BOOKS

Their man in Havana

Hugh Thomas

FIDEL CASTRO: A CRITICAL PORTRAIT by Tad Szulc

r Tad Szulc, a well-known journal- ist. who used to work for the New York Tunes, has written an interesting, uneven, and, in the end, unsatisfactory study of Fidel Castro. The chief weakness of the book is the author's softhearted admira- tion, even affection, for his subject.

Fidel: A Critical Portrait is not without ,merit. The account given of Castro's child-

hood and youth is interesting and fresh. It brings together a lot of material previously unknown or neglected. Castro's schools

and his struggles at the University of Havana are well described. The early days

of the campaign against Batista, including the attacks on the Moncada barracks

(1953) and the first of Castro's two years in the Sierra Maestra (1957) are made to

seem exciting. Mr Szulc is also persuasive and subtle about the extent to which Castro was influenced by Marxism-

Leninism when at university and as a young

lawyer; he plainly interested himself in that subject more than has been appreci- ated, though he never joined friends, such as Leonel Soto or Alfredo Guevara, in taking up membership in the Cuban Com-

munist Party. Mr Szulc describes the deity- eArY of $50,000 by the Central Intelligence

Cuba representative in Santiago de `Atha to Castro's movement in 1958. When taking into account the comparable sum ....given to Justo Carillo, another opponent of Eatista at that time, this makes the CIA

one of the chief financiers of the 1959 revolution in Cuba.

Mr Szulc has also had some revealing interviews with elderly survivors of the

,Party, such as the legendary Fabio Grobart °I'll° was present as a young Polish immig- rant in 1925 at the founding of the party),

and 131as Roca (the secretary general of the

communists during the critical years, 1958- 19b2). This has enabled Mr Szulc to

rdescribe more accurately and fully than has before been done, the subterfuge Practised in 1959 by Castro, his brother Raul, and ‘Che' Guevara. The three men Pretended to serve a democratic, liberal

government, but were in fact seeking to establish a totalitarian socialist regime by building up the Institute of Agrarian Re-

form (INRA) and the rebel army. Keeping particularly in mind Mr Szulc's sources and the above-mentioned $50,000, the last section of this book provides more u. seful material for refuting the grotesque idea that Castro was 'pushed' into com- munism by negligent or hostile Americans.

That myth, though, is so well established, and has been instinctively believed by so

many (who for whatever reasons want to believe ill of the Eisenhower administra- Hutchinson, £14.95 tion), that I doubt whether even now it will so easily be dislodged: what Jean Paul Sartre, C. Wright Mills and Herbert Matthews wanted to think is already part of the myth.

Mr Szulc does also convey something of the size of Castro's personality: his energy, abundant optimism, eloquence, memory and charm — qualities which, as Mr Szulc suggests, might have carried him to the top of the Cuban political tree even if there had been a democracy there. Moreover, though Mr Szulc does not stand far enough back to see, they also make Castro a formidable enemy of law-abiding demo- crats in the United States (and therefore, one must presume, of Mr Szulc himself). This lack of objectivity is what gives the work its flaw. Mr Szulc recognises that Castro has engulfed his country in tragedy, and brought untold tedium where he has not brought misery. He touches lightly on the brutal repression of homosexuals; he marks the existence of the Cuban gulag; he mourns the international dependence of Cuba on the Soviet Union; he does not seek to deny Cuban support and training of international terrorists, though he refers to them as 'revolutionaries': nor does he deny the debacle of the Cuban economy under Castro — a debacle that has made the country more dependent than it was before 1959 on that decreasingly sought after crop, sugar. But all of these admissions are spoken of in a low tone, almost as asides. The main theme is the grandeur of Castro's personality. What, he has brought iniquity and evil? That, it is almost suggested, is inevitable if you are dealing with a man of Castro's Herculean proportions. There is a passage at the end of the book which almost suggests that, since Castro at least is a free man, the country which he runs as a despotism must also be free.

The superlatives begin at the beginning and continue to the end. Thus we are told on the first page that Mr Szulc proposed a collaboration to Castro; he wanted help from his subject in the form of interviews and the provision of material: 'I remarked that, since we were both honourable men, his ideology and mine, differing in the most absolute fashion as they did, shouldn't interfere with the writing of an honest book' (italics mine). One would like to know the reaction to this admission by the thousands of democratic Cubans who opposed Batista, but who are still in prison or in exile because they believed Castro's early protestations in the Sierra in 1957 (as in the manifesto of the Sierra Maestra). The reflections on honour in Cuba of a Gustavo Areas — one-time companion of Castro in the assault on the Moncada barracks, but now in prison for trying to escape the island — would be interesting. Then, far later on in the work, Fidel Castro and John Kennedy are both said to have had 'superb minds and a vision of history', and 'were fascinated by each other as adversaries'. This may be what Castro and Szulc now think, but the idea of placing a great democratic president on the same level as a major subverter of liberty is farfetched.

We are told at the very end that the 60-year-old Castro, for all his loneliness, is `still enormously popular (and even loved)'. Mr Szulc does not, and cannot of course, give any authority for this appre- ciation, which would be contested by those who listen to 'Radio Marti' — which the author quaintly, and surely ingenuously, refers to as a 'hostile radio station'. Cubans normally do not discuss Castro's private life out of respect, Mr Szulc assures us; but since there is no free press, where and how could they discuss it? On page 591, Mr Szulc says that the Cuban national party newspaper Gramma 'now rivals Pravda in quality': since there is not much evidence of a sense of humour in this book, it would be rash to assume that this must be ironical.

Mr Szulc quotes, with apparent approv- al, Castro's exalted account of his part in the riots of 1948, known as the Bogotazo.

I think that what I did there was really noble . . I am proud of what I did . . I think that my decision to stay there that night when I was alone, and it all seemed like a great tactical error, was a great proof of idealism, a great proof of quixotism in the best sense . . . I behaved with principle, with correct morality, with dignity and honour, with incredible altruism.

This account dates from 1981. But in that riot Castro was not, as might be assumed from this story, helping the wounded, driving children out of danger in rickety cars, or insisting the crowds show mercy to unarmed civilians. He was, on the con- trary, having an exciting time haranguing soldiers, stirring up trouble whenever he could, and permitting himself an enjoyable bout of what he himself called 'revolution- ary fever'. There are so many passages like this that one tires. The supreme example is a comparison Mr Szulc makes between Castro (during his march on Havana in 1959) and Christ: 'Every five minutes, at every intersection of the highway, women kissed him, telling him that he was greater than Jesus Christ'. That is the memory of Ratil Chibas — the brother of Castro's predecessor as the would-be heroic re- former of the nation, Eddy Chibas. Mr Szulc finds it necessary to comment: 'Cas- tro himself must then have felt a profound kinship with Christ'.

At one point, Mr Szulc implies that normal usage in Cuba makes use of the 'Listed' for 'you' rather than the colloquial `tu'; whereas my impression is that the Cubans are quicker into that short mono- syllable than any other Latin Americans. Mr Szulc speaks of ROmulo Betancourt and quotes Castro's dislike of him; but he neither notices Castro's unsuccessful attempt to draw Betancourt into his 'anti- yankie' crusade in January 1959 (as de- scribed by that statesman), nor the fact that Betancourt has created in Venezuela and in Latin America a far more resilient and just tradition. The character of the peasants in the Sierra Maestra is well treated — indeed the description of the support given by them for Castro in 1956- 1957 is one of the best parts of the book. But the distinction between squatters and legally well-established farmers might have been explored. Finally, Castro's adven- tures in Africa and elsewhere since 1975 are not really considered in the depth that they surely deserve in a book purporting to be a full life of this Cuban leader. The only point at all developed here is Castro's own argument (accepted by Mr Szulc), that the support of the Angolan MPLA was his, not the Soviets' idea. That may be so, but the implication that the commitment, and the other major Cuban one in Ethiopia, could have been carried through without Soviet logistical help and financing seems to me to be absurd. Fidel: A Critical Portrait contains so many reminders that Cuba could, in the 1960s, have experienced a real national regeneration that it is tragic to have to read on and see why it did not happen. The country was not a poor one by the stan- dards of Latin America. It was full of talent. All those brave young men, 9) optimistic, so enthusiastic, so resolute, s° full of ingenuity! What disillusion, what misery, what cruelty followed — and all of it could have been prevented by Mr Szulc s hero had he had a drop of human kindness. Aie! As it is, the entrepreneurs of that missed recovery are in Florida, the arasis in London, Paris or Madrid.