My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

I have the utmost respect for Fidel. His memory is fantastic and the way he describes various battles and the strategies the 26th of July utilized in the revolution. His memories of Che and Fidel's discussion of ethics both in war and in peace are exemplary. This book was completed in 2005 and many things have changed since then but the interviews can stand alone at any age.

Fantastic book. I definitely recommend it as an interesting read about one of the most fascinating leaders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And shame on the United States government. Even before I heard what Fidel's perspective as Cuba's leader of the Revolution had to say, I was disgusted by what we, as the American people backing our government, have perpetrated against Cuba. And I still don't understand why we allow the Ex-pats in Florida to still run the show when it comes to our policies regarding this island country. It's abhorrent. But anyway, I encourage folks who don't know a lot about Cuba's history, and its relationship with the US, to just crack the pages and see the situation through Castro's eyes. Or read other books on the subject. If you don't know a lot about it, you will truly find it eye opening...

Contents<br /><br />Map of Cuba<br /><br />A Hundred Hours with Fidel<br /><br />1 The Childhood of a Leader  <br />Childhood in Birán - Don Angel - The batey - Fidel's mother - Living in the teacher's house - Colegio de la Salle - Echoes of the war in Spain - The Jesuits of the Colegio de Dolores<br /><br />2  The Forging of a Rebel<br />The first rebellions - The 'house of hunger' - The political atmosphere - The dictatorships of Machado and Batista - In trouble - Havana - The Colegio de Belén<br /><br />3  Entering Politics<br />The University - Eduardo Chibás - Cayo Confites - 'El Bogotazo' - Thinking about Moncada<br /><br />4  The Assault on the Moncada Barracks<br />Preparation - The men - The weapons - The stratergy - The farm in Siboney - The attack - The retreat<br /><br />5 The Backdrop of the Revolution<br />Bolívar - Slavery and independence - Autonomists and pro-Americans - The two wars of Independence - Carlos Manuel de Céspedes - Maximo Gómez - Antonio Maceo - José Martí<br /><br />6  'History Will Absolve Me'<br />The Capture - Lieutenant Sarría - 'Ideas can't be killed' - The trial - The allocution - Prison<br /><br />7  Che Guevara<br />Mexico - Meeting Che - Seeing eye to eye politically - Personality and determination - Preparations for a guerrilla war - Training<br /><br />8  In the Sierra Maestra<br />The Granma - Alegría de Pio - First victories - Che in combat - Raúl and Camilo - War strategies - The defeat of Batista - The triumph of the Revolution<br /><br />9  Lessons from a Guerrilla War<br />Violence and revolution - Ethics with the campesinos - Treatment of prisoners - Wartime justice in the Sierra<br /><br />10  Revolution: First Steps, First Problems<br />Transition - Sectarianism - Public trials of torturers - The Revolution and homosexuals - The Revolution and blacks - The Revolution and women - The Revolution and machismo - The Revolution and the Catholic Church<br /><br />11  The Conspiracies Begin<br />The Revolution's first laws - Che and the administration - The agrarian reform - Che Guevara and revolutionary labour - First acts of sabotage - Ruptures with the US - Terrorism - Attempts on Fidel Castro's life<br /><br />12  The Bay of Pigs / Playa Girón<br />The attack - Mercenaries - US intervention - The military victory - Treatment of the defeated combatants - The prisoner exchange - The dirty war - The role of President Kennedy <br /><br />13  The 'Cuban Missile Crisis' of October 1962<br />The world on the brink of nuclear war - The Soviets' 'betrayal' - Failed negotiations - Letters between Castro and Khrushchev - Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin - The Kennedy assassination <br /><br />14  The Death of Che Guevara<br />Che and the anti-imperialist movement - The farewell letter - In the guerrilla conflicts in Africa - Return to Cuba - Preparing the mission to the Andes - Régis Debray - The last battle - Che's legacy<br /><br />15  Cuba and Africa<br />Algeria - Ahmed Ben Bella - Che in the Congo - Guinea-Bissau - South Africa invades Angola - 'Operation Carlota' - A decisive victory - New aggression - The battle of Cuito Cuanavale - A 'forgotten' deed of valour - Lessons of war<br /><br />16  The Emigration Crises<br />Agreements with Reagan - Camarioca - Mariel - The 'balseros' - The sinking of the tugboat on 13 July 1994 - Riots in Havana on 5 August 1994 - The Cuban Adjustment Act - Emigrants and 'refugees' <br /> <br />17  The Collapse of the Soviet Union <br />The ecological disaster - The infrastructure - Computer mediocrity - The reign of the mafias - Living without the USSR<br /><br />18  The Ochoa Case and the Death Penalty<br />A revelation by Navarro Wolf - The MC businesses - Drugs and dollars - The Columbian connection - The execution of Ochoa - The Cuban Revolution and the death penalty - A de facto moratorium<br /><br />19  Cuba and Neoliberal Globalization <br />The new capitalism - What is Socialism today? - Ideological confusion - The tragedy of the environment - Preserving the environment - 'The battle of ideas' - Towards a general education <br /><br />20  President Jimmy Carter's Visit<br />Torrijos and the Panama Canal Issue - Carter and the Mariel crisis - First encounters - Presidents of the United States - The Varela Project - Change the constitution? - The response<br /><br />21  The Arrest of the Dissidents in March 2003<br />James Cason in Havana - Meetings in the Cuban Interests Office in Washington - War against Cuba? - The Raúl Rivero case - The Valladares affair - The death penalty<br /><br />22  The Hijackings in April 2003<br />Air piracy - Heading for a new migration explosion? - The hijacking of the boat in Regla - The negotiations - The attitude of the American authorities - Revolution, Socialism and crime - Execution of three hijackers - A statement by José Saramago<br /><br />23  Cuba and Spain<br />Felipe González - José María Aznar - The Spanish Socialists and the Cuban Revolution - The Spanish Left - The break with Felipe González - Franco and Aznar - King Juan Carlos I - Prince Felipe of Spain - Manuel Fraga<br /><br />24  Fidel and France<br />A French education - The French Revolution - Victor Hugo an Les Misérables - Balzac and La Comédie Humane - Jean-Paul Sartre - General Charles de Gaulle - Régis Debray - François and Danielle Mitterand - Georges Marchais - Gérard Depardieu<br /><br />25  Latin America<br />Subcomandante Marcos - The indigenous peoples's struggle - Evo Morales - Hugo Chávez and Venezuela - The coup against Chávez - Progressive military leaders - Kirchner and the symbol of Argentina - Lula and Brazil<br /><br />26  Cuba Today<br />Human rights - The economic embargo -  The press and information - The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 - President Bush's agressiveness - The Iraq War - A 'preventive war' against Cuba? - On terrorism <br /><br />27  Summing Up a Life and a Revolution <br />Eloquence and speeches - Love and hate - On treason - A dictator? - Attachment to the uniform - Regrets - The end of the sugar monoculture - The Revolution's successes - The judgement of history - Memorable personalities<br /><br />28  After Fidel, What?<br />'Critic Number One' - Corruption - The single party - Fidel's salary - Socialism: no turning back? - The succession - Raúl Castro - Can the Revolution be brought down? - The future of the Revolution <br /><br />A Note on the Text and the Translation <br /><br />Some Key Dates in the Life of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution (1926 - 2007)<br /><br />Notes<br />Index

Other than the Paris Review interviews and a few others, I am generally not a fan of interviews in the question and answer format. I would rather read a well-rounded profile or a piece where the quotes are weaved in with other details or insights, which is how I try to write too after interviewing someone. So, a book of more than 700 pages, consisting of a long interview in the question and answer format, is not something I would readily pick up.<br /><br />But, here the person facing the question happens to be one Mr.Castro, who speaks at length about the many historical events about which a majority's understanding have been formed through US media propaganda. Ignacio Ramonet, the interviewer, is not a Castro apologist, as evident in his sharp, relentless questioning, covering almost every aspect of Castro's life and politics. In Ramonet's own words, Castro never asked for a list of questions, all through the hours of interviews, spread over different periods. <br /><br />The interview begins from his rather privileged family background. His father Don Angel Castro, who immigrated from Galicia in Spain, was initially a soldier and then a labourer for the United Fruit Company, but later grew to own 900 hectares of land. His mother Lina belonged to a family with origins from the Canary islands. While the young Castro lived in considerable comfort, the majority in the village were not so and also were illiterate. He speaks of his memories as a ten year old in Biran, of reading from the newspaper reports about the Spanish civil war to the house cook Manuel Garcia, who was illiterate. These readings about a war in which many from around the world participated to resist the fascists, probably sowed the seeds of an internationalist outlook in him.<br /><br />One of his first acts of rebellion was against his school vice principal, who slapped him several times without much of a reason. The young Castro punched and kicked him in return in front of the whole school. He was 11 years old then. By the time he was studying law at University, he had become a Marxist-Leninist. Castro's memory and attention to detail comes to the fore in his recounting of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. He speaks about the meticulous planning, the arrival in different groups during a carnival to avoid suspicion and the plan was to seize the army's weapons. They all wore the uniforms of the army under dictator Batista, but recognised each other using low cut street shoes. The training was done at shooting ranges. Among the 140 men, 40 were kept guarding the highway against a counter-attack. <br />Yet, for all the planning, the move failed and Castro and his comrades captured. His life could have ended there, but for the intervention of Lieutenant Pedro Sarria who saved him from being shot by his subordinates and refused to hand him over to his superior. The background to his 'History will absolve me' speech, made as part of his defense in court, is also recounted. Considerable space is set aside for the guerilla campaign centred on Sierra Maestra, from where the revolution triumphed with just 3000 fighters in less than two years on January 1, 1959. Castro says even Hemingway's 'For whom the bell tolls' helped in strategising the irregular war.<br /><br />To a question on their long beards, he says - "The story of our beards is very simple. It arose out of the difficult conditions we were living and fighting under as guerrillas. We didn't have any razor blades, everybody just let their beards and hair grow, and that turned into a kind of badge of identity. For the campesinos and everybody else, for the press, for the reporters we were "los barbudos" - the bearded ones. It had its positive side: in order for a spy to infiltrate us, he had to start preparing months ahead of time - he'd have had to have six-months' growth of beard, you see. Later, with the triumph of the Revolution, we kept our beards to preserve the symbolism."<br />Castro says that none of the soldiers who were captured were tortured, because the aim was to win them over to this side, when the revolutionaries come into power. Among those who treated the injured soldiers were Dr.Che Guevara. He talks about the lies spread by catholic clergy and the US, the most notorious one being that the revolution will take away the children. Using this as a pretext, 14000 children were virtually kidnapped to the US. The enactment of the land reform act was predictably opposed by the US corporates and their agents. <br /><br />The initial years of Castro's Government were marked by acts of sabotage, mostly engineered by the US. The period from 1961 to 63, the country witnessed 5780 terrorist actions, 717 serious attacks on industrial faciliities and even plane hijackings. The US went to great lengths to protect the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and CIA agent, who who was involved in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people, as well as organised the bombing of tourist hotels in Cuba. Protected till the end of his life, the terrorist died in US in 2018, at the age of 90, more than 13 years after this book came out. The terrorist was a hero for the Cuban exiles whom the Western media so love to quote to run down Cuba. Then there is the case of the "poet" Armando valladares, who faked paralysis, and was released from prison after serving sentence for terrorist activity.<br /><br />In the extended talk on the 'Bay of Pigs' invasion of 1961, Castro says that 1200 of the 1500 mercenaries who landed from the US were captured, but none of them were ill-treated and all of them were returned to the US. He even challenges the interviewer to find people to counter this claim. Now, compare this conduct with that of the US, which kept in jail men captured on allegations of spying for years and years. <br /><br />One of the less discussed aspects of the Cuban model is the help extended by the country to the liberation struggles in many colonised countries, a large number of them being African countries, despite its own struggles. Among the countries which got Cuban help in this respect include Algeria, Mozambique, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Congo and Bolivia. As many as 50,000 Cuban soldiers were sent to Angola to fight against the racist South African army in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987. Not to forget, US was an ally of the apartheid regime. Cuba also played a significant contribution to the toppling of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the liberation of Zimbabwe and the independence to Namibia and Angola. The country regularly sends doctors and other support to disaster-hit countries. But, the US refused aid after Hurricane Katrina. <br /><br />One of the most memorable parts of the book is the part where he talks about the call that he made to Hugo Chavez during the US-engineered coup of April 11,2002, when Chavez was stranded inside the presidential palace with few of his most trusted officers. "Fidel's call was decisive in preventing mass self sacrifice. It was the determining factor. His advice allowed is to see better through the obscurity," Chavez would later say. The message that he hadn't resigned , and is a prisoner president, was announced to the world through Castro, to whom Chavez's daughter passed the message, contradicting the claims by the corporate media. Thus, for a time, he became a reporter for the counter coup relaying messages from the Venezuelan armed forces, who stood with Chavez, to the outside world. <br /><br />This should be a recommended read for anyone anywhere in the world, for there is hardly any country free of the impact of the policies of the US Government. And, no one exposes their true intent and hypocrisy like Castro does. An entire life resisting imperial designs and surviving hundreds of attempts on his life has certainly equipped him for it.

As a historical materialist, I don’t believe in Great Man Theory. No single person can drive history forward, and like everyone else Fidel Castro was born into particular circumstances outside of his control. Cuba’s achievements over the last 60 years are due to the masses of Cuban people making history together, not just because of one man. <br />With that being said, while he’s still just a guy, Fidel is absolute legend and one of the greatest humans of the 20th century. Cuba now stands for all the best qualities and aspirations of our species: cooperation, education and the right of all human beings to live a dignified life.

Absolutely astounding to hear Castro's story. Sadly, this brilliant man has been portrayed as a monster for decades. Brilliant, engaged and completely self-aware, it is refreshing to hear his own voice in this fascinating interview style biography.

I read this book at the request of a friend who thought it might be good for a me since, in his opinion, my perspective was too pro-US. Whatever, but I thought it might be interesting. Whatever one thinks about Castro, he certainly was present for some interesting things in history. And I knew very little about Cuban history, so what the hey?<br /><br />In several ways the book is really fascinating. I do have a bit more sympathy for Castro having read this. It seems that, for all his wrong ideas, he probably was trying to do what he thought was best for Cuba. Anyway, the book...<br /><br />First of all - it's long and reads like a long book. The bulk of the book is just the transcript of a several day-long interview between Ramonet and Castro. At several points in the book they pat themselves on the back for having the stamina to keep going and I felt like they should be also patting me on the back for the same reason. I can understand why some people were so eager to leave Cuba - it was probably to avoid having to listen to Castro drone on about stuff.<br /><br />But seriously, there were some riveting parts. For example, the description of the Cuban missile crisis. Castro, it turns out, was very much in disagreement with Kruschev about how to handle that. Who knew? Also, it was really cool to hear about the defense of the bay of pigs invasion from the Cuban perspective. And the whole episode of Jimmy Carter's visit was fascinating. Between these interesting parts, though, there is a ton of Castro showing off how much detail he holds in his head about sugar production, how many doctors they educate, and a gazillion other minutiae that are quite boring to read.<br /><br />The most valuable thing I took away from this book is a deeper understanding of what's wrong with Castro and his perspective. My image of him before was as a self-indulgent, radical, oppressive dictator. Now I view him as a self-indulgent, semi-radical oppressive dictator who was misguidedly trying to do the right thing for his people.<br /><br />Perhaps the crux of his misguided view of the US was revealed when he described Kennedy's creation of the Peace Corps. He called this an "anti-revolutionary" group, designed to gain sympathy for the US amongst people of the third world. I was in the Peace Corps. Nobody, myself included, was motivated at all by their feelings about communist revolution, pro or con. Castro's otherwise impressive mind seems to live within some constrains where everything is either for or against the movement.<br /><br />

اجازه ندادم هیچ خیابان، میدان، مدرسه و بیمارستان به اسم من نامگذاری شود. درآمد سالیانه ی من و اموالم هر ساله به صورت رسمی اعلام می شود. قسمتی از حقوقم را به دولت و مراکزی می بخشم. هیچ کتاب آموزشی حق ندارد از من بنویسد و یا تصویری از من چاپ کند. بهترین رفیق دوران مبارزه را که وزیر هم بود به علت فساد مالی و ثابت شدنشان در دادگاه، حکم اعدامش را تایید کردم و برایش گریه کردم. مبارز و انقلابی که فساد کند، باید فاتحه ی کشور را خواند.

This book took me forever to get through. SOmetimes I read pages and realized I spent the whole time actually thinking about dinner and I had no idea what happened. It read more like Castro's tidy record keeping than a thrilling life story. He remembers every insignificant detail which is good but also really bad if you want to be entertained.

This is an autobiography of Fidel Castro. In this book, he talks about his life and how he became the leader of Cuba. I used this book as research for my school project. It had pretty usefull info.