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The controversial, charismatic Fidel Castro

Friday December 02 2016
castro

Fidel Castro: My Life book cover; Castro holding a flag during his visit in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war; and Castro with South Africa's Nelson Mandela. PHOTOS | FILE | AFP

Spanish writer and journalist Ignacio Ramonet counts himself among the lucky few who got to interview the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro — a man, who gave very few long interviews.

“After almost a year of waiting, I was told that he had agreed to my request for an interview, and it turned out to be the longest and most complete of them all,” Ramonet writes in the introduction to Castro’s spoken autobiography titled Fidel Castro: My Life.

According to Ramonet, Castro was perhaps the most charismatic and controversial former head of state in modern times. A dictatorial pariah to some and a hero and inspiration for many others.

“One of the objectives of these conversations with Castro was to allow him to have his say, to make his argument to the world,” Ramonet writes.

Before they sat down to work in the silence and semi-obscurity of Castro’s personal office — since part of the interviews were filmed for a documentary (Moi, Fidel Castro, 2004) — Ramonet wanted to get to know the public figure a little better, to see him handling matters of state and his personal life.

“We talked about the topics of the day, his past experiences, his present-day concerns, every subject imaginable, and without a tape recorder. I would later reconstruct those conversations in my notebook from memory and we had agreed that he would re-read and alter his responses before publication,” Ramonet recalls.

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What Ramonet discovered during this time was a private, almost shy Fidel, a polite, affable man who paid attention to each person he talked to and spoke without affection, though he had the manners and gestures of an old-fashioned man, which earned him the title of “the last Spanish gentleman.”

Castro was always attentive to people — especially those he worked with — and he never raised his voice. Ramonet never heard him give an order. However, he exercised absolute authority wherever he was through “the force of his overwhelming personality,” Ramonet recalls.

Castro made all the decisions, big or small. Although he consulted the political authorities in charge of the party and the government, it was he who made the final decision.

There was no one within the circle of power that Fidel moved in, since the death of Che Guevara, who had an intellectual calibre comparable to his own. In that respect, he gave the impression of being a man alone, with no close friends or intellectual peers.

According to Ramonet, Castro was a leader who lived — as far as he could see — modestly, austerely, in almost Spartan conditions. There were no luxuries — his furniture was sober, his food frugal, healthy and macrobiotic. Most of his enemies admit that he was one of the few heads of state who did not take advantage of his position to enrich himself.

“Although his face is often in the press, there is no official portrait, nor is there a statue or coin or avenue or building or monument dedicated to Castro or any other living leader of the revolution,” Ramonet observed.

The 724-page autobiography co-authored by Castro and Ramonet was translated by Andrew Hurley and published by Scribner in 2008.

The autobiography draws on more than 100 hours of interviews with Castro, where he narrates a compelling chronicle touching on his childhood, rebellions at home and school, the revolution and meeting prominent public figures like Nelson Mandela.

Castro proudly talks of Cuba’s role in several African countries’ struggles for independence, shares intimacies about more personal matters like his successful attempt to give up cigars and the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp on Cuba.

The long conversations, which began in January 2003 and went on till December 2005, also dwell on his views on capitalism, WTO, the death penalty and other contemporary global issues.

In his own assessment, Ramonet argues, “Despite the unceasing harassment, this little country has achieved undeniably admirable results in the area of human development; the abolition of racism, the emancipation of women, the eradication of illiteracy, a drastic reduction in infant mortality rates and a higher level of general knowledge. Cuba has achieved results that many developed nations would envy.”

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