In November 25, 2016, died, at the age of 90, FidelCastro, commander-in-chief of the RevolutionCuban and subsequently Prime Minister of Cuba, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (the from 1965), President (from 1976 to 2008) and Marxist-Leninist dictator, but also nationalist. Castro was one of the emblematic characters of Cold War(1947-1989), and his death will raise, in the coming years, many political and intellectual debates that will certainly be explored in the college entrance exams and in the And either. Therefore, we have separated some points in Fidel Castro's trajectory that could be targets of discussions and controversies.
From the assault on the Moncada barracks to the Revolution
Fidel Castro's political-revolutionary activity began, in fact, in 1953, with the episode known as Assault on the Moncada barracks. Before that, Castro was active in the journalistic sphere, criticizing the government of Carlospri and, later, the Fulgencio Batista coup. Castro, with over 165 guerrillas, tried to storm the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, with the objective of stealing weapons from the warehouse and arming the population against the government of the already dictator Fulgêncio Baptist. The action was a failure. Most of the guerrillas were killed. Fidel was arrested and convicted. Lawyer by training, he made his own defense, in which he uttered the phrase: "History will absolve me."
In 1955, Fidel was amnesty by the Batista government and went into exile in Mexico, where he met Ernesto Che Guevara and, together with other men (among them, Fidel's brother, raul), composed the group 26th of July Revolutionary Movement (day of the robbery) or, simply, M-26-7. Castro's new guerrilla, which was installed in sierrateacher, in the south of Cuba, clashed with the National Directorate of the M-26-7, commanded by Felipe Pazos and Lester Rodriguez, on account of the request for financial aid to the Cuban political and economic elite, which was against the regime of Batista – even many of these Cubans were exiled in the United States, in cities like Miami and Nova York. This help was known as “Miami Pact”. Fidel's authoritarian centralism at the helm of the Revolution had harsh consequences for those who differed from him.
The old and the new dictatorship
Another important point is the following: despite the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, Cuba, until 1958, had high levels in the social and economic field. This can be corroborated by the writer's observations. Guillermo Cabrera Infante, in the book Mea Cuba. According to Cabrera Infante, “in 1958, Cuba's Gross National Product was surpassed only by Argentina and Venezuela” and, referring to a classic work by Hugh Thomas:
[…] In Cuba there were more cars in the 1950s than in many European countries, and more televisions than Italy. Cuba also had color television in 1958, ten years earlier than England, Wales and Scotland! Is this an arcane secret for the British? Just the opposite. All these data can be found in a book written by an Englishman, Hugh Thomas, who wrote the best history of the other island, Cuba or the yearning for freedom. [1]
The Revolution led by Castro had promised the elites and population of Cuba the overthrow of a dictator (Batista), who pursued and hindered freedoms, but not a regime that would replace the previous one, not just repeating and intensifying these persecutions (starting with the formation of the command of the shootings in the La Cabaña Military Fortress, operated by Che Guevara), as well as deregulating the economy – which was made more explicit in the official declaration of Castro's alignment with USSR and to the position Marxist-Leninist, in 1961.
“Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing"
Castro's direct association with international communism, as well as the authoritarian centralism of his government, which can be summarized in his phrase “Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing”, culminated in purges and exiles of many Cubans who, at first, supported the Revolution. Among these Cubans were some of the main commanders – Castro's companions since the M-26-7. Castro's actions against these people were similar (to a lesser extent) to those taken by josephStalin, in the USSR, during the “Great Terror” phase, in 1937 and 1938.
The first of the Revolution's commanders to oppose Castro's authoritarian shift, back in 1959, was Huber Matos. Matos, despite his campaign as a guerrilla, was nicknamed a traitor and sentenced to 20 years in prison. After leaving prison in 1979, he went into exile in Costa Rica and later in Miami, where he founded the anti-Castro organization CID (Independent and Democratic Cuba).
Another controversial case involved another commander, who was as popular as Che Guevara and the Castro brothers themselves: Camilo Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos also dared to criticize Fidel's authoritarianism and, as late as 1959, the plane in which he was traveling disappeared in the mountain ranges of the island of Cuba. Until today this disappearance has not been properly explained. Many critics of the Cuban communist regime (among them, some dissidents) accuse Fidel of sabotage – since, Unlike Matos, Cienfuegos could not be convicted and imprisoned without a great popular reaction negative.
The "Ochoa Case"and other purges of commanders
The most emblematic case of Castro's authoritarian stance was his rivalry with the General Ochoa, also one of the commanders of the Revolution and commander in other missions headed by Cuba, such as the wars on African soil, see Angolan Civil War. Castro, in 1989 (already at the end of the Cold War), ordered the summary shooting of Ochoa and three other high-ranking officers. patent, accused of involvement in international drug trafficking – specifically with the Colombian Medellín cartel, commanded per pabloEscobar.
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The involvement really existed, but the biggest suspicions fell on the very top of Cuban power: the Castro brothers. To get rid of suspicions of involvement with Pablo Escobar and, at the same time, with political rival Ochoa (who defended the opening of Cuba, as well as Gobarchev was doing at the time in the USSR), Fidel Castro sent him to wall. As researchers Corinne Cumerlato and Denis Rousseau say:
[…] Castro got rid of a double suspicion: that of having got rid of a prestigious official, who left him spare, and that of having at the same time made the disappearance of dangerous witnesses who could implicate him in a drug trafficking case International. On June 13, 1989, at four o'clock in the morning, an execution squad shot four officers superiors, detained just a day earlier and accused of having set up an international drug trafficking network. cocaine. The four were condemned at the end of what was, according to many analysts, the last Stalinist process in the western communist world, in the midst of perestroika Soviet Union and a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. [2]
Three other commanders suffered purges in the Castro dictatorship: Victorlives, Humbertosmilemarin and Ephigenplum trees, as researchers Cumerlato and Rousseau point out:
[…] Víctor Mora, equally at odds with the communist orientation (as well as Huber Matos and Camilo Cienfuegos), resigned from the government. Arrested in 1969 on charges of conspiracy against the state, he managed to escape thanks to a disguise and complicity after nine years in prison. Working as a security guard in a Miami hospital, he died in exile in 1993. Humberto Sori Marín held the post of Minister of Agriculture for some time. Accused of treason on April 18, 1961, in the midst of battle in the Bay of Pigs, he was shot. Finally, Efigenio Ameijeiras, who had three brothers killed in the struggles against the Batista dictatorship, was the first head of the National Revolutionary Police in Havana. Accused of “sectarianism”, he was fired in the early 1960s, before re-converting as a construction site inspector. [3]
The "Heberto Padilla Case"
Another point to be highlighted is the so-called "CaseHebrewPadilla”. Padilla was a Cuban writer of great prestige, who, with the book Fuera de Juego, finished the Grand Prix of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, in 1968. The book criticized Fidel's regime, the persecutions of the population and the rigid control over individual freedoms and the economy. Padilla was convicted and imprisoned in 1971. At the appeal of international artists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Fidel Castro decided to acquit Padilla, on condition that he made a public retraction before a court. Humiliated, Padilla did so and then went into exile, first in the US and then in Spain.
Assassination Attempts Against Fidel Castro
According to official Cuban government sources, as of 2006, Fidel Castro had suffered 638 assassination attempts. In 2007, the CIA confirmed that eight operations were carried out in this regard. The methods used consisted, among other things, in: 1) poisoning a cigar; 2) long-range rifle firing; 3) use of pen with poison dart etc.
Missile Crisis (1962) and Fidel's Resignation (2008)
Other important points, which can be approached in entrance exams and in Enem, are: a Missile Crisis, which took place in 1962, and the Resignation of Fidel Castro, in 2008. The first event consisted of the world crisis triggered by the discovery, in October 1962, of a nuclear missile launching base in Cuba, built by USSR. The base was built soon after Castro's adherence to communism and the counter-revolutionary attempt by exiled Cubans trained by the CIA, to remove Castro from power. The Missile Crisis was the height of tension in the Cold War, as the world had never come so close to nuclear war.
On February 19, 2008, Fidel Castro resigned as president of Cuba, leaving it to his brother, Raul Castro. The news was released by the official newspaper Gramna, who published a letter from Castro talking about the reasons for his resignation, which related to his health. Fidel's resignation was seen by some as a possibility for Cuba to abandon the closed and authoritarian regime altogether; by others, it was seen as a possibility of renewing the bases of this regime, with the new orientation given by Raul Castro.
* Image credits: Shutterstock and emkaplin
GRADES.
[1] INFANT CABRERA, Guillermo. Mea Cuba. (trans. Josely Vianna Baptista). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996. P. 270.
[2] CUMERLATO, Corinne; ROUSSEAU, Dennis. Dr. Castro's Island: the confiscated transition. (trans. Paulo Neves). São Paulo: Editora Peixoto Neto, 2001. P. 75.
[3] CUMERLATO, Corinne; ROUSSEAU, Dennis. Ibid. P. 79.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
