The Autobiography of Fidel Castro (review)

A former member of Fidel Castro's inner circle, Norberto Fuentes was an intimate acquaintance of the subject of his fictional "autobiography". In the eighties, he fell out of favor with the regime and came under suspicion for corruption. During that same time period, his friend Arnaldo Ochoa, a guerrilla hero of the Angolan campaign, was executed after a corruption conviction in a contentious trial. Fortunately, Fuentes was allowed to go into exile after Gabriel García Márquez intervened on his behalf.

Fuentes's fictional "autobiography" of Castro was published in two parts in Spanish, which Anna Kushner has brought together in one volume in her excellent translation of the texts. The novel begins with the childhood of Fidel in Birán, and follows the various stages of his life up until the early 90s. The book is largely a psychological study of the dictator whose life has defined the last sixty years of Cuban history. It is overflowing with the names, places, and events that make history and create a superb historical novel. We are treated to the fictional Castro's personal recollection of the events at the Moncada Barracks, the victory over Batista, the events at the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis. We witness his relationship to and scorn for the various characters and personages of Cuban and world history: Ernesto "Che" Guevara; his own brother, Raúl; Richard Nixon; John F. Kennedy; Sartre; and his many female companions. The portrait that emerges from the text is of a coarse, vulgar, arrogant megalomaniac obsessed with power and willing to kill at any moment in order to achieve the individual objectives at hand. The dictator is presented as an unrepentant criminal who excels at "the Revolution's two supreme duties—homicide and ideology" (534). The Castro of the text takes pleasure in replacing Martí as the chief historical icon of Cuban history and delights in the fact that the milestones of his own life have been transformed into state monuments. Additionally, Castro is obsessed with control and is omnipresent in Cuba through use of the secret service. The dictator is proud of his sexual prowess—that began when he was seven years old (39)—and of the impressive size of his genitalia (305), and he provides insight into his relationships with the many women in his life (María Laborde, Mirta Díaz Balart, Celia Sánchez, Dalia Soto del Valle, etc.). Either way, the profundity of these reflections is comparable to the adolescent jockeying of a high school locker room. Finally, Castro emerges to assume a "royal" status (165, 257) that has successfully ridded himself of any potential challenge to his throne, including his fellow revolutionaries, especially Camilo Cienfuegos and Che (534).

This historical text aspires to join the unique genre within Latin American literature of the dictator novel (Valle-Inclán, Asturias, Roa Bastos, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, etc.). In contrast to other works, Fuentes's text is limited by its first-person narration and this produces a lack of depth and texture. The reader either becomes fascinated by the huge personality of the narrator/main character or will lose interest in the monotonous, generic depiction. One wonders if Castro's personality could really be so unidimensional. Herein lies the problem. Few books on contemporary Cuba and Castro, particularly a book by a Cuban, can resist falling into one of the two prevalent schools of thought: pro- or anti-Castro. This book obviously belongs in the "anti" vein and takes pains to debunk other biographical treatments of Castro that present a more favorable portrait—Frei Betto, for instance (21). While the topic of Cuban politics is a polarizing issue, taking refuge in the absolute values of pro-or anti-Castro is a myopic debate that fails to appreciate the nuances and complexities of reality. How can the Castro of this text, obsessed as he is with himself, control, and violence be reconciled with the regime that mounted...