If, as Engels wrote, the masses are the only real heroes in history and individual "heroes" simply those who fulfill the will of the masses, how can we explain the impact of Napoleon and Lenin on French and Russian history? Or why, after every socialist revolution, has a single omnipotent dictator—Stalin, Mao, Tito, and Castro—reached power?
Fidel Castro may be Marxism's greatest dilemma. After 30 years in power and several proclamations of "institutionalizing" the revolution, he remains the undisputed "maximum leader." In neither foreign nor national affairs has he relinquished an ounce of control. Castro appears as the archetypal Latin American caudillo, one who rules by personal appeal rather than ideological programs, challenging the Marxist concept of socialist leadership. The more we understand the man, the better we can deal with him.
Castro's history is well known. The problem, as usual, is how to interpret it. Favorable biographers tend to gloss over his juvenile violence (he participated in the "gangster" struggles at Havana University) and stress his idealism. Unfavorable analysts dismiss his personal courage to focus on his cruelty and duplicity. Castro is thus either a great hero with some faults or a base scoundrel with some virtues. Curiously, most interpreters give the masses a minor role in Castro's Cuba.
Castro was born and raised in Biran, a small rural town in northern Oriente Province. His father, a tough land-grabbing Spaniard, detested the United States and lived in primitive conditions. One early visitor to Castro's home remarked that he had never seen "a book, a painting, or a flower" in that house. Educated by the Jesuits in Santiago and Havana, Fidel distinguished himself in sports. His will of leadership manifested itself at the University of Havana, where he carried a gun, joined one of the many "action groups," and participated in some acts of physical violence. In 1947, he joined an aborted expedition to topple Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. He appeared in Bogotá, Colombia, the following year, amid the street violence that followed the assassination of a Liberal leader.
Back in Cuba, newlywed lawyer Castro tried his hand at politics. He adapted to the democratic atmosphere of the day, overcoming his image as a hoodlum. He was striving to be nominated for the House of Representatives when two events changed the country's political climate. Eduardo Chibas, the popular leader of the Ortodoxo Party, committed suicide. And—two months before the 1952 election—Gen. Fulgencio Bastista seized power in a bloodless military coup. Up until then, Castro's dominant trait had been his unquenchable thirst for notoriety. He was the first volunteer to speak in a group, gained a reputation pestering photographers to take his picture, and even took the trouble, after a minor sports event, to visit a newspaper and correct his misspelled name. His recessive trait was audacity, and a violent answer to any problem. At Chibas; burial, when Ortodoxo Party leaders steered the masses toward the cemetery, Castro proposed they take to the Presidential Palace, scare President Prio into flight, and seize control of the government. Horrified political leaders rejected the proposal (though the plan might have worked.)
Shedding constraints
Batista's military coup gave Castro an opportunity to shed his
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