Fidel: My Early Years
By Fidel Castro
Ocean Press, 2005
198 pages, $16.95 (pb)
REVIEW BY OWEN RICHARDS
Cuba supporters everywhere were heartened by the immense success of the Walter Salles film adaptation of Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries, recounting the political coming-of-age of the Argentinean doctor-come-revolutionary icon. This book could be considered a companion volume to that book, being the personal account of that other Cuban revolutionary icon, Fidel Castro.
After more than 40 years of the Cuban Revolution, the life of the enigmatic Cuban head of state has captured the imagination of many a biographer. Fidel: My Early Years provides something that sets it apart: a portrait of Castro's political awakening in his own words.
The book is divided into five chapters, revealing Castro's childhood and youth; his early political experiences at the University of Havana; his accidental role in the 1948 uprising in Colombia; his preparation for the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks; and is rounded out by selections of letters from his three years in prison after the failure of the attack.
Castro's childhood and youth, the subjects of chapter one, are explored through an abridged excerpt from a 24-hour interview with Castro by Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto in 1985 (originally published as Fidel and Religion by Ocean Press).
Castro was born in August 1926 in Biran, Cuba, in a wealthy landowning family. But through his contact with the peasantry and his early experiences of urban poverty in Santiago de Cuba, the first seeds of his compassion for the downtrodden were sown.
Castro's 1995 speech to students at the University of Havana, 50 years after he first entered the uni as a law student, makes up the entirety of chapter two, providing a personal account of his early political career in the violent arena of student politics.
At university, Castro became a leader of the left wing of the anti-corruption Cuban People's Party. He began to develop his internationalist ethic by volunteering for an armed expedition to the Dominican Republic to help topple the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in 1947.
University marked an important phase for the young rebel. It was here the future architect of the Cuban Revolution made the transition from radical to socialist. He recalls: "Here I became a revolutionary and a devotee of [Cuban independence hero Jose] Marti. Here I became a socialist — initially a utopian socialist ... though thanks also to my contact with political literature, here in the university and at law school, I subsequently became a Marxist-Leninist."
In 1948, Castro travelled to Venezuela, Panama and Colombia in order to build support for a Latin American anti-imperialist student congress he was organising. It was while in Colombia that Castro was swept up into the popular uprising that inflamed Bogota in 1948. Castro's recollection of the event, recorded in a 1981 interview, makes for the most gripping chapter of My Early Years.
Responding to the assassination of progressive presidential hopeful Jorge Gaitan, the Colombian people rose up, some taking up arms. Again displaying the internationalism that would characterise his later years, the young Castro armed himself, and joined the rebellion.
Castro's politics were shaped by the disorganised uprising: "The April 9 uprising influenced me greatly in my later revolutionary life: having seen what happened there I made a tremendous effort to create political awareness and political education in Cuba. I wanted to avoid the revolution sinking into anarchy, looting and disorder."
The final two chapters of My Early Years should be read together. One contains further selections from his 1985 interview with Betto regarding the preparations for the attack on the Moncada military garrison in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953. The last chapter contains a selection of excerpts from his letters from prison after his capture following the failed attack. The selection is an interesting and inspiring testament to Castro's persistence and idealism.
These chapters show the beginnings of Castro's mature political outlook, detailing in particular his marriage of the radical-democratic outlook of Cuban national hero Marti with the scientific socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin. It also reveals Castro's strategy for revolution in Cuba through stages, initially involving the broadest possible section of the "rebellious discontented masses, who do not have a mature political consciousness of the need for revolution but who constituted the immense majority of the people".
My Early Years provides a unique insight into the early political development of Castro. It leaves one with a thirst for more, particularly his prison letters. It sometimes suffers from its nature as a collection, being repetitious at times, and the truly annoying questioning of Frei Betto — who tries to bring Castro back to religion over and over again — makes for a slow beginning. Nevertheless, Castro's conversational gift and political wisdom shines through.
My Early Years contains material never before published in English and features 16 pages of black and white photos. It also presents a short biography of Castro, an introduction and an eloquent "Portrait of Fidel" by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 20, 2005.
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