Notes

Prologue

1. NIE 85-2-60, The Situation in Cuba, June 14, 1960.

Introduction

1. Joseph North, “Raul Castro Tells Our Reporter of Cuba’s Revolutionary Aims,” The Worker, February 1, 1959, p. 7.

2. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, Little Brown, 1970, p. 489.

3. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, Norton, 1997, p. 14.

4. Rufo Lopez Fresquet, My Fourteen Months with Castro, World Publishing Company, 1966, pp. 110–111; and Philip Bonsal, Castro, Cuba, and the United States, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971, pp. 64–65.

5. Teresa Gurza, “Cuba: Past, Present, Future of Socialist Revolution,” El Dia, September 19, 1975. JPRS No. 65966, October 20, 1975.

6. Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro, Random House, 1961, p. 216.

7. Jeffrey J. Safford, “The Nixon-Castro Meeting of 19 April 1959,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 4 (Fall 1980).

8. Interview with Ernesto Betancourt, Washington, DC, March 27, 2003.

9. Interview with Barbara Gordon, Washington, DC, April 11, 2002.

10. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, Harper and Row, 1971, p. 1211.

11. Jeffrey M. Elliot and Mervyn M. Dymally, Fidel Castro: Nothing Can Stop the Course of History, Pathfinder Press, 1986, p. 23.

12. Herminio Portell-Vila, “Quien Mal Anda, Mal Acaba,” Bohemia Libre, January 1, 1961, p. 88.

13. Neill Macaulay, A Rebel in Cuba, Quadrangle Books, 1970, p. 14.

14. Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, Vintage Books, 1985, p. 30.

15. Bonsal, op. cit., p. 36.

16. Interview with Huber Matos, Miami, FL, February 24, 1986.

17. FBIS, January 22, 1959.

18. Rolando Bonachea and Nelson Valdes, Revolutionary Struggle: The Selected Works of Fidel Castro, The MIT Press, 1972, p. 285.

19. “Excerpts from the Appearance of Fidel Castro Before the Press,” U. S. Department of State, American Embassy, Havana, March 13, 1959.

20. Interview with Ernesto Betancourt.

21. Harold Scarlett, The Houston Post, April 29, 1959, p. 1.

22. Betancourt, op. cit.

23. Thomas, op. cit., p. 1228.

24. Bonsal, op. cit., p. 108.

25. Richard Bissell. Reflections of a Cold Warrior, Yale University Press, 1996, p. 154.

26. Revolucion, January 29, 1959.

27. Interview with Jaime Costa, Miami, FL, February 25, 1986.

28. Gianni Mina, An Encounter with Fidel, Ocean Press, 1991, p. 230.

29. Pablo Diaz Gonzalez, “La Travesia Historia del Granma,” Bohemia, December 3, 1961, p. 46.

30. Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Revolutionary War, Havana, 1967, p. 9.

31. Rene Rodriguez, “From Tuxpan to Las Coloradas,” Granma English Weekly, December 6, 1981.

32. Interview with Alcibiades Hidalgo, Miami, FL, August 6, 2004.

33. Ibid.

34. Tomas Borge, Face to Face with Fidel Castro, Ocean Press, 1992, p. 143.

35. Thomas, op. cit., p. 1087.

36. Interview with Lucas Moran Arce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 27, 1986.

Chapter 1

1. Robert Quirk, Fidel Castro, W.W. Norton, 1993, p. 4.

2. Alina Fernandez, Memorias de Una Hija de Fidel Castro, Plaza y Janes Editores, S.A., Madrid, 1997, p. 11.

3. I am grateful to Juan Tomas Sanchez of the Cuban Sugarcane Growers Association in Florida, and Dr. Jose Alvarez, Professor of Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida, for sharing descriptions of the Cuban zafra.

4. Alina Fernandez, Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba, St. Martin’s Press, 1998, p. 80.

5. Interview with Barbara Gordon, Washington, DC, April 11, 2002.

6. Rafael Diaz Balart, interview by Adriana Bosch, for American Experience, PBS, June 2, 2003.

7. Leycester Coltman, The Real Fidel Castro, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 5.

8. Harvey Cox, Fidel and Religion: Castro Talks on Revolution and Religion with Frei Betto, Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 115. This is the most extensive autobiographical discourse that Fidel Castro has ever given.

9. Norberto Fuentes, La Autobiografia de Fidel Castro (Vol. 1), Ediciones Destino, Barcelona, 2004, p. 110.

10. Fidel and Religion, op. cit., p. 98.

11. Interview with Juanita Castro, Miami, FL, February 24, 1986.

12. Fidel and Religion, op. cit., pp. 128 and 138.

13. Interview with Amado Llorente, S.J., Miami, FL, February 25, 1986.

14. Interview with Jose Ignacio Rasco, Coral Gables, FL, February 24, 1986.

15. Lee Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba: Cuba’s Fidel, Vintage, 1967, pp. 16–17.

16. Ibid., p. 184.

17. Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince, Little Brown and Company, 1991, p. 23; Interview with Lucas Moran Arce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 27, 1986.

18. Juana Castro, “My Brother Is A Tyrant And He Must Go, Life, August 28, 1964, p. 27.

19. Interview with Manuel Romeu, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, February 27, 1986. Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro, Random House, 1961, p. 131, repeats essentially the same account.

20. “Interview with Musawwar’s Reporter,” Unclassified enclosure, U.S. Embassy Cairo, February 11, 1966.

21. Alina Fernandez. Castro’s Daughter, op. cit., p. 5.

22. Teresa Casuso, “I Saw Castro Change,” Look, November 21, 1961, p. 128.

23. Betto interview, op. cit., p. 170.

24. Gerardo Rodriguez Morejon, Fidel Castro: Biografia, P. Fernandez y Cia, Havana, 1959, pp. 221, 223.

25. Interview with Alina Fernandez, Miami, FL, November 10, 2004.

26. Juan O. Tamayo, “Castro’s Family,” Miami Herald, October 8, 2000.

27. Lucas Moran Arce interview, op. cit.

28. Mario Parajon, “Fidel y Raul Vistos por Juanita,” El Mundo, Havana, January 9, 1959, p. A7.

29. Elliott and Dymally, op. cit., p. 213.

30. Ibid., p. 23.

31. Ann Louise Bardach, Cuba Confidential, Vintage Books, 2002, p. 59.

32. Parajon, op. cit.

33. Tomas Borge, Face to Face with Fidel Castro, Ocean Press, 1992, p. 38.

34. Bardach, op. cit., p. 59.

35. FBIS, March 27, 1991.

Chapter Two

1. The letter is preserved in the Pino family collection.

2. Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro, Little Brown & Co., 1991, p. 25.

3. Serge Raffy, Castro el Desleal, Santillana Ediciones Generales, 2004. His finding is confirmed in Katiuska Blanco, Todo el Tiempo de los Cedros, Casa Editora Abril, Havana 2003, an authorized volume of Castro and Ruz family history and genealogy.

4. Alina Fernandez, Castro’s Daughter, St. Martin’s Press, 1998, p. 7.

5. Both photos are included in Fidel Castro Fidel, My Early Years, Ocean Press, 1998.

6. Carlos Franqui, Diary of the Cuban Revolution, The Viking Press, 1976, p. 2.

7. Fidel, My Early Years, op. cit., p. 39.

8. Ibid., p. 44.

9. Franqui, op. cit.

10. Interview with Father Amado Llorente, Miami, FL, February 25, 1986. Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro, Random House, 1961, p. 131, wrote similarly of Fidel, mentioning “some hidden wound related to his childhood that had never healed.”

11. Harvey Cox, Fidel and Religion: Castro Talks on Revolution and Religion with Frei Betto, Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 110.

12. Franqui, op. cit., p. 88.

13. Fidel: My Early Years, op. cit., p. 44.

14. Geyer, op. cit., p. 51.

15. Franqui, op. cit., pp. 3 and 7.

16. Leycester Coltman, The Real Fidel Castro, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 49.

17. Raul Castro, Interview with Moncada magazine, translation by FBIS, February 27, 1987.

18. Interview with Norberto Fuentes, Coral Gables, FL, November 12, 2004.

19. Pedro Alvarez Tabio and Otto Hernandez, “From Llanos del Infierno to Epifanio Diaz’ Farm (V),” Granma Weekly Review, January 1982, p. 3.

20. Alcibiades Hidalgo, An Enigma Named Raul, a presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, March 20, 2003.

21. Granma Weekly Review, op. cit.

22. Norberto Fuentes interview.

23. Franqui, op. cit., p. 4.

24. Interview with Ramon Mestre, Coral Gables, FL, February 25, 1986; and Amado Llorente interview, op. cit.

25. Fidel and Religion, op. cit., p. 120.

26. Juana Castro, “My Brother is a Tyrant and He Must Go,” Life, August 28, 1964, p. 27.

27. Franqui, op. cit., p. 5.

28. Castro family letter in the Pino family collection; Franqui, op. cit., p. 84.

29. Blanco, op. cit., p. 528, quotes the official record of the christening on January 19, 1935, indicating that Fidel’s name then was Fidel Hipólito Ruz Gonzalez.

30. Fidel and Religion, op. cit., p. 108.

31. Cancelled checks in the Pino family collection.

32. Raffy, op. cit., p. 616, and Blanco, op. cit.

33. A photocopy of the diploma appears in Blanco, op. cit., on an unnumbered page.

34. Pino family collection.

Chapter Three

1. Interview with Jose Ignacio Rasco, Coral Gables, FL, February 24, 1986.

2. Tad Szulc interview with Juan Rovira, October 27, 1984, Tad Szulc Collection, Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries.

3. Interviews with Father Quevedo, Aibonito, Puerto Rico, February 28, 1986; and Father Feliz, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 28, 1986.

4. Rasco interview, op. cit.

5. Lee Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel, Vintage, 1967, p. 23.

6. Fidel Castro news conference, FBIS, April 27, 2000.

7. One substantial reference to the New Deal appeared in a letter Fidel wrote from prison on the Isle of Pines on April 15, 1954. It reflected a mixture of appreciation for the impact of the New Deal’s reforms but also Fidel’s authoritarian and anti-free-market instincts as well as his misunderstanding of Roosevelt’s “court packing” crisis. Fidel wrote: “The prosperity that followed, after years dominated by poverty, was not the byproduct of chance or the famous free play of supply and demand, but the result of the sound measures courageously taken by the government. He attacked the conservative spirit entrenched in the Supreme Court; he had to get rid of a few old men legally, by pensioning them off. Given the character, the mentality, the history of the people of the United States, Roosevelt actually did some wonderful things.” Carlos Franqui, Diary of the Cuban Revolution, The Viking Press, 1976, p. 76.

8. Szulc interview with Juan Rovira, op. cit.

9. Franqui, op. cit., p. 76.

10. Interview with Luis Aguilar, Coral Gables, FL, October 22, 2002.

11. Gianni Mina, An Encounter with Fidel, Ocean Press, 1991, p. 171.

12. FBIS, March 27, 1991.

13. Telephone interview with Juan Grau, Mexico City, December 10, 2004.

14. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, Harper and Row, 1971, p. 876.

15. Alberto Bayo, Mi Aporte a la Revolucion Cubana, Impresa Ejercito Rebelde, Havana, 1960, p. 21.

16. Norberto Fuentes, La Autobiografia de Fidel Castro, Ediciones Destino, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 88–89.

17. Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, Transaction Publishers, 1993, p. 52.

18. Leycester Coltman, The Real Fidel Castro, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 221.

19. Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince, Little Brown, 1991, pp. 32–33.

20. “Exclusivo: Diario de Campana de Raul Castro,” Revolucion, January 26, 1959, p. 4.

21. Interview with Alina Fernandez, Miami, FL, November 10, 2004.

22. Interview of Raul Castro by Mario Vasquez, Rana, El Sol de Mexico, Havana, Prensa Latina, April 21, 1993.

23. Juanita Castro testimony, Washington, DC, House Un-American Activities Committee, June 11, 1965.

24. Interviews with Bernardo Benes, Surfside, FL, January 30, 2002, and Manuel Romeu, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, February 27, 1986.