In November 1983, then as managing editor of the Times, I traveled through South America, visiting our bureaus, interviewing leaders of the strife-torn continent, and all the while hoping that Fidel Castro would agree to my repeated requests for a meeting. Since my days in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis I had hoped for an opportunity to interview Castro about the aftermath of the confrontation with President Kennedy and his relations with the Soviet Union. I was accompanied on my Latin America tour by Bill Kovach, the enterprise editor of our National Desk. The circumstances were rather odd, but our invitation to visit Cuba did finally come through during the evening of November 23 in Managua, Nicaragua.
We had just interviewed Tomás Borge, a member of the ruling Directorate of the Sandinista Party, which was battling the American-supported Contra guerrillas. Borge had taken us to dinner in a shacklike house in a poor village on the outskirts of Managua, where we talked to the people and dined on pork, black beans, rice, and Coca Cola, and then back to the capital for drinks at a fancy bar at the Intercontinental Hotel. Suddenly, I was summoned from the bar at 10 o’clock to take a phone call from the Cuban ambassador. The next morning we were aboard a Cuban airliner bound for Havana. We lunched with Cuban officials in Havana at the Bodeguita del Medio, where there was a sign handwritten by Ernest Hemingway: “My Mogito in La Bodeguita, My Daiquiri in El Floridita.” It was a lovely lunch sampling the Hemingway drinks, but our hosts did not reveal whether Castro would be seeing us. Two days passed marked by interviews with Cuban leaders and tours. Then, at 9:30 P.M., a phone call in my hotel room: “We will pick you up in a moment; the president is ready to receive you.”
We were welcomed at the Council of State building by Alfredo Ramírez, the head of the American Department in the Ministry of External Affairs. We surrendered our cameras and tape recorder at the door, as requested, and a few minutes later we were ushered into Castro’s spacious office, an oblong wood-paneled room. The president’s large wooden desk piled with working files stood in a far corner before an overfilled bookcase. Fidel Castro greeted us as we entered. He was dressed in his familiar uniform, green combat fatigues, a short combat jacket with leather belt, and black zipper boots. His beard was quite long and rather straggly, but his hair with its silver gray streaks was well groomed. Castro waved us to beige leather couches arranged around a coffee table. We were seated with his aides: Alfredo Ramírez, Ramón Sánchez-Paridi, head of the Interest Section in Washington, and José Migar Barrenco, the secretary of the Council of State.
Castro, his manner warm and friendly, asked me to sit beside him, saying he would like to be able to look into my face. He apologized for inviting us to his office at such a late hour and added with a smile that possibly he had upset our plans; perhaps we would have preferred to go to the Tropicana, a large, splashy nightclub cabaret. Castro then invited questions, noting that he preferred to have our conversation kept out of the newspapers but that I was free to convey his views to associates. I am recording here condensed excerpts of Castro’s remarks for the first time.
I began by asking Castro for his view of the tensions between President Ronald Reagan’s administration and the Soviet leadership and their impact on Latin America, especially Cuba. Castro said that tensions were probably more severe than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. He said the international situation had been aggravated in particular by the decision of the United States and its allies to deploy Pershing missiles in Western Europe. You can judge the reaction of the Soviet Union to the deployment of the Pershings, he said, by comparing it to the American reaction during the 1962 crisis when the Russians were implanting forty-two medium-range missiles on Cuban soil. The American reaction was violent. There developed the threat of war. Now, Castro said, there is a parallel. If Russian missile launchers had been implanted in Cuba, they could have hit American targets in only a few minutes. The Pershing missiles can reach targets in the Soviet Union in a few minutes. So there is reason for the Russians to be concerned—in fact, even more so, since the Pershings are fifty times greater in power and numbers. (The Pershing systems were scrapped following the ratification of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on May 27, 1988.)
Then, striking a characteristic pose, Castro stroked his beard, thought for a moment, and, gesturing with his forefinger, said: “However, you must understand that the struggle in Latin America began much before there was any East-West confrontation or, in fact, even before the Bolshevik Revolution.” He said that the struggle for independence and freedom in Latin America would continue even if there was a détente between the Soviet Union and the United States. Even under conditions of détente, he thought it probable that the United States would still resist the revolutionary struggle convulsing Latin America. With a shrug, he said there was a possibility that détente might even work to the disadvantage of Latin America.
I asked whether it was unrealistic for Cuba to adopt an attitude of hostility while living in the shadow of the United States. Castro retorted it was not Cuba which had taken a stance of hostility but actually it was the United States which had been hostile toward Cuba. He said that countries struggling for their independence could not give up simply because they were living in the proximity of the United States. He said the revolutionary struggle was spreading throughout Latin America and he foresaw a day when even countries like Brazil would join and the United States would have to respect the power of the Latin American nations. Despite all of this, Castro continued, it was certainly possible for the United States to come to an accommodation with Cuba and bring about flourishing economic relations. He asked me: “You have diplomatic relations with China, which is a Communist country, why not with us?” I pointed out that good relations had developed between China and the United States for at least two reasons: China had become independent of Moscow and the United States thus no longer felt menaced by a Sino-Soviet monolith. Secondly, the Chinese had given up attempting to export revolution to the less developed countries.
Castro replied: As far as the export of revolution is concerned, it was true that Cuba has assisted revolutionaries in various countries, although the extent has been exaggerated. He said it did not make any difference, in any case, how much assistance you give to revolutionaries engaged in struggle unless there is a real will to win and a need to bring about change in the country. Those are the crucial and decisive factors, he said. He cited the American programs of assistance to the Salvadoran Army and before that to the South Vietnamese army. They failed, he said, because the revolutionaries had the spirit and will to win and had roots among the people and in the country.
As regards Cuba’s relations with the Soviet Union, Castro said, it was on a mutual basis and at times it was the Cubans who took the lead in urging Moscow to adopt policies. He said he remained grateful to Moscow for its large-scale assistance dating from the Khrushchev era. He did not complain about his treatment in the resolution of the missile crisis. Castro recalled that when he first took power, he was isolated, under pressure from the United States, and didn’t know in which direction to turn. He said it was the Soviet Union which came forward with the assistance he needed to build and preserve the Cuban nation—and the Cubans cannot overlook that fact. However, he stressed that Cuba retained its independence of action and that Soviet military advisers were in Cuba solely to train his army in the use of new weapons. The Soviet military force was a remnant of what Nikita Khrushchev posted on the island prior to the 1962 missile crisis with the United States. At the time I spoke with Castro, he was receiving a Soviet subsidy of $4 billion annually, representing 25 percent of the small country’s GNP. This included Soviet purchases of sugar and nickel at prices above market level. The subsidies ended in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In replying to questions, Castro stared intently into my eyes and often raised his hands in expressive gestures. Castro’s personal interpreter was brought in after the first interpreter was worn out; she not only translated simultaneously but also mimicked Castro’s inflections and expressions. Castro’s remarks revealed a broad knowledge of foreign affairs and history, including that of the United States. He frequently cited names of relevant personalities, dates, and statistics. Speaking of the work of the thousands of Cuban teachers in Nicaragua, he said proudly that 93 percent of their pupils had advanced to the next grade. When two Cuban schoolteachers were killed by the Contras near the Honduran border, he said, twenty-nine thousand Cuban schoolteachers volunteered thereafter to go to Nicaragua. As he spoke tenderly about Nicaragua’s schoolchildren, I thought, what a contrast. This is the same man whose dictatorial Communist regime had so brutally repressed political opponents.
At midnight, after the conversation with Castro had continued for more than two hours, ranging largely over issues relating to the civil wars in Salvador and Nicaragua, I was thanking Castro when he interrupted to say: “Well, it’s not too late to go to the Tropicana.” A tray of mogitas and daiquiris was brought in. For himself, Castro poured two drinks of Chivas Regal, saying he preferred scotch to rum. During our meeting, Castro smoked only one small cigar. He told us he had read everything that Hemingway wrote. In particular, he admired The Old Man and the Sea because Hemingway had written a novel “simply about a man and his thoughts.”