From the Flickr pages of https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/
My recent travels around Cuba - see http://www.francesalut.com/2015/02/cuba-towards-an-uneasy-rapprochment-with-the-usa.html - introduced me to a charming island and its friendly people. It has not always been a good idea to get on the wrong side of one or two of them, and Raúl Castro may be a good example. But that was then. Now the "Cuban Thaw" is under way with its promise of an end to the Cold War relic that has seen decades of US-Cuban hostility. This is my appraisal* of the president with the household surname, interspersed with images from my visit ...
After a lifetime spent in the long shadow of his brother, Fidel, Raúl Castro has at last risen to international statesmanship, taking centre-stage with Barack Obama in pursuit of friendly relations between Cuba and the United States.
The surname is among the most famous in the world; the first name of Fidel Castro’s successor as president of Cuba was, until recently, more obscure.
But in a corner of the Panama convention centre where heads of state were gathering for the recent Summit of the Americas, Raúl and Obama jointly made their mark on history. All it took was a handshake to mark their cautious steps to end the belligerence that has bedevilled Cuban-American relations for more than half a century. It was also the first Summit of the Americas that Cuba had been permitted to attend in the event’s 21-year history.
It was a gesture that underlined a remarkable achievement by Fidel’s younger brother, himself an elderly man less than two months short of his 84th birthday – seven years beyond the current average life expectancy of Cuban men.
The handshake was not their first; that came 16 months earlier, when Raúl and Obama crossed paths at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium.
Raúl and Obama may respect rather than fully trust – let alone like - each other but the Panama handshake, followed by hour-long discussions, reinforces the progress in a mutual if restrained charm offensive between close but formerly hostile neighbours. If Obama’s references to “candid and fruitful” exchanges suggest businesslike resolve more than warmth, even that would be in stark contrast to decades of enmity.
Both the Cuban leader and the US president have reason to want a swift path to the establishment of cordial relations. Raúl has said he will not stand for re-election in 2018; Obama’s second and final term ends in November next year.
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Following Obama’s declaration, in December last year, of a programme of normalisation now commonly known as the “Cuban thaw”, he and Raúl have shown a readiness to put words into action. The US has eased travel curbs to the island and restrictions on “remittances”, money sent home by Cuban exiles who left the island in pursuit of the American dream but still cling to family links and loyalties back home.
Obama promises a quick decision on the removal of Cuba from the blacklist of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism, a status that a defiant Fidel once shrugged off but which all Cubans know brings harsh economic consequences. The US president has also urged Congress to lift the trade embargo on Cuba. Raúl has pledged to release more political prisoners, having already freed a US aid worker, Alan Gross, and a Cuban accused of aiding US intelligence.
The sharp cultural and ideological differences that exist now will not quickly disappear. Raúl insists his Caribbean island will never renounce its “independence, freedom or values”. It was a typically forthright statement from a man who, alongside Fidel and the Argentine guerrilla leader Che Guevara, sailed on board the yacht Granma in 1956, its 82 passengers preparing to launch the Cuban revolution.
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz was the youngest of three brothers born to an immigrant Spanish father and Cuban mother of Spanish origin. The boys were hardly model pupils, expelled from their first, Catholic-run school for being “the three biggest bullies” it had encountered, in the words of a priest quoted in a profile posted on the website of the US-based Hacienda Publishing in 2001.
Raúl appears to have been a plodding learner, described by The Wall Street Journal as “mediocre” in his social-sciences studies, whereas Fidel excelled in law. But they shared an enthusiasm for far-left, even violent, politics and activism. Fidel took part in communist rioting in Colombia; his younger brother enlisted in a pro-Soviet affiliate of the Cuban communist party.
Both took part in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. The ill-planned operation was a comprehensive failure, but is glorified 62 years later as an event of unequalled significance in the history of the revolution that eventually toppled the detested dictator Fulgencio Batista. Its date, July 26, became the name of the insurrection movement.
Busloads of tourists now move each week through accessible areas of the old barracks, noting the bullet holes on exterior walls and the display of grainy black-and-white photographs of those who participated. Giant posters and murals around the island bear witness to the place of July 26 in the Cuban national consciousness.
Several rebels were killed in the attack and more than 50 more died in custody in the ferocious reprisals that followed. On the intervention of the Archbishop of Santiago, Monseigneur Enrique Pérez Serantes, a family friend and, like the Castros’ father, Angel, from the Spanish region of Galicia, Raúl and Fidel were spared serious consequences. After 18 months of relatively benign imprisonment, they benefited from a general amnesty and chose exile in Mexico, where they set about preparing to drive Batista from power.
For all the spirit of romance, adventure and selfless struggle that later epitomised left-wing and even liberal perceptions of the Cuban revolution, Raúl was a ruthless and often unforgiving rebel commander.
As head of Cuban armed forces, he reputedly ordered the execution of 100 Batista military officers. One photograph from 1959 shows him calmly blindfolding a prisoner as another rebel ties the man to a tree to face a firing squad.
From Dr Antonio Rafael de la Cova's Latin American Studies website
Raúl may have mellowed in old age, seeing his country’s interests – and his own legacy – best served by the renewal of ties with the superpower on its doorstep.
But he has always been seen as an austere and authoritative figure, respected by Fidel as one of very few comrades to merit unqualified trust. The Hacienda Publishing appraisal from 2001 described him as “a sanguinary leader, and although he has perpetually played second fiddle to [and] flatterer of his older brother, the younger Castro has always been a feared hardliner”.
From rebel command to high political office, Raúl has been a constant heavyweight of revolution and its aftermath. When Fidel seized power, Raúl began an extraordinary 49 years as Cuba’s armed services minister. Along with Guevara, he was one of his brother’s regional chiefs of staff during the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 which they helped repulse.
He was named president of the country’s council of state as a temporary transfer of powers in 2006 when his brother’s health worsened, assuming office on a permanent basis in 2008. He remains Cuba’s highest ranking general and first secretary of the communist party’s central committee.
Back in 2001, handshakes and deals with the US may then have seemed an improbable future. In the same year, speaking on Cuban state television, Raúl said: “I am among those who believe that it would be in imperialism’s interest to try, with our irreconcilable differences, to normalise relations as much as possible during Fidel’s life.” The implication, which he proceeded to endorse, was that he, Raúl, would be more difficult to deal with.
This may have meant little more than the setting out of a tough opening stance for the bargaining that even then he knew lay ahead. It also showed, as is probably no less true 14 years later, that Raúl is determined to be no pushover for a US president eyeing a memorably diplomatic feat before leaving power.
But as US officials ponder the negotiations to come, they may bear in mind the evidence of an interview by an obviously sympathetic American actor, Sean Penn, in 2008.
Penn hailed Raúl as a man who was “warm, open, energetic and sharp of wit”. And with one anecdote, he described the energy and stubborn streak that drives Cuba’s president.
“Castro moves with the agility of a young man,” Penn wrote. “He exercises every day, his eyes are bright and his voice is strong. He picks up where he left off. ‘You know, Sean, there was a famous picture of Fidel from the Bay of Pigs invasion. He is standing in front of a Russian tank. We did not yet know even how to put those tanks in reverse. So retreat was no option’.”
* Reproduced from The National with the editor's consent. See my wrk at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall
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