A Conversation
with Fidel Castro
The OLAS Conference
and the ‘Principles’
of Paul-Henri Spaak
By Ernest Mandel
New York, N. Y. 10010. SP 6
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PAUL-HENRI SPAAK
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PAUL-HENRI SPAAK
A CONVERSATION WITH FIDEL CASTRO
(The following article has been translated by World Outlook from the August 18 issue of Marcha. The author, Carlos Marfa Gutiérrez, represented the Montevideo weekly at the conference of the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity (OLAS) held in Havana July 31- August 10.]
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Twice within 24 hours I had the opportunity to hear Pidel Castro summarize not only the results and the lines of action that emerged from the OLAS conference but also the position of the Cuban leadership on a whole series of ques-— tions associated with the continental freedom struggle.
The first time was his speech closing the conference. Given before 3,000 enthusiastic delegates, journalists and spectators jamming the Chaplin theater, it lasted almost four hours. The next was the following day in the Palace of the Revolution in an early morning interview that lasted two hours. The tone of the first speech was (as always with Castro) fiery and resolute, but it clearly followed a rigorous outline, a careful progression in its themes. In the Palace, on the other hand, Fidel was subjected to questioning, responded to almost everything that was put to him, and his style, naturally, was colloquial and more spontaneous.
The reader, after going over both reports (the one dealing with the closing speech will appear in the next issue of Marcha), will find that they are complementary. Fidel Castro knows how to handle himself as a member of a collective leadership and as an individual leader of the revolution. If he was more systematic in the Chaplin theater, perhaps in the Palace he was able to sincerely analyze certain questions which the atmosphere of the closing ceremony did not permit. Whoever reads the text of Fidel's speech attentively, along with this report, will see that it is the same Castro, rounding out some of the conclusions reached at the conference which Carlos Niéfiez and I sought to express in a precise way in our dispatches, as in those blocking out the process of the anti-imperialist struggle from now on. What Fidel said -- although it is much too weighty to put in the same scales against such cheap goods -- is the best reply to the yelping and snapping which certain journalistic lapdogs have given vent to recently in El Popular.
The formal invitation sent by President Osvaldo Dorticés and Prime Minister Fidel Castro to attend the reception closing the OLAS conference said that the meeting would end at 10 p.m. But the thousand persons who wandered through the vast salons of marble and crystal in the Palace of the Revolution did not seem to be aware of this. When 10 o'clock came, Fidel Castro had not yet appeared and no one seemed resigned to not seeing him. Some journalists even clung timidly to the idea of interviewing him. Castro hinself, much earlier, had undertaken to dispel any illusions.
In Oriente -- after a speech which he gave in the primitive area of Gran Tierra, where ultramodern foundling homes and power plants are appearing as if by miracle among the tropical ridges and red flats where things and people are permanently covered with dust -- I took advantage of an unexpected encounter with the jeep he was riding in to ask him what all of us were wondering: when would he give us a press conference? Fidel laughed, placing his heavy hand on my shoulder and, gesturing toward the American photographer Lee Lockwood (the author of the widely circulated reportage in Playboy), said not to give him up:
"Look at this Gringo; he took three months waiting for an interview. Do you have that much patience?"
Of course, upon returning from Gran Tierra he did travel for some days around the island with Stokely Carmichael and K.S.Karol, the representative of Le Nouvel Observateur, who was the only journalist at the conference to enjoy this privilege. But Karol himself said later that almost all the questions were asked by Castro and the topic was China, a field in which the French journalist is one of the world experts.
That evening in the Palace, the crowd was much too heterogeneous to work out an interview; in addition it was composed of persons that only the Cuban revolution could bring together in one place. Where else could you see Marguerite Duras talking with Comandante Juan Almeida? Or a pop art model (who up to a couple of weeks before had not dreamed of exchanging the Rue Montaigne for El Malecén and who was in Havana thanks to the fact that her husband was one of the painters associated with the Salén de Mayo exhibition) absorbed in a circle in which President Dorticés, the Venezuelan guerrilla fighter Francisco Prada and Peter Weiss were deliberating with Ariel Collazo on political topics? A diminutive Vietnamese heroine, the journalists Marcel Niedergang and Wilfred Burchett, the French sculptor César (who limits himself in an Olympian way to conpressing old automobiles into blocks two feet wide, standing them on a pedestal and saying, "Voila"), the American folk singer
Barbara Dane and the widow of Frantz Fanon, all shared a common intention to wait for Fidel Castro, prolonging the meeting.
When the prime minister arrived, a tight circle of talkers and listeners immediately formed around him. First came the rituals, Jacqueline Lobatén put an indigenous necklace on him which she had brought from Peru; a Vietnamese guerrilla fighter took Fidel's olive-green cap, giving him his own military hat in return, and Fidel wore the guerrilla fighter's headgear the rest of the evening, looking incongruously like a Boy Scout. Then began the conversations that are typical of every social gathering where Castro appears; the questioners get in as best they can by means of their elbows until they push through the group into the first row. Thus Laura Berquist of Look, in her audacious miniskirt, got in; various Latin-American delegates; each with their two or three minutes. Castro responded to all of them, almost always with a humor that is contagious and that manages to evade direct replies.
Few are as able as Fidel to maintain a conversation in an intransigent tone that nevertheless does not disconcert his questioner. Three or four of those most insistent on talking with him "seriously," circled impatiently with the group, which under the permanent exuberance of the prime minister moved through the room without losing its cohesion. At one moment communication was almost inpossible when Rail Castro entered the group, making a path.
"Comandante," we asked him, "would you ask Fidel if he will talk with us?"
"I'm waiting my turn, too," said Rafl Castro with a smile. "I don't know if I can get there."
Those of us who were following the advice about having patience, which Fidel had given us in Oriente, at last had our turn. At one o'clock in the morning, the collectors of verbal souvenirs were talked out, all the photos had been taken, and the waiters were beginning to stop handing out drinks. President Dorticés and most of the ministers had left a little while before. In the two immense rooms of the Palace, linked by a kind of tropical garden, only a dozen sleepwalkers were wandering around and the conference automobiles had left. Freed from his last questioners, Fidel moved toward a private room. Four or five officers and functionaries accompanied him, but we patient ones were standing in the doorway: the Chileans Augusto Olivares, Carlos Jorquera and Victor Vaccaro and I.
"Comandante," said Jorquera, "you have already talked with everybody. Aren't you going to talk with the journalists of Chile and Uruguay? He and I are from the magazine Punto Final."
Fingering his beard under the Vietnamese hat, Fidel tried pulling the joke that the final moment had come for him too, but the occasion was too good (no audience, with the morning still ahead, no photographers, and in relative isolation) not to take immediate advantage of it. The first questions called forth others and some touched on matters too sensitive for Fidel to resist the temptation of answering. Until 2:40 a.m., standing all the time, sometimes putting his arn around a questioner, growing excited at times and at other times thinking some seconds before answering, the prime minister talked on all the topics we brought up. From what we had attentively listened to in the speech at the Chaplin the night before and read in the papers the next day, we had drawn certain conclusions and we wanted to verify these. But, especially, both the Chileans and I were particularly intrigued by a sentence printed in the report of the Cuban delegation to the OLAS conference: "To talk about a guerrilla struggle in Chile or Uruguay is as farfetched and absurd as to deny this possipility in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Peru."
"Are you in agreement with those words?" Olivares asked hin.
"Where does it say that?"
"In the report of the Cubans."
"And who wrote that, Chico?"
He was told that it was an official publication and someone added that as Chileans and Uruguayans we felt a little put out over such a flat statement.
"Well, I didn't write that," Fidel said. "Don't feel bad."
The joke made a good introduction to the subject. Later in our hotel, the four of us reconstructed everything possible from our notes, and from this reconstruction I have extracted the following questions and answers, the main themes of which deal with armed struggle, the new relation of forces in the socialist camp and the tragic case of the Venezuelan Communist party.
"It can't be denied," Fidel said, "that in Chile and Uruguay mass movements exist. But in addition geographical conditions are needed. Chile has them."
"Then a guerrilla focal center is possible in Chile, too?"
"Look, the thesis about a guerrilla focal center holds for any country. Even
for Western Germany. Even there a guerrilla focal center can be created. The question is to know when this guerrilla focal center is opportune."
"Hence, in Chile?"
Fidel relieved the tension of the question with another joke:
"Chico, that depends on you. Look, if I were in Chile, I would rise up. But I believe they are still carrying on down there with this stuff about elections."
"You would make a good candidate for the presidency," vowed one of the Chileans.
"First you would have to let me enter Chile. Do you think they would give me a visa?"
"And Uruguay?" I asked. "Do you believe that armed struggle is impossible there?"
"Your country lacks the geographic conditions for armed struggle. There aren't any mountains. There aren't any jungles. You couldn't develop guerrilla war there."
"Do you mean that the concept of armed struggle signifies only rural guerrilla war? Don't you think it's theoretically possible to carry out an armed urban insurrection, or a sudden coup, like the Bolshevik model?"
"Well, theoretically it's possible."
"Do you think it's possible in the big capitals with a very dense population and concentration of services?"
"In Uruguay you have militant and politicized masses. I believe, in view of this, that you possess certain conditions. But an armed insurrection, at present, would not last two days in your country. You are between two colossal countries; they would immediately make a sandwich out of you. No, in Uruguay this can't be done.
"So, then, we accept the Cuban thesis of OLAS?"
"Well," Fidel smiled, "if you want to carry on guerrilla war, some guerril» las are nearby in Bolivia. Look, guerrilla war in all the Americas is the same; every place it always has the same objec~ tive. When the conditions don't exist in a country (and here he turned to the Chileans), you also have to support the struggle where the conditions do exist."
"And in Brazil?"
"Ah, there guerrilla war is a picnic; all the conditions exist there. Look, three months after the guerrillas triumph in Brazil, the Uruguayan oligarchy will fall by itself. I wouldn't exclude some country in Latin America, one or two, not having to undergo this trial, so bloody, so painful, of armed struggle. It's clear that when the majority of countries have made their revolution, imperialism and the oligarchies won't last long in the rest. Everything depends on what the revolutionists in these exceptional countries think; if they decide to wait, with their arms folded until those in the other countries fight and win, or if they feel ashamed and therefore support the other guerrilla fighters. What I maintain is that it's a single struggle, in all of Latin America."
Olivares and Jorquera returned to the case of Chile and more questions followed. Once more they discussed the subject of electoralisn.
"You can't play with the word revolution," said Fidel. "Frei used this word too much with the masses. The election was conducted to decide between the socialist revolution and his revolution in freedon. And what happened? There was no revolution, but the idea of a revolution no longer scares anyone. The same people that go to mass talk about revolution as an objective possibility, as a possible program. When the revolution comes, they will already know what it's about."
"But can they make the revolution via elections?"
"I don't know. I don't know about that. I think not. It would be very good if they could, but no. I can tell them about my own case. In another epoch here, I ran for parliament. But I didn't believe that this was a revolutionary road. I did believe that a seat would open a road for me. Do you know what I was thinking of doing? That when I was in parliament, I would immediately present a revolutionary program to the people, four or five really revolutionary laws, not to get them passed, but to offer a program for a revolution. I knew that the masses were suffering in Cuba, that they would understand this progran."
"And you would have stayed in parliament?"
"No, that wasn't it. I would have presented a revolutionary program and immediately opened up a struggle. A revolutionary politician mustn't get his rear end caught in a seat in parliament. Look, a revolutionist must keep his eye on conjunctural events, must take advantage of all the conjunctural events. At the time I was reading Marxism and I knew
a lot of things, although I still had a rather romantic conception. But I already understood the needs of the masses and I saw that the struggle, the episodes in the struggle, could mobilize them. At the funeral for Chibas, fifteen thousand persons attended. And I said to the leaders of the party then, I said to Pardo Llada: Let's take the body to the Palace and these people will bring down the government. In face of this crowd, the government will fall. There, in a single hour the revolution could have triumphed because the masses were revolutionary. But the professional politicians were scared."
Later he talked about the assault on the Moncada barracks, about the concept behind this episode. "One of our ideas at the time," Fidel reflected, "was wrong -- the idea that we could confront the repressive apparatus in the cities. I was born in the country and I have always tended to feel more comfortable outside of the cities, but we didn't have any concept on rural guerrilla war. Intuitively, we felt something, because our plan, if we failed, pointed to hiding out in the mountains. But I myself had never been in the Sierra Maestra. We did have the idea of creating situations that would mobilize the masses. When we left in the Granma, we left fifteen rifles hidden in Mexico. If we failed, we would return by plane with these arms and parachute into the mountains. And we had to go on learning; the hard way, you see, a very hard way.
In the first battle, they trapped us in some rocks on the mountain. We were a dozen yards from a post of soldiers, and the planes were buzzing us. Then the men lost their heads and waited for the planes without paying attention to the soldiers. Only seven of us in my group were able to get out. A revolutionist pays very dearly for lack of experience; in armed struggle, lack of experience can't exist.
"Comandante," said Jorquera, "this is a more theoretical question, but very important, in the light of your speech yesterday [at the Chaplin theater August 10] -- do you feel that the moral attitude of a revolutionist must remain the same when he is in power?"
"Well, give me an example."
"In power," added Olivares, "is it possibile to maintain the same principles as in the revolutionary struggle?"
"There is a revolutionary ethics," said Fidel, "which is the same in either case. It's a matter of principles. You can't have one ethics as a revolutionist and different ethics in power."
“And does this apply in relations among states?" asked Olivares.
Fidel caught the turn which the conversation was taking, but he let the two continue clarifying the point further. We were going to speak, it was clear, of a delicate theme: the condemnation that had been voted for in Commission III of the OLAS conference of the technical and economic assistance which the socialist countries were granting to certain anti-Cuban governments and oligarchies in Latin America.
"In what way might this resolution affect future relations between OLAS and the socialist camp?" I asked.
There are times when, in making certain statements, Fidel appears to change abruptly almost in his physical attitude. He was silent for some seconds, narrowing his eyes, evaluating the intent of the question, and then putting his arm across Olivares, he took me by the shoulder, as if to underline his reply.
"Look, we're not going around hunting for problems, but we're not afraid of them either."
And he repeated:
"Look, we're not afraid of them, eh! "
One of the others brought up the second resolution of Commission III, which, in condemning the CP of Venezuela, had induced a division among the delegations (El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay voted in both cases against these condemnations). In his speech at the Chaplin theater, Fidel for a solid hour had pilloried the Venezuelan CP; he had listed their betrayals, had called their leaders "imposters," had said that in the case of the death of Iribarren Borges they had become Leoni's "police dogs"; had branded them as "fingerers of the Cuban revolution." Now we questioned him precisely on the conduct of the CP's or the political groups that had placed themselves in such an untenable position as defending the Venezuelan party or its attendance at the conference. One of these votes was the Uruguayan and, naturally, I asked Fidel for his opinion.
The prime minister did not evade answering. He responded with complete frankness ("This is a conversation among friends," he said); but he asked beforehand that it not be published. Then I took up the question from another angle:
"Weren't you afraid that to condemn a CP, derelict in its revolutionary duty, could injure the image of other Communist parties that are really in the vanguard politically, or in the struggle, in other countries of the Americas?"
"If they are in the political vanguard," said Fidel, "this will not affect them. They will be saved, not because they are Communist parties, but because they are in the vanguard of the struggle. The struggle measures the force and vitality of a vanguard. Look, the Soviet Union is the only one that can survive its errors, because it is an objective fact, because it has made the revolution. It is a power factor; it is a revolutionary fact. It is the others who are not going to survive; because they are outposts and they have not made the revolution. It is not enough to be theorists; what is in dispute today is not Marxism. The question today is not Marxism, but the interpretations of Marxism. The Venezuelan people will never forgive the rightist leaders of the Venezuelan party."
Here, the politician gave way to the guerrilla fighter, furious over the betrayal of his brothers in the struggle:
"They can picture Douglas [the guerrilla leader expelled from the Communist party] everywhere like a man breathing smoke and fire. It's the same Mafia as the one in Guatemala skimping on arms -- three rifles here, three rifles there -- so the irritating groups would be exterminated. But in Venezuela the people will never forgive them, because in Cuba -- if we adopted the attitude of backing the fingermen -- the people would never forgive us either. There you have it, a party that's a nest of fingermen. They're the same ones who practically joined the cops in the Iribarren Borges affair. And still you find people that defend them."
"Can't you have an identity in ideology that rises above these errors in behavior?"
"Do you believe in churches? I don't believe in then."
A long time was spent on the subject. The Venezuelan betrayal is a matter that has deeply preoccupied Fidel; it was, in addition, the gauge in a certain sense for the definitions in the OLAS conference, and Castro said a lot more things that night.
When at a certain moment, after a digression, he asked us what he had just been talking about, we became aware of how tired this man was who had been talking for hours after finishing a day of fabulous activity. He had to rest; we, too, overcome by this flood of answers and dizzying web of references.
I put one last question to him: "In the OLAS the idea was advanced that the contradiction of our times is no longer ‘imperialism-socialist camp' but 'imperialism-Third World.' What's your opinion on that?"
"The classical contradiction 'imperialism-socialist camp' cannot be left out. It has been a fundamental dialectical factor, in the propagation of the revolution as well as in supporting it and in the struggle for peace. It is an objective fact, too, and no one can deny it. But I also believe that the other contradiction ‘imperialism-Third World' has appeared, and it is now the most important, the one bearing the weight of the struggle. We are within the latter process. I would say that we have to include both contradictions, but that the latter one is now the most important."
Then he began leaving, although the dialogue continued step by step toward the door. Before his officers took him away to rest, he shook hands with all of us, with a sly reproach included in his warm snile:
"You are revolutionists, but also journalists and you have your professional] one—sidedness; you made me talk too much.
BRAZILIAN CP