“Not Only for my Country”

from Limes 4/2004

By Lucio Caracciolo

Cuba loves to think of itself as exceptional.The first to believe it was Christopher Columbus, Cuban ante litteram by right of discovery, mistaking it for a continent. Its current master,
Fidel Castro Ruz, is certainly convinced of it. For whose rather enlarged ego that stretch of Caribbean land is the launching pad for global ambition, echoed in universalist rhetoric:
the revolt of the oppressed peoples against the arrogance of the great, of the Third World periphery against the neocolonial metropolises.

Hence three paradoxes.

First: Cuban internationalism presupposes an equally emphatic nationalism.
To speak to the world, Castro wanted to transform the Strait of Florida into a mental and geopolitical abyss. Fidel’s revolution—tan cubana como las palmas (as Cuban as the palm trees)—is not only the last victorious war of independence. Much more, it is the attempt to define a national identity in contraposition to the North American colossus. Along the track traced by apostle of the Cuban nation, Jose Marti (1853-1895), dedicated to the mission of “preventing in time, with Cuba’s Independence, the United States’ spreading over the Antilles and flowing with this greater strength over our lands of America” (see note 1).
But if Marti, in the wake of Simon Bolivar, entwined the national scale with the continental one—emancipating the Cuban homeland from Spain, saving it from US greed for controlling Latin America—Castro has managed to argue and to act on a global scale.
Nor would he have been able to do otherwise, once he identified himself as the implacable enemy of the greatest world power.

Second: Cuba’s independence from the USA was founded for three decades on economic and strategic dependence on the Soviet Union. Seen from Moscow, the queen of the Antilles was “a porcupine situated 144 kilometers from the coast of the USA” (Nikita Khrushchev) - (see note 2). Castro’s masterpiece was to never get completely squashed by the USSR, sparing the “porcupine” from being mixed up in the vast bestiary of the “socialist field”, diminished to a Caribbean popular democracy. Castroist Cuba could not relinquish its geopolitical exceptionality.

Third and greatest paradox: to survive the desmerengamiento (dismemberment) of the Soviet bloc and the consequent international isolation, Castro has tenaciously rejected any foolish aspirations for internal reform. The economy remains centralized, save for scant margins of cuentapropismo (self-employed workers), recently restricted to expenditures for masseurs, barbers and news vendors. In the 1990’s, instead of perestroika, Fidel preferred touristroika.
The tourist sector, valued source of currency, is in the hand of the military, guided by the younger brother and number two in the regime, Raul. So today, two societies exist side by side in Cuba: that which has access to the American dollar and that which is just getting by on the Cuban peso; the first basically Creole, the second largely black.
Result: the dictatorship endures, but the egalitarianism—one of the ideological pillars of the revolution along with independence and internationalism—is sacrificed daily on the altar of the almighty dollar.

The only chance left to the caudillo is to cherish an apocalyptic patriotism. Almost as if the only alternative for the regime is to embroider the estrella solitaria of the Cuban flag—faithfully on the American one—among the fifty sister stars and stripes of the constellation. But those who are not part of the nomenklatura are always poorer and always less disposed to attribute their suffering to the American embargo alone.

What remains then of the revolution of the barbudos, forty-five years after Fidel’s triumph and the first prophecies of its inevitable end, and fifteen years since the suicide of its principle strategic ally? To come up with a balance sheet, it is best to first investigate the character traits of an geopolitical exception, able to broadcast its myth to the whole world, well-beyond the ploughed fields of the communist idea or Third World solidarity.

For forty years, from the triumph of the Castroist revolution (1959) to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), Cuba asserted itself as a global geopolitical actor. Why? Primarily thanks to its lider maximo, a leader with ambitions that dwarfed the actual size of his country.
He is living proof of the importance of personality in history, able to transform a tropical archipelago, elevating it to a protagonist on the international scene. Today it seems incredible, but it was for Cuba that in 1962, the USA and USSR were on the verge of open war and nuclear holocaust. If we wanted to make a comparison with another dictator capable of transforming a pawn into a bishop on the global chessboard, we could invoke Tito with his Yugoslavia (Fidel if anything acted like a Caballo—Horse, a nickname acquired as a guerilla in the Sierra Maestra and then extended to his sexual prowess—thanks to his unscrupulousness.)

Castro embodies Cuban exceptionalism. We can’t reduce him to a single mould.
He is not attached to a doctrine. Or better, he himself is the doctrine.
The Cuban revolution is Fidel; there is no fidelism without Fidel. The archetype of the charismatic leader, gifted with mesmeric appeal. A sharp contrast from the odious and hated Raul, brother and heir apparent, Fidel is admired by many. Sometimes even to those who oppose him. Still now, at 77 years (see note 3), after having saturated his people with barrages of televised addresses and fluvial oratory performances, he enjoys a certain popularity.
That which is owed to an aging monarch who can’t renounce the throne, because even if he wanted his nomenklatura would prevent him from doing so, fearful of disappearing along with him. If the caudillo offered himself to the verdict of an authentic popular vote—as leader of the state, not of course as Secretary of the Communist Party—he would risk victory.
But the risk appears theoretical because, according to Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Fidel privately declared: “I don’t hold elections because no me sale los cojones”(see note 4) .

The vulgate depicts him as a communist autocrat. The noun is exact. Fidel’s source of power is the revolution and “one doesn’t desert a revolution” (see note 5). Put simply, Fidel considers himself president for life. The adjective on the other hand is imprecise. Not just because the lider maximo publicly embraced Marxism-Leninism only a couple of years after having taken power nor does he appear to have studied in-depth the doctrine and history, to the extent that for Che Guevara in December 1957 he was still “an authentic leader of the bourgeois left” (see note 6). Above all, the commander in chief of the revolution is a patriot. Even though a second generation Cuban, son of a rich landowner of European descent, Castro considers himself the heir and fulfiller of the independence movements of Jose Marti, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, a concentration of the cubanismo that according to Guillermo Cabrera Incapo concerns the romantic idea of death and sacrifice, on which the leader of the rebel army grafts a well-displayed sense of honor. Still, Castro carries the stigma of the ortodoxo, disciple of the charismatic Eduardo Chibas (1907-1951) and of his anti-corruption campaigns. Finally, he remains an admirer of Simon Bolivar, whose cult of continental unity Fidel absorbed in his youthful wanderings through Latin America and finds today in his Venezuelan ally, Hugo Chavez. All filtered through the immeasurable, capricious idea of himself—never really distinguished from the tragicomic cults of personality so beloved of Asian communists—and through discipline exercised not too spontaneously in the halls of the Jesuits. In his study in Havana, only just liberated from the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista—for a long time much more pro-Communist than Fidel—hangs in fact, together with a map of Cuba, a portrait of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Castro’s vanity hinged until the 1990’s upon an exceptional geopolitical circumstance. In the bipolar world of the Cold War—almost a modern Tordesillas (see note 7) —Cuba could multiply the returns of its historical-geographical position as “garden of entrance” in the American Mediterranean. Well before, Alfred Mahan, the high priest of American naval power, had renamed Havana “the Gibraltar of the Gulf”. In the zero-sum logic of the East-West conflict, the emancipation of Cuba from US hegemony threw open the doors of the American continent to the Eurasian rival, in violation of that most sacred of American geopolitical postulates, the Monroe Doctrine (see note 8). Since 1961, Cuba has defined itself as “the first socialist territory of the Western Hemisphere”. Thus changed the internal front of the Cold War for Washington. The illusion of manipulating Fidel vanished, not stopping with overthrowing him (the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, April 1961), assassinating him (the Cuban secret services count, through 1997, 637 failed attempts on his life) or at least isolating him.

After four centuries of Spanish domination and sixty years of US control, Cuba agreed with the USSR upon a sort of life insurance breached only by the disappearance of the protector power. But under the Soviet umbrella the Cuban “porcupine” cultivated an original terzismo geopolitico. “We are attached to various blocs and to none”, explained Castro in October of 1977 (see note 9). Cuba presented itself to the world in the 1970’s as a model of emancipation from the neocolonial trap. This often conflicted with Soviet interests. Into the East-West conflict, Castro integrated the North-South struggle. From this sprang a very peculiar diagonal: from Cuba’s viewpoint, the Second World (socialist bloc) was the fulcrum for pitting the Third World against the first.

Havana during the Sixties was the capital of the world revolution. Not the classic Marxist revolution, in the name of the proletariat, but the Martist one, in the name of the poor and oppressed of the world. Connecting the anti-colonial revolts to the “non-aligned” movement, Castro promoted a Third World axis of Cuba-Algeria-Congo-Vietnam-Indonesia. In January of 1966, Havana hosted the First Tricontinental Conference. The European followers of Marx’s theories, beginning with Jean-Paul Sartre, went on pilgrimages to Cuba.Cuban messianism reached its zenith.

According to some, at this point, a crisis would have matured between Fidel and Che. Between Castro, custodian of the domestic revolution, prudent statist and realist, and the internationalist Guevara, launched on the foquista adventure, to turn the Andes into a South American Sierra Maestra. This legend perhaps serves to boost the myth of Che. Of course two hypertrophied personalities were confronting one another; two inimitable existential and political parabolas. But between him and Castro there was a division of labor in the sphere of a common strategy to export the revolution. This is documented at least as far as Africa is concerned, where predominantly black Cuban troops, in a sort of inversion of the slave route, fought in the hundreds of thousands until the 1980’s (see note 10).

In geostrategic terms it was a total failure. Costing a fortune in Soviet finances and forcing the Cuban regime to resort to narcotrafficking just in order to maintain the foolish ambitions of spreading the revolution. But the Thirdworldist campaigns served to popularize the myth of the Cuban David in struggle against the American Goliath, by the account of the peoples oppressed by neocolonialism, for whom Che is the supreme icon. And they supported the representation of Cuba as “Afro-Latin” nation, so dear to Castro (see note 11) .

It is only today, in a world without the USSR, that the geopolitical thirdism is revealed as a good investment for the regime. When anti-Americanism is in style almost everywhere, Cuba enjoys its repercussions, through its soft power, as it were. One image in particular: while at the Olympic games in Athens, the US athletes tried to keep a low profile so as not to draw attention in a rather hostile environment, the Cubans paraded effigies of Fidel and Che with glee.

The anti-imperialist myth endures. Paradoxically, because it failed, conferring on its transcontinental adventures a still-seductive legendary hue, not only in the Latin American context, or among the anti-globalization protestors. Without the cult of Guevarian foquismo, remodulated by Castro in a national-patriotic key as a hymn to the Cuban revolution, the regime might already have collapsed. If the Castroist dictatorship has not ended up as one of the Soviet Communist dominoes, the reason is simple: it was never just communist, much less Soviet.

Since the Russian tricolor replaced the Red Flag on the highest yard in of the Kremlin, Castro has sought to escape isolation. Cuba has changed very little for the lider maximo. The proud anti-Yankee bastion threatens to be reduced to a “normal” country. To conserve the state of exception—hence the legitimacy of the revolutionary power—the regime will try anything.

On the internal front, Castro proclaimed in 1990 the “special period”, taking care of the image of the father of the country. But he refused to make any openings toward a multiparty system and democracy. Nor was any serious liberalization of the economy discussed. Inefficiency, the black market and corruption increased. Education and medicine, pride of the revolution, have bottomed out, save for a few niches in biotechnology.

The “social conquests of the revolution” merit however comparison to the recent past.
The Castroist propaganda omits the record that until the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, Cuba had a per capita income double that of the average Latin American nation, even if the difference between the country and the city, between blacks or mulattos and whites was great. Havana was one of the most expensive cities in the world, vital not only for casinos managed by the mafia or for the refined cuisine, but for the vivacious musical and literary culture. In 1955 the first drive-in was inaugurated, when on the island there were already 550 cinema with 370,500 seats; one out of every 25 inhabitants owned a TV, one out of every 38 a telephone and one out of every 40 a car (with the largest number of Cadillacs per capita on the planet), besides the largest Coca-Cola factory in the world (see note 12).
The lifestyle in Havana was heavily Americanized. The metropolis of the Antilles seemed more modern than Miami or New Orleans (see note 13).

The monoculture of sugar has waned (now Cuba imports it, primarily from Brazil), while the accumulation of capital remains very low and foreign investment insufficient, a country in debt up to its neck remains afloat thanks to tourism and the transfer of funds from emigrants, who on several occasions, Fidel has allowed to escape across the border to relieve himself of troublesome opponents. There are very few active dissidents, each one suspecting the other, having been infiltrated by Security agents and snubbed by the Cuban American exile groups (who themselves, as we shall see, are anything but harmonious).

In the elite of power, more and more militarized and organized for hangers-on, there persists the “curse of the number three”—he who draws too close to the dome of the Castro brothers is liquidated (Ochoa) or outcast (Robaina).

On the external side, the last fifteen years have been marked by the strain of breaking through isolation. From helping Latin American governments to mediate peace with the guerrillas at one time subsidized by Cuba (see note 14), to rapprochement with European countries, particularly the France of Mitterand and the Spain of Gonzalez yesterday (and perhaps of Zapatero today), to the axis with Chavez’s Bolivarist Venezuela and overtures to the South American giants, Lula’s Brazil and Kirchner’s Argentina. Some flash still illuminates the autumn of the Cuban patriarch on the world stage. But Cuba matters too little for the major powers, nr can it presume to export abroad a crumbling socio-political model.

So today to prop itself up, the Castroist regime relies on demonizing Bush’s America. For Fidel it is a “nazifascist regime” (see note 15) that threatens to invade Cuba. And therefore, the commander in chief concludes rhetorically: “Who, gentlemen, are the principle defenders of socialism in Cuba?Themselves!”—the Americans (see note 16). The dictator’s hope is that the economic bloqueo with which for almost half a century ten presidents have sought to subdue it with endure forever, if he wanted to, Castro would have been able to reduce it through some indication of internal liberalization. But it is a luxury that the regime cannot afford.
The opening to the United States would close the revolutionary era. “We would be an offshoot of Miami”, explains Fidel (see note 17). It remains to be explained why Washington continues to offer him the formidable alibi of the embargo.

Cuba is for the United States a question of internal politics. For geographical position, for the interlacement of economic interests, already the case at the time of Spanish colonization, for the influences on a way of life. This “special intimacy”, as defined by President William McKinley (1897-1901), who futilely attempted to acquire the island from Spain for 300 million dollars, was and remains reciprocal. Monroism had for decades a parallel in the Cuban annexationists, aimed at embracing the larger American brother. The Cuban flag was first unveiled in New Orleans in 1850. The first president of the Republic, Tomas Estrada Palma, sworn in in 1901 to guarantee US interests did not hesitate to move to New York. Many independence fighters for Cuba, from Maximo Gomez (Dominican-born) to Fidel Castro himself, have not managed to completely repress a streak of admiration for America. Some historians remain convinced that if Eisenhower or Kennedy had offered a hand to Fidel instead of attempting to smother the regime in the cradle with economic reprisals, and support for the exiles and the anti-Castroist guerillas, Cuba would not have ended up in Moscow’s orbit.

Of course from Washington’s point of view the “Gibraltar of the Gulf” was never an autonomous and equal interlocutor. According to one of the most notable dissidents, the Social Democrat Manuel Cuesta Morua, the “hegemonic incontinence” and the “geopolitical ambition” of the United States in challenging Castroism, delegitimizes the democratic opposition—slandered by the regime as “American agents”—and “doubly legitimizes Cuba’s present political model”
(see note 18) .

While Castro reacted to the USSR’s suicide by tightening the screws on the regime, the United States reinforced the embargo—the Torricelli (1992) and Helms-Burton (1996) Acts—and at least in the early years of the Nineties broadcasting its certainty of the rapid fall of the Cuban leader. Quite the opposite occurred. Instead of increasing pressure on the regime, Washington’s intransigence reduced it.

On the international front, the isolated Castro presents himself as a victim of attempted economic strangulation. In the heart of the UN General Assembly the relations of force are reversed: the GlassPalacehas repeatedly voted against the US embargo, most recently by 157 votes against 3, leaving Washington in the company of the Marshall Islands and of Israel.
For some time, Havana has succeeded in dividing the Western front, allowing certain Latin American countries along with the Canadians and Europeans the vague hope that through a dialogue they might realize the invocation of Pope John Paul II in his pilgrimage to Havana (January 1998): in opening the world to Cuba, Cuba would open itself to the world.
The new wave of repression of Spring 2003 (75 dissidents incarcerated, of which 7 were released in recent months so that they would not die in prison), justified by the increased threat of American invasion, has for now crushed this expectation. But the gap between the American and European approaches—not to mention others, Latin American in particular—remains wide.

In reality the United States has no intention of invading Cuba. And it feels not the least urgency as far as overthrowing Castro, in spite of Bush’s having produced a ponderous doctrine (almost 500 pages) designed to “accelerated the democratic transition in Cuba”. The problem is not surrounding and destroying the revolutionary virus. The question is clearly domestic.
It serves to prevent the queen of the Antilles from becoming a Caribbean platform for drug trafficking, avoid waves of hundreds of thousands of off refugees that could flood the US coast in case of the sudden fall of the regime and the consequent civil war and—last but not least—ensure that Cuban exiles in Florida vote Bush in the November elections. In 2000 the incoming president obtained 80% of the Cuban vote but won Florida only by 537 highly contested votes. His permanence (or lack thereof) in the White House could depend this time on controlling that key state and thus on the Cuban American vote. As the analyst Lissa Weinmann observes, “Washington’s policy towards Cuba can be described better as an extension of policy towards Florida by other means” (see note 19).

The Cubans of America number about 1.2 million, 56% of which live in Miami-DadeCounty. Four of them are members of Congress. But how American are these Cubans? In his latest work, the political scientist Sam Huntington asserts that the impact of the Cuban and more generally the Hispanic community on Miami has produced a “virtual secession”.
“This city is separate; we have our own foreign policy”, avers one thoughtful Cuban-American quoted by Huntington (see note 20). More accurately, Cuban Americans have two internal policies—towards their adopted homeland and towards their nation of origin—that together influence US policy towards Cuba thanks to their taking root in Florida, swing state par excellence.

It is in looking to them that Bush has this summer launched severe restrictive measures on visits of the exiles to their relatives in Cuba—from once a year to once every three years—and on the possibility of daily expenditures there—from 164 to 50 dollars. For the strategists at the White House, this works to cut a major source of currency for Castro. In fact, according to UN statistics, Cuban-American visitors bring about a billion dollars to the island each year.

But a good part of the Cuban-American community is rebelling against the restrictions. According to the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago, of the University of Pittsburgh, they merely help to a deepen a rift in the Cuban community: “The solution…to end the division between two peoples (not governments) of Cuba—on the island and in the diaspora—can not be battle to the death between more than a million people in the south of Florida and over eleven million on the island”(see note 21). Many among the younger and less ideological exiles consider the measures an insult; a mistake destined to weigh down upon them and the people of Cuba and to assist Castroist propaganda (the first effect on the island was a steep rise in prices, obviously attributed to Bush). They are quite different from the refugees of the Sixties and Seventies, passionately anti-Castro, who fear that a slow transition to democracy will condemn them to death, politically-speaking, and mean the renunciation of their confiscated property on the island.

The debate over Bush’s measures—that have provoked the dissent of the House of Representatives (on June 7, 221 congressmen, among them 46 Republicans, voted against the provision, 194 in favor)—has thrown in stark relief the internal fractures of the
Cuban-American community. Disagreements have come to the fore in the last years, after the moderate turn of the Cuba American National Foundation and the subsequent secession of the “hard-liners” who left to form the Cuban Liberty Council. If the first inclines towards dialogue with the regime and favor a soft transition, the second is betting everything on toppling the regime from outside—which is to say from the United States. Bush is their last hope.
If he loses—as they fear—the Democrats’ move towards an opening to the regime would prevail (Kerry promises to increase travel permits and favors cultural exchanges). And with it the interests of the influential and largely southern agricultural and industrial lobbies, that already are successfully evading the embargo, to the extent that the United States was Cuba’s seventh-ranked commercial partner in 2003. For them, the economic blockade signifies a loss in profits and jobs all to the advantage of their international competition (for Florida alone, the loss in potential yearly profits is in the billions).

According to the anti-embargo party, in abolishing the controversial Helms-Burton Act and renewing a discrete dialogue between Washington and Havana—that was carried out undercover for four decades through private missions and more or less secret contacts—the United States would accelerate a post-Castroist transition, and avoid launching fanatical refugees across the Strait of Florida as would be precipitated by the sudden fall of the regime.

Some Cubanologists are more inclined to wager on the “biological solution”, awaiting Fidel’s death. Then, all the scenarios are possible. From the continuation of Castroism with other leaders—almost certainly not the unpopular Raul—to the civil war sparked by a rift in the armed forces, to a soft transition: the fruit of a compromise among former Castroist leaders deciding not to disappear along with the leader, supposed internal reformists (Carlos Lage), members of the military, exiles groups and members of the democratic opposition, all with the benediction of the Catholic Church.

The United States are in no hurry, Bush’s proclamations notwithstanding, the rest of the world still less so. The Europeans have other priorities, as do even the Latin Americans who still sympathize with Cuba out of anti-gringa sentiment. The image of the island is that of a travel agency: dazzling tropical beaches, easy sex, rum and cigars. The European Union has made Cuba a laboratory of sterile policy of “principles”, seeking uselessly to exchange a “critical dialogue” with modest internal openings, from which would spring a soft transition to post-Castroism. A dixi et servavi animam meam at zero cost and as much effectiveness, resulting in the diplomatic crisis of spring 2003. It was enough to induce in at least a few European governments the sense that the “politics of conditionality” is urgently in need of reviewing.

The Cubans who each day busy themselves with making the most of the libreta de abastecimiento—the meager nourishment of party membership—with activities not always commendable or gratifying, waver between the certainty of present misery and the uncertainty of an unknowable—and perhaps worse—future. They live the tiempo detenido, the time that precedes the “solution”, “biological” or otherwise. At bottom, as Danilo Manera wrote many years ago, they pay “the price of being other people’s myth, stretched between the two opposed and complementary nomenklatures: those in Miami who have made a fortune with Fidel, laying the blame on him, and those in Havana who have made a fortune with Fidel, ingloriously occupying positions of power in his shadow for too long” (see note 22).

Meanwhile, the important players cautiously position themselves for an emergency that could go off tomorrow or in several years. Fidel manages the passive assent that is left to him between patriotic/anti-American tirades and repressive crackdowns, carried out by Raul in the name of the “fight against corruption”. Evidently for the regime, repression is less costly than toleration. Even if it loses him the approval of left-wing Latin American and European intellectuals, at last scandalized by Castroist authoritarianism. To the challenge of Project Varela—a modest proposal of democratic reform launched by the traditionalist Catholic dissenter, Oswaldo Paya, who has collected more than 25 thousand adherents on the island—Fidel responded with a plebiscite declaring the socialist revolution untouchable. As far as the Church is concerned, it continues to quietly sew up the fabric of the nation, for example constructing a sort of parallel educational system.

On the American side of the Strait, the other Cuba, the one in diaspora, is preparing to settle its internal accounts and wait to see who will inhabit the White House for the next four years. Post-Castro Cuba will largely play around the future of the “second Cuba”—between two and three million people, dispersed throughout the Americas and in Europe. Only some agreement among the exile groups (mafia included), the US industrial lobbies and members of the military, perhaps already set in motion beyond the public invectives, will be able to untie the knot of property rights that threatens to stifle any post-Castroist equilibrium.

Oil could be an unbalancing factor. Cuba is hungry for black gold.Until now it has relied on the generous supply from its friend, Chavez. But if Cuban waters prove to gush crude of sufficient quality and commercial quantities, the geopolitics of the region would be turned on its head. US oil tankers are champing at the bit while European, Canadian and Brazilian firms have long been studying the Cuban waters. So far the research of the Spanish company, Repsol, conducted in the area known as Yamagua 1 , has not produced the desired results. Should that change, we could be certain that the major American companies would have already besieged the White House to convince it to revoke the embargo and completely rethink America’s strategy towards an oil-rich Cuba.

Castro saved by oil? Improbable, for now. If it happened, it would only be the umpteenth Cuban paradox. But one day someone or something will free Cuba from the prison of the myth which has forced on it a revolution reduced to devouring its children. The Cubans deserve “normalcy”. Provided that they build it themselves, por cuenta propia.


  1. C. VITIER, R. FERNANDEZ RETAMAR (translator), Marti, Rome 1995, Erre emme edizioni, p. 136.
  2. C. FURIATI, La storia mi assolverà. Vita di Fidel Castro.Una biografia consentita, Milan 2002, il Saggiatore, p. 369.
  3. Fidel Castro came into the world on August 13, 1927.In official documents he is shown as being born a year earlier.The falsification is the work of the padre, who wanted to conceal his extra conjugal roots.Castro senior in fact married Fidel’s mother only after the birth of the future lider maximo.
  4. Literally: “It doesn’t come from the testicles”.See C.A. MONTANER, “La lucida follia del lider maximo”, MicroMega, n. 1/1992, p. 52.
  5. C. FURIATI, see above, p. 548.
  6. See C. FRANQUI, Diary of the Cuban Revolution, New York 1980, Viking Press, p. 269.
  7. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7, 1494 by Spain and Portugal, assigned all lands discovered in the future east of the 46° west meridian to Portugal, and all those west to Spain.
  8. In a message to Congress on December 2, 1823, President James Monroe proclaimed his geopolitical principles, based on the prevention of any future European colonization of the Americas.That document well maintained its value over time.
  9. C. FURIATI, see above, p. 478.
  10. See in particular A. MOSCATO, Breve storia di Cuba, Roma 2004, Datanews, pp. 121-133.
  11. M. ZEUSKE, Insel der Extreme.Kuba im 20.Jarhundert, Zurich 2000, Rotpunkt Verlag, p. 233.
  12. Ibid, p. 160.
  13. So notes W. C. LANE, director of the Caterpillar Corporation, in the National Summit on Cuba (September 17-18, 2002), see www.nationalsummitoncuba.org.
  14. See D. DI SANTO, “I democratici di sinistra e l’opposizione democratica cubana”, in L’altra Cuba.La realtà cubana e l’opposizione democratica dentro Cuba, edited by the International Relations Deparment of the democratici di sinistra, supplement to number 498 of the weekly Internazionale, p. 11.
  15. A. MOSCATO, see above, p. 170.
  16. Cited in C. FURIATI, see above, p. 596.
  17. Ibid, p. 542.
  18. M.CUESTA MORUA, “Institucionalidad politica y cambio democratico”, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, n. 32, primavera 2004, p. 176.
  19. L. WEINMANN, “Washington’s Irrational Cuba Policy”, World Policy Journal, Spring 2004, p. 22.
  20. S. P. HUNTINGTON, Who Are We?America’s Great Debate, London 2004, Free Press, p. 251.
  21. C. MESA-LAGO, “El reinado de la doble moral”, Cubaencuentro, 14/7/2004, http://www.cubaencuentro.com/20040714.html
  22. D. MANERA, “Habanera a fior di pella sull’isola che c’e”, in A labbra nude.Racconti dall’ultima Cuba, edited by D. MANERA, Milan 1995, Feltrinelli, p. 205.