K. S. KAROL'S FOUR DAYS WITH FIDEL
An extensive interview with Fidel Castro, granted to the internationally known journalist and political analyst K.S.Karol, appeared in the February issue of Evergreen, the literary review published in New York.
This is the interview that Karol obtained at the time of the conference of the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity held in Havana last July and August. It is published under the title, "Four Days With Fidel."
The two met at two o'clock in the morning in the newly built village of Los Arados at the extreme southern tip of Cuba. Together with a group of Cuban army officers, Castro and Karol spent two days on a tour by jeep through the Sierra Cristal, arriving at last at an experimental agricultural project at Pinares de Mayari.
Castro talked about Cuba's economy, stressing projects to increase the volume of free goods and services in order to eliminate money as a regulator of social relations.
"This isn't a poor country," Cas-— tro said. "It has a number of natural resources (precious metals and iron in particular) and is an extremely fertile land for a country with a relatively small population. What made Cuba an underdeveloped country was imperialist exploitation. More than half of our land was not cultivated, and we had no clear idea of its resources."
As one example, Castro pointed to the increases in milk production:
"We have always had plenty of cattle in Cuba, but our herds were never good dairy cattle and we used to import milk. Even now it remains rationed. Then, two years ago, we bought some bulls reputed for their dairy qualities; we've studied various methods for improving our pastures, we've created almost 2,000 insemination centers....By 1970 we'll be producing 20,000,000 liters of milk per month, and our maximum domestic needs will be only 2,000,000 liters. Free milk is not a pipe dream."
At Pinares de Mayari, Karol was shown a vast agricultural project: 25,000 hectares of citrus fruits, truck gardens, and precious wood on land which had lain fallow before the revolution. It is worked by 7,000 young people, all volunteers.
Karol questioned Castro about the still significant number of small private farms.
"You asked me why we helped the
small landowners," Castro replied, "giv-
ing them credit and furnishing them with
fertilizer and free installations: they
represent the private sector resisting
control, whose existence is, to all in-
tents and purposes, diametrically opposed
to our socialist plans. My answer is: pri-
vate property will disappear in Cuba the
day when the socialist sector will have a
productive capacity sufficient to make
family businesses obsolete."
"Why haven't you tried to group
these peasants into cooperatives?" Karol
asked.
Fidel answered, "What, after all,
is a cooperative? It is a certain number
of individual farms brought together, and
if one or two families are hostile to us,
that's enough to influence the entire
group. The cooperative does not represent
a socialist form of property; it even
threatens to create another form of pri-
vate property on the land, and consequent-
ly impede real socialism later on. It is
not my impression that this problem has
been solved in the other socialist coun-
tries."
Castro said that there are still
250,000 peasants who own their own land
in Cuba.
Karol asked Castro to comment on
the charge that Cuba's economy is "subsi-
dized" by the Soviet Union, citing esti-
mates of $600,000,000 per year that the
Soviet Union spends on Cuba.
"Our economic relations with the
socialist countries are quite clear," Cas-
tro said. "The Soviet Union and other so-
cialist countries have made a political
choice by establishing economic relations
with us at a time when the United States
was trying to eliminate us. This decision
enabled us to reorient our foreign trade
and thwart our enemies' economic maneu-
vers. Russia also supplies us with arms,
because not only must we cope with an eco-
nomic war but also with sabotage and the
constant threat of invasion by the United
States....
"But, aside from the arms we re-
ceive free of charge, we pay for all the
merchandise we import from socialist coun-
tries. No one gives us any gifts or 'sub-
sidizes' us....When we owe money to France
or England, no one thinks that they are
‘subsidizing' our socialism. They profit
by their trade with us, as does the social-
ist bloc."
During the last lap of the trip
through the Sierra Cristal, the revolu-
tionary leader and the reporter discussed Cuba's position in the world revolutionary struggle:
While very concerned with the development of Cuba's socialist econony, Castro declared, “We're not crazy enough to want to try and build here at home a ‘national communism' which would work out a modus vivendi with the United States and, little by little, become reintegrated into the American economy. Such an attitude would be both immoral and unrealistic....
"The American leaders....will agree to coexist with us if we will issue an invitation to the rest of Latin America to accept the status quo.
"This kind of ‘peaceful coexistence' is of no interest whatever to us."
The last meeting between Karol and Castro took place just after the end of the OLAS conference, August 10.
Karol concludes on the basis of this discussion that Castro does not view the OLAS as a new international. This flows, he says, from Castro's statement to him that "The Communist parties have their place in this movement..." and Fidel's insistence that guerrillas cannot be led from outside their country. "It is the adherence of each [member organization of OLAS] to internationalist principles," Karol says, "which will guarantee the cohesion of this new organization, with the task of the permanent committee being simply to coordinate mutual aid among then."
He quotes Castro as saying of the dispute with the Kremlin-oriented Communist parties, "No one has a monopoly on revolution or revolutionary theory. We make no claims to playing the role of guide, nor do we think that our party should serve as a model. We believe in the virtues of discussion and constant reexamination of certain truths which for thirty-five years have been considered as
self-evident and which, in fact, are not
at all."
Later the discussion shifted to
the war in the Mideast. Castro attributed
Egypt's defeat to its army's "lack of rev-
olutionary spirit."
“A truly revolutionary force," he
said, “can sometimes retreat in the face
of an enemy who is better equipped, but
it is always capable of continuing the
fight under another form and of wresting
final victory."
He said that even if Egypt had
been entirely overrun, if it had the nec-
essary cohesion and revolutionary deter-
mination it could have carried on guer-
rilla warfare and eventually beaten the
Israeli forces.
Karol said that Castro was "pro-
foundly shocked by certain Arab propagan-
da" on the eve of the war: "True revolu-
tionaries," Castro declared, "never
threaten an entire country with extermina-
tion. This propaganda unwittingly helped
the Israeli leaders mobilize their peo-
ple's patriotism which they then used in
a war of conquest, carried out under the
protection of Yankee imperialism. Our con-
demnation of Israel is unequivocal, but
we do not dispute its right to exist."
Karol says that he was able to ver-
ify that Cuba is a country of armed peo-
ple, ready to defend themselves if the
United States should attempt to invade.
Castro told him that "Our only
guarantee in the face of aggression is
our capacity to defend ourselves and our
determination to fight to the last man.
In my speech in Santiago I said that, if
ever there were an American invasion of
Cuba, there would never be a cease-fire
here, and whoever might employ these
words, no matter what his position or
past attainments, would be considered a
traitor. The Americans know I mean what I
say."