Ceylon Today Editorial

CASTRO – THE SAGA CONTINUES

27 November 2016

From femme females to poisoned milkshakes, Fidel Castro ran the gamut of hundreds of assassination attempts (much of it romanticized exaggeration) since he became (rather made himself!) the Prime Minister of Cuba in February of 1959. He would have well been reminiscing in his years in retirement, Havana cigar clutched between tobacco-stained teeth, with his made-for-drama belligerent and almost Churchillian glare, and guffawing at the CIA's failed attempts to kill him through the US presidencies of Eisenhower (38 tries), Kennedy (42 tries), Johnson (72 tries) and an unconfirmed 184 times during the Nixon presidency.

Fidel, who unleashed a global scare with the Russian-Cuban missile crisis lived to however see the impossible happen – normalization of relations with the US in July 2015...a far cry from the volcano cusp heat of relations that existed since the US slapped a crushing embargo on him back in 1960.Was he satisfied with the fruits of his revolution? History could be mixed up on that score.

Suffice it to say, due to lack of space, that he did, with telling impact, change the course of Cuban history forever, when in 1958 Batista failed to snuff out the uprising that Castro managed to drum up...much or most of it successful exclusively because the then Soviet Russia found it 'expedient' to finance and arm the revolution. The impossible happened. January 1, 1959, Castro grabbed control with a string of counter-attacks against everything that Batista could throw at him and found, himself marching into Havana where he took over as Prime Minister...leaving it to a slew of revolutionary tribunals which tried and executed members of the Batista regime for supposed war crimes.

Castro then rolled back every pro-US 'advance' made under Batista, beginning the next year, 1960, to nationalize all US-owned businesses, including oil refineries, factories and casinos, compelling the US to sever all diplomatic relations and clap the massive trade embargo on Cuba.The catastrophic Bay of Pigs CIA planned invasion needs no mention here except to add that the few who survived of the trained Cuban exiles used by the CIA were released by Castro in April 1961, in exchange for US$ 52 million worth medical supplies and baby food items. Friends were apparently not coming to Castro's aid, post-revolution. That did not stop him declaring himself a Marxist-Leninist in late 1961...a move that was stoke similar but pie-in-the-sky revolutionary stunt from Sri Lanka's local Marxists-Leninists, many of whom are now quite well reformed and honourable devotees at the shrine of parliamentary democracy at the Diyawanna Oya! Their comrades did not have it as good as Castro did simply because they had no method to their madness. Castro, supposedly an intellectual of sorts, however failed to foresee reality...and fortunately too, global changes brought about pragmatic rationalism to the fore ending the embargo and restoring US-Cuban relations.

The Soviets used Castro's need for aid, financial and military, to stealthily send, all the way from Russia, nuclear missiles to Cuba, just 90 miles across the bay from Florida triggering fears of WWIII. The world knows all about how Khrushchev blinked first before Kennedy and removed the nukes, against Castro's wishes, who was left out of the negotiations. In return Kennedy consented not to reinvade Cuba.... And...as an irony of history would have it consented to take American nuclear weapons out of Turkey...a region into which the US is today sending in more weapons and men as the old 'Soviet' spirit personified in Putin seeks to resuscitate the long-dead USSR.

Yes, Castro abolished legal discrimination, went about some development as best as he could, creating a little employment here, electrification there, improving education and healthcare. But commentators are agreed that all that or more would have happened to make life for the Cubans a better lot even under Batista or someone else. Like other repressive Marxist States however, Castro, though he came short of the white van and hooded motorcycle killer culture in Sri Lanka of recent years, did ruthlessly shut down all opposition newspapers, jailed thousands of political opponents and that was the end of democratic elections in the truer essence of the phrase...much of it persisting to this day. His policies were to leave their mark on governance by the Marxist-Leninist friends in Sirima Bandaranaike's Cabinet that almost plunged the nation into economic chaos.

In Sri Lanka, many salute the great man at his death, if only for his sincerity of intent, albeit lacking realpolitik rationale. But Castro himself would probably laugh at the absurdity of the concept of NAM, with Sri Lanka in recent years the very antithesis of its founding principles.