How can we celebrate the death of any man, we who are mortal? There was something unseemly--yet human, and therefore understandable--when the crowds took to the streets over the weekend to celebrate the death of a sad old man. In Miami they put on a Mardi Gras in November. Ninety miles away in a city named Havana, the streets were empty as a people mourned.
How little history, and bloodlust, change. Once it's safe to do so, any tyrant can be shouted down. See the late tyrant by the name of Saddam Hussein. He stood on the gallows, looking down at his executioners, who began to mock him. A man in the crowd, perhaps nameless to history now, begged the execution team, which was quickly turning into a mob, to be quiet: "This man is facing execution."
Or go back a few years further than that. The remains of a man named Cromwell had to be disinterred to satisfy the mob. And those remains were hanged, thrown in a pit, and finally beheaded--the head displayed outside Westminster Hall for decades. Somewhere in the archives there are still grainy photographs snapped with strange pride of Mussolini and little Clara Petacci hung upside down from a lamppost in Milan for the edification and spittle of the crowd, in essence the same faceless mob that only a few years before had been cheering Il Duce whenever he would jut his jaw.
An American politician by the name of Bob Dole once called a particular generation the Age of Nixon. But that same generation, in different latitudes, could have been called the Age of Castro. For a man the masses would call Fidel! Fidel! Fidel! would dominate the thoughts of more presidents than just Nixon. From Eisenhower to Obama, the lead communist from Cuba would be the focus of many an intel report in the White House.
Not that Fidel Castro was always a communist. Oh, no. In the beginning, before and after Granma hit the beach, the guerrilla prince had little ideological, religious or political leanings other than getting and maintaining total power. The Eisenhower administration would wonder aloud which way Cuba would go after Batista fled, so little did Fidel and his cohorts preach ideology. The Castro Bros. and Co. wanted power, power, and more power. Complete power. That was all. Just total domination of an island and its people. And the Spanish-speaking countries directly to its west and southwest. And Africa. If their enemies would just stop defending themselves, the Castros would stop killing them. Eventually.
Some of those who studied him early on say Fidel Castro could have just as easily become a steady democrat--if a democracy could've guaranteed that he'd be president for life. And be applauded by every state-run television station. And lionized in all the state-run press reports. And cheered by the masses, who knew what was good for them.
But, of course, a democracy could not guarantee that. So there would be no democracy in Cuba. The story goes that James Britt Donovan had so much success negotiating for the survivors of the Bay of Pigs, and the American diplomat became so popular in Cuba, that he joked with Fidel about running for office in Havana:
"I think," Mr. Donovan said, "that when the next election is held I'm coming back to run against you. I think I can win."
To which Fidel replied, with something that passed for a grin: "You know, doctor, I think you may be right. So there will be no elections."
Only after Fidel Castro decided that communism was the path of least resistance to complete power would he end his speeches, "Socialism or death!"
Certainly Fidel, and his chief enforcer and favorite brother Raul, would make sure there were no real elections to interfere with their power. And they'd make sure anybody who got in their way, or maybe looked at them without sufficient love and faithfulness, would find themselves in prison. Or a head shorter. And always, always, blame anything that went wrong on El Norte. Did government-run agricultural practices create nothing but shortages? Blame El Norte. Did young Cubans die in failed coups in Africa and central and South America? Blame El Norte. Is the weather bad this year? Blame El Norte.
And did some people get too uppity and decide that maybe the government's policies aren't best for the people? Jail them and blame El Norte.
"All criticism is opposition," Fidel once told a compatriot. "All opposition is counter-revolutionary." And must be crushed.
And crushed it was. Sure, some saw Fidel as a champion of the poor, who overthrew another dictator and brought free health care to his people. But for millions of others he was the new boss, same as the old boss, who killed political opponents, suppressed any hint of freedom for his people, and, over the years, destroyed the national economy, especially after the Soviet Union wasn't around to bail his government out.
The Independent said this week that the number of executions under Castro's 50-year rule ran in the thousands, including the always present (in totalitarian regimes) rigged trials, arbitrary imprisonments and "extrajudicial executions." Homosexuals, priests and others who didn't completely agree with the Castros (including newspaper editors) were gathered up in re-education camps. And let out on occasion, with other criminals, to come to these shores when they became too expensive to feed.
So now another dictator goes the way we all will. And depending on where you live, reactions, um, vary considerably. As you knew they would once the world no longer had Fidel to explain, for hours on end, how to think and feel.
THERE IS certainly no sense of celebration in this quarter. Instead, today let us mourn not for him but for others--the innocent victims of his regime. And the innocent Cubans sent off to fight in the jungles or deserts for Fidel's friends, or at least his allies. Many of them never saw Cuba again. For his political opponents who, after found wanting, never saw the sun again. For their families. And for the millions who fled his regime, leaving all their belongings and many family members, behind.
Early in his career, before he took control of the island and this country's front pages, a young Fidel Castro, on trial for opposing the regime he would eventually overthrow, told his judges that they couldn't harm him. Go ahead, do your worse, he said, because: "History will absolve me."
Well, history will judge him, that's certain.
And now that time has come.
Editorial on 11/29/2016