Is Fidel Castro a Communist?
In 1961 Fidel Castro announced to the world that he was a Marxist-Leninist
and would remain so until the last day of his life. But Herbert Mathews
knew better. Asked about Castro's true confession of Marxist faith the
told a gathering of his colleagues at the Overseas Press Club in New York
that he didn't believe Castro; that the Communist label didn't fit him.
"Today Castro may believe he is a Communist," he said, "but
tomorrow he may believe something else." Matthews not believing Castro's
confession of Marxist faith in the New York Herald Tribune, December 7,
1961. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in Castro's political life
or speeches that allow us to conclude that Marx's or Lenin's works are
in any way a key to his political behavior.
A CIA officer, acting under a journalist's cover, visited Castro at the
Sierra Maestra mountains. The man remained with the group for two or three
weeks. Upon returning to Washington he reported that Castro was an ego-maniac
and emotionally unstable, but not a Communist.
General C. P. Cabell, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, testifying
before the Internal Security Sub-Committee of the U.S. Senate, told that
"We believe Castro is not a member of the Communist Party, and does
not consider himself a Communist."
Fidel Castro doesn't seem attached to any particular ideology. His only
goal is survival and power. A strong evidence pointing to this fact is
that Fidel Castro survived the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union. In
the case of Castro, however, if you dig enough in search for an underlying
ideology, you will find that his thought and action is closer to Fascism
than to any other ideology.
Matthews not believing Castro's confession of
Marxist faith in the New York Herald Tribune, December 7, 1961.
CIA officer visiting Castro At Sierra Maestra in Mario Lazo, Dagger
in the Heart. New York:Twin Circle, 248.
Gen. Cabell's testifying before Senate Sub-Committee in Earl E. T. Smith,
The Fourth Floor. New York: Random House, 1962, 34-35.
Is he a homosexual?
When Fidel was attending high school at Havana's Colegio de Belén,
most of his classmates treated him as a country bumpkin. He did not dance
well. His clothes hung loosely on his lanky frame. Paradoxically, the girls
loved him for all of that, but he never seemed to be interested in them.
After he approached the Soviets in 1959, the homophobic Soviet intelligence
got information about Fidel's special appeal to homosexuals and was seriously
concerned about it. During his early days as a law student in the University
of Havana a group of known homosexuals made up some of his closest friends.
The most prominent of these friends, and the one closest to Fidel, was
Alfredo Guevara (no relation to Ché Guevara). He traveled with Fidel
to Colombia in 1948, was with him during the Bogotazo, and has always hold
important positions in Castro's government.
Raúl Castro, the only one of his brothers that Fidel seemed to get
along with, was rumored to be a homosexual. Some of his ex-classmates affirm
that Raúl had been expelled from Belén High School, allegedly
for engaging in homosexual acts. Juan Vivés, a member of the Cuban
intelligence who defected to the West, says that Rebel Army soldiers nicknamed
Raúl Castro "la China roja" (Red China). The pun--in Spanish
Red China means both Communist China and Chinese woman--came both because
of Raúl's mongoloid features and because it was rumored that he
was a homosexual.
Among the attackers of the Moncada barracks and later in the guerrilla
war in the Sierra Maestra homosexuals were Fidel's most close associates.
None of them-Celia Sánchez, Armando Hart, Melba Hernández
or JoséMartínez Páez-came from the "exploited
masses," but were members of a small elite segment of Cuban society;
pro-American, well educated and affluent. None of them--perhaps with the
exception of Alfredo Guevara--were known for their Communist faith or had
been members of the Cuban communist party. 
When Fidel began to
emerge as a political leader they were attracted to Fidel's personal magnetism
and drifted to his side. Almost overnight they became fanatical radicals
of Fidelismo and active leaders in the revolution. Their very intellectual
background and their easy life acted, paradoxically, as fertile soil for
the seeds of radicalism to germinate. Author Paul Bethel notices that,
lacking manliness, some men are attracted like flies to those of virile
image, like Castro or Ché Guevara.
Reinaldo Arenas, one of the most important Cuban writers in exile, a homosexual
and an anti-Castroist, made an in-depth analysis of the homosexual core
of Castroism. A characteristic of Castroism, says Arenas, is that it psychologically
castrates men. The Cuban caudillist system only accepts two types of men,
the macho-macho (male-male), obviously represented by Fidel Castro himself,
the only one who speaks, stomps the tribune, thunders, gives orders and
gives prizes or prison. The other type is the macho-hembra (male-female),
in other words, the man who unconditionally obeys and admires the macho-macho.
The admiration the macho-hembra feels for the macho-macho is such that
he ends up by imitating his words, his intonation, the way he walks and
his gestures.
According to Carlos Alberto Montaner, Fidel Castro conquered Ché
Guevara, and that strange politico-erotic relation, so frequent in the
Cuban mad-house, always presided the relationship between the two men.
Another one who fell under Castro's spell, according to Montaner, was Regis
Debray. It was only when he was in Paris, safe from the Maximum Leader's
"virile seduction," that he recovered his mental lucidity and
wrote some revealing books.
Castro not interested in girls in Ray Brennan, Castro,
Cuba and Justice . New York: Doubleday, 1959, 43.
Raúl's China roja nickname in Los amos de Cuba . Buenos
Aires: Emecé, 1982, 40.
Bethel on men attracted by Castro's virile image in The Losers
, New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1969, 31.
Arenas on machos-machos and machos-hembras in Necesidad de Libertad,
Mexico, D.F.: Kosmos, 1986, 218.
Castro conquering Ché Guevara in Carlos Alberto Montaner, Fidel
Castro y la revolución cubana , Madrid: Playor, 1983, 26.
Debray falling under Fidel's virile seduction in Carlos Alberto Montaner,
op. cit., 26.
Has he been working for the CIA all these years?
Where did you get that idea? For some time I thought I was alone in my suspicions,
but I have discovered that many people share my misgivings. A long time ago
I met a guy in Cuba who told me that the Soviets never had trusted Castro.
The guy, whose name was Vadim Listov, was a correspondent for Izvestia in
Havana. As it happens with most journalists abroad, he was moonlighting as
a senior officer for the Soviet intelligence services.
Some people in Miami are apparently beginning (they have slow minds!) to see
some weird connection between Castro and the CIA. One way or another every
step Castro takes, from invading Africa to smuggling drugs into the U. S.,
seems to play into the CIA's hands.
If you are really interest in the subject I suggest that you take a look at
an article I wrote several years ago. It is titled "Fidel
Castro Supermole."
But I am warning you beforehand that my article is a long piece, and not for
the faint of heart. It will take you at least three or four hours to read
it. You may probably want to print it to read it later. (Check with Microsoft's
lawyers before doing that!)
If you decide to pursue the hypertextual link above, keep in mind that by
clicking on the left arrow of your browser you can come back right to this
page.
Is Fidel Castro de Chupacabras?
Though Fidel has been sucking the blood of the Cuban people and terrorizing
them for more than thirty years, there is no conclusive scientific evidence
that he is the notorious Chupacabras.
Nevertheless, rumors persist.
Some scientists at the Institute for Paranormal Research and Unexplained
Phenomena, at Guanabacoa, a small town across the Havana Bay, claim that
there is a strong possibility that Fidel is actually the Chupacabras. "Like
the Chupacabras, Fidel is a bloodsucker." they say. "Both of
them stink like hell, and both of them mesmerize people. What else we need,"
they say, "to prove beyond any unreasonable doubt that Fidel and the
Chupacabras are actually one and the same?"
Is it true that he stinks?
OH, YES! He stinks like hell!
When Fidel enrolled at the Colegio de Dolores, in Santiago de Cuba, his
personal hygiene was such that he soon got he nickname "bola de churre",
roughly "greaseball". The nickname followed him to the Colegio
de Belén and later to the University of Havana.
Lack of personal hygiene is particularly offensive in Cuba. There is probably
no country in the world, perhaps with the exception of Japan, where personal
cleanliness is more taken for granted. (As a matter of fact, most Cubans
disliked the Russians not because they were Communists, but because their
stinkingness!)
References to Fidel's nickname in Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart
. New York: Twin Circle, 1968, 115.
Also in Franco, The Morning After. 80, and elsewhere.
Is he really crazy?
At the Belén School Fidel was known by the nickname 
"el loco Fidel" ("crazy Fidel"). When he was at
Belén he drove a bicycle at high speed and crashed it gainst brick
wall. Fidel was unconscious after the accident, and had to be hospitalized.
He regained consciousness after three days.
Some people believe that, as a result of the accident, he is affected by
logorrhea, a syndrome characterized by an uncontrollable flow of words.
Some Fidel's classmates at Belén tell that he had sudden temper
tantrums, 
during which he kicked the walls, his face red
with wrath. A sure way to trigger his tantrums, Fidel's classmates say,
was to mention the word "bastard" in his presence.
Raúl Castro told Tad Szulc that when he was serving his sentence
at the Isle of Pines prison for the attack on the Moncada barracks, he
was moved to the cell where Fidel had been in isolation for about a year.
Fidel "didn't let me sleep for weeks. Having been alone all that time,
he just talked day and night, day and night . . ."
Any diagnosis about Castro's mental condition has to be made without consultation
with the patient. Conscious of these limitations, some Cuban psychiatrists
in exile believe that Fidel Castro is a psychoneurotic of the obsessive
and hysterical type. He also shows paranoids or persecution patterns. Put
in lay terms, Castro is an abnormal and mentally ill person.
Nickname "crazy Fidel" in Carlos Franqui,
ida, aventuras y desastres de un hombre llamado Castro . Barcelona:
Planeta, 1988, 35.
References to logorrhea syndrome, reaction to hearing the word "bastard,"
and bicycle crash in Victor Franco, The Morning After . New York:
Praeger, 1963, 78-79.
Raúl's anecdote of Fidel at Isle of Pines prison in Tad Szulc,
Fidel, a Critical Portrait . New York, William Morrow, 1986, 35.