Castro: the making of a Marxist
Review by Neville Spencer
The Making of a Revolutionary. My Early Years
By Fidel Castro — Edited by Deborah Shnookal and Pedro Álvaro Tabío
Ocean Press, 1998
141 pp., $19.95 (pb)
In the capitalist world, articles and memoirs about the personal lives of politicians and public figures are all too common. In Cuba, by contrast, such trivia and sensationalism are almost absent — leaders such as Fidel Castro are usually discussed only in the context of politics.
This book isn't an autobiography. It consists of three interviews and one speech by Castro, edited together to create something which, while it involves his personal life, gives a background to the developments that led to the 1959 Cuban Revolution and an insight into some of the most momentous events in Latin American history.
It also includes an introductory essay by the Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, who has been a close friend of Castro for many years.
Castro's father was a poor farmer from Spain drafted to fight in Cuba during its 1895-98 war of independence. He returned as an immigrant several years later and, by the time Castro was born, had become a moderately well-off landowner.
Fidel Castro was born in 1926. In My Early Years he describes some of the fairly elite schools at which he was educated and the development of a sense of justice — the embryo of his later political development.
When he entered the University of Havana in 1945, he still knew very little about politics. He became involved in student politics, standing and comfortably winning as the anthropology delegate. He joined the opposition Orthodox Party.
Supporters of the Grau government, however, dominated the university. When they barred Castro from the university, he defied the ban. He got a pistol and some supporters to accompany him and, against his expectations, managed to survive his years at the university.
Castro's development towards a Marxist, or scientific socialist, position came slowly. He describes his original political position as utopian socialism — supporting an egalitarian society but without any theoretical analysis of present society or a clear strategy for how to change it.
He had contact with activists of the Communist Party. Buying books from them, he built up a library of Marxist classics. This aided his evolution towards a more Marxist analysis.
He never thought, however, that the Communist Party was the appropriate vehicle for a socialist revolution. In the speech included in My Early Years, he points out that the CP, in line with the Comintern, had changed tack in its attitude toward Hitler and fascism.
It started to push for a broad front against fascism which, as Castro points out, corrected the divisions in the left which in Germany may have been responsible for allowing Hitler the upper hand. But in Cuba this line led the party into an alliance with the repressive and corrupt Batista government. This left it little possibility of attracting mass support.
Internationalism
A striking aspect of Castro's early political development is that, while his development towards scientific socialism was gradual, his spirit of internationalism seemed quite instinctive.
The willingness of Cuba to sacrifice its meagre financial resources and its human resources to support struggles for justice in so many parts of the world is one of the most inspiring aspects of the Cuban Revolution. Significantly, it was through internationalism that Castro developed his political awareness and his understanding of what could make a successful revolutionary strategy.
At university, he became president of the Dominican Pro-Democracy Committee, which opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
He also felt strongly about the struggle for independence in Puerto Rico, which, like Cuba, became a US colony after the Spanish-American War but, unlike Cuba, never gained even nominal independence. He became president of the Committee for the Liberation of Puerto Rico.
His involvement in the struggles developing in other countries provided him with valuable lessons that he later applied to the revolutionary struggle in Cuba.
In 1947, education minister Julián Alemán decided to sponsor an expedition to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship. Raising the banner of Dominican democracy had the potential to win enormous credibility for Alemán. He gathered together 1500 volunteers to be trained as an invasion force.
As head of the Dominican Pro-Democracy Committee, Castro didn't hesitate to join the expedition, even though it meant working among his political enemies.
In the end, the expedition was called off, due to rivalries within the political elite, and many in the expedition were arrested. The chaotic organisation of the expedition was to be an important negative example for Castro's later struggles.
His understanding of politics and strategy was to mature further as he threw himself into the struggle in Colombia.
The meeting to found the Organisation of American States (OAS) was to be held in Bogotá from March 30 to May 2, 1948. Knowing that this body was set to be a reactionary force, Castro decided to organise a counter-conference of Latin American students.
To organise the conference, he visited Venezuela and Panama, and came into contact with students from many parts of Latin America.
Colombian students were also enthusiastic about the idea. Most of the Colombian students were left Liberals. At that time, the Liberal Party was led by the popular leftist Jorge Gaitán, who was favoured to win the next presidential election.
The Colombians arranged a meeting for Castro with Gaitán, in which the leader offered his support for the conference.
Organisation
When Gaitán was assassinated an hour before a second meeting with Castro was due to take place, the Cuban was drawn into the resulting popular uprising, now known as the Bogotazo.
People had begun to pour onto the streets to express their anger and frustration. The anger and violence that the incident created were spontaneous and arbitrarily directed.
Castro remembers an incident were he "saw a man in the park trying to break a typewriter that he had taken from somewhere. He was determined to break that typewriter, but he was having a terrible time trying to do it with his hands. So I said, 'Give it to me', and I helped him."
He realised that this was not the way to make a revolution. Wandering on further, he came across people trying to form an armed band. Seeing something a little more organised taking place, he joined the armed uprising. But there was no central leadership here either.
Castro's tale of those two days shows their chaotic nature and his frustration with the naive tactics adopted by those who assumed the leadership. Again, this was an important learning experience for him.
The incident ended with what Castro labels "betrayal". The Liberals' leadership made a deal with the government and called for the disarming of the uprising. Subsequently, many who supported the uprising were killed.
The book ends with a brief section about the preparations for the attack on the Moncada barracks, led by Castro. While the attack was to end in many deaths and the imprisonment of Castro and others, it marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.
By this time Castro the scientific socialist knew that careful planning and organisation were critical to avoid failure in armed struggle. While he was to work with forces very like the Colombian Liberal Party leaders who betrayed the Bogotazo uprising, this time he knew that the revolution could not place its faith in them.