A Short Biography of Fidel Castro

A Short Biography of Fidel Castro
2006-04-08

Issue 74, April 7, 2006

*The following biography is being released since Fidel Castro's health
has continued to deteriorate recently.

Officially, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born August 13, 1926, on his
family's sugar plantation near Biran, Oriente province in Cuba, but
there is good reason to believe he was actually born one year later. His
father was an immigrant from Galicia, Spain. Castro was educated in
Catholic schools in Oriente and later in Havana.

One of his Jesuit teachers at Belen high school in Havana, Father
Armando Llorente, describes Fidel as "motivated, proud, and different
from the others. Fidel had a desire to distinguish himself primarily in
sports, he liked to win regardless of effort; he was little interested
in parties or socializing and seemed alienated from Cuban society."

At Belen Castro became influenced by fascist ideas. He admitted being
impacted by the Falange, the Spanish variety of fascism and by its
leader Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. Castro also participated in
Hispanidad, a movement that criticized Anglo Saxon material values and
admired the moral values of Spanish and Spanish American culture.

In 1945 Castro entered Law School at the University of Havana, where
student activism, violence, and gang conflicts were common. Protected by
its autonomy, the university was a sanctuary for political agitators.
Castro soon joined the activists and associated with one of the gangs,
the Union Insurreccional Revolucionaria. Although he was implicated in
the murder of a rival student leader, and in at least three other
similar attempts, nothing was proved. He acquired a reputation for
personal ambition, opportunism, and oratorical flair. Yet he never
achieved his ambition to lead the student federation. On several
occasions he was defeated in student elections, experiences that could
help explain his subsequent antipathy for fair elections of any kind.

In 1947 Castro left the University temporarily to enroll in an attempt
to overthrow Dominican Republic dictator Rafael L. Trujillo. He trained
in military tactics on a small island off Cuba’s shores, although the
expedition never materialized. In 1948 he participated in one of the
most controversial episodes of his life, the Bogotazo – a series of
riots in the Colombian capital following the assassination of Liberal
Party leader Jorge E. Gaitan.

At the time, Argentine Dictator Juan D. Peron, who favored the
establishment of an anti-imperialist Latin American Student Union under
his control, encouraged four Cuban students, including Castro, to attend
a student meeting in Bogota. The gathering was timed to coincide with
the Ninth Inter-American Conference that Peron opposed, and which the
Communists were also bent on disrupting. When Gaitan was assassinated,
riots and chaos followed. Castro was caught up in the violence that
rocked Bogota. Picking up a rifle from a police station, he roamed the
streets inciting the populace to revolt and distributing anti-U.S.
propaganda. One of his Cuban companions later said that it "was a
hysteric, ambitious, and uncontrollable Fidel who acted in these
events." Pursued by Colombian police, he and the other Cubans took
refuge in the Cuban Embassy and were later flown back to Havana where
Castro resumed his studies.

At the university, he was exposed to different ideologies. On the
campus, more than anywhere else, the nation's problems were constantly
debated. Theories of all sorts flourished. The authoritarian ideas of
fascism and communism were widely discussed. But above all, the
nationalistic program of Cuba's Partido Ortodoxo – economic
independence, political liberty, social justice, and an end to
corruption – captured the imagination of the students. The Ortodoxo
party's charismatic leader, Eduardo Chibas, became their idol. Castro
developed into a follower of Chibas, absorbing the latter's somewhat
vague but puritanical ideology. He also married Mirta Diaz-Balart, a
young philosophy student with whom he had one son. The marriage later
broke up.

In 1950 Castro graduated and began practicing law in Havana. Law soon
gave way to politics and revolutionary activities, however. He became a
congressional candidate on the Ortodoxo party slate for the June 1952
elections, which, however, were never held. On March 10, 1952, Fulgencio
Batista and a group of army conspirators overthrew President Carlos
Prio's democratic regime and installed a military dictatorship.

For Castro violence seemed the only way to oppose it. He organized a
group of followers and, on July 26, 1953, they attacked the Moncada
military garrison in Oriente province. Castro was captured, tried, and
sentenced to 15 years in prison. He defended himself in the trial,
attacking Batista's regime and outlining his political and economic
ideas, most of them within the mainstream of Cuba's political
traditions. He cast himself as a follower of Jose Marti, Cuba’s
independence hero and of Chibas and the Ortodoxo party’s ideology.

After being released by an amnesty in 1955, the untiring and determined
Castro traveled to Mexico and began organizing followers in his 26th of
July Movement to launch a rural insurgency to topple the Batista
dictatorship. On December 2, 1956, with his brother Raul, and 80 men, he
landed in Oriente province. After encounters with the army in which all
but 12 of the expeditionaries were killed or captured, Castro fled to
the Sierra Maestra mountains forming there a nucleus for a guerrilla
operation. At the same time, urban opposition to the Batista regime
increased. While Castro was in the mountains, an attack on the
presidential palace on March 13, 1957 nearly succeeded in killing
Batista. Castro criticized the attack, however, because he considered
its leaders rivals. On April 9, 1958, his call for a national strike
against the Batista dictatorship was a failure.

The government met terrorism with counter-terrorism. Political opponents
were tortured and assassinated and most of the Cuban populace turned
against Batista. Castro emerged as the undisputed leader of the
anti-Batista opposition and his guerrillas extended their control over
rural areas. Finally defections in the army precipitated the crumbling
of the regime on December 31, 1958. Batista and his principal henchmen
fled to the Dominican Republic.

On January 1, 1959 Castro and his July 26th Movement assumed power. He
proclaimed a provisional government and held public trials and
executions of "criminals" of the Batista regime. On February 15, Castro
appointed his brother Raul commander of the rebel armyand later minister
of the revolutionary armed forces in October.

Yet, Castro exerted an almost mystical hold over the Cuban masses. As
Marti had done three quarters of a century earlier, and Chibas only a
decade before, Castro lectured the Cubans on morality and public virtue.
He emphasized his commitment to democracy and social reform, promising
to hold free elections. Repeatedly denying that he was a Communist, he
described his revolution as being humanistic and promised a
nationalistic government, which would respect private property and
Cuba's international obligations.

But, attempting to consolidate his support inside Cuba, Castro
implemented sweeping reforms. First, he confiscated wealth "illegally"
acquired by Batista's followers. Then, he substantially reduced rents,
and in May 1959 passed an agrarian reform law that confiscated large
holdings. Although the avowed purpose of this law was to develop a class
of independent farmers, in reality the regime transformed the areas
seized into cooperatives managed by a National Institute of Agrarian
Reform. As time went by, cooperatives gave way to state farms, with most
farmers becoming government employees.

Toward the end of 1959 a further radicalization of the revolution took
place. This was accompanied by the defection or purge of revolutionary
leaders and their replacement by more radical and oftentimes Communist
militants. Castro, who had been publicly criticizing the United States
from his first days in power, accused the Eisenhower administration of
harboring aggressive designs against the revolution. In February 1960,
Anastas Mikoyan, Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, visited Havana and
signed a Cuban-Soviet trade agreement, and soon after Cuba established
diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and most Communist countries.
Castro's verbal attacks against the United States intensified.

Several months later, when the three largest American oil refineries in
Cuba refused to refine Soviet petroleum, Castro confiscated them. The
United States retaliated by cutting Cuba's sugar quota. Castro in turn
confiscated, without payment, American properties as well as many Cuban
businesses. In September 1960 Castro addressed the United Nations
General Assembly in New York, exchanging embraces with Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev. In January 1961 President Eisenhower broke diplomatic
relations with Cuba.

By that time anti-Castro exiles, supported by the United States, were
training for an invasion of the island. The failure of the Bay of Pigs
invasion in April 1961 consolidated Castro's power and led to the
introduction of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and to the October 1962
missile crisis. At the time of the Bay of Pigs, Castro declared his
regime to be socialist, as economic centralization and repression
increased. Private schools and the press fell under government control.
This was accompanied by a nationwide literacy campaign and considerably
increased investment in educational facilities. Sanitation and public
health also improved with the establishment of rural hospitals under
state control. Religious institutions were suppressed, schools closed,
and clergymen expelled from the island. Thousands of Cubans fled, most
to the United States.

In December 1961, Castro openly espoused Communism. "I am a Marxist-
Leninist," he said, "and shall be one until the end of my life." He also
organized a single party to rule Cuba. By the middle of 1961, he had
merged all of the groups that had fought against Batista into the
Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, a preparatory step toward the
creation later of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution,
transformed in 1965 into the Communist Party of Cuba – since then the
country’s ruling and only party.

In foreign affairs Castro moved closer to the Soviet Union. The October
1962 missile crisis, however, strained Cuban-Soviet relations. By
negotiating directly with the Kennedy administration the Soviets
humiliated Castro. Despite his two visits to the Soviet Union, in April
1963 and January 1964, and increased Soviet aid, uneasy relations
prevailed between Havana and Moscow. At the same time, pro-Soviet Cuban
communists were eliminated from positions of power on the island.

Until the end of 1963 Castro attempted to maintain a position of
neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute. But following the 1964 Havana
Conference of pro- Soviet Latin American Communist parties, the Kremlin
pressured Castro into supporting its policies. Cuba's relations with
China deteriorated, and early in 1966 Castro denounced the Chinese
regime. By supporting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
Castro demonstrated his dependence on the Soviet Union as well as his
determination to move closer to the Soviet camp.

Castro's determination to export his revolution was a source of conflict
in Cuban-Soviet relations. After the 1964 Havana Conference of Latin
American Communist parties, the Soviet Union was temporarily able to
slow down Castro's support for armed struggle in Latin America. But by
1966 Castro founded in Havana the Asia-Africa-Latin America People's
Solidarity Organization (OSPAAL) to promote revolution in three
continents. In July 1967 he formed the Latin American Solidarity
Organization (OLAS), specifically designed to promote violence and
terrorism in Latin America.

Castro's efforts in the 1960s were unsuccessful, as evidenced by the
failure of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's guerrilla campaign in Bolivia and his
capture and execution in 1967. Yet in the 1970s Castro could claim that
the Nicaraguan revolution vindicated his commitment to violence as the
Sandinistas, with substantial covert Cuban support, overthrew the Somoza
dictatorship. A few years earlier Cuba, with Soviet support, had
dispatched thousands of troops to Angola to help consolidate a
pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban Marxist regime.

Castro was elected Chairman of the non-aligned movement and visited
various African countries. He also supported the Allende regime in
Chile, sending numerous Cuban security personnel to boost the Marxist
regime and later provided money, weapons and personnel to the guerrillas
in El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemala in attempts to establish
communist regimes in those countries as well. Castro also supported
terrorist organizations in the Middle East establishing close
cooperation with the PLO, Hammas and others. He aligned himself with the
most radical, anti-American regimes such as Syria, Libya, and North Korea.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism in Eastern Europe,
Castro toned down his support for guerillas and violence. Yet he
continued to support guerrillas in Colombia and other groups in the
Middle East. The Hugo Chavez electoral victory in Venezuela provided
Castro with a friend and close ally. Cuban security personnel were
dispatched to Venezuela to train and support Chavez’ security apparatus
and the Venezuelan president reciprocated by providing Cuba with at
least $1 billion yearly in petroleum and other aid. He also mended
fences with the Chinese who have been providing Cuba with aid and
credits and established an electronic eaves-dropping facility in Bejucal
in Havana.

For more than four decades now Castro has led the Cuban revolution.
Supervising projects, making all important decisions, traveling
regularly, he has conducted his government in a highly personal style,
exercising totalitarian control. He has consistently been motivated to
challenge and defy American power and influence throughout Latin
America. A determined revolutionary, he has made the shock waves of the
Cuban revolution felt not only in Latin America but also throughout the
world. Despite economic difficulties after the end of the Soviet era, he
has maintained tight political control by clamping down on every voice
of opposition or criticism on the island and by allowing large numbers
of potential foes to leave the island.

A hero to some, a traitor to others, and a criminal demagogue to still
others, Fidel Castro is undoubtedly one of the modern world’s most
controversial and flamboyant political leaders.

Selected books in English that contain valuable information on Fidel
Castro include:

Aguila, Juan del. Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution.

Dominguez, Jorge I. Cuba: Order and Revolution.

Geyer, Georgie Anne. Guerilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro.

Gonzalez, Edward. Cuba Under Castro: The Limits of Charisma.

Horowitz, Irving L. and Jaime Suchlicki, eds. Cuban Communism.

Latell, Brian. After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and
Cuba’s Next Leader.

Montaner, Carlos Alberto. Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.

Quirk, Robert E. Fidel Castro.

Suchlicki, Jaime. Cuba: From Columbus to Castro and Beyond.

Szulc, Tad. Fidel: A Critical Portrait.

Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom.

*This biography was prepared by Jaime Suchlicki, Director of the
Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of
Miami, who is solely responsible for its content.

http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=5142