Until 2008, he wore his eternal army uniform and held an inseparable Cuban cigar between his jaws. Those days are over: the elderly Fidel Castro spends his days at home, in a hospital or convalescent home, he has exchanged his army outfit for a camping tuxedo. But the story of this striking resistance fighter from yesteryear certainly appeals to the imagination. It is like an adventure from a boys’ book: with twelve men and a total of seven guns, Castro ousted the cruel and corrupt Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. They came from the mountains, fought a guerrilla war and in the meantime won over the population en masse.
Youth
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 in the town of Biran, Cuba. His father, Angel Castro, came from Spain and had lived in Cuba since 1899. When Fidel was born, his father owned a large piece of land on which sugar cane was grown. The old Castro employed about three hundred men. Fidel was not the son of his father’s wife, but of a mistress. Nevertheless, Fidel was raised in the family and at the age of eight he attended boarding school in Santiago de Cuba and then in Havana. In October 1945 he went to study law at the University of Cuba.
Resists
In March 1952, Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba. Castro was now a lawyer and joined the resistance against Batista. He turned out to have enormous powers of persuasion, because within a year he had more than a thousand followers. He also collected money and weapons for the resistance movement throughout the country.
Act of resistance
In July 1953 the time had come: the first armed act of resistance took place in Santiago de Cuba. There, Castro and his fighters stormed an army barracks. It became a fiasco. Castro was arrested and most of his fellow fighters did not live to tell the story. During the trial, Castro defended himself. He concluded his four-hour plea with the famous words: Convict me. It does not matter. History will acquit me! He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Mexico
Two years after his conviction, Castro received amnesty from Batista. He wanted to make this gesture because he had become president. When the persistent rumor spread that Batista wanted him killed, Castro left. He and the surviving fighters of old went to Mexico to regroup. They started the Movement on the 26th of July, after the date the barracks were stormed in 53. M-26-7 for short. The young Argentinian doctor Ernesto -Che- Guevara also joined in Mexico.
Powerboat
While Guevara and others received intensive training and trained hard for a guerrilla war, Castro drove around town and country in the United States to raise money for his movement. After all, there were many Cubans living in the US who had fled from Batista. In 1956 he had enough money to buy a boat; an 18 meter long motorboat.
With the 82 followers crammed into the boat, Castro left Mexico for Cuba at the end of 1956. After a week, in early December, the group arrived. Exhausted and in possession of seawater-damaged weapons, Castro and his men were met by Batista’s army. It became a massacre. Castro and twelve fellow fighters survived. They entered the mountains of Sierra Maestra.
Locals
to motivate his men and achieved a lot of goodwill among the local population. He gave more and more support to the resistance fighters so that Castro was safe in the mountains. From this bastion, M-26-7 carried out attacks on Batista’s troops. These were extremely efficient actions that increased despondency among Batista’s soldiers.
PR
Castro also had a great sense of public relations. He had journalists come by to make reports in the jungle. As a result, photos of the resistance fighters appeared in the Western press, which aroused much sympathy among the public at home and abroad. The local population had been on his side for some time. Batista panicked and as the battle continued he used more and more terror, including against his own population. He thus lost the last vestige of support from the Cubans. Batista’s forces defeated Che Guevarra’s in Santa Clara at the end of 58. When the Americans also overthrew him, the dictator secretly fled to the Dominican Republic on December 31, 1958. He would live in exile in Portugal and Spain until his death in 1973.
Triumphal procession
A week after Batista’s flight, Castro appeared in Havana after a triumphal tour through Cuba. During his first speech, a white dove landed on Castro’s shoulder. To this day, devout Cubans consider this a sign from above. El Commandante solemnly promised never to become a dictator, if the people want me to resign, then I will resign.
Communist
In practice, hundreds of Batista supporters had been executed for war crimes immediately after the coup. Large companies were nationalized, agricultural land was expropriated and the promised elections never materialized.
Was this communism? Castro’s biographers disagree on this. His ideology was a bit vague at first. According to one biographer, Castro was a real communist who hid it for PR reasons. The other insists that C astro was never a true communist but used this label to gain the support of the Soviet Union and make a stand against America.
Americans
The Americans were not particularly in favor of what they considered a communist island just off their coast. The CIA made several attempts to eliminate Castro. Snipers, poison and even cigars were used. All without success. The Russians supported Castro but never took him very seriously politically. They saw Cuba primarily as the Soviets’ sugar supplier. Cuba received money, weapons and tractors. The Russians did see the great advantages of Cuba’s geographical location, so close to the US.
Missile crisis
During the missile crisis in October 1962, the Americans and the Soviets came face to face. The Russians wanted to place nuclear missiles in Cuba and the Americans did not accept this. According to them, the island was too close to the American coast. It became a very exciting conflict and the whole world seriously took into account the possibility of a third world war, a nuclear war. Ultimately, the Americans and Russians solved the problems together. Castro was completely passed over by both the Russians and the Americans. El Commandante played no role whatsoever.
Isolated
In the late 80s and early 90s, an economic disaster befell Castro. The Soviet Union began to distance itself from Castro under the Gorbachev regime from 1986 onwards and when the Soviet empire fell apart in 1991, Cuba lost its most important sponsor and trading partner. The Russians dropped communism and Castro and embraced capitalism. ‘El Líder Maximo’ refused to do such stupid things. He became very isolated. Socialismo o muerte, Socialism or death, the official slogan of Cuba, sounded more and more like that of someone crying in the desert.
Poverty
The population was not very prosperous, but from the early 1990s onwards they increasingly lived in even greater poverty. The island became even more of a police state. To this day, Cubans are not allowed to go abroad and freedom of speech does not exist on the island. Furthermore, there is a culture of personality cult around the father of the country Castro and far-reaching myth formation around the 1958 revolution.
Takeover
Castro lasted a long time. In 2008, at the age of 82, he resigned as President of Cuba. His health began to fail him. El Commandante was now an old man who could hardly keep up his notoriously long speeches (speeches lasting six hours were no exception). His brother Raul took over from him in 2008. He was also 76 years old in 2008. It seems that this young Castro is starting to allow capitalism on a modest scale.
Fidel Castro himself is struggling with his health and still makes himself heard occasionally. He caused a stir in 2010 when he said in an American magazine that the Cuban system no longer works even for us. It became world news. However, Castro quickly reversed his statement, saying that while he had been quoted correctly, he had not meant it that way.