Fidel Castro is finally dead. It was an eventuality that Cubans have been waiting to happen for a very long time. I am not a Fidel Castro fan. Never was. Never will been. And I see empathize with the Cuban diaspora who yearn to be back to their homeland. However, I would like to pay homage to someone when it is merited. Fidel Castro, a giant in Latin American history, deserves that homage. This is an ode to a great Latin American leader.
First of all, I know very little of Fidel Castro’s background. I refused to read his biography even if I was posted as a Foreign Service officer in Cuba. I despised the man, but I didn’t even know why. I worked in the Havana suburb of Miramar in a house whose previous owner was incarcerated for nearly 50 years. The owners were exiled against their wishes to Miami, Florida. And this was a guy who fought with Castro against Batista. His only fault was to go against the man from turning Cuba into a Communist State. Every time I entered that house, I thought I felt the anger of its previous owners.
Come to think of it, I was an angry man when I was in Cuba. I saw how beautiful the land was. I saw how resourceful the people were. I felt what was holding them back was the dream of a Mad Man. That man was Fidel Castro. We remember how his huge ego nearly caused the demise of the world in a nuclear cataclysm. I used to blame Fidel Castro for what ailed Cuba then and now. I blame him for the corrupt and inefficient political system that only causes so much hardship among its people. How was it possible that after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the man and his system survived?
For sure, the Fidel Castro is a divisive figure. This is the guy who had the chutzpah to say the history would absolve him. This is the guy who in his early 30s led a successful guerilla revolution which upended the whole of Latin America. The ramifications of which are still being felt today in the likes of Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico. For a generation of revolutionaries who successfully built a post-colonial political landscape out of World War II, Fidel Castro showed how to successfully win and hold on to power for so long. He outlived them all, CIA assassination attempts and all.
Che Guevara is the more beloved revolutionary figure. Yet, Fidel Castro was the more successful guerilla operative. Che’s popular figure cuts across global pop culture and is a known symbol of youthful rebellion. Yet, Fidel Castro did exactly what Che failed to do. He led a grassroots guerilla revolution and won power. Che wrote a book on guerilla warfare. Fidel lived, survived and transcended it.
In a way, I began to understand Fidel Castro. He must have felt anger with the world order as a young man. It was when I lived in Mexico were I began to understand Fidel Castro. There is definitely something about Mexico that makes one become a closet revolutionary. There I was in in a cosmopolitan setting where probably both the world’s richest and poorest man live. I began to understand the latent anger of the common Latin American Indian who have been bypassed by the White Man in his own ancestral land.
This is because Mexico gives us insight of what ails the whole of Latin America. In a land of massive physical and material wealth, the minority rich White population controls everything. Te majority Amerindian population remains dirt poor with little access to economic advancement. The tiny rich refuse to share their wealth with the massive poor. This is the legacy of colonialism in the whole of Latin America. This is something that I also saw in my travels in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The poor Amerindian has so much grievances against the White man.
This is why I am now changing my position on Fidel Castro. After all, this is the guy who led a protest by sugar cane workers against his own father. He was the catalyst of the emergence of an Latin American left that remains in power in the likes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, to name a few. Fidel Castro enabled the Amerindian to realize his potential in his own land. He blazed the trail so that the likes of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales could emerge. By this contribution alone, Fidel Castro deserves to be mentioned among the pantheon of Latin America’s greatest heroes.
Sure, he was a terrible administrator and economic manager. There’s no denying that. He led Cuba to the brink. He was merely saved by the oil largesse of his late disciple Hugo Chavez. He, however, brought to reality the concept of Social Justice in a continent that is in dire need of it. His dedication to a Post-colonial World helped create the current political landscape in Latin America. He fought The Man and survived. Those who see themselves as downtrodden and left behind by the current system see in him a beacon of hope.
In a world where the White Man is fighting back to retain his privileges (see the emergence of Donald Trump and the Brexiters), Fidel Castro will live on as a shining example to the underprivileged on how to beat back the system. R.I.P. Don Fidel Castro Ruz.