Video depicts a crude side to Raul Castro

Posted on Sun, Aug. 13, 2006

RAUL CASTRO
Video depicts a crude side to Raúl Castro
Home video footage shot in the early 1990s, being rebroadcast on Miami
Spanish-language TV, shows a side of Raúl Castro few get to see.
BY NANCY SAN MARTIN
nsanmartin@MiamiHerald.com

In one scene, Cuban Defense Minister and interim leader Raúl Castro
holds up a bar of soap in the shape of breasts and, after taking a
sniff, remarks how good it would be if all women ``had them like this.''

In another, he pokes fun at former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
And in a third he ogles a uniformed female marine and then tells how, as
a child, he was sexually aroused after peering at a girl through a window.

The crude behavior is no parody. They are snippets of a video shot in
1992 by an unidentified U.S. physician and broadcast by several Miami
stations in the 1990s. It is currently being rebroadcast by Miami's
Spanish-language Channel 41, América TeVé.

At one point in the video, when the physician tries to take on a more
serious tone, Raúl Castro says, ``If we didn't take things lightly, we
would die of bitterness.''

The unusual footage offers a peek into the private side of a 75-year-old
revolutionary leader who has headed Cuba's military for 47 years and now
temporarily controls the island's future as older brother Fidel Castro
recuperates from gastrointestinal surgery.

''This is a side of him few people see,'' said Miguel Cossio, América
TeVé's news director. ``He hardly ever comes out in public, and speaks
even less.''

`THE REAL RAUL'

''People are discovering a Raúl Castro they did not know -- the real
Raúl,'' Cossio added.

The station would not reveal the name of the doctor or the circumstances
surrounding his unusual access to Castro. But Cossio said Cuban
officials have never challenged the video's authenticity.

''The video is real,'' he said.

Since the Castro brothers began plotting their revolution in the early
1950s, Raúl has operated in his older brother's shadow. He has often
been described as an avowed communist and ruthless leader with the
organizational skills of a perfectionist.

But he also has been described as an engaging and easy-going family man
who loves to tell jokes, as well as a heavy drinker who sometimes goes
over the line of good taste, especially when drunk.

In the footage, dated Feb. 9, 1992, and recorded with a video camera
that was not hidden, Raúl Castro does not appear drunk. But within about
25 minutes, there are at least eight instances of behavior befitting a
comedian, not a statesman.

The video starts in an office and moves through a visit to several
military installations.

In one exchange, Castro opens a gift of a bar of soap in the shape of a
heart with breasts. He smiles, holds the soap to his face and takes a
deep breath.

RAUNCHY EXCHANGE

''If all [women] had them like this, it would be very good,'' he says
with a chuckle, adding that he must keep the gift away from his
grandson, otherwise the boy ``would take it and start touching the
little breasts.''

Later in the video, Castro tells the American that he resembles former
Soviet leader Gorbachev.

''But you are better than Gorbachev,'' Castro says. ``You are capable of
opening someone's chest, changing his heart and keep him living.
Gorbachev made the heart of the Soviet Union change and killed it.''

When the physician jokingly challenges Castro about the number of Cuban
generals, saying he had heard that, if one drills for oil in Cuba, a
general pops up, Castro retorts with a joke of his own. ''Or a
mulatta,'' he says.

Shortly afterward, as a unit of female troops marches past him in a
formal ceremony, Castro chases after the unit and reaches over to tap
one uniformed female's face from behind.

``Now, this is a good unit to be part of.''

He goes on to tell a lengthy story about having to confess to a priest
when he was a youngster studying in an all-boys Catholic school. Castro
said he told the priest that he had looked through a window, saw a girl
and had ``bad thoughts.''

''What else?'' Castro said the priest asked him. ``Well, Father, that
night, you know, I masturbated.''

Castro turned to one of the Cuban military officers around him and said
the men in the unit were lucky: ``They have girls here. They don't have
to masturbate.''

Cuba experts said the crude behavior might raise questions about Raúl
Castro's ability to rule Cuba.

''Raúl is the provisional leader of Cuba,'' said Andy Gomez, a senior
fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies. ``Is he capable of handling that leadership?
That's a big question.''

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