Castro Retires: A Revaluation of Fidelismo
February 20th, 2008
by Dayan Jayatilleka
Ailing revolutionary icon Fidel Castro permanently gave up the Cuban presidency on Tuesday Feb 19th , ending five decades of rule of the island marked by his one-man defiance of the United States. This article was written earlier in celebration of his 80th birthday is posted here to honour Fidel Castro’s retirement
“..that cosmic force called Fidel Castro Ruz..” - Che Guevara (’Cuba: exception or vanguard?’)
“You were the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the Second War…”
- Norman Mailer
The Cuban leader’s 80th birthday today, his renewed significance in Latin America, and his current illness which may presage the passage of his era, render relevant a re-valuation of Fidelismo.
Fidel Castro is listed in The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth Century Political Thinkers, the editors of which define those included as ‘important thinkers from the early years of the century to the contemporary period…[whose] ideas have influenced political thought and activity in the twentieth century’.
[Fidel Castro, Cuba’s fiery revolutionary patriarch and an international icon of rebellion, resigned as president on Feb. 19, 2008, according to La Granma, the state run newspaper in Cuba-[Photo: NY Times.com]
Fidel not only represents continuity with defining struggles and themes of the twentieth century - capitalism and socialism, imperialism and national liberation, reform and revolution - thereby illumining them in retrospect, he has also a shaped the landscape of the present. “Suddenly Latin America has grabbed the world’s attention”, opines The Economist (London), in its issue of May 20th, 2006, in a cover story entitled The Battle for Latin America’s Soul. According to Newsweek the central symbol in the drama of a resurgent Latin America is Fidel Castro: “Fidel has more fans in the region than he’s had in years…The symbol that has benefited most from the new perspective is …the left’s reigning lion in winter, Fidel Castro…Castro has experienced a remarkable resurgence.”(Joseph Contreras, ‘Latin America: Castro’s Comeback’, Newsweek, March 20, 2006, p.26). The Chicago Tribune confirms recently that “the guidance and support of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez have helped the political left make a remarkable resurgence in Latin America.” (Colin McMahon and Hugh Dellios, ‘Region shifts to the left’, Chicago Tribune, Aug 8, 2006).
The Cuban leader’s 80th birthday today, his renewed significance in Latin America, and his current illness which may presage the passage of his era, render relevant a re-valuation of Fidelismo, which Prof Donald E Rice defines as “a global perspective…Fidel’s particular construction of Marxism”.
Fidel’s Perspective Commenting on the fall of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro remarked that it was not a case of homicide, but of suicide. “Socialism did not die from natural causes: it was a suicide.” (Interview by Tomas Borge for Managua’s EL NUEVO DIARIO, 3 June 1992). “The truth is that they destroyed the socialist bloc with the cooperation of the socialist bloc and the USSR. It was a case of suicide and self-destruction” (speech at the concluding plenary session of the Sixth Congress of the Union of Young Communists, Havana 4th April 1992). The comment on the collapse of Soviet socialism was Fidel Castro’s second characterisation of the unravelling of a revolutionary experiment as ’suicide’, i.e. self-inflicted. The first was that of Grenada. The two uses of the term ’suicide’ indicate clearly, the two types of behaviour that Fidel thought self-destructive of revolutions: on the one hand fratricidal strife, internal bloodletting fuelled by political and ideological fundamentalism- as in Grenada - and on the other, endless compromise and dilution; the lack of political will to fight for the survival of socialism and the continuation in power of the revolution - as in the USSR. Castro strove to avoid both extremes, or as the Marxist lexicon has it, ‘deviations’.
[Mr. Castro in 1985-NY Times Multimedia]
Looking back at the Cold war in a CNN/BBC interview (March 19, 1998) years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro’s main conclusions constitute a quite distinctive perspective and stance on contemporary history: though Marx, Engels and Lenin did not envisage ’socialism in one country’ the Soviet leaders were not wrong in adopting it because they needed a mobilising slogan and task in an international situation that left them no choice; not only was there no Cuban-Soviet master plan, had one “actually existed, we would have won the Cold War”; the USSR was neither consulted nor informed of the Cuban internationalist mission in Angola; the only instance of coordinated Cuban-Soviet military action was in support of Ethiopia and repelling the Somali invasion; the USSR did not support Cuba’s policy towards the revolution in Latin America; that revolution had better prospects than the ones initially faced by Fidel and the Cuban revolution; had the Latin American revolution won it would have changed the outcome of history not least because of its impact upon the United States which would have equalled that of the Vietnam war; the Latin American revolution did not succeed largely because of the Sino-Soviet struggle and the competing pulls it exercised on the Latin American left movement; the main factor in the defeat of socialism and the victory of capitalism led by the US in the Cold War was the split between the communist parties of the USSR and China. (Fidel Castro, Cold War: Warnings for a Unipolar World, Ocean Press, Melbourne, 2003, pp 20-75)
Fidel Castro’s political thought is original in, among other things, its brand of anti-imperialism. It is in marked contrast to ‘cultural nationalist’ anti-imperialism, which is anti-Western and anti-modern. The Iranian revolution of 1979 is the most prominent example of the latter, though Al Qaeda and other similar organisations are cases in point. This brand of anti-imperialism is not solely Islamic in provenance: most countries of the global South display some variety of it, marked by ethnic majoritarianism and therefore the inability to deal sensitively with internal nationalities and ethno-religious questions.
The global East and South saw forms of anti-imperialism that were non Marxist, pre-Marxist, which while being nationalist or patriotic, were not anti-Western, anti-modern or traditionalist. The main examples would be Cuba’s Jose Marti, China’s Sun Yat Sen and India’s Nehru. These anti-imperialist nationalisms were in a sense modernising ideologies, fighting against the backwardness of their own societies, albeit drawing on dissident traditions of the West. Marti’s patriotism had a continental sweep and went even further, invoking a humanistic universalism.
Fidel’s anti-imperialism based itself on that of Jose Marti but went on, as in most subject areas, to cross cut existing trends and forge a new synthesis. It has a moral and cultural dimension but not in the sense of the extremist ideologues who view Western society as decadent and their traditional culture as both self sufficient and inherently superior. He also wove in the statist nationalism of Stalin, insofar as the defence of the Cuban revolution and the revolutionary state was given emphasis. From Jose Marti and Simon Bolivar he has inherited a continental, Latin American vision, but this he combines with a Tricontinentalism or Third Worldism (which found the most dramatic incarnation in the internationalist missions in Africa). Fidel’s anti-imperialism was not purely Third Worldist or equidistant; it entailed solidarity with the socialist state system.
Most interestingly Fidelismo reached deep into Western society, identifying with youth movements and making an indelible impression on the consciousness of successive generations of Western youth. This it was able to do because of its nuanced, dialectical critique of the West and identification with certain aspects and trends of Western history and culture.
The moral and cultural dimensions of Fidel’s anti-imperialism did not take the form of protectionist Puritanism, as in the case of many Third World nationalisms. He denounced the West in moral terms that were universal: injustice, oppression, poverty, inequality. He also projected the Cuban revolution and Cuban socialism as morally superior in terms that were not culturally circumscribed but could be subscribed to by all humanity: eg the provision of free universal health care and education. Cuba has more doctors serving abroad than do the World Health Organisation or USAID! In the domain of culture, Cuba’s praxis takes the forms of indigenous and contemporary popular music and dance, which do not seek to shut out Western music but can compete with it, while drawing from and contributing to it. The Cuban experiment owes its sustainability in the face of unparalleled odds, to the assertion of the moral within the project of alternative modernity. The figure of Che Guevara shows the imaginative power and continued cultural valency in universal terms, of the combination of the values of reason/modernity and morality.
Fidel, Terrorism and Ethics While in strategic terms the contemporary global picture is bipolar - between the sole superpower and its allies on the one hand, and terrorism of Islamic provenance on the other- it is not necessarily so at a philosophical and ideological level. In this domain the game is not zero-sum, but triangular. In-between the neo-conservatism (and rejection of liberalism) which is the ruling ideology of unipolar hegemony, and the forms of terrorism that challenge that hegemony, lies a third zone.
[Mr. Castro played to the crowd on July 8, 1964: Photo Courtesy of NYTimes.com Multimedia]
In this zone are those alienated, albeit unequally, by both the fanaticism of terrorism and the arrogance of neoconservative ‘market fundamentalism’. The alienated are the offspring of reason and modernity: liberalism, social democracy, reform communism, residual Marxism, and the moderate liberal and progressive currents of religions. Anti-war US Democrats, western European social democrats, Eastern and southern European ex-Communists who are ‘reform communists’ or ‘new social democrats’, the African ex-Marxist ex-guerrillas who are ‘new ‘or ‘emergent democrats’, the dramatically revived Latin American left originating in the Sao Paulo and Porto Allegro forums but now wielding governmental power in a majority of South American states, the anti-globalisation and anti-Iraq war global movements, and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. These are some of the trends and tendencies of a Third Zone.
Gramscian The critique of terrorism cannot be credibly sustained by the neoconservatives with their project of unilateralist militarism, global hegemony and unvarnished economic neo-liberalism. The strength of terrorism, especially its religious variant has been its moral critique and its moral underpinning. The critique of terrorism has of necessity to be a moral and ethical, cultural and civilizational; in a word, Gramscian.
The discussion and debate on terrorism polarises between two main approaches. One is the status quo-ist response. It condemns terrorism out of hand with no reference to its context and causative factors. There is, in short, no attempt to understand the phenomenon. A variant of this is to condemn all forms of anti-Establishment violence as terrorism. The other seeks to set terrorism in its context but in doing so tends either to condone it, or exculpate it as the product of deep injustice and the response of the weak against the oppressor. State terrorism is seen as the root cause of and therefore morally worse than anti-state terrorism. Castro’s response to the 9/11 attacks, contained in his speech of Sept 22, 2001, constitutes a unique ‘third perspective’.
It contains an understanding of the deep, causative roots of terrorism and the culpability of the powerful and privileged in its emergence. However, none of these factors stand in the way of a resolute denunciation of terrorism; a denunciation that pre-empts the argument that there are any extenuating circumstances for its adoption and practice. The moral-ethical criterion operates as an autonomous factor, which is absolute and unconditional. Castro’s country and its revolution are themselves the victims of US policy which has often taken the form of state sponsored terrorism. He is therefore acutely aware of the hypocrisy of the US denunciation of terrorism.
He warns against a militaristic response to terrorism and argues for deep-going structural changes to eliminate its causes. Fidel’s is therefore an unambiguous and uncompromising moral denunciation of terrorism, not relative to or qualified by the socioeconomic or political causes, of which he is nonetheless aware (and goes onto address).
“No one can deny that terrorism is today a dangerous and ethically indefensible phenomenon, which should be eradicated regardless of
its deep origins, the economic and political factors that brought it to life and those responsible for it. ” (Fidel Castro, Sept 22, 2001)
The people of the world disagree with the foreign policy of the US administration especially in its neo conservative variant, but as the response to 9/11 shows, there was a civilizational consensus which rejected those egregious acts of terrorism. A way of life, a way of being - both social and individual - has to be counter-posed to that offered by terrorist ideology. A moral critique of injustice must be part of the rejection of the terrorist response to injustice.
Fidel Castro must be studied so as to derive a ‘typology of morals’ within the traditions of ‘violent politics’ (Eric Hobsbawm) or ‘politico-military’ endeavour, and his guiding values are a necessary prelude to the ‘revaluation of values’ (Nietzsche) within the current upsurge of terrorism, crude anti-globalisation and anti-Westernism.
A new moral synthesis can be based only upon a new synthesis of values, and can emanate only from such a breaking down of the Berlin walls that have existed between the off-springs of reason and modernity. This renders possible a condominium of reason against the forces of moral barbarisms emanating from within the status quo and without.
Reason and modernity alone cannot combat the moral power of both Christian Evangelical fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism. Both these extremisms thrive on a doctrine of struggle and heroism. Therefore an alternative psychology, deriving from an alternative ethic of struggle and heroism, has to part of the synthesis. The Romantic rebellion offers such a source of inspiration, but given the irrational dark underside of that rebellion, it must be filtered through and informed by the values of reason and modernity.
In his Political Romanticism, Carl Schmitt’s critique is that Romanticism in politics introduces aesthetic criteria and in doing so, weakens its capacity for decision and demonstrates a propensity for defeat. Fidel Castro’s synthesis of the traditions of Realism, Reason and Romanticism not merely avoids but demonstrates an aversion to such ‘Hamletesque’ political behaviour. Castro has shown a vocation for (Schmittian) ‘decisionism’. He struggled to win and to defend the gains of victory.
He has succeeded in doing so using criteria other than or supplementary to those of Realism, of power; and introduced precisely aesthetic criteria and values especially in the notion of the heroic. Common to Realism and Romanticism is the centrality of the phenomenon of struggle, of great contestation. In the Realist tradition this is couched in terms of power, its acquisition and retention. In the Romantic tradition, the aesthetic of heroism is defined in terms of struggle. Romanticism often relies on ‘irrational’ criteria of pure feeling, while the Castroist synthesis combines passion with Reason’s reliance on science and logical argumentation, and above all on the labour of convincing, explanation, and persuasion.
The relevance of Fidel Castro’s achievement and contribution, and his political ideas could be contested on the grounds that they belong to an age that has disappeared, the age of socialism and revolution. However, the work of Nietzsche most strongly demonstrates the philosophical and intellectual validity of such excavation. Nietzsche’s critique of existing values was based on or reinforced by his contrast with values of the past, their decline, and an argument not for their restoration but for a new synthesis which would give birth to new values.
[Mr. Castro, right, and Che Guevara, the minister of industry, in Havana in the early 1960’s. Mr. Castro overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista to gain power in Cuba-NYTimes.com]
His celebration of the Homeric hero, his ambivalence towards Socrates, his discovery of the Dionysian and the dualism of the Apollonian and Dionysian and assertion of a synthesis as the source of Greek dramatic achievement, his final call in The Will to Power for “a Caesar with the soul of Christ”, illustrate this fevered search for synthesis of types and values in the creation of a new mentality and mode of being. Fidel Castro is an example of such a synthesis on the Left end of the spectrum.
His relevance is enhanced by the fact that these alternative values are incarnated and practised by him in two antithetical states of being - as armed rebel, and as ruler. Thus they constitute an all encompassing ethic and morality.
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14 Comments Add your own
1. ilaya seran senguttuven | February 20th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Like millions outside Cuba Fidel was one of my favourites too. Why? Certainly he stood against the US monolith, restored the dignity of Cuba which the US Mafia and Batista had converted into a Casino kingdom (does’nt this remind you of a country you know in the vicinity?)
making those Cuban lasses women of easy virtue. But he certainly was not without fault. He became a brutal dictator and was intolerant of other views and opinions. He jailed many of his compadres of the Revolution as “Traitors and Yankee Agents” Cubans who ate Chicken several times a week were reported to be eating Chicken only during Xmas time. Forbes Magazine may have something in calling him one of the wealthiest men in the Hemisphere. The Magazine estimated he had cash of over US$90 billion (or was it more) stashed away. In fairness to Castro he asked Forbes to show evidence - that was not forthcoming. But all these are mitigated by the simple way he chose to live among the Cuban plebians. He went everywhere and mixed with the people. Went into cheap Cafes for Coffee and Cigars and chatted with everyone around. When he went to the UN in New York he stayed in
cheap hotels in Harlem - breaking so called diplomatic tradition.
He said “Cuba is a poor country and cannot the luxury of staying at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan” (Boggles, are you listening?) I wish the change of guard was more social democratic rather than that nepotistic ritual of handing over to his brother - no similar to that joke in the other Social Utopia in Asia - North Korea.
In spite of all this Fidel Castro will be remembered in history
kindly. And, in the eyes of the young in the developing world he - together with Che Guevera - will always be Heroes for a long time to come.
2. Diplomut | February 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Castro and Jayatillake are both antiques. old theories, socially and economically expensive to maintain, bankrupt notions, trying to hold a population hostage to their antique values, spreading unhappiness and poverty.
Without the Russians and now Hug Chavez of Venezuela, Cuba and its people would be starving. So much for his ethic and morality.
3. Jack Ranasinghe | February 20th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Congratulations Dayan. Great article. This sort of meandering esoteric yet sometimes though provoking vapour is your forte. Everytime your pen strays into Sri Lanka’s ethnic issue, you expose yourself. Although you may feel compelled to do so from time to time, you don’t have justify your paycheck. The YOBs are too busy with their hands in the cookie jar to notice that you’re not doing your propaganda job.
4. Ratnam Ganesh | February 20th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Dear Diploumat,
Jayatilleke’s theory variies with the governments that change and he looks for oppertunities.But Fidel stood for principle.His theory is no comparison.
It is Fidel and and his intelegence that saved Hugo Chevez..I visited Cuba recently.Of course they are poor because many countries do not want to support a communist country.Further every one shares equally.May be a few privillaged whom I haven’t seen there but may be.Average people manage and the country as a whole looks much better than Sri Lanka where some people rich and others are very poor.
Are people in Sri Lanka happy with the war,unemployment,Economy and the rest…?
5. Dayan Jayatilleka | February 21st, 2008 at 7:29 am
Admirers of Fidel Castro and Cuba who are simultaneously hostile to the Sri Lankan state have this question to ask themselves: how is it that Cuba and Sri Lanka have had warm, excellent relations throughout the decades, including under “Yankee Dicky” JR Jayewardene, while Cuba has never once spoken sympathetically of the Tamil separatist cause or struggle?
As for those who see a contradiction betwen my support of Fidel Castro and the Sri Lankan state specially under patriotic populist leaders such as Premadasa and Mahinda, all I can do is urge them to read Fidel’s views on the breakup of Yugoslavia, and his disclosure that he (unsucessfully) urged Milosevic to ” resist! resist! resist” the NATO troops in Kosovo. Cuba and Sri Lanka, two small islands, stand for the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement. Castro has always stood with utmost firmness and militancy for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states, and against any Western interference ..which he demonstrated by sending troops to fight in the Ogaden, against the Somali attempt to break up Ethiopia.
6. Diplomut | February 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Milosovic, Castro and the rest were oppressors of their peoples, resulting in mass exodus of their populations. Yankee Dicky stood by and watched Tamils being burnt in 83 and presided over another exodus.
You are over and over again exposing your unsuitability to hold office in exposing yourself as a confused man living in the past.
Your hero’s are marx, lenin, Castro and other despots who brought so much suffering on their own peoples.
It is people like you who are dragging our country into oblivion. Do us all a favour and return back to your university where you can do your lenin, marx and castro thing, without causing damage to Sri Lanka.
7. ilaya seran senguttuven | February 22nd, 2008 at 3:42 am
Dayan (5) …. In as much as Cuba was not known to have openly expressed sympathy with Tamil Liberation cause, it is equally true Fidel/ the Cuban govt never spoke against the Tamil struggle either. Yet, given Fidal’ s known and established inclination towards liberation struggles globall, it is not difficult to speculate where his sympathies would have been. It certainly would have been unequivocally in the same direction when you were yourself part of the Tamil struggle - with those fine lads of the EPRF headed by the superb Padmanabha - brutally killed by monsters. I don’t think JRJ, very much wanting to be the head of NAM at that time, would have done anything to gain Fidel’s wrath. The JRJ-Castro relationship, therefore, was very good to the extent where Castro sent lovely Havana Cigars to JRJ regularly. And, when that great journalist of this country - never to be enticed or seduced by high office or perks - the late Mervyn de Silva - called on JRJ regularly, he was given these delicious Cigars, which many a time Mervyn shared with me and close friends. Mervyn, being what Mervyn, was - in spite of the courtesies sorroundng these regular visits to
“Breamar” - often wrote critically of JRJ’s politics. That is the culture and history of these fine men who were journalists whose names are referred to in reverential terms. These are known more to you than anyone else - with the natural advantage that was yours in the equation…. That phsyco Slobodan Milosevic made the miscalculation of under-estimating the Kosovan struggle because the latter were much smaller in number than the Serbs - a serious error our own leaders are not free from. Milosovic let lose his animals on innocent Kosovan girls and women - who duly raped them mercilessly - all because they were different from the Serb Christians. They were predominantly Albanian Muslims. And, now after Timor leste we have the UDI of Kosovo despite powerful protests from Russia, China and Spain - who are all themselves facing serious threats of breakaway regions themselves…In the position you are in you will do well to familiarise your current employer and Brothers Inc and make them wiser with the ways of the world - which is so far removed from that those sorrounding Mahinda R have painted for him…In your present re-incarnation you refer to Premadasa as “patriotic and populist” and club him with Mahinda..Hmmm. Mahinda may not have agreed with this description when Premadasa was boss.
In fact, we certainly felt bad when crackers were lit when
Premadasa - “the patriotic and populist” man you refer to - died because it was repugnant to the culture and nature of our
people. Many then did not agree with us and went on to lighting these crackers - Mahinda R was’nt too far from the scene …But such indeed are the ways of this cruel and uncaring world, eh?”..
8. Sinhalese | February 22nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
Parabhakaran also a Despot worse or mre like Polpot. Diplomut may be does not know that lot of Sinhala youth in 80 to 90s supported Tamil Liberation struggle. It all changed when Prabha and his gang massacred Progressive Tamil forces. Only this Madbahu with nonsense theory supports LTTE and Prabha now. We don’t. Mahind and any one else lesser Devil compare to Prabhakaran. (That does not mean I support murder and mayham by Pilliyan karuna gang or some Army gangs murder of 5 Trinco Students etc). Lenin supported Polish Independence as you Tamils does not know. But Polish Lib Struggle did not have suicide bombers and child killers. You can say now Army also kills children by bombing. We never support that. Specialy areail bombing. But Prabhas method of fighing attracts own destruction of Tamils. Tamils are still (specialy in west) in cuckoo land in reference to Ealm and Prabha.
9. Dayan Jayatilleka | February 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 am
Dear Diplomut,
I do wish the international community here at the UN in Geneva shared your view of my unsuitabilty, so i could have a little free time and my wife and i could enjoy this place more! Right now i have elected unanimously or by consensus, (1) a Vice presdent of the Human rights Council, (2) the chairman of he governing Body of the ILO, (3) the co-ordinator on general disarmament in the Conference on Disarmament (4) The Chairman of the Intergovernmental working group on the implementation of the Durban declaration and programe of action ( i.e. the UN anti-racism conference) and (5) a jury member of the international Time for peace Film and Music awards. So, Diplomut, can’t you please, please do me a big personal favour and convince them of your view that i am “are over and over again exposing your unsuitability to hold office in exposing yourself as a confused man living in the past”?
10. Dayan Jayatilleka | February 22nd, 2008 at 9:53 am
Dear readers ,
I thought i’d share with you the following assesment of Fidel Castro, by the biographer of Che Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson, published today ( Friday, Feb 22) in the Guardian, UK:
“…Fidel has always seen himself, his countrymen and Cuba itself as engaged in a heroic struggle - for socialism, against imperialism, in defence of national sovereignty and so on …
Long before he became a socialist, Fidel was an ardent Cuban nationalist who conceived of his revolution as the restorative antidote to his country’s history of Yankee midwifery. Later, he came to believe that he and his revolution had finally secured full Cuban national sovereignty - or, as he often referred to it, its “dignity” - by standing up to the United States and by surviving.
In a conversation we had in 2006, Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba’s National Assembly, suggested that Cuba’s independence was the most important achievement of Fidel and his revolution…”
11. villa anand | February 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 am
Dayan Dayan on our comment 5;
Those who admire Fidel, admirer him for his dedication to his ideology, resisting US influence in South America, standing up for Cuba’s sovereignty, his ability to survive for so long as the leader of a country in the backyard of the most brutal and strongest nation in the world and defying openly. That does not mean we need to look for what he has approved, not approved, spoken sympathetically, or not. Your reference to Fidel is like religious fundamentalists quoting few scientific discoveries in isolation and claiming their faith is in acceptance with science.
We know that even though Cuba and Sri Lanka have had warm, excellent relations, Yankee Dicky” JR was not Fidel’s buddy. Was Fidel sympathetic towards Mrs. Banda when JR took away her civic rights? What was his position on JVP uprising and the government’s brutal crackdown? He may have an opinion, but never stated it. Having a good relationship with a country does not mean you endorse every thing they do. Cuba had excellent relationship with Soviet Union, but did Castro accept the revisionist policies of that country? No.
Every situation and every circumstance is unique. Fidel being an admirer of Nehru and Indira Gandhi would have endorsed the split of Bangladesh even though it affected the unity and territorial integrity of then Pakistan. It is no secret India under India provided training for Tamil militants. You yourself admitted that you took up political militancy; did you seek Castro’s approval? You might have changed your position by believing in Indo- Lanka accord and 13th amendment. But most Tamil’s don’t.
Even though Cuba is poor, the Cubans are proud and united as one nation, because there is no racial discrimination. The Spanish descendents are not treated differently from the African descendents. The constitution does not refer to and give prominence to any language or religion. If Sri Lanka is governed by Fidel Castro, Tamils will be happy but Mahinda brothers and probably you will be the ones getting on to a boat and leave the island like the Miami Cubans.
Please do not insult Fidel Castro by comparing him to the clowns of Sri Lanka and make us believe that he will endorse their buffoonery
12. ilaya seran senguttuven | February 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I have conceded the good Fidel did to the country he loved, the dignity he restored to his Motherland. The educated Lawyer that he was coming from a reasonably wealth family he could have worked towards a comfortable and successful life in Cuba. But for some,
likeSWRD, Keneuman, my friend Kumar Ponnambalam and others, personal wealth and comfort come well below that of love of country and people. Fidel failed to lift the economic level of his country despite a long innings of total political power. He did not allow democratic socialism to develop. He jailed many of his comrades whom he thought was a threat to his political leadership. He misread that he and only he will decide what is good for Cuba and the Cubans.
In his congenital rage against the USA he schemed with Khruschev’s Russia to turn Cuba into a nuclear arsenal to be turned against the USA.He brought the world almost to an end in 1962. I had my own thoughts of the CIA and some Americans in the Establishment. But there is no doubt the vast majority of Americans are good, innocent people whose wealth (n food production, scientific invention) they share with the world. Their excellent educational instituitions are open to all our children (including you, I think) Therefore, this is the darker side of our common hero Fidel. He is to Latin America what Robert Mugabe is to Africa. We all supported Mugabe when he fought against Ian Smith but we never expected him to become the dictatorial brute he has become reducing that wonderful country that was known as the Bread Basket of Africa to that level where 3 million have illegally crossed to S.Africa merely to get a meal a day. Some who begin as socialists end up as awful dictatorial morons. Castro was not as bad and unacceptable to his people as Mugabe. But together with Castro’s large reservoir of good to Cuba and the Cubans, he too was not free from that condition which the Bible refers to as “weakness of the flesh” Let me again reiterate in spite
of faults Fidel Castro will be remembered in history
as a romantic, fearless fighter for justice and fair play for his people against great odds. If allowed to themselves the Cubans and Americans will build a new and more friendlier relationship
across ideological and polical considerations.
13. Sri | February 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 am
Dayan,
Your article is superb. but you had compromised with some subsequent stupid responses to the comments -the same argumentative mania!
Castro is not God, so are Marx, Engels ,Lenin and Stalin. But you Marxist always have hairsplitting arguments on every action and every word spoken by them even in different contexts, sometimes contradicting their own previous opinions and treat them as gospel truth.
By the bye, Dayan are you still a Marxist? or were you ever a Marxist?
These adherences are not even dogmatic, but like blind religious discourse faithfully interpreted by all Marxist and their fellow travelers including you.
History will judge Castro as a great human being, a revolutionary, a rebel and a doer unlike many Marxist who were simply only argumentative, idle theoreticians.
Castro was not a Marxist before Cuban Revolution and was not supported by Soviet Union until Castro captured power and sought the help of this super power- the Soviet Union against USA, not in the great tradition of socialist or nonaligned movement, but as a tactical move. To play one against the other.
.
Please correct me if I am wrong!
The hostility with the Americans and the alliance with Russians lasted almost 50 years. During this long period, .Castro continued his revolutionary assistance,not as astoge of Soviet Union,but in the great revolutionary traditionj, to the anti colonial and national liberation movements not only in Latin America but internationally including Africa, not merely vocal but by action with deployment of troops.
Real solidarity with the oppressed people!.
There could not be any doubt where his sympathies would have been in Sri Lanka.
14. Argonot | February 23rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Dayan, I agree with you that Fidel Castro is to be admired for liberating Cuba from the corrupt dictator Fulgenico Batisto and getting rid off American influenced Prostitutuion,gambling casinos and the MAFIA.Most of all he will be remembered for standing up to America.
It is an insult to Fidel Castro for you to make any comparison with Sri Lanka or with our past and current leaders.
Your Marxist/Leninist theory was ok at a particular point in the world history. However, in the long run all the countries which embraced Marxisam has failed.
Answer Me why did the Soviet Union disintrgrate!!
Why are so Many former Soviet union block countries are queuing to join European Union!!
Why are so many cubans have either left or want to leave the country!!
Communist experiment has not worked and will not work in the modern context. Even China is fast moving towards Free Market economy.
In conclusion, I suggest the only comparison between Cuba and Sri Lanka is that both are failed states and have missed many opportunities to uplift the living standard of its people.
Also in both countries many citizens have left or are attempting to leave the country. The only thing Sri Lanka can boast about is producing house maids to send to Middle East to earn Foreign Exchange.
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