The Real Fidel Castro

348 Pages·2005·1.19 MB·English

by  Leycester Coltman

The Real Fidel Castro

The Real Fidel Castro
Leycester Coltman
With a Foreword by Julia E. Sweig
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Sir Leycester Coltman
Foreword, copyright © 2003 by Julia E. Sweig
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected] www.yaleup.co.uk
Set in Adobe Garamond by Northern Phototypesetting Ltd, Bolton, Lancs
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coltman, Leycester.
The real Fidel Castro / by Leycester Coltman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–300–10188–0 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Castro, Fidel, 1926– 2. Cuba—History—1933–1959. 3. Cuba—History—1959–
4. Heads of state—Cuba—Biography. I. Title.
F1788.22.C3C59 2003
972.9106´4´092—dc21 2003012942
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Foreword by Julia E. Sweig vii
Preface ix
Map xi
1 Rebel in Search of a Cause 1
2 Alone on the Beach 16
3 Lessons in Revolution 30
4 Part-time Husband and Lawyer 46
5 The Movement 59
6 Moncada Lives! 80
7 Prison and Exile 93
8 In the Sierra 113
9 Power 140
10 Invasion 167
11 The Missile Crisis 187
12 Revolution and More Revolution 203
13 The Private Man 219
14 The Economy, a Poet and Chile 227
15 Leader of the Third World 237
16 The Old Order Changes 247
17 Hard Times 267
18 The Final Hour? 282
19 Second Wind 301
20 End Game 314
Select Bibliography 323
Index 325
Illustrations
1. Castro, aged eighteen (Associated Press, AP)
2. Castro in his early twenties (Camera Press)
3. Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, March 1958 (Associated
Press, AP)
4. Castro with his son Fidelito, in Havana, February 1959 (Associated
Press, AP)
5. Castro, appointed prime minister, 16 February 1959 (Associated
Press, AP)
6. Castro at the March 1960 funeral procession for victims of the
La Coubre explosion (Associated Press, AP)
7. The prime minister as manual worker, February 1961 (Associated
Press, AP)
8. Castro at the Cuban inter-provincial baseball championships, February
1977 (Associated Press, AP)
9. Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, May 1963 (Camera Press)
10. Castro and his brother Raul, May 1993 (Associated Press, AP)
11. Castro and Pope John Paul II, January 1998 (Associated Press, AP)
12. Ramon Castro and the British Ambassador with Baroness (Janet)
Young in 1991 (author’s collection)
13. Castro and United Nations Secrretary-General Kofi Annan, April 2000
(Associated Press, AP)
14. Fidel Castro with Leycester Coltman (author’s collection)
Foreword
In The Real Fidel Castro, Sir Leycester Coltman offers a unique contribution
to the literature on the Cuban revolution and the political life of its leader
Fidel Castro. Since the early 1960s American readers have been limited to
biographical and historical treatments of Castro written mainly by North
Americans excessively distracted by the questions and concerns of the Cold
War or by Cuban exiles with an axe to grind. Sir Leycester’s perspective offers
a welcome new depiction of recent Cuban history and of Fidel Castro Ruz,
the man most associated with that country’s successes and failures over the
last forty-five years. And the book provides an excellent complement and
update to a work published fifteen years ago by Wayne S. Smith, the retired
US diplomat who served two tours of duty, first as a junior officer in the late
1950s and later as President Carter’s envoy during that administration’s
attempt to improve relations with Cuba in the late 1970s.
Whereas Smith left Havana in 1981, resigning from the US Foreign
Service in protest over the Reagan administration’s reversals of the Carter
initiative, Coltman began his service as British Ambassador there ten years
later, in 1991, and stayed until 1994. Other than the years 1959 to 1962,
which saw the birth and radicalisation of the revolution, the emergence of a
counter-revolution, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the
beginning of Soviet sponsorship, I can think of no other three-year period
which was as significant in terms of recent Cuban history.
During Coltman’s stay, the world changed for Cuba. The Soviet Union
withdrew its troops and eliminated its multi-billion dollar annual subsidy to
the island; the US tightened its trade embargo; thousands of Cuban troops
returned from Angola, the country’s last major international mission; Fidel
Castro adopted a series of economic reforms that, while stopping far short of
full blown liberalisation, converted a solidly statist economy into a mixed
economy and began, in the Pope’s subsequent formulation, to open Cuba to
the world.
viii Foreword
Coltman brings a keen, wry and subtle eye to these critical events, to
Castro’s decision-making process, and to many other dimensions of the
revolution’s history, narrating the story with a mixture of insight drawn from
his personal interaction with Castro and a scholar’s approach to history. Like
the great British historian of Cuba, Hugh Thomas, Coltman’s voice is partic-
ularly refreshing for the American reader precisely because he is, well, not
American. Yet he is a close enough cousin to provide an analysis of Fidel
Castro as a politician without having to qualify, demonise and caveat his way
through the story.
The full history of British relations with Latin America during the Cold
War period has yet to be written. Given a further opportunity Sir Leycester
Coltman may have shared more observations of his own country’s approach
to Cuba and to the hemisphere. His book is a careful and highly readable, if
modestly indirect, introduction to this wider story.
Julia E. Sweig
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations and author of
Inside the Cuban Revolution (2002)
July 2003
Preface
Leycester Coltman was born in 1938 and educated at Rugby School and
Magdalene College, Cambridge. He later spent a sabbatical year at the
Manchester Business School.
After joining the British Diplomatic Service he served in Copenhagen,
Cairo, Brasilia, Mexico City, Brussels and latterly as British Ambassador in
Havana (1991–4) and Bogota (1994–8). During spells in the Foreign Office
in London he served in the Eastern Department (on the Jordan desk), in the
Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department (responsible for liaison with the
Intelligence Services), as Deputy Head of the Southern European Depart-
ment, as Head of the Mexico and Central America Department (during the
period of the Contra war in Nicaragua and the invasion of Panama) and,
before being posted to Cuba, as Head of the Latin America Department.
An important part of a diplomat’s work is to sift through a mass of infor-
mation, misinformation, press reports, rumours and gossip in order to
separate fact from fiction and provide an accurate and balanced account of
what is really going on in the country at issue. In a closed society like that of
Cuba this is a difficult task requiring knowledge and experience. Much of
Coltman’s diplomatic career had been spent on political work, especially in
Latin America. He was ideally placed to understand and describe the complex
historical and psychological forces which moulded Fidel Castro.
During Coltman’s service both in London and in Cuba he had access to
information additional to that obtained from direct contacts with Castro
and others. This gave him a unique perspective from which to assess the
credibility of the many witnesses who have written or talked about their
particular encounters with Castro. Coltman accompanied many visitors in
calls on Castro and saw how the Commandant behaved with both friends
and enemies. And Castro would often visit the ambassador’s residence
for lengthy and relaxed conversations with Coltman. He was therefore
unusually well-placed to make sense of the apparent contradictions in Castro’s
personality.