The Double Life of Fidel Castro (17 page)

In the mid-1980s, alongside my guard duties, I was completing higher education studies at MININT in company with officers from the various military regions of our country. On the curriculum of that continuing education course were classes in political history, criminal law, psychology, and counterespionage. One day, at the end of a class devoted to the recruitment of foreign agents, a student officer—I can still remember his name, Roberto Dobao—came over to me to announce that Ramón Castro wanted a private talk with me. Intrigued, I asked him, “Ramón, the brother of the Commander in Chief ?”

“That’s the one!”

The student explained that he was working at the Valle de Picadura dairy farm, an agroindustrial farm run by Fidel’s eldest brother. Ramón, having found out that Officer Dobao was taking courses with “Fidel’s bodyguard,” had asked him to approach me discreetly. I was both surprised and intrigued by this request and I willingly accepted. Several days later, on a day off, Dobao and I were en route for Valle de Picadura, about thirty miles east of Havana.

Ramón was Fidel’s “other brother.” They were almost the same age (Ramón was two years older), the same stature (over six feet two), and wore the same beard. In short, they were physically similar, but the resemblance ended there. Totally uninterested in politics, the eldest Castro had never occupied a government post.
Guajiro
(farmer) through and through, he had quietly devoted his life to agriculture, first by taking over the huge estate of their father, Ángel Castro, situated in the east of the country near Santiago de Cuba, then as a high-level official in the Ministry of Agriculture, and finally as director of the special dairy farm in Valle de Picadura, one of the foremost state industrial farms of Cuba, then producing mainly fruit juice and milk. I had been there several times with the
Comandante
, for Fidel liked to observe for himself the progress of the revolution in the agricultural sector, of which he thought himself an expert.

It took about an hour to reach the place from Havana. No sooner were we there than Ramón came down from his office and took me aside to talk, in the shade of a mango tree. It was odd to be meeting Fidel’s brother without my boss. Ramón was visibly preoccupied: “Thanks for coming, Sánchez,” said the farmer whose handshake was even firmer than Fidel’s. He immediately set out the reason for his distress, using the familiar “you” form.

“Listen, I’ve been trying to get hold of my brother for months, but it’s impossible. . . . I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve left messages everywhere, including at the
palacio
. . . no reply! I really need to speak to him. So could you have a word with him for me?”

“Of course,
señor
, I promise to do what I can,” I said, using the formal “you” form since I wasn’t in the habit of addressing just anyone with the familiar form, especially not official figures such as Ramón.

When we got to the
palacio
the following morning, I took the opportunity of being alone in the elevator with the
Comandante
to talk about Ramón.

“
Comandante
, yesterday I was at Valle de Picadura and I found your brother very upset and sad. . . . I think he would like to talk to you. . . .”

“I know, I know . . . I know about it, Sánchez. . . . Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him,” replied Fidel, bringing the conversation to a close.

I didn’t know what vital news Ramón had to tell his brother but, in any case, I knew the latter had taken account of my message; a few days later, my classmate came to thank me profusely on behalf of the eldest Castro. The anecdote ends there, but the episode continues to intrigue me, even now: has anyone else ever had to go through a third party to speak to their own brother?

Throughout his life, the
Comandante
did not set much store by his siblings, as numerous as they were unknown. Ángel Castro (1875–1956) and Lina (1903–1963), a landowner and his young domestic servant whom he wed in a second marriage, had seven children: Angelita (born 1923), Ramón (1924), Fidel (1926), Raúl (1931), Juanita (1933), Enma (1935), and Agustina (1938). Fidel was always fairly close to Angelita, who died in 2012, and they had a friendly relationship without it being deeper than that. As for Juanita,
¡Qué se vaya al carajo!
(Let her go screw herself!) might have been the sentiment of the
Comandante
for this unmarried sister, whom he never once mentioned in my presence. She had fled Cuba in 1964 at the age of thirty-one to live in Miami, from where she frequently denounced communism, Castrism, and totalitarianism. Fidel had deleted her, as though she no longer existed. He also had little to do with Enma, for good reason: she spent most of her life in Mexico, where she married a Mexican businessman in the 1950s. Finally, the discreet and pious Agustina, long married to a pianist who is now deceased, has also always been distant from her famous brother. When all is said and done, only Raúl, five years younger, is truly close to Fidel, despite various serious differences in personality. “As children, Ramón was easygoing, Fidel rigid, and Raúl a clown,” their sister Juanita noted. “Raúl had many friends and playmates. Fidel, on the other hand, was solitary, introspective, and selfish.”
*

Another difference: if a rumor widely propagated in Cuba and the United States and repeated by certain biographers of Fidel is to be believed, he and Raúl did not have the same biological father. The defense minister was supposedly the illegitimate son that their mother Lina had with the commander of a security post in Birán, the Castros’ native village. Is it true? I have no idea. All I can say is that Raúl in no way resembles his two older brothers. Smaller, unshaven, he also has slanted eyes, hence his nickname of El Chino, the Chinaman. On the other hand, he has a marked resemblance to his younger sister Juanita, who was born two years after him.

_______________

*
Juanita Castro and Maria Antonieta Collins,
Fidel and Raúl, mes frères:
L’ histoire secrete
[Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers: A Secret History] (Paris: Plon, 2011).

Since childhood, Fidel and Raúl had been hand in glove. The latter had followed the former in all his adventures, from the attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953 until his accession to power. For Raúl, Fidel was a sort of substitute father, perhaps because the real father, Ángel, a strict patriarch originally from Galicia in Spain, was that distant, brutal man described in certain biographies. Fidel was also a strict “father”—but a father that Raúl respected and admired, even idolized. The truth is that the
Comandante
possessed all the talents that Raúl did not have: charisma, intellectual agility, political vision, persuasiveness, ease with speaking, and a gift for communication.

All his life, Raúl has been under Fidel’s influence. In the Sierra Maestra, he did everything to prove his valor and courage and to win his brother’s esteem. According to historians, he executed traitors and enemies with his own weapon and presided over execution squads without displaying the slightest emotion. Raúl has more blood on his hands, professionally speaking as it were, than Fidel. At any rate, his nature is just as repressive as that of the
Líder Máximo
, if not even more so; his zeal paid off, and in 1958 Fidel judged Raúl capable of commanding at the front, like Che Guevara. He therefore entrusted his brother with the opening of a new guerrilla front, the “second eastern Frank País front” situated in the east toward the town of Santiago de Cuba. Raúl acquitted himself with flying colors.

A mediocre student at school who became a rather taciturn adult, this lover of cock fighting—an activity then in vogue but now outlawed—found himself on the battlefield. Tough and dogmatic, methodical and organized, it was there that he earned his stripes as future defense minister—a post that he occupied for forty-nine years, until 2008.

Raúl had an absolute loyalty toward Fidel. He was also the only person in the world that the
Comandante
trusted 100 percent. The two functioned in tandem. For example, when there was good news to announce such as the promotion of new leaders, it was always the number one who took care of it—but when an official was to be stripped of his post and rebuffed in public, the number two always took over. To the gallery it looked like “good cop, bad cop,” and in fact the pair were in agreement about everything. They spoke every day on the phone, met several times a week, and—not a minor affair—they would not miss the other’s birthday for all the world. Raúl’s innumerable visits to the presidential
palacio
gave me ample occasion to observe the relationship between the two brothers.

It would be a mistake to downplay Raúl’s historical role. First of all, he was the first to encounter the Cuban communist movement under Batista. Then, it was he who had introduced the Argentinian Ernesto Che Guevara to his big brother. Indeed, some people consider Raúl the real architect of the Castrist system. Unlike his brother—visionary, energetic, impulsive, but totally disorganized—Raúl was a natural, and uncompromising, organizer. His great achievement was to have methodically transformed a guerrilla movement into an army of professionals capable of operating across oceans and defeating a foreign army, as it did in Angola. It was also he who imposed an iron discipline on the military and who organized the dominance of the military over 60 to 70 percent of the national economy, including the lucrative sector of tourism. Headed by “Raúlist” generals, the GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.) holding company controlled dozens of large companies in every sector: Cimex (real estate, banks, restauration, gas stations, supermarkets, and more than two hundred shops), Cubanacan (tourism), Gaviota S.A. (hotels), Servicio Automotriz S.A. (tourist car service), Tecnotex (import-export of technologies and services), Agrotex (agriculture), Sermar (dockyards), Geocuba (cartography), and so on. From behind the scenes, Raúl was therefore an essential cog in the system.

For all that, the second in command of the revolution did not take any decision, even the most insignificant, without first referring it to the leader. I once saw him in Fidel’s office having his brother validate the choice of new battledress for the army. At the time, Raúl was even submissive in terms of his relations with us, his brother’s guards—he was well placed to know that we represented the most important structure in the hierarchy of power. The defense minister held us in such high esteem that when he went to join Fidel in a public place, he dismissed his own escort to place himself directly under our protection.

What is more, he did not allow anyone—not even a minister or a general—to go against the slightest order given by Fidel’s escort. When one of us asked an official, of whatever rank, to please stand aside to let us through, woe betide him if he protested because Raúl, who watched everything out of a corner of his eye, would immediately notice and mark down a mental black mark against him. I also noticed that during official receptions at the presidential palace, he would sometimes “play the police” himself: if he thought there were too many courtiers around Fidel, he would speak individually to certain of them—including ministers—to tell them they should now leave his brother a little oxygen and space. Then, after having discreetly got rid of the unwelcome guests, he would turn toward us security officers, almost as though he were seeking our approval.

In public, Raúl presented the image of a friendly, affable, approachable man. Particularly fond of iced vodka, this inveterate drinker was also a party lover, an aficionado of jokes who was, according to some, blessed with a real sense of humor. Of course, all of that was nothing more than a façade. For my part, I always found him rough, curt, almost unpleasant. Politically, he was a hard-liner focused on repression; since he has succeeded his brother as head of state, police brutalities have not decreased— far from it, contrary to the notion the government has cleverly managed to instill in world public opinion.

Raúl’s humor was often dubious. I can still see him, in the early 1990s, turning up at the airport to wave good-bye to the
Comandante
at the foot of the airplane, as he did each time the latter went abroad. I should point out that, in this case, part of Fidel’s escort remained in Cuba. We were about to embark when the number two shouted out to the number one: “Don’t worry about your escort, I’ll put those who stay behind to work. No vacations with me!” As the doors of the Ilyushin closed behind us, I thought, “What an idiotic joke. . . .” Apparently he did not know that Fidel’s escort rarely sat twiddling their thumbs. When the
Líder Máximo
was abroad, not only did the guards carry on with their normal training but, in addition, they took the opportunity of carrying out overdue tasks such as cleaning weaponry, maintaining vehicles, checking the condition of equipment to be used in case of war, the examination of air raid shelters, and many other duties.

However, there is one thing one cannot take away from Raúl: his sense of family. It was he, and nobody else, who for a long time put up Fidelito and Jorge Ángel, his brother’s first sons— legitimate and illegitimate—under his own roof because he knew they were not welcome at Punto Cero with Dalia and Fidel. And it was he who from the beginning arranged that the first wife of the
Comandante
, Mirta Díaz-Balart, who has lived in Spain for more than fifty years, was able to return to the island to maintain contact with her son, Fidelito.

Raúl was the pater familias of the Castros. On Sundays, he and his wife, Vilma, would often put on great barbecues that brought together children, grandchildren, cousins, brothers, and sisters. Sometimes Fidel would join the family, and even if he did not stay long, these reunions gave his sisters the rare opportunity to see him. The surroundings were pleasant: after having lived in a four-story building in the quarter of Nuevo Vedado, Raúl, Vilma, and all their clan had moved close to Fidel and Dalia’s, to La Rinconada. Before the revolution it had been a rich coffee trader’s property. Situated on 222nd Street, it was surrounded by a huge, tree-filled territory, adorned with luxuriant vegetation, and also boasted two high-quality sports terrains: a pitch for baseball and one for frontenis (a variant of the Basque pelota game played with tennis racquets and mainly popular in Mexico, Spain, and Argentina).