By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on August 14, 2025
foto: Hector Planes
Yesterday marked the official start of tributes to mark the centenary of the birth of Fidel Castro (1926-2016), which will culminate on August 13 next year. It will not be just a series of events to remember him, but an extensive journey of reflection, remembrance, and action that will review his political work, the ideas he defended, and the life of a man who, despite attempts by the global right wing to tear down his physical and symbolic statues, remains a reference point for millions.
The big question hanging over this centenary is what will become of Cuba without Fidel. Or, in other words, how much longer will the communist island resist once its leader’s biological time has come to an end? But, as he would warn, the real question is another: what will become of the future of humanity without the conviction that it is possible to chart a different course from the current one, which seems headed for self-destruction? What will become of the world without the determination of those who refuse to live without a price? “Dignity is never individual; even the dignity of the loneliest man on earth is collective,” Fidel once said.
Subjective factors can influence the course of history: they can accelerate progress or slow it down. In Cuba, the subjective factor embodied in Fidel was decisive in ensuring that the revolution not only triumphed but also survived decades of siege. However, his strength cannot be explained solely by personal charisma. It was sustained by a persistent faith in human beings and their capacity to “conceive the noblest ideas, harbor the most generous feelings, and, overcoming the powerful instincts imposed on them by nature, give their lives for what they feel and think,” as he told Ignacio Ramonet in One Hundred Hours with Fidel.
That leadership would not have lasted without the support of a people who, with enormous sacrifices, have defended their sovereignty without submitting it to any negotiation. Nelson Mandela acknowledged that if more nations behaved like the small Caribbean island—he was not speaking only in terms of Cuba’s participation in the struggle against apartheid—there would be less concern about the future of the planet. Perhaps then we would live in a less polluted world without the indiscriminate devastation of nature; a world without extreme inequalities, without structural violence, without wars of extermination or the constant risk of nuclear tragedy. A world where the compass of politics would be, unwaveringly, human well-being.
The question, therefore, is not when Cuba will surrender after Fidel’s absence. The question is how much longer the world will endure this kind of “second Middle Ages” that humanity is going through and that is forcing Cuba, in extreme conditions, to “invent the platypus, the only mammal that lays eggs,” as the Argentine architect and writer Rodolfo Livingston defined the Cuban social project.
As for the island, there is something deeply moving about this epic stubbornness that consists of continuing to respect oneself above marginalization and misfortune. Never giving up the will to be: that, precisely, is dignity. Therefore, let us hope that the centenary year serves to give a fair account of that experiment led by Fidel in the small Caribbean territory that continues to defy the giants.
Livingston, incidentally, ventured a theory a few years ago in Página 12 about the future of the platypus that is Cuba: “The seeds are small. So were the ancestors of mammals—our biological ancestors—tiny compared to the dinosaurs that seemed invincible 70 million years ago. Where are they today?”
As a curious note, it was the Argentine architect who discovered that Andrés Oppenheimer, author of Castro’s Last Hour: The Secret History Behind the Imminent Fall of Communism in Cuba, published in 1992, changed the subtitle of the book in its second edition, in 1993: The Secret History Behind the Gradual Collapse of Communism in Cuba. Livingston predicted the following subtitles in future editions: The Secret History of the Possible Deterioration of Communism in Cuba and The Secret History Behind the Persistence of Communism in Cuba.
Perhaps that is Fidel’s main legacy: that the resistance of his people can become an enduring mark, when everything around us seems to be teetering on the brink of a precipice.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English