Cover design ::maybe
www.maybe.com.au
Copyright 2006 Ocean Press
Copyright 2006 Frei Betto
Translated by Mary Todd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9872283-8-3 (e-book)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 2006923943
Second edition 2006
Reprinted 2014, 2015
PUBLISHED BY OCEAN PRESS
Australia: PO Box 1015 North Melbourne VIC 3051
OCEAN PRESS TRADE DISTRIBUTORS
United States and Canada: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Tel: 1-800-283-3572www.cbsd.com
Australia and New Zealand: Ocean Press
E-mail:
UK and Europe: Turnaround Publisher Services
E-mail:
Latin America: Ocean Press
E-mail:
www.oceanbooks.com.au
CONTENTS
Fidel Castro Ruz was born in Birn, in the former province of Oriente, on August 13, 1926. Born into a well-off, landowning family, he attended elite Catholic private schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, and graduated from law school at the University of Havana in 1950.
While at university, he joined a student group against political corruption. He was a member of the Cuban Peoples Party (also known as the Orthodox Party) and in 1947 became a leader of its left wing. That same year, he volunteered for an armed expedition against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, though the expeditionaries were unable to leave Cuba to carry out their plans. As a student leader, Fidel Castro travelled to Venezuela, Panama, and Colombia to help organize a Latin American anti-imperialist student congress to coincide with the founding conference of the US-sponsored Organization of American States (OAS). While in Colombia, he participated in the April 1948 popular uprising in Bogot.
After Fulgencio Batistas March 10, 1952, coup dtat in Cuba, Fidel began to organize a revolutionary organization to initiate armed insurrection against the US-backed Batista dictatorship. He organized and led an unsuccessful assault on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, for which he and over two dozen others were captured, tried, found guilty, and imprisoned. More than 60 revolutionaries were murdered by Batistas army during, and immediately after, the Moncada attack. In prison, Fidel edited his defense speech from the trial into the pamphlet History Will Absolve Me , which was distributed in tens of thousands of copies and became the program of the July 26 Movement. Originally sentenced to 15 years, he and his comrades were released from prison in May 1955, after 22 months, as a result of a public campaign for amnesty.
On July 7, 1955, Fidel left for Mexico, where he began to organize a guerrilla expedition to launch armed insurrection in Cuba. On December 2, 1956, along with 81 other fighters, including his brother Ral, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida, and Jess Montan, Fidel reached the Cuban coast aboard the cabin cruiser Granma . For the next two years, he directed the operations of the Rebel Army, in addition to continuing as central leader of the July 26 Movement. After an initial setback, the guerrillas were able to reorganize their forces, and by late 1958 had successfully extended their struggle from the Sierra Maestra mountains throughout the island.
On January 1, 1959, Batista fled Cuba. In response to a call by Fidel Castro, hundreds of thousands of Cubans launched an insurrectionary general strike that ensured the victory of the revolution. Fidel arrived triumphantly in Havana on January 8 as commander-in-chief of Cubas victorious Rebel Army. On February 13, 1959, he was named prime minister, a position he held until December 1976, when he became the president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers.
He has been first secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party since its founding in 1965.
Frei Betto is a Brazilian priest, born in Belo Horizonte in 1944. He became active at a very young age in the Catholic Student Youth and was imprisoned by the military dictatorship in 1964, when he was a journalism student. The following year he entered the Dominican order. Along with his studies of philosophy and theology, he worked as a journalist and in the movement opposing Brazils military regime.
Frei Betto worked with the internationally renowned Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, who enabled peasants to quickly learn to read by providing materials about politics, power, and liberation.
Imprisoned again in 1969, on his release in 1974 he became involved with organizing Christian base communities in poor and industrial neighborhoods. During the 1980s he worked in Nicaragua, Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, advising on issues of religion and the state. He has also been prominent in the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and at the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre. More recently he has been an adviser to the Luiz Incio Lula da Silva government in Brazil on social policy and the Zero Hunger project.
Frei Betto is a member of the International Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians and is widely acclaimed as author of over a dozen books on liberation theology.
To Leonardo Boff: priest, doctor, and above all, prophet.
To the memory of Friar Mateus Rocha, who taught me the liberating dimension of Christian faith, and as provincial of the Brazilian Dominicans, stimulated this mission.
To all Latin American Christians, who, amid lack of understanding and in the blessedness of the thirst for justice, are preparing, in the manner of John the Baptist, for the coming of the Lord in socialism.
FREI BETTO
It is amazing that 20 years after the launching of the Spanish edition of Fidel and Religion in November 1985 it should remain so timely. The lead up to this book involved a series of unexpected events and coincidences. It had never occurred to me that I would have the privilege of listening to the comandante [Fidel Castro] in a long interview, though I had begun my professional career as a journalist an activity in which I am still involved, as it is entirely compatible with my pastoral work as a Dominican friar.
I was very grateful when, after a conversation in Havana in February 1985 that lasted from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., Fidel agreed to give me a brief interview. The Cuban leader usually works at night, and in addition to being an excellent speaker, participates in discussions with tremendous enthusiasm. He never meets with an interviewer for just 10 or 15 minutes. Generally, he spends hours talking preferably, those just before dawn because hes interested in hearing everything his visitor has to say. With a mind open to all topics, he asked me for details about the cooking in the monasteries, the friars library, the system of studies and methods of preaching the gospel. Or he would ask about the economy, climate, political forces and history of the visitors country. He also took the opportunity to talk about the Cuban revolution its achievements, mistakes, limitations, and advances never falling into leftist clichs or quoting the Marxist classics.
