Dr. Orville Taylor, Contributor
If Jamaican black men could replicate the formula for Fidel Castro's political longevity, all of the sellers of 'Afrodesiacs' would gain a bumper crop. As in the classic Prince Buster song of the 1960s, "you lick him up, you lick him dung, him bounce right back. What a hard man fi dead."
At 81, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is by far the star of the drama of the Caribbean 20th-century geopolitics. Like an old gunfighter in those corny spaghetti westerns we used to watch as children, he has ridden off into the sunset, removed from office not by any of the external efforts of the last 50 years, but by time, age and illness.
Like 80 per cent of Jamaicans, Castro is the product of an unwed mother, although that is not the reason that the United States considers him to be a 'dirty bastard'. He survived murder attempts from as far back as the 1950s, threats to blow his country off the map, the decline of his main benefactor, the Soviet Union, and 10 American presidents.
His tenure as president of Cuba spanned 12 Summer Olympic Games and saw the Caribbean produce two of its three greatest quarter-milers ever, his own Alberto Juantorena de Danger and our Bertland Cameron. Unless watching from his surveillance monitors, he missed Cameron's epic run in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the most spectacular since Herb McKenley's 44.6 leg in 1952.
Sanctions
He has seen sanctions against his country, the Korean War, Vietnam, the liberation of Zimbabwe, the imprisonment, release and ascendancy of Nelson Mandela, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the support and toppling of Saddam Hussein by the United States. Castro has witnessed the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in the 1960s to 1980s, and those of 'mass distraction' in the new millennium.
An atheist, his name is ironically prophetic. Fidel, means 'faithful' and his surname can literally be translated as 'I castrate'. He has stuck faithfully to his revolution and has excised the manhood of all that have tried to remove him.
A rebel from his teenage years, he led a strike by workers on his own father's plantation at age 13. With brilliance greater than 150,000 missing Cuban bulbs, he excelled academically and went on to become a lawyer. Deeply moved by poverty, inequality and the dominance of American interests in his country, he joined the popular Cuban People's Party. This party was thwarted in its bid to become the legitimate government by a military takeover by Fulgencio Batista in 1952. This led to a failed coup attempt by Castro, his imprisonment, release and ultimate success in 1958.
This is not intended to rehash his well-known biography, and certainly it is not to cast him as a hero. Castro is a product of historical forces. One of the negative features of Spanish de-colonialisation policy was that it did not leave structures of democracy in internal governance. As a result, the leaders who emerged from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s were strong area dons, who jostled among themselves for power. These 'Caudillos', as they were called, wrested control of government via coups d'etat and became unelected presidentes.
General Batista was one of these. Although friendly to American interests and the ruling classes, he did little for the masses. Thus, despite high levels of industrialisation, poverty increased. Jamaicans living in Cuba disliked him not because of his surname as we are stereotyped, but because of the blatant racism that relegated Cuban blacks to second-class citizens.
Several attempts were made to dislodge Castro, but he consolidated his popularity, improved the lot of the small Cuban man, virtually eradicated illiteracy and made Cubans the healthiest in the hemisphere, with a life expectancy of more than 80 years. While it is true that he has an oppressive state apparatus, the average Cuban loves him.
He is by no means a saint. He has stifled dissent, prevented the development of a coherent opposition, and jailed scores of political dissidents and journalists. It would be impossible to write a column such as this in Cuba. Under the aegis of the Russians, he sent troops into several wars in Africa and the region. His support was crucial in the 1979 coup in Grenada, which overthrew Eric Gairy and brought into power the ill-fated People's Revolutionary Government.
Although, it is by now accepted that during the Michael Manley era between 1974-1980 there were Western foreign operatives, the Cuban presence here was pervasive. True, thousands of Jamaicans got trained as doctors, dentists, brigadistas and teachers, among others. But Ambassador Estrada crossed the line by making derisive statements about the Opposition, thus, interfering in the democracy and internal politics of our own nation-state.
Symbolic connection
Nevertheless, as we close off an era with his retirement, it is difficult not to make a symbolic connection with Barack Obama's rising star. The next major primary that he faces is in Texas. That state has one of the largest Hispanic populations and is the last place in the United States that blacks were set free. Its flag, like the Cuban, is red, white and blue, with a white star in the middle to the left.
One of the major achievements of Castro was to reduce the levels of official racism. Interestingly, in 1961, the year that Obama was born, the Democrats in the US attempted to assassinate him. Obama faces the wife of the president, who passed the Helms-Burton law increasing sanctions against Cuba in 1996.
Obama is willing to talk to Cuba unconditionally, Hillary says no. Who will star and whose moon will get eclipsed in a black hole? Bet Fidel is watching faithfully.
Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at UWI, Mona.
