Archive [February 2000]

Talking to Communist dictators is not something I do every day. In fact, it is not something I do, period. But in light of the spotlight shone on this old tyrant as the citizenship of young Elian Gonzalez is debated, I thought it would be instructive to create a virtual meeting. Castro’s words here are his own; what follows is what I would like to say to him.

Rush: Greetings. Which do you prefer — totalitarian, tyrant, despot, or megalomaniac? Or how about just plain Communist dictator?

Castro: Naturally, the accusation of my being a Communist was absurd in the eyes of all who knew my public path in Cuba.

Rush: Well, that’s what you said in 1956 in order to deceive your own people.

Castro: It wasn’t possible to attempt the conquest of power in Cuba if one had a Communist label.

Rush: I get it. Kind of like calling yourself a “New Democrat.” You also pledged to “satisfy the people’s material needs without sacrificing any freedoms.” Didn’t quite work out that way, did it?

Castro: Men evolve politically. You mustn’t forget that. We made a Revolution that we first called “humanist,” but we now call it socialist.

Rush: No, no — haven’t you heard? You’re supposed to call it “progressive” now. Or better yet, the “Third Way.” Speaking of evolving, how far down on the political evolutionary chain are you?

Castro: I came to believe in socialism when I discovered that capitalism means the exploitation of man by man, when I saw the cyclical crises of capitalism when I realized that imperialism was doomed. Now, you should not be surprised that I came to this conclusion. We all read the same books, don’t we?

Rush: Apparently there are at least two you haven’t read: The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So. By me. But I’m not surprised — after all, such books are banned in your enlightened country. Perhaps you could have one of your minions smuggle them in for you. Let me ask you this: what do you believe in?

Castro: I believe absolutely in Marxism. Did I have prejudices concerning Communists? Yes. Was I influenced by the propaganda of imperialism and reaction against Communism? Yes. Did I think Communists were thieves? No, never. I always thought Communists were honorable, honest people.

Rush: Like yourself?

Castro: I behaved with principle, with correct morality, with dignity, with honor, with incredible altruism.

Rush: Incredible. I agree. All right, this sounds familiar. This was the same sort of claptrap we used to hear from the balcony overlooking Red Square.

Castro: The Revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Rush: Yep — that’s the stuff I mean. Okay, so it’s settled. You’re a Communist dictator. And I —

Castro: Faithful dog of imperialism.

Rush: Thanks. But I was going to say I am the Doctor of Democracy.

Castro: We have won the war; the days of tyranny are counted! The duty of every revolutionary is to make the Revolution. The Revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world.

Rush: And for decades, you have been sponsoring the terrorism to help this along, haven’t you? You have supported many so-called “revolutionary movements” in Latin America and Africa and elsewhere.

Castro: I am against terrorism.

Rush: I see. So why do you sponsor it?

Castro: It is not for revolutionaries to sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by.

Rush: Speaking of corpses — Cuba was totally dependent on the USSR, wasn’t it? In fact, the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1990 devastated your country. You backed the wrong horse, Mr. Castro.

Castro: We are winning … Victory will be ours!

Rush: And here’s a memorable quote right back: “We will bury you.” Remember that one?

I’d like to get to the news of the day: six-year-old Elian Gonzalez. You have posed as a champion of family values as you’ve demanded that he be returned to his father in Cuba. But as long as you have been in power, your government has separated families — as a way of punishing those who don’t agree with you.

Castro: You may paint me as the devil as long as you remain objective.

Rush: Sir, many would say that painting you as the devil is objective. According to the superb new book, Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press), your regime has been brutal. In the early days 15,000 Cubans were executed. Since 1959, when your vaunted Cuban “revolution” took place, a fifth of your population has fled. In fact 25,000 Cubans — including Elian Gonzalez’s mother, Elizabeth — were willing to give their lives in their attempt to flee to the United States.

Castro: The dogs that lick your wounds every day will never conceal the awful smells emanating from them! When history is written, it will speak of you as it speaks of plagues and epidemics!

Rush: You’ve been consulting with Hillary Clinton again, haven’t you? Look, there’s no need to get contentious here. I’m just interested in discovering why so many Cubans apparently don’t find your glorious reign appealing.

Castro: There are countries where more than 20,000 are leaving. There is a country in Central America, Guatemala, where over 100,000 people are leaving and that comes from the days of invasion against a democratic nation there. And I want to mention other countries that thousands of people have disappeared in Latin America. That has never happened in Cuba! None of those countries have been blockaded, yet Cuba is still under blockade. And that is the reality. That is the historical reality. We are against every blockade. Anyway, blockades go against the people, against men, women and children.

Rush: Ah, the children.

Castro: Against the youth and the old. It kills those people. It makes them starve.

Rush: Oh? I thought only Republicans did that.

Castro: No blockade has been as tough and as rigorous as the blockade against Cuba.

Rush: Let me see if I follow this: You’re saying that the reason thousands of Cubans try to escape from your island every year on inner tubes is because of the American embargo?

Castro: All this is part of a great plot.

Rush: No, you’ve got to pay attention; the word is “vast.”

Castro: They have taken an oath to oppose our revolution to the death, to try to isolate us from all other countries, to try and create within and without our country, political and economic, national and international, that is, all kinds of problems for us —

Rush: Go ahead, say it! It’s a conspiracy!

Castro: — all this is only a conspiracy; all this is only an evil attempt against our country and our revolution. I think it is not fair to use blockade against any country, it is not logical. Because those are weapons against people, against ordinary people. There is no reason. It’s like a noiseless atom bomb, which kills the people, kills the children. There is no justification for a blockade.

Rush: Speaking of the blockade, I would be remiss were I not to ask you about the October, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It was precipitated when the U.S. government discovered the Soviet Union was setting up long-range ballistic missiles in your country. President Kennedy instituted a naval blockade, which remained until Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles.

America has rightly perceived you as a threat, sir. You, as a committed Marxist-Leninist —

Castro: We are not only Marxist-Leninists; we are also nationalists and patriots.

Rush: — as a committed Marxist-Leninist-nationalist-patriot, were aligned with the Soviet Union. You nationalized industry; you collectivized agriculture; you confiscated property; you appropriated your nation’s wealth; you seized all private businesses; you made private enterprise a crime; you abolished all opposition parties; you proclaimed yourself president for life; you eliminated freedoms; you trampled on rights; you ruled by fiat, backed up by terror. You have, in fact, created one of the most repressive dictatorships on earth.

Castro: I always definitely believed in the need for seizing power by revolution. From the moral point of view, I never had and I shall never have doubts that our attitude was correct.

Rush: Of course not — fascists never do. But back to the missile crisis. What did you ultimately expect would happen with the Russkies’ missiles on your island pointing at the U.S.?

Castro: Perhaps thanks to America because you have made me famous. You have turned me into some kind of David, fighting the Goliath. I was faced with a dilemma: I didn’t very much like the idea of having Soviet missiles in our country, or Soviet troops on our territory, because of how it would affect the image of the Cuban revolution, and because by that time, given the experience we had gained, we were already thinking in terms of a revolution in the rest of Latin America … So of course, to appear to be a Soviet base here in the Caribbean would lose the Cuban revolution a great deal of influence and prestige, and the world would perceive us to be a Soviet base.

Rush: Which you were.

Castro: At that moment, I didn’t think about Cuba. I said to myself: if such an unfortunate war is unleashed, we will disappear from the map. At that moment, I was worried about the rest of the world, about the Soviet Union, about humanity at large.

Rush: How noble! You are a source of inspiration and a role model for leftists everywhere. Just ask anyone in the American media. Except for one detail, sir. Don’t you smoke?

Castro: I reached the conclusion long ago that the one last sacrifice I must make for public health is to stop smoking; I haven’t really missed it that much. If someone had forced me to quit, I would have suffered; but since I forced myself to halt smoking [in 1985], without making any solemn promise, it worked.

Rush: Is there anything else you’d like Americans to know about your health or habits?

Castro: If you calculate 15 minutes a day to shave, that is 5,000 minutes a year spent shaving.

Rush: Oh, I get it. Your beard has a political purpose: growing it allows more time to be dedicated to the Revolution. How fortunate. What, in your view, isn’t tied to the Revolution?

Castro: We believe that the Revolution still must fight many battles, and we believe that our first thought and our first preoccupation must be what to do to make the Revolution victorious … The revolutionary places something even above his own creative spirit; he places the Revolution above all else, and the most revolutionary artist would be disposed to sacrifice even his own artistic vocation for the Revolution.

Rush: Why is it that I never hear any talk of liberty from you? No discussion of freedom? No concern for individual rights?

Castro: The Revolution also has its rights, and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist … What are the rights of writers and artists, revolutionaries or not-revolutionaries? Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, no rights.

Rush: Sir, that is chilling. I am one who hopes Elian Gonzalez will never have to live under your totalitarian words.

Castro: History will absolve me.

Rush: I wouldn’t count on it. Let’s go over some of that history, shall we? And especially your history when it comes to this supposed desire to keep families together in your glorious Marxist-Leninist society. Shortly after you seized power, 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to America. But you prevented their parents from joining them. So as you whip up your government-sponsored demonstrations into frenzies over the love between father and son, people should know that it was you, sir, who split those thousands of families apart.

Castro: These are the things that should open the people’s eyes and prove to them that a Revolution is not an easy thing, that it is not a little stroll. The people should know that we have to defend ourselves very tenaciously, very intelligently, and very firmly, since we can count on no one else but ourselves, our own resources, and the sympathy of the people. Nothing more than this, because generally the oligarchies and the vested interests in other countries do nothing else but play the game and abet the enemies of this Revolution.

Rush: Who are the “enemies” of your revolution? The thousands of ordinary Cubans who were taken from their homes and forced to labor on the collective farms, while you lived in luxury? The newspapers and magazines that were banned, making all opposition a crime against the state? The religious and the dissenters, who to this day are routinely arrested and jailed?

Castro: I was supported by the masses.

Rush: You and your defenders — and there are many, in the liberal bastions of the United States — always claim you have all this popular support among the Cuban people. After all, they say, look how much you have done to improve the peasants’ lives! Look at your health system, your education system. Socialism works! Long live Castro!

But if you’re so popular, why don’t you stand in a free election? You won’t — because you know you’d be crushed.

Castro: I shall not — never! — be taken alive by the soldiers of tyranny while I sleep!

Rush: No, I’m talking about voters. And they might remember some recent history that demonstrates your “family values” — the incident that Cuban-Americans refer to as the “March 13th” tugboat tragedy, in 1994. The boat was destroyed by the Cuban coast guard. Forty people, including 20 children, drowned.

Castro: Every single person either remains with the Revolution today or is a martyr of the Revolution.

Rush: You often offer dissidents a choice: jail or exile — a practice condemned by international human rights organizations. As a result, Cuban exiles around the world live out their lives alone, for years waiting, hoping, that their families will be allowed to join them.

Castro: I detest loneliness, total loneliness, maybe because of the need man has for company. Aristotle said that man was a social being, and it seems I belong to that species — the fact that I detest loneliness does not mean that I am not capable of standing it.

Rush: Good for you. So you figure if you can stand it, so can they. Speaking of which, your daughter, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, joined demonstrators protesting your arrival at the United Nations in 1995.

Castro: It seems to me that I should not touch upon this subject publicly. I wouldn’t be acting like a gentleman if I did.

Rush: And you are always the gentleman! In the past two months, at least 100 dissidents have been arrested in your country. Cuba was condemned by the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva last March and at the Ibero-American Summit in Havana in November. Your prisoners live under conditions that remain among the worst in the world.

Let me read to you from Cuba: Exodus, Living Conditions and Human Rights, by Juan Clark: “Detainees have been subjected to electroshock and suffer from lack of adequate nutrition and medical care. They are often humiliated, and they have endured physical and psychological torture in cells known as gavetas [drawers], where they are packed so closely they have to remain standing. In a more recent version of the gavetas, the prisoner is locked into a cell resembling a coffin. Meanwhile, the general population lives under the watchful eye of the CDR’s [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution] vigilante groups organized by city block to spy on fellow citizens … Acts of repudiation are performed by Nazi-style mobs, the Rapid Response Brigades organized by the government to terrorize dissidents. They can also be subjected to various forms of blackmail and even ‘mysterious’ accidents. Arbitrary arrests are justified under the Ley de Peligrosidad [Endangerment Law], under which anyone who poses a threat to the system can be arrested and incarcerated without due process. Those who criticize the government or denounce human rights abuses can also be subjected to immediate arrest for distributing ‘enemy propaganda.’”

Now the Clinton Administration wants Elian Gonzalez to be returned to you based on “parental rights.” But there are no rights in Cuba!

Castro: Someday humanity will have to remember with horror these 100 years of capitalist development and what it has done to nature, and how they have poisoned everything, and how they have created this situation in which the deserts are expanding, and the forests are disappearing. You can see that the surface area is decreasing, the land is becoming saline, and natural resources are becoming scarce.

Rush: You’re changing the subject.

Castro: I trust that solidarity will prevail over xenophobia and racism, that generosity will prevail over selfishness.

Rush: You have been talking to the Clintons again!

Castro: I think the actions of Clinton’s adversaries are really dirty. It’s a real example of the things that occur in that country, of the lack of ethics.

Rush: If you want a real example of the things that occur in this country, the United States of America, don’t look to the Clintons. They understand even less than you do, I’m afraid. You need to look at ordinary Americans, accomplishing extraordinary things. Look to our economy, the engine of American freedom. Look to our innovations, our inventions, our problem-solving; our incomparable institutions and traditions that liberty has produced. This is what you get with a free people, unleashed and unshackled.

Castro: I could be rich … You know how? By writing the history of our Revolution for Hollywood.

Rush: You miss my point! Oh, never mind. But besides, you are rich. At the expense of your people. Mr. Castro, the truth is obvious to the whole world: by trying to control Cuba’s economy you have destroyed it. But it couldn’t be helped; that’s what socialism does. It hasn’t worked one time, ever, whenever and wherever it’s been tried.

Remember the 1950s? Your country actually exported food — something that seems unimaginable now. Thanks to you, your citizens have for decades lived under food rationing. With the collapse of your patron, the Soviet Union, malnutrition is widespread.

In fact, all the horrors that the Y2K nuts in this country worried about — power blackouts and water shortages, a primitive existence due to the inability to operate cars, washing machines, air conditioners or other conveniences — are normal daily Cuban life. Since all housing is assigned by the state, living conditions are appalling. In fact, Cuba looks frozen in time, with progress arrested in 1959, the year of your glorious “Revolution.”

Castro: The struggle in this country is for socialism.

Rush: Well, you’ve achieved it. Congratulations. Thank you for your time. One more question, on a lighter note. You once dreamed of playing major league baseball in the United States, and I know you still watch the game closely. Do you have a favorite team?

Castro: Perhaps because of my friendship with Ted Turner, the Atlanta Braves.

Rush: Why am I not surprised?

The comments by Fidel Castro in this satirical manufactured exchange are all actual quotes, taken verbatim from the Cuban dictator’s speeches, writings and media interviews since the 1950s.