RedComrade
12th January 2004, 04:12
Alright, my freshmen english teacher gave us this assignment over break that we were to right a biographical report on a life to emulate. I chose Fidel Castro, i hope you enjoy.
Fidel Castro
Now, almost a decade after the iron curtain came crashing down and the Cold War finally ground to a halt, you might think Americans would have been able to reexamine the fascinating enigma that is Fidel Castro. Sadly for much of the western world the McCarthyist stigma surrounding this famous leader remains an inalienable part of our conception of Fidel. But after closer scrutiny I have found a heroic side to this man we commonly tend to demonize. It is my hope that this project shall help to present some rarely seen aspects of this legendary figure.
Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1927 to a well off Galician émigré and a young servant. Fidel’s father and mother had both grown up in extreme poverty before finally managing to claw out a profitable existence on a large stretch of local land. Unlike many other well-off Cubans the Castros embraced their peasant heritage and were disdainful of the extravagant lifestyle of the Cuban bourgeois. Castro spent much of his time as a young child playing with the offspring of the destitute field hands. These early experiences helped shape Fidel’s awareness of the terrible poverty that confronted Cuba’s rural peasants.
At the age of five Fidel was shipped off to attend boarding school in the provincial capital of Santiago. Fidel was a rebellious youth who often engaged himself in confrontations with his authoritarian teachers, an experience I’m sure we can all identify with at one time or another, I know I have. He was also a natural leader and a talented athlete, quickly winning friends and distinguishing himself in school sports. At the age of fourteen Castro left the familiarity of his home province of Oriente to attend high school at the prestigious Belen College in Havana. While at Belen Castro expanded his athletic prowess, playing on the elite high school basketball and baseball teams and even receiving national recognition as a premier baseball player. Fidel also participated in an activity that has proved very useful to me, joining the debating society where he proved himself to be an excellent speaker. When Fidel graduated in 1945 it was apparent that he could look forward to a bright future.
Later that year Fidel enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Havana. Fidel quickly began to put his leadership talent to work, successfully running for the position of representative of his freshmen class at the faculty of law in the student government. During this time Fidel’s experiences as a child with the poor peasant children were given new significance as he began to read the left wing literature that was prevalent on campus. When Fidel traveled to a student congress in Bogotá, Colombia his new political conscience was hardened in the throes of revolution. During his stay fascist terrorists assassinated the popular leftwing politician Jorge Gaitan. In response, the Colombian people took to the streets in an uprising known as the Bogotaza, Fidel and his fellow students joined them. In spite of personal self interest Fidel risked his life taking up arms to protect protestors when the army began to hunt them down. Eventually things cooled down and the protests dissipated but this experience would stay with Fidel for the rest of his life.
Fidel returned to Havana as a changed man. He became increasingly active in politically with a party known as the Ortodoxos who sought to end to institutionalized corruption that was prevalent in the Cuba of the 1940’s. At the same time he began dating a fellow student, Mirta Diaz Balart. On October 11th the two were married. Mirta was from an affluent family that had ties to the United Fruit Company, a U.S corporation that owned much of the Cuban countryside, as well as the future dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. Soon afterwards Fidel achieved a goal shared by myself and countless others, graduating with a degree in law and setting out into the job market. Declining a position from his in-laws to a corrupt, high-paying law office Fidel decided to start his own firm. His main work consisted of charity cases representing poor workers at little or no fee. In fact Fidel became so generous in his services that when he and his wife had a son, Fidelito, in September of 1949, he could not even afford a crib. Even when Castro himself became sick with an illness, Fidel refused to increase the fees he charged his poor clients. This selflessness is a model for all people, including myself, regardless of whether or not they agree with Castro’s political views.
Around this time Fidel began to campaign for a position as a member of the House of Representatives in the upcoming elections of 1952. Those elections would never take place. On the morning of March 10, 1952 Fulgencio Batista instituted a coup that overthrew the elected government of Cuba. His ascent to power was followed by a suspension of constitutional guarantees and dismissal of the Congress. Castro’s wife’s family was good friends with Batista and offered Castro a job in the dictatorship. He of course turned it down, he was enraged. He quickly set about organizing a resistance to overthrow the new dictatorship. Fidel had been tempted with luxuries and riches, but still he did not betray his revolutionary conscience.
Over a year later the movement Fidel had organized revealed itself to the authorities. On the morning of July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro and over 100 others attacked the Moncada barracks in the town of Santiago in what was supposed to be a hit and run attack to capture arms. Despite the brave efforts of Fidel and his men they were outnumbered 6 to 1 and their small force was defeated. After sounding the retreat to prevent the loss of more of his men Fidel went into hiding, but was soon hunted down and captured while sleeping. Fidel went on to be sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Like many other experiences later in life Fidel took his lemons and made lemonade, he used the time in prison to study and read voraciously.
Two years later in 1955 Fidel and his comrades were released from prison in an attempt by the Cuban dictator to improve international relations. Fidel moved to Mexico where he would continue his struggle against the oppression of the Batista government. There he spared no time in reorganizing the movement to overthrow Batista, now dubbed the July 26th movement. He drew many new recruits, among them the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as well as funds and arms with which he would make revolution. He also drew up a political program that would be carried out upon the success of the revolution, including land redistribution for Cuba’s oppressed peasants and universal education. After a year in exile Castro returned to Cuba, this time in a boat with over a hundred well armed militants, to overthrow the capitalist Batista dictatorship.
Upon their arrival their boat hit some rocks and they were forced to evacuate with only what they could carry to shore. The remnants of this initial force eventually made their way into the Sierra Maestra mountain range. Life was hard, but Castro and his men persevered, overcoming their trials while mounting ever bolder attacks on Batista’s corrupt government. They soon began to capture the attention of the island and the press abroad, gaining thousands of recruits and prompting fiercer reprisals from Batista’s government. Nevertheless the dictator struggled in vain, the will of the people lay with Castro and his brave young guerillas.
After little more than two years Batista realized the inevitable. By now the July 26th movement had reached unstoppable proportions, controlling most of the countryside and nearly all of the eastern half of the island. On New Year’s Eve Batista fled the island, Cuba was now in the hands of Castro and his men. As one of his first moves in power, Castro began to redistribute the land to improve the lot of the destitute peasants. At the time of the revolution over 75% of Cuba was owned by non-Cubans!, Castro set about returning this land to the Cuban people who worked it. It was a decision that the United States would not tolerate, just 5 years after overthrowing the democratic president of Guatemala who had attempted a program much more moderate than Castro’s, the U.S began planning to overthrow the Castro government. Castro’s actions confirm his status as a modern day David. Whatever your political persuasion Castro’s actions serve as a model, a model to do the right thing regardless of the hardships or trials you may endure as a result. The United States also stopped buying Cuban sugar, purchases which made up over half of Cuba’s yearly profit, purchases that Cuba depended on to survive, and they began planning to overthrow Castro by whatever means possible, preferably by rigging elections. Castro was now forced to act, and act quick. He was faced with the choice of either giving up the key reforms or finding a new buyer for Cuba’s sugar. When the Soviet Union offered to buy up the sugar Castro agreed. He was now walking a tight rope, which, while allowing him to carry out his land reform and prevent the three fourths of the country from returning to foreign ownership, would keep him from ever making decisions that were too offensive to the sensibilities of his soviet benefactors.
Castro’s revolution was a human revolution, with flaws like all things human. The revolution would come to carry out inexcusable persecutions of intellectuals and homosexuals, hurting thousands in the process. However, with the world’s only superpower using every means at its disposal to overthrow the small island nation some of these measures are understandable. With our own crack down on civil liberties (including suspension of the constitutional guarantees to the 4th through 8th amendments embodied in the Patriot Act) in response to a much smaller threat we can only imagine what we would have done in Castro’s shoes. Indeed the American government would go on to attempt to assassinate Castro over 6 times, spending millions of dollars financing attempts to overthrow Castro, carrying out terrorist actions against Cuban civilians that would kill thousands, instigating an embargo against any and all trade with the nation, and even invading the island in the famous Bay of Pigs debacle. I can only shudder to think what our own president would have done in Castro’s shoes; indeed Castro let all of the Bay of Pigs invaders go free, even allowing them to interrogate him! I have a hard time seeing our own president allowing Iraqi P.O.W.’s question him! Even with the American intervention Castro’s actions still remain inexcusable, they have wreaked havoc on the lives of countless Cubans.
Despite these flaws the Cuban revolution has still done a tremendous amount of good for the Cuban people. Castro has provided the Cuban people with universal, free education and universal, free health care; privileges not even enjoyed in Cuba’s much wealthier northern neighbor. Cuba currently has a 98% literacy rate, the highest in the western hemisphere, greater even than our own! Cubans have the highest life expectancy rate in Latin America, only one year below our own, at 76 years. Cuba also has the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America and the highest per capita number of doctors of any country in Latin America. Not to mention Cuba suffers from fewer than a hundred AIDs deaths a year and is the first third world country to completely eradicate hunger and malnutrition. These facts are not from the Cuban government, they are from the CIA world fact book, the same organization that has admittedly tried to assassinate Castro over six times! These are amazing accomplishments for what was once a poor, insignificant island (3/4ths of which was owned by foreigners) that is currently the target of an embargo by the world’s only superpower.
Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because I am of a similar political persuasion. Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because he fought against capitalism. Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because he heads the only socialist state in the western hemisphere. Fidel has led a life to emulate for qualities that every man and woman can admire. Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for his tremendous bravery. Numerous times in his life Castro has risked his own skin to defend the interests of a working class that was not his own. While he could have been a prosperous official in a corrupt government Castro was working as an attorney for the poor at almost no pay. Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for his defense of country. Despite being the son of a bourgeois landowner Castro took up arms to liberate his fatherland, 75% of which was owned by foreign capitalists.
Perhaps most important of all Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for the lesson he taught us. In a day and age where positive social change is often prevented from coming to pass through the ballot box Fidel and the positive legacy of the Cuban Revolution outweigh it’s dark side and provide an important teaching to working people today. These principles are only affirmed by the proud history of the working People of Latin America who built the Cuban Revolution. When the factory owners and Yankee imperialists ousted the elected leader of Guatemala, when they riddled the body of Chilean president Salvador Allende with bullets, when they tried to remove Hugo Chavez of Venezuela through the coup they accentuate this message of Fidel and his revolution. Where man oppresses man we must never cease in the struggle to abolish this injustice, and when the oppressor hinders our just struggle with force of arms we must not shy to fight fire with fire. The hands that once harvested grain and toiled in the fields must not flinch from the grip of the rifle and the bite of the cannon as they defend their land and their liberty. In the words of Fidel Castro “Socialismo o Muerte”!
Fidel Castro
Now, almost a decade after the iron curtain came crashing down and the Cold War finally ground to a halt, you might think Americans would have been able to reexamine the fascinating enigma that is Fidel Castro. Sadly for much of the western world the McCarthyist stigma surrounding this famous leader remains an inalienable part of our conception of Fidel. But after closer scrutiny I have found a heroic side to this man we commonly tend to demonize. It is my hope that this project shall help to present some rarely seen aspects of this legendary figure.
Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1927 to a well off Galician émigré and a young servant. Fidel’s father and mother had both grown up in extreme poverty before finally managing to claw out a profitable existence on a large stretch of local land. Unlike many other well-off Cubans the Castros embraced their peasant heritage and were disdainful of the extravagant lifestyle of the Cuban bourgeois. Castro spent much of his time as a young child playing with the offspring of the destitute field hands. These early experiences helped shape Fidel’s awareness of the terrible poverty that confronted Cuba’s rural peasants.
At the age of five Fidel was shipped off to attend boarding school in the provincial capital of Santiago. Fidel was a rebellious youth who often engaged himself in confrontations with his authoritarian teachers, an experience I’m sure we can all identify with at one time or another, I know I have. He was also a natural leader and a talented athlete, quickly winning friends and distinguishing himself in school sports. At the age of fourteen Castro left the familiarity of his home province of Oriente to attend high school at the prestigious Belen College in Havana. While at Belen Castro expanded his athletic prowess, playing on the elite high school basketball and baseball teams and even receiving national recognition as a premier baseball player. Fidel also participated in an activity that has proved very useful to me, joining the debating society where he proved himself to be an excellent speaker. When Fidel graduated in 1945 it was apparent that he could look forward to a bright future.
Later that year Fidel enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Havana. Fidel quickly began to put his leadership talent to work, successfully running for the position of representative of his freshmen class at the faculty of law in the student government. During this time Fidel’s experiences as a child with the poor peasant children were given new significance as he began to read the left wing literature that was prevalent on campus. When Fidel traveled to a student congress in Bogotá, Colombia his new political conscience was hardened in the throes of revolution. During his stay fascist terrorists assassinated the popular leftwing politician Jorge Gaitan. In response, the Colombian people took to the streets in an uprising known as the Bogotaza, Fidel and his fellow students joined them. In spite of personal self interest Fidel risked his life taking up arms to protect protestors when the army began to hunt them down. Eventually things cooled down and the protests dissipated but this experience would stay with Fidel for the rest of his life.
Fidel returned to Havana as a changed man. He became increasingly active in politically with a party known as the Ortodoxos who sought to end to institutionalized corruption that was prevalent in the Cuba of the 1940’s. At the same time he began dating a fellow student, Mirta Diaz Balart. On October 11th the two were married. Mirta was from an affluent family that had ties to the United Fruit Company, a U.S corporation that owned much of the Cuban countryside, as well as the future dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. Soon afterwards Fidel achieved a goal shared by myself and countless others, graduating with a degree in law and setting out into the job market. Declining a position from his in-laws to a corrupt, high-paying law office Fidel decided to start his own firm. His main work consisted of charity cases representing poor workers at little or no fee. In fact Fidel became so generous in his services that when he and his wife had a son, Fidelito, in September of 1949, he could not even afford a crib. Even when Castro himself became sick with an illness, Fidel refused to increase the fees he charged his poor clients. This selflessness is a model for all people, including myself, regardless of whether or not they agree with Castro’s political views.
Around this time Fidel began to campaign for a position as a member of the House of Representatives in the upcoming elections of 1952. Those elections would never take place. On the morning of March 10, 1952 Fulgencio Batista instituted a coup that overthrew the elected government of Cuba. His ascent to power was followed by a suspension of constitutional guarantees and dismissal of the Congress. Castro’s wife’s family was good friends with Batista and offered Castro a job in the dictatorship. He of course turned it down, he was enraged. He quickly set about organizing a resistance to overthrow the new dictatorship. Fidel had been tempted with luxuries and riches, but still he did not betray his revolutionary conscience.
Over a year later the movement Fidel had organized revealed itself to the authorities. On the morning of July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro and over 100 others attacked the Moncada barracks in the town of Santiago in what was supposed to be a hit and run attack to capture arms. Despite the brave efforts of Fidel and his men they were outnumbered 6 to 1 and their small force was defeated. After sounding the retreat to prevent the loss of more of his men Fidel went into hiding, but was soon hunted down and captured while sleeping. Fidel went on to be sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Like many other experiences later in life Fidel took his lemons and made lemonade, he used the time in prison to study and read voraciously.
Two years later in 1955 Fidel and his comrades were released from prison in an attempt by the Cuban dictator to improve international relations. Fidel moved to Mexico where he would continue his struggle against the oppression of the Batista government. There he spared no time in reorganizing the movement to overthrow Batista, now dubbed the July 26th movement. He drew many new recruits, among them the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as well as funds and arms with which he would make revolution. He also drew up a political program that would be carried out upon the success of the revolution, including land redistribution for Cuba’s oppressed peasants and universal education. After a year in exile Castro returned to Cuba, this time in a boat with over a hundred well armed militants, to overthrow the capitalist Batista dictatorship.
Upon their arrival their boat hit some rocks and they were forced to evacuate with only what they could carry to shore. The remnants of this initial force eventually made their way into the Sierra Maestra mountain range. Life was hard, but Castro and his men persevered, overcoming their trials while mounting ever bolder attacks on Batista’s corrupt government. They soon began to capture the attention of the island and the press abroad, gaining thousands of recruits and prompting fiercer reprisals from Batista’s government. Nevertheless the dictator struggled in vain, the will of the people lay with Castro and his brave young guerillas.
After little more than two years Batista realized the inevitable. By now the July 26th movement had reached unstoppable proportions, controlling most of the countryside and nearly all of the eastern half of the island. On New Year’s Eve Batista fled the island, Cuba was now in the hands of Castro and his men. As one of his first moves in power, Castro began to redistribute the land to improve the lot of the destitute peasants. At the time of the revolution over 75% of Cuba was owned by non-Cubans!, Castro set about returning this land to the Cuban people who worked it. It was a decision that the United States would not tolerate, just 5 years after overthrowing the democratic president of Guatemala who had attempted a program much more moderate than Castro’s, the U.S began planning to overthrow the Castro government. Castro’s actions confirm his status as a modern day David. Whatever your political persuasion Castro’s actions serve as a model, a model to do the right thing regardless of the hardships or trials you may endure as a result. The United States also stopped buying Cuban sugar, purchases which made up over half of Cuba’s yearly profit, purchases that Cuba depended on to survive, and they began planning to overthrow Castro by whatever means possible, preferably by rigging elections. Castro was now forced to act, and act quick. He was faced with the choice of either giving up the key reforms or finding a new buyer for Cuba’s sugar. When the Soviet Union offered to buy up the sugar Castro agreed. He was now walking a tight rope, which, while allowing him to carry out his land reform and prevent the three fourths of the country from returning to foreign ownership, would keep him from ever making decisions that were too offensive to the sensibilities of his soviet benefactors.
Castro’s revolution was a human revolution, with flaws like all things human. The revolution would come to carry out inexcusable persecutions of intellectuals and homosexuals, hurting thousands in the process. However, with the world’s only superpower using every means at its disposal to overthrow the small island nation some of these measures are understandable. With our own crack down on civil liberties (including suspension of the constitutional guarantees to the 4th through 8th amendments embodied in the Patriot Act) in response to a much smaller threat we can only imagine what we would have done in Castro’s shoes. Indeed the American government would go on to attempt to assassinate Castro over 6 times, spending millions of dollars financing attempts to overthrow Castro, carrying out terrorist actions against Cuban civilians that would kill thousands, instigating an embargo against any and all trade with the nation, and even invading the island in the famous Bay of Pigs debacle. I can only shudder to think what our own president would have done in Castro’s shoes; indeed Castro let all of the Bay of Pigs invaders go free, even allowing them to interrogate him! I have a hard time seeing our own president allowing Iraqi P.O.W.’s question him! Even with the American intervention Castro’s actions still remain inexcusable, they have wreaked havoc on the lives of countless Cubans.
Despite these flaws the Cuban revolution has still done a tremendous amount of good for the Cuban people. Castro has provided the Cuban people with universal, free education and universal, free health care; privileges not even enjoyed in Cuba’s much wealthier northern neighbor. Cuba currently has a 98% literacy rate, the highest in the western hemisphere, greater even than our own! Cubans have the highest life expectancy rate in Latin America, only one year below our own, at 76 years. Cuba also has the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America and the highest per capita number of doctors of any country in Latin America. Not to mention Cuba suffers from fewer than a hundred AIDs deaths a year and is the first third world country to completely eradicate hunger and malnutrition. These facts are not from the Cuban government, they are from the CIA world fact book, the same organization that has admittedly tried to assassinate Castro over six times! These are amazing accomplishments for what was once a poor, insignificant island (3/4ths of which was owned by foreigners) that is currently the target of an embargo by the world’s only superpower.
Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because I am of a similar political persuasion. Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because he fought against capitalism. Fidel Castro isn’t just a life to emulate because he heads the only socialist state in the western hemisphere. Fidel has led a life to emulate for qualities that every man and woman can admire. Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for his tremendous bravery. Numerous times in his life Castro has risked his own skin to defend the interests of a working class that was not his own. While he could have been a prosperous official in a corrupt government Castro was working as an attorney for the poor at almost no pay. Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for his defense of country. Despite being the son of a bourgeois landowner Castro took up arms to liberate his fatherland, 75% of which was owned by foreign capitalists.
Perhaps most important of all Fidel Castro is a life to emulate for the lesson he taught us. In a day and age where positive social change is often prevented from coming to pass through the ballot box Fidel and the positive legacy of the Cuban Revolution outweigh it’s dark side and provide an important teaching to working people today. These principles are only affirmed by the proud history of the working People of Latin America who built the Cuban Revolution. When the factory owners and Yankee imperialists ousted the elected leader of Guatemala, when they riddled the body of Chilean president Salvador Allende with bullets, when they tried to remove Hugo Chavez of Venezuela through the coup they accentuate this message of Fidel and his revolution. Where man oppresses man we must never cease in the struggle to abolish this injustice, and when the oppressor hinders our just struggle with force of arms we must not shy to fight fire with fire. The hands that once harvested grain and toiled in the fields must not flinch from the grip of the rifle and the bite of the cannon as they defend their land and their liberty. In the words of Fidel Castro “Socialismo o Muerte”!