does not like it when women control him, dominate him or try to influence him. those techniques that women generally tend to use. But he himself understands very well how to direct the basic instincts of people.

November 56. Castro returns from exile with 81 guerrilla fighters on a shipwrecked boat, armed. No revolution worthy of the name can be peaceful. Che Guevara has coined a phrase that is absolutely true. He says, the guerrilla fighter is an armed teacher. Where there is no free speech and to convince the oppressor, you have the freedom to create liberty with the gun. so you can talk to the oppressor. Is Castro a daredevil? Upon landing, two-thirds of his troops were either killed or arrested, but he acts as if he is leading an army. In fact, he never has more than 320 men against 10,000 government soldiers.

We gladly suffer cold and rain and the hardship of life in the mountains. But the people saw your skull when they are sent up here. Since his exile in Mexico, Che Guevara is at Castro's side, a doctor from Argentina who is passionate about Karl Marx. These two constituted a hybrid creature, embodied the perfect man, the new man, with great empathy and concern for others, dedicated entirely to the work and sacrificing themselves for a just cause. And once again, a new woman is at Castro's side,

Celia Sanchez. The resolute guerrilla fighter remains his most faithful companion. until her death in 1980. Fidel said, ''You do what I want or you keep your mouth shut.'' Celia was Catholic, a Catholic and such a strong-willed Marxist, which resulted in a tension that was too much in the long run. So Celia resigned and became only a poor appendage of Fidel Castro. 1959. The Hour of the Victor. Commander Fidel Castro is looking for new headquarters. After years in the mountains, he considers a luxury hotel to be appropriate.

There he shows himself to the American television audience in pyjamas. This week Fidel, as everyone in Cuba calls him, has been away in the hill country where he made his home for two years. A few hours ago he returned to his apartment on the 23rd floor of the Havana Hilton Hotel. Good evening Fidel Castro. Tell me Fidel Castro, are you concerned at all about the communist influence in Cuba? Oh, I am not worried because there is no threat about communism here in Cuba. Fidelito.

Hello Fidel Junior. Hi. That's a very good looking puppy you have there. Is he yours? No, somebody gave it to my father for a present. Uh-huh. Do you have a dog of your own? Yes, I have two dogs. What kind of dogs are they? Well, of all the little. Just small ones, huh? Fidel, when was the last time you were in the United States? I was in the United States from October to December in 1955. When do you think you'll be visiting us again?

Oh, when they choose the light. I think when they have a chance. Four months later, Castro flies to New York at the invitation of American publishers. He has no idea that the US government had recently discussed his assassination. Castro is affable. He has nothing to do with communism, he reiterates. That goes down well with the New Yorkers. Castro has become a master of self-promotion.

The revolutionary leader bows to Lincoln, the former US president, because he stands for freedom. Almost everyone. Almost all of the leaders of Latin America went to Washington to ask for money. But Fidel did not ask for money. He asked that the Cuban revolution be understood. But Washington gives Castro the cold shoulder. U.S. President Eisenhower prefers to play golf. The guest is dispatched by his vice president, Nixon. The pride of the Cuban is deeply wounded.

The conversation was over. They came out of Nixon's office. It was then clear to me that Fidel was not satisfied with the outcome of the conversation at all. Castro does not feel he is being taken seriously. Nixon ridicules him as naive. The Cuban will return the favor to the United States. The following year Castro returns, this time to the United Nations, and he must find accommodation in Harlem in a flophouse.

Castro had meanwhile nationalized large estates and branches of U.S. corporations in Cuba. This is something that no one has dared to do in the backyard of the United States. Another powerful leader knows how to take advantage of the tensions between his delegation and the U.S. No one in those days in New York is so kind to the dynamic revolutionary leaders as Nikita Khrushchev, the communist leader from Moscow. Decades later, Soviet communism is long since gone. Not so with Fidelism in Cuba. There is poverty. Dissidents are imprisoned. But when the Patriarch tours his island in sneakers, many still cheer. And not just because they were ordered to do so.

He taught us Cubans to feel dignity, to defend our principles. And he helped build a nation that, although not perfect, has a high moral status in the world. but it is a moral value to the world. Castro, the socialist, has achieved a lot in Cuba. The enormous social inequalities have been eliminated. The health system is considered a model for Latin America.

Since Castro's revolution, there is hardly any racism. The school enrolment is 100%. Fidel Castro, a Cuban bringer of salvation? But the construction of the new Cuba also has another, cruel side. Many got to feel Castro's wrath, among them, Cuba Matos, one of his closest companions. I didn't want to go along with it anymore.

I had come to believe that the revolution, more or less obviously, had developed into a communist dictatorship. Commander Matos resigns in 1959. This is something that Castro cannot forgive. He has Matos arrested as a counter-revolutionary. The order has to be carried out by another companion, Camilo Cienfuegos. But he calls Castro first. Camilo ends the phone call. Fidel must have said something outrageously offensive to him. Camilo just sat there stunned and was completely pale. When I saw his face, I knew.

This is where the career of Camilo Cienfuegos ends. Camilo Cienfuegos carries out the command and locks up his friend. A few days later, he disappears from the scene without a trace, on the way to Havana, together with his airplane. I have no doubt that the Castro brothers killed him. It may have been so or not. You should not be too quick to judge here. In Cuba, everybody is rational. Fidel Castro is not Tarzan or Batman. He's very rational. How else can you explain that such a man ruled a country directly across from the United States for decades?

He acts with great deliberation, very pragmatically. Why would he have killed Camilo? One thing is certain, what Castro did with Hugo Matos. In a show trial, Matos is branded a traitor to the revolution, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and tortured. They pinched my testicles, injected me with some kind of fluid or liquid and stabbed my penis. They did terrible things to me. From the start of the revolution, Fidel Castro shows two signs. There is the ruthless power freak and the intellectual, with a sense of humor and flair for indulgence. Privately, Castro lives in a middle-class residential area, surrounded by books and his rifle.

Cuban exiles supported by the CIA want to overthrow Castro. The Bay of Pigs invasion. But Castro fights them off. As a commander, he is in his element. He's a man who knows no fear. He has no fear of losing his life. The threat also represents an opportunity for Castro. Over 1,000 attackers are captured, and Castro presents himself as a man who cannot be forced to his knees by the United States. Now he declares his country a socialist state. The Americans react like at the touch of a button. The CIA and Cuban exiles carry out acts of sabotage.

Even Castro himself is still in its sights. He learns to live with the risk, always changing his whereabouts, sealing off his private life. You can be absolutely sure that it was official United States government policy to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s. Later on, these terrorists which owed their training and their skills and their existence really to the CIA, they took on a life of their own and continued terrorist operations including attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Help comes from the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1962, it secretly ships nuclear missiles to Cuba. When American spy planes discovered the launching pads, the world comes to the brink of nuclear war. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. The American fleet encircles the island of Cuba. Castro calls on his countrymen to prepare for an invasion. The old game continues.

Little Cuba versus the USA, its big neighbor. But then, the Soviets withdraw their nuclear missiles. Castro is furious. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached an agreement behind his back. Previously, Castro had demanded a nuclear first strike in case of an invasion. Khrushchev's deputy is to bring him to his senses. He describes Castro as difficult, exploding at the slightest provocation.

An invitation by Khrushchev is to improve relations. For 40 days Castro travels through the Soviet Union. Reluctantly, he must realize that he has long been dependent on Moscow, militarily and economically, at the mercy of the world powers. A trimmed down rebel. Here Castro learns from Khrushchev how the horse trading with Kennedy transpired. The withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba against the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey.

Henceforth Castro also distrusts the Russians. And they distrust him. Find him guerrilla-like, unpredictable. And Castro now receives conflicting signals from the other world power. While the CIA continues to work on overthrowing the Cuban, the US president seeks a discreet rapprochement. In the fall of 63, Kennedy welcomes a French journalist. He knows that he will then travel on to Cuba and gives him a message for Castro. He told me, you're traveling to Cuba? The whole world thinks I've got something against Castro because he's a communist. But that's not true.

I couldn't care less. Jean Daniel takes this message to Havana. He shall stay in Castro's house. There, the journalist is amazed. In the room where my wife and I had spent the night hung a large crucifix. Imagine, in the house of the revolutionary leader who is communist and against the church, there is a large crucifix in every room. Daniel delivers Kennedy's words to Castro. It is November the 22nd.

Castro told me, you know, you're a peace ambassador. And I said, why? And he said, because what you told me tonight shows that Kennedy, who wanted to kill me, has changed his mind. And me, with my relationship that I had with the Russians, I've changed my mind too. Perhaps there is a chance to come to an understanding with this man. At the same time, 1,500 kilometers northwest of here, President Kennedy and his wife are visiting Dallas. Castro wanted to send me back to Kennedy.

Suddenly the phone rang. You could understand what Castro was saying. Injured. Seriously injured. Seriously. Very seriously injured. But he's not dead. No, he's not dead. Ten minutes later Cuba's president calls saying Kennedy is dead. Castro tells me your peace mission is over. Now the whole world will believe I was behind the assassination.

Although Kennedy could have been the first US president that we could communicate with. Kennedy's successor shows no interest in easing relations with Havana. Henceforth Castro remains a stone in the shoe of all American presidents. Richard Nixon even takes the enmity with Fidel Castro personally. For Nixon, the phenomenon of Castro was a particularly emotional issue because he believed he was defeated in 1960 because of the fact that Kennedy was freer to talk about Castro. Then he was being vice president and knowledgeable of what was being done.

So he believed he was defeated because of Castro's existence. Kennedy had accused Nixon of tolerating thousands of murders and the exploitation of Cuba by the Batista regime, and thus bringing Castro to power in the first place. Then in 1962 he felt he was defeated for governor in California. because the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred at the precise moment. .of the election so that to prevent the emergence of another Castro was an article of faith with Nixon and an issue in which he was more active than on any other single issue. that I dealt with him. In Cuba, meanwhile, life follows its socialist course.

Castro and Che Guevara continue to tinker on their vision of the new man and of Cuba as a model third-world country. The two present themselves as a revolutionary dream team, but the kinship felt by Guevara's daughter also leads to tensions. I think my uncle Fidel is a very stubborn man. If he wants to push something through, he can go to extremes. And I think my father was the same. The relationship between Number One, the Maximo leader, and his Minister of Industry deteriorates. The sugar harvests are dwindling.

Industrialization stagnates. As Che Guevara also accuses the Soviet Union of imperialism, he is removed from power. He disappears to Bolivia, instigates a guerrilla war there. But this suicide mission does not have a happy ending. Che Guevara is murdered. How Fidel Castro tells Guevara's daughter about his death shows his conviction. It is an honor to die for the revolution. He invented a letter that Papa is supposed to have written, in which he states that he would not want us to cry for him if he died in combat someday.

Fidel wanted to tell us, my papa had died the way he wanted to, in the struggle, and if men were to die this way, then you ought not to cry. Castro has always played down any quarrels with Che Guevara. He took advantage of his popularity, also for himself. I will now read you a letter by Comrade Ernesto Guevara. There is much that I want to tell you and our people, but words cannot express that which I want to express. Until victory, fatherland, or death, I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervor, Che.

During these years, Castro gets on well with the new Soviet leader Brezhnev. In Africa, he fights proxy wars for him. He also values Erich Honecker. Castro receives know-how on national security and economic aid from the GDR. Cubans are better off in the 70s and 80s than ever before. Castro stays in power into the 21st century, supported by a clique of old comrades. Speeches by Castro are like holy masses.

The people will have the last word. Countless assassination attempts. Fidel Castro has survived them all. He has his people under control. He has gained the respect of his enemies and he disarms reporters with the greatest of ease. Do you actually wear a bulletproof vest?

I will land in New York like this. I have a moral protective vest. Spring of 1989. The Cold War is almost over. Gorbachev comes to visit. The whole world expects the Soviet leader to demand reforms. As he tells Honecker, life punishes those who come too late. But Gorbachev restrains himself. He knows why Castro became a hardliner.

The US was in a state of war with Castro. And Fidel Castro sought an ally. So he embraced the Soviet Union. And whenever the Soviet Union supported someone, the US had something against it, and vice versa. That's why Fidel Castro became a communist. In the 90s too, Washington maintains its economic blockade erected since the 1960s and achieved the opposite effect. Castro uses the pressure from the US to stabilize his power in Cuba. Castro plays David to our Goliath beautifully, and we give him the opportunity to do it month after month. Castro has become mellower in old age.

During the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998, he does not wear his usual military fatigues. He bows before the Pope. Then, in 2004, Castro topples, physically. His supporters sense even Castro's omnipotence is finite. And in 2006, a serious intestinal surgery confines him to his sickbed. He is now tenaciously trying to keep his revolution on track from there. And get back on his feet again. Fidel already had an absence in 2004 after his severe fall in Santa Clara.

Raul then took over power and also helped ensure that the family, that members of the family took over important positions and acted as a substitute. And all others were practically pushed aside. Early 2007. Raul Castro is now appointed successor to his brother, but the elderly Fidel does not want to see himself forced into retirement. With occasional comments and public gestures, he wants to make it clear that he and Raul are one. But what will become of Cuba without Fidel Castro?

I do think that this revolution will survive, not only in the firmly established structures of the party, but also, and we have now seen under Raoul again and again, in the military. Members of the military have very leading positions. in society and largely rule the economy, including tourism. So I would almost say that we have a kind of military dictatorship of its own. And it did not come to power in a coup, but it was organically grown out of the regime. Raul Castro, Cuba's new and powerful man, has also learned his lesson. The revolution needs heroes, and Cuba needs Fidel as a legend.

Fidel is Fidel. We all know Fidel is irreplaceable. The greatest achievements today, after 50 years of the revolution, the disappearance of hunger. There is no malnutrition. No one among the 11 million Cubans dies or suffers from hunger. There is no illiteracy anymore. There are no epidemics anymore. And Raul has launched a tentative opening towards a controlled market economy. Cuba is, and must be, more independent.

When the patriarch steps down, this will naturally result in a new situation. People need to reorient themselves. They also have to look forward. And I think the young generation, who has in part either experience Fidel Castro as an old man or not at all, is also seeking new horizons. At the end of his life, he is also seeking his peace with God. In 2012, Castro and his girlfriend Dalia welcome Pope Benedict XVI.

I was in Biran, at the house where he was born. Crucifixes everywhere, images of the saints, it's unbelievable. So? He was Catholic, sure. And that's not something you can just wipe away. I think Fidel is a lot like the Jesuit Ignacio de Loyola, but also like Lenin and Karl Marx. The result of decades of Castro's rule, any opposition in Cuba has no chance. Instead, hero worship according to the Soviet model.

For decades, Cuba's spiritual life was restricted. This large landowner should have left his finger to younger people a long time ago. But Castro had chained his fate to that of Cuba and vice versa. It was electricity and cha-cha-cha. It was a special revolution. And back then I believed that perhaps it is possible for somebody to do things differently from the other revolutionaries, socialists, communists. Very quickly it became clear to me, he's just as bad as all the other dictators.

But in one thing he seemed different. Castro lived modestly. As a video that was smuggled out of Cuba and aired by US channel shows, the ladies' man and father of at least eight grown children, in a late role as grandpa. Buenos Aires, 2003. Even after half a century in power, Castro was specially celebrated in the developing world as a heroic figure. His last appearances were similar to those of a pop star on a farewell tour. You've all brought me good luck and it's a shame that this may be my last trip.

Fidel Castro has outlived them all. Generations of American presidents, Soviet leaders, CIA directors, assassins. But history's final verdict about him has yet to be made. He defied the American superpower and its policy of exploitation and destruction, has set an example for all the peoples of Latin America. In Cuba we also had a socialist economy, a centrally planned economy, which simply broke down, which failed. And that's why you always have to see both sides. On one side, this lighthouse, but also on the other side, the failure. And what makes things worse,

the constant violation of human rights. For a small eternity, Fidel Castro played an important supporting role in world politics. As a rebel. A womanizer. As a statesman. But even revolutionary leaders can't live forever. What remains of Fidel Castro in particular is his myth.