By Frei Beto on November 27, 2024
Fidel Castro Ruz
November 25 marked eight years since Fidel’s passing. I could not say how many private conversations I had with him since I met him in 1980. After our first meeting, in Managua, I traveled numerous times to Cuba, and I think that, from 1985 onwards, in almost all of them I had the opportunity to meet him.
On February 19, 2016, I was in Havana; it was my last day in the city and I already had my bags packed to leave in the afternoon back to Brazil. In the morning I went to the Casa de las Américas to attend the screening of the film Bautismo de sangre, based on my book of the same name, and I had arranged to have lunch with Homero Acosta and then head for the airport.
To my surprise, Homero arrived much earlier than expected and took me out of the room where the film was being shown. Dalia Soto del Valle, Fidel’s wife, had called him to tell him that the Comandante was interested in talking to me on the phone. For security reasons, the call could not be made by cell phone. We had to return to the hotel to call from the landline in the room where I had been staying.
I had already closed my account at the Meliá Habana. Even so, Homero insisted that we return to the hotel. Luckily, the room was still empty. Homer made the call and handed me the phone. Dalia told me that, unfortunately, “the boss” had not been able to see me during those days, but that he wanted to greet me on the phone before I left. Fidel, always attentive to me, asked me if I had to return to Brazil that afternoon, if I could not stay a few days. I explained to him the difficulties in doing so.
-But couldn’t you at least come here for a coffee? – he invited me.
I said yes. Once in Homero’s car, neither he nor Roberto, his driver, knew where Fidel’s house was. It was a secret kept under a thousand keys for security reasons. But I had been there several times and knew the route well. So an unusual situation arose: a Brazilian friar showed the way to the Comandante’s residence to a high official of the Palace of the Revolution and his driver. Moreover, it was the first time Homero was personally with him, which was repeated in many of my subsequent visits to Cuba, even on Fidel’s 90th birthday.
What first struck me when I saw Fidel was how imposing his figure was. He looked bigger than he was, and the olive green jacket invested him with a symbolism that conveyed authority and decisiveness. When he entered a room it was as if the whole space was occupied by his aura. Those around him were silent, attentive to his gestures and his words. The first moments were usually self-conscious, because everyone would wait for him to take the initiative, choose the subject, make a proposal or launch an idea, while he persisted in the illusion that his presence was just one more and that he would be treated in an equally friendly manner, without ceremony or reverence. As in the Cole Porter song, he surely wondered if he wouldn’t be happier being a simple country man, without the fame that clothed him.
Legend has it that in the wee hours of the morning he used to drive his jeep incognito through the streets of Havana. I know that he had the habit of showing up unexpectedly at his friends’ houses, whenever he saw a light on, and although he claimed he would only be there for five minutes, it was not uncommon for him to stay until the first rays of light announced the dawn.
Another surprising detail about Fidel was the timbre of his voice. The falsetto tone contrasted with his corpulence. Sometimes he sounded so low that his interlocutors’ ears pricked up as if they were listening to secrets and unpublished revelations. And when he spoke he did not like to be interrupted. Magnanimous, he would go from the international situation to a recipe for spaghetti, from the sugar harvest to memories of his youth.
But he was not a monopolizer of words. I have never met anyone who liked to talk so much. That is why he did not grant audiences. He disliked protocol meetings, in which diplomatic lies resound as definitive truths. Fidel did not know how to receive a person for 15 or 20 minutes. When he met with someone, the meeting lasted at least an hour. Often all night, until he realized it was time to go home, take a bath, eat something and sleep.
In personal conversations, the Cuban leader tried to get the most out of his interlocutor. When he was enthusiastic about a subject, he wanted to know all aspects of it. He would inquire about everything: the climate of a city, the cut of a piece of clothing, the type of leather of a briefcase or the military planes of a country. If the interlocutor did not master the details of the subject that had arisen, the best thing to do was to change the subject.
Even if he began the dialogue comfortably seated, he soon had the impression that every seat was too narrow for his large frame. Electrified by the enthusiasm caused by his own ideas, Fidel would get up, walk from one side to the other, stand in the middle of the room with his feet together, his trunk arched backwards, his head bent over the back of his neck and his finger in his hand; he would take a cowboy shot of whiskey, taste a canapé; he would lean over his interlocutor, touch his shoulder with the tips of his index and middle fingers, whisper in his ear; He pointed incisively with the index finger of his right hand, gesticulated vehemently, argued with his face framed by his beard and opened his mouth showing his small, white teeth, as if the impact of an idea required him to refill his lungs; he would pierce his interlocutor with his small, bright eyes, as if he wanted to absorb all the information transmitted.
A lot of agility was necessary to accompany his reasoning. His prodigious memory was enriched with an enviable capacity to perform complicated mathematical operations in his mind, as if he were running a computer in his brain. He liked to be told anecdotes and stories, to have productive processes described, to have foreign politicians profiled. But he would not allow them to invade his privacy, which was kept under seven keys. Unless the interest was related to his only passion: the Cuban Revolution.
Always surrounded by attentive members of his personal security detail, Fidel knew he was not just the target of his admirers’ affection. Between 1960 and 1972, mobsters like Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, eager to recover the casinos expropriated by the Revolution, tried to assassinate him in collaboration with the CIA.
In spite of everything, he survived. And he passed away at the age of 90 serenely, in his bed, surrounded by his family.
Today Cuba faces a serious economic crisis caused by the criminal blockade imposed by the White House. Fidel is no longer at the helm of the country and, therefore, the Cuban people do not have the helmsman who led them during the five years of the Special Period (1990-1995), which I had the opportunity to witness.
Raul Castro, who succeeded him, is at an advanced age and is deservedly retired at home. And the Cuban people democratically elected Díaz-Canel to preside the country for the second time.
There are those who say that Cuba would not be facing so many difficulties if Fidel were alive and at the head of the revolutionary government. But that opinion does not seem fair to me. First, because the current situation, especially at the international level, is very different from that of the 1990s. Today imperialist hegemony has been strengthened by the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and the measures of Trump and Biden have further reinforced the blockade. Secondly, because Díaz-Canel does not govern alone. Revolutionary Cuba has always had a collegial government, composed of the Political Bureau, the Council of State and the National Assembly of People’s Power.
The current government is making every effort to reduce the crisis and preserve the fundamental principles of socialism, because they guarantee Cuba’s independence and sovereignty, and prevent the country from submitting to the neocolonial interests of metropolitan nations, as is the case in most Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Fidel was a unique leader, endowed with a gift that few political leaders possess: charisma. But that does not make him irreplaceable. He knew it, so much so that, while he was still alive, he handed over the command of the Revolution to his brother Raul. And he participated in the election of Díaz-Canel.
In light of this commemoration (which means making memory alive) of the eight years of Fidel’s physical disappearance, it is essential to keep in mind that revolutions and their progress, amidst crises and challenges, do not depend on a man or a woman: they depend on a people. Without the support and mobilization of the people, all power has a fragile foundation. And Fidel’s example and thought are alive for the Cuban people to demonstrate, once again, their revolutionary resilience and their capacity to overcome the barriers that the enemy tries to impose on their freedom.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English