How Fidel Castro Went From Revolutionary to Ruler

Today in Cuba no name moves men more quickly to praise—or to anger—than that of Fidel Castro. To the people of Oriente he is a romantic near legend. To Batista he is a nagging threat to the strongman’s position as boss of Cuba. Yet for all of Castro’s new-won fame, he remains something of a man of mystery.

Castro was born in Oriente, in 1926. The son of a hard-living, self-made sugar planter, he spent his boyhood in Oriente, went to a Catholic high school in Havana. At Havana University he plunged into student politics. In 1947 he took part in a seaborne filibuster aimed at toppling the dictatorship of the Dominican Republic. In 1948 he went to Bogota during the Conference of American States to demonstrate against “non-Latin influence in Latin America.”

…Castro left Havana University in 1950 with degrees in law, international law and the social sciences, set up a law practice, married the daughter of a man who later became one of Batista’s top officials, fathered a son. In 1952 he ran for Congress in the elections that were canceled by Batista’s coup. Outraged, Castro plotted for a year, then led a band of some 40 men in a foredoomed frontal attack against Santiago’s Moncada barracks. He was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment (and divorced by his wife), but 19 months later Batista freed all political prisoners, including Castro.

Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks—behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue-ribbon audience waited 43⁄4 hours for his arrival. Wildly, he blasted U.S. arms aid to Batista, but he paid a friendly call at 1 a.m. on the ambassador from Britain, which sold tanks and planes to Batista for nearly a year after the U.S. had stopped.

Castro has the Cuban moralistic streak in spades, showing no apparent affection for money or soft living. He considers himself a Roman Catholic but is also impressed by Patriot José Marti’s anticlerical tomes. He has to be cajoled into changing his filthy fatigue jacket. His only luxury is 50¢ Montecristo cigars.

He is full of soaring, vaguely leftist hopes for Cuba’s future but has no clear program. Other Latin American leaders trust his democratic professions, hope that his shortcomings will not bring on disorder and another dictatorship.