Castro: High-Fidelity Commie!
By Mike Marino

Take a fistful of green leafy Lenin, mix with a philosophical pinch of Karl Marx, and my oh, Mao! You have the makin's for a real oldtime Uncle Ho Chi Minh hoe-down that gyrates to a sexy, balmy, palmy Caribbean calypso boshevik beat played by a company of campy commies in a tropical paradise. Viva Cuba! Lee-Ward Islands, Left-Wing Islands. Face it amigo's and amiga's, when you go to the Islands mon, Forgettabout Club Med...this juke joint's a jumpin' Club Red! It's hi-fi, high-Fidel-ity 45 rpm socialism spinning out of control, and out of tune with the times on a turntable of nostalgia in a "me" generation of capitalism in the digital world of MP3's!

Cigars and Commies conjur up the world vision we have of cocky Cuba and it's cockier Castro. The cold war castrator has kicked America in it's red, white and blue stars and stripes balls of democracy for decades. He has sucessfully flipped off the American Eagle, and has given us a hearty Hi-Yo Silver middlefinger along with a heartfelt "Fuck You" every chance he could. He's outlived them all, and in the squared circle of the Cold War championship ring..he IS Jerry Lee Lewis, he IS the last man standing. Kennedy, had beautifully coiffed metrosexual hair, but also harbored a hardon for Castro. Eventually JKF was DOA and went down for the count. In the case of Tricky Dicky Richard Nixon, the entire belief in the American way of political life went ejaculation limp, with the nation having spent itself screwing the rest of the world in a baccanal in the boudiour of bad behaviour in a display of Military Industrial might, God On Our Side muscle, and political rape at the point of a bayonet. Dick Gregory had some great comments about forcing democracy down the throats of a people with guns..."In my neighborhood," he said, "If something is that good, someone will steal it!"

A revolutionary compost pile in a Cold War garden, Cuba sits 90 miles offshore. Socialists and communists have never been popular in the American peoples republic of demon-cracy, the land of Lincoln, (the man, not the car!) and the land of Jefferson. For that matter it frowned on anyone who fought for civil rights and they were most likely labeled as communists. Labor leaders and others who fought for workers rights were labeled communist. Martin Luther King, Ceasar Chavez, hell, Lucille Ball..commies all..must have been her red hair. Eleanor Roosevelt fighting for civil rights...damn commie bitch. How dare her. America has never been kindly towards "socialist" causes such as equal rights for all, health care for all, veterans benefits, and the homeless. Veterans, (of which I am one from the Vietnam Era and not proud of it) after they have given a few years of service, a limb or two as an amputees offering to Lady Liberty are really screwed all the way from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. The list goes on and on as to a litany of failings of this "most powerful nation on earth" and the reputation it has earned as the bully in the political playground beating the shit out of the smaller kids who dare defy it. Enter, stage far left, Cuba and Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz...the communist thorn up America's ass for almost 50 years.

BC...Before Castro...The Ugly American had been portrayed in film by Marlon Brando as the Ambassador to a small ricer country, (shock, sigh, epiphany)..a euphemism for Vietnam, north and south, and the Ugly American has been portrayed off screen in real life in many countries around the world including the real life Vietnam, and closer to home, in Cuba. Cuba was part of the war chest trophy booty at the end of the Spanish American War rainbow, a political pot of tropical gold that exploded in flames in Havana Harbor. Some say the fuse was lit by the match of yellow journalism with political pyro, William Randolph Hearst igniting it one day, and by wars end, we had in possession, the Phillipines, Guam and Cuba. The country with African roots was from then on dominated by American greed, politics and for awhile, organized crime that bolstered the island nations government, promoted prostitution and gambling, lining the political pockets of the halls of Cuban power while the United States forced itself on her as though she were a street alley whore in the employ of her red, white and blue pimp.

Enter stage left. The pre-revolutionary Fidel Castro, who, when born, shot from the womb in 1926...a socialist cannonball looking for an imperialist bullseye to penetrate. One child of a Cuban brood of Castro children that numbered a half a dozen, his life was good...tropical balmy and tropical palmy, where he grew up in the confines of economic comfort in a hardship free household. Fidels padre, a Spainard by birth, was a sugar plantation owner of some means who was married twice. Madre the Second, Fidels mamacita, was a maid to his fathers first wife. Hence, Fidels Levi-Leninist 501 genes were split down the middle..plantataion overseer on the right, and the proletarian left on the other side. which may explain his schizophrenia in dealing with the west and the east and never the twain shall meet except headon in a collision of diametrically opposed social philosophies.

Jesuit boarding schools and a penchant for baseball pennants, provided the macro elements of his education, which was a strange mixture of religion and secular interests. Fidel merely wanted to graduate with a mortar board (not a mortar, they came later) and hit one out of the ballpark! A Louisville slugger the prefered "weapon" of choice at the time, not the grenade. Gimme some peanuts and cracker jacks was probably numero uno on his private hit parade.

Law school in 1945 was next, and while in the haughty halls of higher education, as most students will do, he gets caught up in the cacophony of political chaos that involved Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism and of course, sassy socialism. This paved a rugged road of political thought and theory that would lead him down the garden path of revolution that began hacking it's way through the societal forest with a machete of military machismo in 1947 when he traveled to the Dominican Republic with others to overthrow the dicatator, Rafael Trujilla. Even though they failed to "vote him off the island" it did fuel inject Fidel's passion for social justice.

Castro soon joined an anti-communist political party called the Partido Ortodoxo. It's presidential candidate lost his bid for election in 1948 but set his sights on 1951 where he hoped to warn the populace that General Fulgncio Batista, former corrupt president was planing a return to power. The year 1948 also brought marriage to Fidel to a woman from a wealthy and powerful family that garnered strong political connections and he ran for election, but as prophesized, Batista overthrew the governemnt and cancelled the election. Now castro had no political platform and very little money to support a growing family. He eventually divorced in 1955.

Batista set himself up as dictator, and got his government recognized by the United States. By the Cold War Fab Fifties, American gangsters, led for the most part by the economic philosophies of Meyer Lansky, had dropped anchor in Cuba with a plethora of gambling casinos and bawdy bordellos that lined the streets of Havana with criminal activity. It also lined the pockets of Batista and his Cuban cronies with wealth at the expense of the Cuban population. Add to this the exploitation of the islands natural resources at the hands of American big business, and you had a capitalist tag team to be reckoned with. The island was having it's economic blood sucked dry by a new breed of American Vampire...the Miltary Industrial Complex...and it was only a matter of time before the victim would strike back at the perpetrator, coiled like a cobra and ready to strike with the vengeful venom of viva la revolution! Never mind Viva Las Vegas! (Insert Elvis Here!)

On July 26, 1953, Castroites attacked the Moncada military barracks in an attempt to sink the Batista barrio battleship. It failed. Castro was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in 1955. Once free, he went to Mexico, where he met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Che (the face that is the darling of tee-shirts and posters on college campuses everywhere today!) devised a new strategy to topple the Batista regime...based on an old tactic that the patriots (To the British Crown, they were regarded as terrorsists much as we think of the Taliban today) of the American Revolution initiated...guerrilla warfare. Guevara believed that the plight of Latin America's poor could be rectified, but only through violent revolution. Bullets before Ballots! He joined Castro's group and became an important confidante, helping to shape Castro's political beliefs and started inadvertently a stylish, trendy interest in sporting great amounts of facial hair that was quickly copied thoughout the Caribbean.

In December of 1956, Castro returned to Cuba with a boatload of insurgents near the city of Manzanillo. Batista was prepared for them and killed or captured most of the attackers. Castro, along with his brother Raul, and Guevara were able to bootscoot high and deep into the Sierra Maestra mountain range along the island's southeastern coast. From there the bearded battalions of revolutionaries waged guerrilla war over the course of the next two years and aimed bullseye dead on against the Batista government. They organizing resistance groups in cities and small towns across Cuba. He was also able to organize a parallel government, kind of like Supermans Bizzaro World, and to carry out some communal agrarian reform, along with the control of provinces with agricultural and manufacturing production.

The political and military fabric of the Batista regime began to unravel like a cheap suit off the rack at Montgomery Wards in 1958. Along with the loss of popular support and massive desertions in the military, Batista's government collapsed like a cancerous lung due to Castro's efforts. In January of 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, (what the hell..it was good enough for Trujillo!) and at the ripe old revolutionary age of 32, Castro concluded a classic check mate guerrilla campaign allowing him to take control of Cuba where he implemented reforms by nationalizing factories and plantations in an effort to end U.S. economic dominance on the island. Strangulation was more like it, and American companies felt the negative effects of the reforms, causing friction between Cuba and the United States. For example, the Castro government announced it was going to base compensation to foreign companies on the artificially low property values that the companies themselves had negotiated with past Cuban governments in order to keep their taxes low. Of course capitalist arms were up in a rage.

Then in April of 1959, Castro hopped a plane to the United States (later, planes were usually highjacked to Cuba!) as guests of the National Press Club. President Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of Normandy, avid golfer and downhome yokel refused to meet with him which is typical of American conduct when her nose is out of joint and it's ass isn't kissed properly. So what's a feller to do? Screw You, Uncle Sam, and he began to establish relations with the Soviet Union and asked the Commie Princess if she'd go to the prom with him..she said "Si!" The USSR sent more than 100 Spanish-speaking advisers to help organize Cuba's defense committee. In February 1960, Cuba signed a trade agreement to buy oil from the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations. U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, so Castro expropriated the refineries. The United States retaliated by cutting Cuba's import quota on sugar. This began a decades-long contentious relationship between the two countries.

On January 3, 1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with the Cuban government leaving that mess for the next guy and the next guys after that to clena up...Yikes Ike! On April 16, Castro had the equivalient of a coming out ball, a scene right out of Gone with the Wind where Tara was host to a debutantes ball of societies finest sicialists in rag to riches to rags formals. He declared Cuba a socialist state.

The following day 1,400 US backed, badly trained and inept Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow the Castro regime. The incursion ended in disaster with hundreds of the insurgents killed and nearly 1,000 captured. Though the United States denied any involvement, it was revealed that the Cuban exiles were trained by the Central Intelligence (Intelligence is a misnomer) Agency and armed with U.S. weapons. (but no air support! and remember the US had lost in Korea, and most recently in Vietnam, and had it's first "solo" victory in Grenada! Grenada? C'mon! Hell, we're still getting our ass kicked in Iraq and Afghanistan!) Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced the Cuban government was adopting communist economic and political policies. On February 7, 1962, the United States imposed a full economic embargo on Cuba, a policy that continues to this day.

Castro intensified his relations with the Soviet Union by accepting further economic and military aid. In October 1962, his increasing reliance on Soviet aid brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Wanting to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived an idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. He justified the move as a response to U.S. Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey. An American U2 reconnaissance plane discovered the missile base construction before the missiles were installed. President Kennedy responded by demanding the removal of the missiles with orders for the U.S. Navy to search any vessels headed for the island.

Over the course of several anxious days of secret communications between Khrushchev, Kennedy, and their agents, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the United States' public agreement not to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration also agreed to secretly remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both leaders saved face and gained some admiration for restraint. The soviet system fell apart in the Eighties like a second hand Yugo. "Bring that wall down Mr. Gorbechev" and all that, and today Havana is an idyllic island wide classic car show on post cold war cruise control, where aging Chevy's have replaced fading murals of Che, although they still stand, proud but peeling, and watching over the Cuban populace. Bicycles are a basic mode of transportation, and Guantanamo, the US marine base at the end of an island, a constant reminder to Castro that there is an American suppository ready to race up the commie colon at a moments notice...

The Castro mystique has not only survived to this day, but the mythology has grown deeper than the six foot deep hole the conspiracy theorists have dug..dig it..he was behind the Kennedy assassination...the CIA had exploding cigars to kill him, chemicals to make his beard fall off his face, yadda, yadda, and more yadda...49 years later...he is the last man standing. Kruschev and Kennedy are mere cold war footprints in history. Castro, on the other hand is a living dinosaur of a politically Jurassic period that defies logic. From Che to Chevy's on the cold war dragstrip....but...he is the last man standing!