Cuba Libre!

Whilst most of the world spent last week ogling at photos of Saddam’s dead kids, a different media carnival was going on in Cuba. Why? Well, because 50 years ago a hitherto unknown lawyer set about ousting the Batista administration.

Fidel Castro’s achievement in usurping an incumbent government that had made Havana’s casinos a Mecca for US gangsters shouldn’t be underestimated – even if the origins of the revolution were pretty haphazard. Back in 1953, he and his fellow dishevelled guerrillas attacked the Moncada barracks in Santiago with ancient rifles and only to be captured and put on trial.

It was during the trial that made Castro a household name in Cuba and elsewhere, and where he delivered lines that proved he wasn’t finished with playing revolutionary: ‘Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.’

If his self-belief was impressive, and his determination was to be admired – it was another six years before Castro seized power – what happened when the revolution was finally won was less glitzy.

Nowadays, the country’s quaint 1950s façade barely shrouds an impoverished country brought to its knees through poor relations with its powerful neighbour, the USA, and due to the passing of the Soviet Union. But, who’s to blame for that?

Well, before you point a loaded finger at El President, consider the following. When Castro took control he set about returning the wealth of the nation to the Cubans, who had been forced to work in tobacco fields and cigar factories for wealthy American cohorts of the deposed leadership. These racketeers having been given the country’s assets in return for a cut of the casinos’ profits.

Repatriating these valuable commodities did not go down too well with the US, and Eisenhower refused to entertain any prospect of a working relationship with Cuba. With America sulking because Cuba had taken its ball back, Castro was forced to look elsewhere for a potential trading partner, and despite the fact that his revolution was not carried out in order to create a Communist satellite state, the USSR was approached.

Being less than 100 miles from the Florida coast, it’s understandable than Khrushchev was all ears to any talk of a trade off.

As expected Cuba’s blunt diplomatic strategies riled the US. In 1960 CIA operatives were training Cuban exiles to subvert the regime. A year later Eisenhower’s administration broke off all diplomatic relations with Havana and the Cold War inched closer to crisis point. That was in January 1961, by April the USA had a new president who, just a matter of weeks into the job, sanctioned the CIA’s invasion of the Bay of Pigs, only for Castro’s forces to keep the pigs at bay.

The resulting withdrawal was a huge humiliation to the CIA, and many other government agencies. For Cuba, the attack was little more than an unprovoked attack, which threatened the country’s sovereignty, and it responded by agreeing to have nuclear missiles transported from the USSR. As everyone knows this strategy sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Before you say, so what? Old news, Kennedy held firm and America was saved from living in the shadow of a nuclear threat, remember that 40 years on, the missiles are still there. True, they mightn’t be pointing at the US, but they are still on Cuban soil. Just a little fact the US doesn’t like to be reminded of.

If you think about it this fact explains much about the United States’ policy with regard Castro ever since. With these missiles only needing to be turned 180°, a more subtle approach to dealing with the in-Fidel was introduced. The US secret services went into overdrive. Assassination plots were rife. Cuban dissidents were trained and smuggled into Havana armed with exploding cigars and bottles of expensive booze laced with poisons designed to make Castro’s beard fall out.

Needless to say all of these ruses failed, and now, in 2003, Eisenhower’s gone, Khrushchev’s gone Kennedy’s gone, pretty much other national leader’s pushing up daisies or living in exile. And yet Fidel prevails.

Cuba has survived in the face of such hostility from a country that considers itself champion of the oppressed, yet reserves the right to repress any nation that follows a different doctrine to its own. Cuba has staggered on in defiance of a world power that rejected the chance to work with Castro because he ‘stole’ its casinos – under the guise that Fidel was Communist and therefore oppressing the people. Yet, conducted witch-hunts of anyone with even mildly liberal tendencies under the tenure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The list of hypocrisies goes on (but I won’t).

Suffice to say, with all this in mind it’s no wonder that the US acted with such alarming alacrity when Uday and Qusay’s hiding place was discovered. Killing them rather than smoking them out saved George W’s blushes at having to read about ‘The Beard’ celebrating the dawn of the Cuban Revolution on the front page of the Washington Post.