FIDEL CASTRO

My Life by Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet ; Published by Allen Lane ; Pages 724 ; Price Rs 850/--

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This is an unusual autobiography in the sense that it is not written by Fidel Castro but spoken by him in the form of answers to a galaxy of questions put to him on a number of occasions over a period beginning with  January 2003 and concluding in December 2005—lasting in all for a hundred hours.

                                 This book-interview is a hybrid genre at once old and new. It is old in that one of its first examples was Wilhelm Goethe’s “Conversations with Ackerman” which came out in 1835. It is contemporary as recent recording techniques have made such works popular. The bonafides of the interviewer are impeccable. Ignacio Ramonet is the long-time editor of the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, one of the founders of ATTAC International and a key player in organizing the World Social forum. He is also the Founder of the NGO Media Watch Global. He is a frequent contributor to many learned journals. The book under review appeared originally in Spanish and has been translated into English by Andrew Hurley.

                                      This is a book of contemporary history. It supplements Castro’s statements with detailed notes which clarify and furnish information on the historical, political and cultural figures mentioned by Castro and recalls History. There is a detailed  chronology from 1926 to 2007 with useful parallels in time and geography.

                                       Few men have known the glory of entering the pages of both history and legend in their lifetime. Fidel is one of them. He is the last sacred giant of international politics. He belongs to the generation of mythical leaders like Nelson Mandela, Ho Chi Minh, Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara.

                                       He had an all-encompassing vision of globalisation, its consequences and ways of confronting them; his arguments of great modernity and cleverness made patent qualities that included---his sense of strategy, his uncanny ability to read a situation accurately and his quickness of analysis.

                                          Under his leadership Cuba with a tiny population of 11 million people has conducted a very powerful foreign policy, of far-reaching consequences—it has even stared down the United States, whose ten Presidents failed to dislodge Fidel or even jostle the revolution one bit off its path.

                                             It is on record that despite persistent attacks by the U S, Cuba has never responded with violence for fifty years; that  not a single act of violence  encouraged or sponsored by Cuba has occurred in U S A.

                                               Fidel Castro is the President of Cuba. In 1959 he led the revolution that led to the fall of Fulgencio Batista. He held the post of Prime Minister till 1976, when he became President of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. Castro became the First secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965 and heralded the transformation of Cuba into a one-party Socialist republic. As President he holds the supreme military rank of Comandante in the Cuban military. On 31st July 2006 Fidel Castro temporarily transferred duties to his  brother  Raoul Castro.

                                       Castro’s life began in a sugar plantation 80 years ago. He went on to graduate as a lawyer, led a failed revolution against the Batista regime. He was tried and imprisoned. He escaped to Mexico only to return to begin a guerrilla war. In 1959 when he was thirty two only he marched triumphantly to Havana. He soon became Prime Minister and has remained in power ever since—that is for over 50 years. He has survived ten American Presidents and 600 attempts on his life.

                                          In this book Castro describes his life from 1930, all the way up to the present day. He discusses every thing—his parents, his earliest influences, the beginnings of the revolution, his relationship with Che Guevara, the Bay of Pigs Fiasco, the October Missile Crisis, the Carter years, Cuban migration to USA. He tackles a number of controversial questions from human rights, freedom of the press, repression of homosexuals and the survival of death penalty.

                                            Ramonet comes out as a well prepared  inter- locutor  tackling the communist leader’s legacy. Castro’s comments on world events and personalities are highly thought provoking and very fascinating. Special mention must be made of the disenchantment with Khrushchev after he withdrew all the missiles without checking with Castro. The exchange of letters between Castro and Khrushchev are highly impressive. Castro has sound advice to give Hugo Chavez of Venezuela during a 2002 coup attempt.

                                               There is no doubt that Fidel Castro was the most charismatic leader of those days, always controversial and one who stood firm as a rock for more than half a century.  He was a hero and an inspiration to the world’s poor having maintained his independence fiercely against heavy odds.

                                             In his eighties he has now set out in great and amazing details his remarkable autobiography. During his recent illness he revealed to reporters that he was keeping alive to ensure that this book has been checked by him. Castro narrates graphically his experience of  harsh elementary school teachers, the early failures of revolution, their amazing against-all odds victory over Batista, the Cuban side of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the October Missile crisis, the positive role of Cuba in African independence movements and above all his relations with the high and mighty like Boris Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, Saddam Hussein and his dealings with ten American Presidents from Eisenhower to George Bush. Castro proudly declares that life expectancy in Cuba is higher than in USA, half a million students study in Cuban universities ,  there are  seventy thousand doctors in Cuba, a large number of them assisting the poor in Africa.

                                       Fidel was a leader who lived modestly, austerely, in spartan conditions. There was no luxury about or around him. His furniture was sober; his food was frugal and healthy. His habits were those of a soldier-monk. He had not taken advantage of his position to enrich himself. Hewas a man of impressive physique, over six feet tall, athletic and robust. Brilliant and baroque he had a visceral need to communicate with the public.

                                         He was given the name Fidel after a man who was his Godfather. At school he was outstanding at basketball, football and baseball. Since 1956 he has never been unarmed. ”I once said that if Ulysses was captivated by the song of the Sirens, I was captivated by the Marxist denunciations”, he declared about his faith. He explained why he sported a beard. “If you multiply the fifteen minutes you spend on shaving every day by the number of days in a year, you’ll see that you devote almost 5500 minutes to shaving in one year. An eight-hour day of work consist of 480 minutes, so if you don’t shave you gain about ten days that you can devote to reading, to sport, or to what you really care for ”. He shares intimacies about personal matters such as the kindness of his strict father, his attempts to give up cigars, his great love for Ernest Hemingway, respect for Romain Rolland and his high regard for Che Guevara.

                                      Ignacio Ramonet has brought out an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary leader who lived in times of great turmoil and came out with grace and won world esteem.  This is an outstanding autobiography of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries.

P.P.Ramachandran

21/06/2020.