Fidel Castro, from Student Gangster to Autocrat

Fidel Castro, from Student Gangster to Autocrat / Ivan Garcia
Posted on August 13, 2015

Ivan Garcia, 13 August 2015 — When Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz turns 89
today, probably after the toast, the Cuban caudillo will take time to
remember his hectic life.

To come to know Castro's true profile, not the eyewash sold to us by the
historiography of the regime, will be a monumental task of historians,
academics and psychologists after his death.

Angel Castro, his father, was a Spanish soldier who fought against the
Liberation Army. After settling in Cuba he became a landowner,
entrepreneur and cheat who, every night, openly and illegally ran a
fence around his property.

Castro studied in primary and secondary in schools in Santiago de Cuba.
When he was 12 he wrote a letter in English to the president of the
United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. For ten dollars he offered to
supply some information about deposits of nickel in eastern Europe that
could be used in the manufacture of aircraft and funds for the US Navy
in World War II.

His personal life hides points of interest for any psychiatrist. Castro
should have passed through the attic of a psychologist to try to cure
his megalomania. perhaps it would have saved Cuba and Cubans from some
nonsense.

He arrived in Havana in 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, to
get his degree at the Jesuit college of Belen, in the Marianao
neighborhood, west of the city. He was chosen as best athlete of the
year for 1943-1944. He finished his degree in June of 1045, along with
his future brother-in-law, Rafael Diaz-Balart, his best friend of the
time and later his bitter enemy.

It is at this stage that his passion for oratory began. The Socialist
People's Party, under the aegis of the Kremlin, called him a "reckless
screw-off and petty bourgeoisie," following his blunders in a debate on
public and private debate at Belen College and later after his failed
assault on the Moncada Barracks.

He entered the University of Havana on 4 September 1945. His academic
life was characterized by his almost total absence in the classrooms.
Beginning in the third year, Castro dedicated special intensity to his
academic work, enrolling in three majors (Law, Diplomatic Law and Social
Sciences) with the intention of obtaining a scholarship to study in
Europe or the United States.

It was during that period when he engaged in some university gangs with
marked gangster tendencies. They were groups of violent your anarchists.
The resolved their differences with gunfire. There is evidence that they
acted as henchmen for the corrupt institutions of the Republican government.

With the generous allowance from his father in Biran, Fidel bought a
car. He led a dissipated life in the capital, where he spent more time
in cages and informal gatherings than in the classroom.

After Fulgencio Batista's coup in the spring of 1952, Fidel Castro
organized an armed group to overthrow him. His devotion to weapons and
the stories of war led him to plot the assault on a military fortress in
Santiago de Cuba to found a movement with terrorist tactics, with
bombings in public places, hijackings and celebrities like the Argentine
race driver, Juan Manuel Fangio.

The attack on the Moncada Barracks was a badly planned military action
that cost the lives of 70 young men, between those lost in combat and
those later assassinated by the Batista army.

He was tried and sentenced to 15 years. In prison, according to his own
account, he smoke tobacco, ate spaghetti and read many books. He
received very different treatment from that he later meted out to Cuban
political prisoners.

After an amnesty, he was released in 1954. In Mexico he prepared an
expedition with 82 men to overthrow Batista. In January of 1959, after
two years of guerrilla skirmishes, Fidel Castro came to power.

And he pulled all sorts of promises of democracy out of his hat.
Progressively, he began to govern as an autocrat. He ordered the
executions of his opponents, allowed trials without judicial guarantees,
closed newspapers and magazines, abolished free expression, curtailed
political freedom, confiscated private business and allied himself with
Soviet communism.

The "bearded one"ruled to the rhythm of military mobilizations and the
economy of the barracks. He became angry when Khrushchev negotiated a
peaceful solution to the October 1962 Missile Crisis. Castro argued for
the epic. Immolating himself for the homeland, socialism and the New
Man. As the jihadists are doing today in the name of Islam.

He directed the war in Angola from a house in Nuevo Vedado, sitting in
an armchair of black leather, moving miniature tanks, canons and troops
in a giant model.

He destroyed the Cuban economy, agriculture, livestock, fishing… The
litany of crazy promises is extensive. It's unthinkable that one person
is capable of causing so many disasters. Fidel Castro managed it.

Source: Fidel Castro, from Student Gangster to Autocrat / Ivan Garcia |
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