Playboy Classic: Fidel Castro

The dictator who created modern Cuba and who has been a thorn in the side of every U.S. president since 1959 tells why he became our enemy and how we could have been allies

Fidel Castro, the revolutionary who essentially created modern Cuba, will be remembered as either hero or villain, depending on who writes the history of the tiny nation. Some see Castro as the liberator of Cuba from a repressive govern­ment that was a puppet of foreign imperialists (that is. the United States). Others judge him as a brutal dictator who imprisoned and killed those who chal­lenged his authoritarian rule. His impact was ffit beyond the island nation he ruled from 1959 until 2006. when he turned power over to his brother Haul. (Since then. Castro, now 86. has made few public appearances and is reputed to be ill.) In the interim years, he survived assassination attempts ordered by the CIA and the Bay of Pigs invasion. I le was also at the epicenter of one of the world's most precarious moments, the Cuban Missile Cri­sis, when he allowed the Soviet Lninn to place nuclear missiles—ones pointed at the U.S.—on the island. It led to a face-off between the USSR's Nikita Khrushchev and President John K. Kennedy. The crisis was defused, but Castro's alliance with the Soviel Union further alienated him from the United States at the height of the Cold War.

While prime minister. Castro, who held a num­ber of titles during his reign, was the subject of two Playlmy Interviews, in January 1967 and August 1985. both remarkable and historic documents. Castro opened up in these interviews in ways that few national leaders ever speak to any media. The first interview was conducted by journalist Lee Lockwood, who spoke with Castro through the night and until dawn in a series of sessions at his Isle »l Pines home. A Cuba specialist. I.ixkwood concluded that Castro's answers to his provix'ative questions were "generally honest—however ideo­logically inimical his views."

PLAYBOY: VX hen you came to power in 1959. did you think that Cuba and the U.S. were going to get along better than they actually have? CASTRO: Yes. that was one of my illusions. At that time, we believed the revolutionary program could be carried out with a great degree of comprehen­sion on the part of the people of the United States. We believed that because it was just, it would be accepted. We thought about the people of the United States, that in some way their opinion would influ­ence the decisions of the government. PLAYBOY: Did the subsequent hostility of the Amer­ican government have much to do with creating a receptive atmosphere for communism in Cuba? CASTRO: I think so. in the same way that the friendly acts of the Soviet Union also helped. It taught us something we had not clearly understood at the lx-ginning: that our true allies, the only ones that could help us make our own revolution, were none other than those countries that had recently had their own.

PLAYBOY: Yet some observers have characterized your development as a Communist as having lieen largely a scries of reactions on your part to a scries of hostile acts by the U.S.: that is. that the U.S.. in effect, forced you and Cuba into the Communist camp. CASTRO: The United States, with its imperialist foreign policy, constitutes part of the contempo­rary circumstances that make revolutionaries out of people everywhere.

PLAYBOY: In the five years since you announced the true nature of the (continued on page 146)

CASTRO

(continued from page 69) revolution and began to institute its sweeping social changes, several hundred thousand Cubans have renounced their country and fled to the United States. If the revolution is really for the good of the people, how do you account for this mass exodus? CASTRO: There were many different rea­sons. Many of those who emigrated had lived from gambling, prostitution, drug traffic and other illicit activities before the revolution. They have gone with their vices to Miami and other cities in the United States because they couldn't adapt them­selves to a society that has eradicated those social ills. Before the revolution, many stringent requirements were imposed on people applying for emigration to the United States, but after the revolution, even such unsavory parasites as these were admitted. All they had to do was say they were against communism.

Others of the emigrants were those with a very clear class position, who had been in the forefront against any change in social structure and felt themselves tricked when changes came about. Even though we had proclaimed them in our initial program, they didn't believe we would implement them, either because they had gotten used

to changes never occurring or because they thought such changes would not be possi­ble in Cuba because they would affect the American interest, and that any government that tried this was destined to be rapidly swept away. Others left out of opportunism, because they believed that if a great many of their class left, the revolution wouldn't last very long. Some also left out of fear of war or from personal insecurity. There were even some who left after a whole series of revolutionary laws had been passed, when counterrevolutionaries spread a rumor that a new law was going to be passed that would take away the right of parents to bring up their own children. This absurd campaign succeeded in convincing many people, espe­cially those who already had a lot of doubts. They sent their children out of the country and later left themselves. PLAYBOY: If there had been active opposition to the revolution from the middle and upper classes, do you think you might have lost? CASTRO: I don't think so. It would have been a longer struggle, more violent, keener from the beginning, but, together with the poor peasants and the workers, we would have overthrown Batista [Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator deposed by Castro] even if he had had their solid support. PLAYBOY: Given Batista's vast superiority of troops and armaments—with or without

middle- and upper-class support—some American military strategists feel you could have been defeated if it hadn't been for his ineptitude. Do you think that's true? CASTRO: Unquestionably, if Batista had been a wiser and a braver man, a man of dif­ferent characteristics, he would have been able to instill more spirit in his soldiers. By leading his troops more skillfully, he could have prolonged the war, but he would not have won it.

He had his only opportunity right at the beginning, when we were few and inex­perienced. By the time we had gained a knowledge of the terrain and had increased our force to a little more than 100 armed men, there was already no way of destroy­ing us with a professional army. The only way he could have contained us then would have been by fighting us with an army of peasants from the mountains where we were operating. For that, it would have been necessary to obtain the genuine sup­port of the exploited peasant class. But how could he have gained that support? An army that served the landowners would never have been able to get the exploited farmers on their side. PLAYBOY: Is it your conviction that the U.S. would be better off under socialism or communism? CASTRO: No. I am a Marxist, and as a

Marxist, I believe that revolutions are engendered by a state of misery and des­peration among the masses. And that is not the situation of all the people of the United States but of only a minority, especially the Negroes. Only the masses can bring about a change of social structure, and the masses decide to make those great changes only when their situation is one of desperation. Many years could pass without that hap­pening to the masses of the United States. In reality, the struggle between the classes is not being conducted inside the United States. It is being conducted outside U.S. borders, in Vietnam, in Santo Domingo, in Venezuela and in certain other countries, including Cuba. Though I understand that a certain amount of protest and dissent is being heard in some North American uni­versities, it is not the masses of the U.S. who fight today against the North Ameri­can capitalists, because U.S. citizens have a relatively high standard of living and they are not suffering from hunger or misery. PLAYBOY: Wherever the U.S. has inter­vened militarily since World War II, it has been to defend the underdeveloped nations from the threat of Communist sub­version or aggression. CASTRO: Why does it regard communism as a threat?

PLAYBOY: To put it simply, our government's position is that the goal of international communism is to enslave peoples, not to liberate them.

CASTRO: That is an absolutely erroneous point of view. Look at the case of Cuba: The United States wants to "liberate" Cuba from communism, but in reality, Cuba doesn't want to be "liberated" from communism. In order to "liberate" Cuba from communism, the United States organized the followers of Batista, the most reactionary people of this country—torturers, conspirators, thieves,

exploiters of all types. It organized them, trained them and armed them in order to come to "liberate" the people of Cuba. But none of those counterrevolutionaries had ever considered the needs of the Cuban people. They hadn't solved the problem of unemployment, ignorance, the lack of medi­cal care, the poverty and misery that existed before the revolution. PLAYBOY: In a 1964 newspaper interview, you said that one of the points you would consider as a basis for negotiations with the United States would be the question of abandoning Cuban assistance to revolution­ary movements in other Latin American countries. Is this no longer your position? CASTRO: What I said at that time was that our country was ready to live by norms of an international character, obeyed and accepted by all, of nonintervention in the internal affairs of the other countries. But I believe this formula should not be limited to Cuba. Bringing that concept up to date, I can say to you that we would gladly discuss our problems with the United States within the framework of a world policy of peace, but we have no interest in discussing them independently of the international situa­tion. We are not interested in negotiating our differences while the U.S. is interven­ing in Santo Domingo, in Vietnam and elsewhere, while it is playing the role of repressive international policeman against revolutionary movements.

Before long, the United States will find itself required to overextend its forces in order to fight interventionist wars of a universally hateful nature against the revo­lutionary movements in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America. It will find itself increasingly alone, isolated and repudiated by world opinion. The revolutionary movement will break out sooner or later in all oppressed and exploited countries.

PLAYBOY: At the end of the Missile Crisis, one of the points of the accord between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a pledge by the U.S. that it would not invade Cuba. Do you consider that agreement still in effect? CASTRO: That is indisputable. The agree­ment is a matter of both fact and legality. The United States has since alleged that because we haven't permitted inspection, there is no such agreement, but de facto, they accept it.

PLAYBOY: Has there been any diminution of counterrevolutionary activities in Cuba since the Missile Crisis? CASTRO: No, the CIA maintains its activities incessantly and with all possible resources. It works systematically with all the Cubans who are now in the United States, with the relatives and friends of the counterrevolu­tionaries who are there, trying constantly to organize webs of information, espio­nage and counterrevolution. Much of the news related to the activities of the CIA we do not make public. Many times we know when agents come. We are always capturing agents, launches, boats, radio-communication equipment. PLAYBOY: What do you do with the agents you capture?

CASTRO: The same thing we did with the prisoners captured at the Bay of Pigs. PLAYBOY: How many political prisoners are you holding at the present time? CASTRO: Although we usually do not give this kind of information, I am going to make an exception with you. I think there must be approximately 20,000. [According to Time (October 8, 1965), the number is closer to 50,000.] This number comprises all those sentenced by revolutionary tribu­nals, including not only those sentenced on account of counterrevolutionary activi­ties but also those sentenced for offenses against the people during Batista's regime, and many cases that have nothing to do with political activities, such as embezzle­ment, theft or assault, which because of their character were transferred to revo­lutionary tribunals. Unfortunately, we are going to have counterrevolutionary prison­ers for many years to come. PLAYBOY: Why?

CASTRO: In a revolutionary process, there are no neutrals: There are only partisans of the revolution or enemies of it. In every great revolutionary process it has happened like this—in the French Revolution, in the Russian Revolution, in our revolution. PLAYBOY: You once stated that if the U.S. government would agree to cease foster­ing counterrevolution in Cuba, you would consider freeing the majority, if not all, of your political prisoners. Has your position changed on this matter? CASTRO: We made that proposal because we believe that the counterrevolutionary activ­ity directed and encouraged by the United States is the fundamental cause of the exist­ing tensions and, therefore, of the measures that we find ourselves obliged to take. I am certain that without the support of the United States, there would be no counterrev­olution. If the counterrevolution ends, the necessity of keeping many of the counterrev­olutionaries in prison will end too. Thanks to our rehabilitation program, I have no

doubt that many of these men will come to be revolutionaries themselves. PLAYBOY: What kind of rehabilitation? CASTRO: There are two kinds. One is for persons living in rural areas who collab­orated with the counterrevolutionary bands that were operating in the Escam-bray Mountains. These cases were not sent to prison; they were transferred to agricultural work for a period of one to two years on granjas [state farms]. During the period of time between their arrest and their release, the revolutionary gov­ernment has taken care of all the needs of their families. Upon their final release, they have been and are being relocated as agricultural workers, and they and their families are given new living quarters built for them by the government. The other type of rehabilitation has to do with cases of persons under sentence for offenses against the people during the time of Batista's tyr­anny, as well as with those sentenced for counterrevolutionary offenses since 1959. Their rehabilitation has three stages: first, the participation of the sentenced person in agricultural work, study and other activi­ties; a second stage in which he is allowed to visit his family periodically; and a third stage when he is paroled. PLAYBOY: You've spoken of prerevolution-ary Havana as an overdeveloped city in an underdeveloped country. But today it looks to most visitors like a crumbling relic. Its streets, which have fallen into disrepair, are almost empty of traffic; its buildings are run-down; its public utilities are inef­ficient; its housing shortages are acute. If Cuba can't maintain its own capital city, how can it be expected to fulfill its inter­national financial obligations? CASTRO: A modern city has many expenses: To maintain Havana at the same level as before would be detrimental to what has to be done in the interior of the country. For that reason, Havana must necessarily suf­fer this process of disuse, of deterioration, until enough resources can be provided. Of course, everything that's essential will be taken care of in Havana: the public services—transportation, water, sewerage, streets, parks, hospitals, schools, etc. But construction of new buildings—like those lavish skyscrapers that were built before the revolution, to the detriment of the inte­rior of the country—has been discontinued for the time being. Moreover, under the Urban Reform Law of 1960, all rents were reduced and many people are now paying no rent at all.

PLAYBOY: Is the scarcity of living quarters in the cities one of the reasons you have per­mitted the continuation of that old Cuban institution, the posada [a government-run chain of motel-like establishments where young Cuban couples go to make love— for a nominal fee and no questions asked]? CASTRO: The problem of the posadas poses a series of questions of a human kind that will have to be analyzed in the future. Neither customs nor traditions can be changed eas­ily, nor can they be dealt with superficially. I believe that new realities—social, economic and cultural—will determine new condi­tions and new concepts of human relations. PLAYBOY: Concepts shorn of the strict

religious traditions that still form the basis of prevailing Cuban attitudes toward sex­ual relations?

CASTRO: I think it's not only a matter of religious traditions, which naturally have an influence, but also of certain Spanish customs, which are stricter in this respect than, for example, Anglo-Saxon traditions. Naturally, those centers to which you refer have been in operation because they satisfy a social need. Closing them would make no sense. But what has definitely been fought is prostitution. That is a vicious, corrupt, cruel thing; a dead weight that generally affects women of humble origin, who for an infinite number of economic and social rea­sons wind up in that life. The revolution has been eliminating it, not in an abrupt, dras­tic, radical way, but progressively, trying to give employment and educational oppor­tunities to the women so that they might learn other skills that would permit them to work and earn their living in a different manner. This, too, raises the future necessity of approaching the problems of sexual rela­tions in a different way. But we believe that these are problems of the future, and they are problems that cannot be determined by decree—not at all.

PLAYBOY: To what extent does the curric­ulum in Cuban schools include political indoctrination?

CASTRO: What you call political indoctrina­tion would perhaps be more correctly called social education; after all, our children are being educated to live in a Communist society. From an early age, they must be dis­couraged from every egotistical feeling in the enjoyment of material things, such as the sense of individual property, and be encour­aged toward the greatest possible common effort and the spirit of cooperation. There­fore, they must receive not only instruction of a scientific kind but also education for social life and a broad general culture. PLAYBOY: Is there an attempt to teach such subjects as art and literature, and their criti­cism, from the Marxist point of view? CASTRO: We have very few qualified people as yet who could even try to give a Marxist interpretation of the problems of art. But as a revolutionary, it is my understanding that one of our fundamental concerns must be that all the manifestations of culture be placed at the service of man, developing in him all the most positive feelings. For me, art is not an end in itself. Man is its end; making man happier, making man better. PLAYBOY: Is there any attempt to exert con­trol over the production of art in Cuba—of literature, for example? CASTRO: No—but a book that we did not believe to be of some value wouldn't have a chance of being published. PLAYBOY: In other words, an author who wrote a novel that contained counterrevo­lutionary sentiments couldn't possibly get it published in Cuba? CASTRO: At present, no. PLAYBOY: Why not speak of the evolutionary changes that are taking place in the U.S.? Why not tell the Cuban people the whole story? CASTRO: Because altogether there have not yet been any evolutionary changes in a posi­tive sense in the United States. But rather, politically speaking, a true regression.

From our general point of view, the policy of the United States—above all, its foreign policy—has veered more and more toward an ultrareactionary position. PLAYBOY: We weren't talking about U.S. foreign policy.

CASTRO: But in reality, that is what most affects us.

PLAYBOY: It seems to most outside observ­ers that anybody who has a point of view substantially different from the gov­ernment line about American foreign policy—or almost anything else—has very little opportunity to express himself in the press here. It seems, in fact, to be an arm of the government.

CASTRO: What you say is true. There is very little criticism. An enemy of socialism can­not write in our newspapers—but we don't deny it, and we don't go around proclaim­ing a hypothetical freedom of the press where it actually doesn't exist, the way you people do.

PLAYBOY: This brings up a commonly held view in the U.S. that you are an absolute dictator, that not only intellectuals but the Cuban people have no voice in their gov­ernment and that there is no sign that this is going to change. Would you comment? CASTRO: As far as the people having a voice in government is concerned, we are Marxists and look upon the state as an instrument of the ruling class to exercise power. In Cuba, the ruling class consists of the workers and peasants; that is, of the manual and intel­lectual workers, directed by a party that is composed of the best men from among them. We organize our party with the par­ticipation of all the workers in all the fields of labor, who express their opinions in a com­pletely free way: in assemblies, proposing and supporting those they believe should be members of the party or opposing those they believe should not be. You also asked about power concentrated in one person. The question is: In leading the people, have I

acted in a unilateral manner? Never! All the decisions that have been made, absolutely all of them, have been discussed among the principal leaders of the revolution. PLAYBOY: The American system of govern­ment expresses the will of the majority through a president and a Congress elected by rich and poor alike. How do Cuba's peo­ple express their will?

CASTRO: By struggling and fighting against oppression. They revealed it in the Sierra Maestra by defeating the well-equipped army of Batista. They revealed it on Giron Beach [the Bay of Pigs] by destroying the mercenary invaders. They revealed it in the Escambray in wiping out the counterrevo­lutionary bands. They reveal it constantly, in every public demonstration that the rev­olution organizes with the multitudinous support of the masses. They have revealed it with their firm support of the revolutionary government in the face of America's eco­nomic blockade and by the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of men ready to die in the defense of their revolution. PLAYBOY: But if Cuba is not a dictatorship, in what way are your people able to effectively influence the leadership? CASTRO: There is a mutual influence of the people over the leaders and of the leaders over the people. The important thing is the identification of the leaders with the aspira­tions and the emotions of the people. There are many ways of establishing this identifi­cation. The best way of all is to maintain the most immediate contact possible with the masses.

PLAYBOY: The hero worship they feel for you, in the opinion of many outsiders who have seen the fervid reception you receive at huge public rallies, has a mystical, almost religious intensity about it. Do you feel that's true? CASTRO: To some extent, perhaps principally among the farmers, but in personal contact they do not treat me like that. I visit many places. I talk a great deal with the farmers.

I go to their homes and they treat me with great naturalness in a very friendly and informal way—which means that this mys­tical business really doesn't exist in person. Far from any kind of reverence, there is a certain feeling of familiarity. PLAYBOY: Is this familiarity enhanced by the thousands of idealized, inspirational portraits and photographs of you posted prominently in nearly every Cuban home and public building?

CASTRO: I don't know whether you are aware that one of the first laws passed by the revo­lutionary government, following a proposal of mine, was an edict against erecting statues to any living leader or putting his photo­graph in government offices. That same law has prohibited giving the name of any liv­ing leader to any street, to any park, to any town in Cuba. I believe that nowhere else, under circumstances such as ours, has a sim­ilar resolution been passed, and it was one of the first laws approved by the revolution.

Now you will see, in many homes and schools and public places, a small photo­graph in a little frame on the bookshelf or a corner of the desk. But where do most of these photographs come from? From magazines, from newspapers, from posters connected with some public meeting. Some people have even done a business in pho­tographs, printing the ones they like and selling them in the street. But all of this has taken place—and anybody can verify it— without any official initiative whatever.

And permit me to say, finally, that I don't experience any personal satisfaction what­soever when I read some of the flattering qualities that are attributed to me in the press. I have never spent a single second of pleasure over such things. PLAYBOY: What role do you yourself expect to play in the government of the future, once the party is fully established and the constitution is in effect? CASTRO: I think that for a few more years I will figure as the leader of the party. If I were to say that I didn't want that, people would think I was crazy. But you want me to speak sincerely? I will try to make it the least amount of time possible. I am attracted to many other things that are not official activities. I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young. I don't propose this as a duty but as something more—a right. PLAYBOY: Can you really picture yourself as a retired "elder statesman"? CASTRO: It is more difficult for me to imag­ine myself as an old man than as a retired statesman because of the hardship it will be for me not to be able to climb mountains, to swim, to go spear-fishing and to engage in all the other pastimes that I enjoy. But there is one thing to which I am very much attracted that old age will not deter me from: studying, experimenting and work­ing in agriculture. But perhaps I will fall into the habit that comes to all of us, of think­ing that the younger generation is bungling everything. That is a mania characteristic of all old people—but I'm going to try to remain alert against it.

Excerpted from the January 1967 issue.