emma_goldman
8th August 2006, 03:34
US News & World Report (http://www.usnews.com)
August 14/August 21, 2006
Waiting on Fidel's Final Act
"History will absolve me," a definat Fidel Castro declared in court after his first atempt to overthrow Flgencio Batista, in 1953. Jailed but soon pardoned, Castro eventually returned to his staging ground in Cuba's Sierra Maestra. This time his efforts led to triumph in the teeming streets of Havana. But 47 years after he seized power and turned his island nation into another failed instance of "truly existing socialism" - and as rumors of his possible death or abication circulated after his surgery last week - history's absolution looks doubtful.
A dominant player on the world stage for the past half century, Castro was the embodiment of the Nietzschean will to power. Charismatic, fearless, ruthless, charming (witness the snow job he did on Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even as he stifled Cuba's best creative minds), intelligent, lucky: The list goes on. A good Catholic boy gone disastrously astray, he put the rhetorical skills of his Jesuit schooling in the seervice not of the deity but o fa bankrupt ideology and his own enormous ego.
Could things have turned out otherwise? Harry Truman thought so. he would have sat down with castro, he said, and had a heart-toheart: Castro could have his revolution as long as there was no talk of communism. But Dweight Eisenhower, angry about the confiscation of US corporate holdings, snubbed Castro when he came to New York, an dthe hot-tempered Cuban accept Moscow's bear hug instead. The rest is history: A US trade embargo, severed diplomatic relations, the Bay of Pigs, the missle criss, suppression of dissent, refusal to change even after the Soviet Union imploded.
Detente was possible. But whenever Washington made overtures, Castro turned a deaf ear. In the end, he cared more about his global image and his absolute grip on power, the two being, in his mind at least, mutually indispensable. For his vainglory, Castro will stand not among the mandelas but among the Arafats in history's musoleum, a leader who put ideology and ego above the needs of his people, even while posing - forever posing - as his people's greatest champion. Absolution? Anything but.
August 14/August 21, 2006
Waiting on Fidel's Final Act
"History will absolve me," a definat Fidel Castro declared in court after his first atempt to overthrow Flgencio Batista, in 1953. Jailed but soon pardoned, Castro eventually returned to his staging ground in Cuba's Sierra Maestra. This time his efforts led to triumph in the teeming streets of Havana. But 47 years after he seized power and turned his island nation into another failed instance of "truly existing socialism" - and as rumors of his possible death or abication circulated after his surgery last week - history's absolution looks doubtful.
A dominant player on the world stage for the past half century, Castro was the embodiment of the Nietzschean will to power. Charismatic, fearless, ruthless, charming (witness the snow job he did on Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even as he stifled Cuba's best creative minds), intelligent, lucky: The list goes on. A good Catholic boy gone disastrously astray, he put the rhetorical skills of his Jesuit schooling in the seervice not of the deity but o fa bankrupt ideology and his own enormous ego.
Could things have turned out otherwise? Harry Truman thought so. he would have sat down with castro, he said, and had a heart-toheart: Castro could have his revolution as long as there was no talk of communism. But Dweight Eisenhower, angry about the confiscation of US corporate holdings, snubbed Castro when he came to New York, an dthe hot-tempered Cuban accept Moscow's bear hug instead. The rest is history: A US trade embargo, severed diplomatic relations, the Bay of Pigs, the missle criss, suppression of dissent, refusal to change even after the Soviet Union imploded.
Detente was possible. But whenever Washington made overtures, Castro turned a deaf ear. In the end, he cared more about his global image and his absolute grip on power, the two being, in his mind at least, mutually indispensable. For his vainglory, Castro will stand not among the mandelas but among the Arafats in history's musoleum, a leader who put ideology and ego above the needs of his people, even while posing - forever posing - as his people's greatest champion. Absolution? Anything but.