Troy Southgate

Nov 26, 2024

LIKE many people, I have very mixed feelings about Fidel Castro (1926-2016). Unlike his close associate, Che Guevara (1928-1967), Castro claimed in 1959 that he was “not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement, but we do not have to say that we are anti-communists just to fawn on foreign powers.” Two years later, however, on December 2nd, 1961, Castro announced that he was “a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life.” Clearly, the Cuban leader was a man of contradictions.

As an Anarchist, I was always strongly opposed to Cuba’s rampant statism, tight censorship, inextricable association with Soviet and Chinese tyrants, and the country’s token relations with the liberal hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Bearing similarities to the manner in which Gabriele D’Annunzio’s (1863-1938) nationalist irregulars took control of Fiume in 1919, perhaps, Castro’s abortive efforts to seize the Moncada barracks in July 1953 and overthrow Batista’s dictatorship involved just a handful of dedicated revolutionaries. Despite this failure, the guerrilla war of 1956-59 eventually led to Castro’s victory in January 1959.

He too, was a nationalist, but the most admirable quality about Castro was his defiant and committed anti-capitalism and the fact that he stood up to the might of American imperialism throughout the course of seven decades. It is for this that Castro should be remembered. As he once said, “Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.”