No Religion Higher than Truth Book

I picked this book up in the sole bookstore in Varadero, Cuba, a shop I visit every time I go down to that resort town. This time, after a five-year gap, the books looked just like they had been on my last visit, no new titles, more curling and dog-earring of the tired wares on offer, and most covers that featured either Che Guevara or Fidel Castro or both. Signs of the regurgitated US embargo were clear. There were more of the 1950’s clunkers on the road, forced back into service, less food in restaurants, but the grit to survive as embodied in the father of their republic was never more alive. Oh, and the bookstore was now accepting credit cards, so there was one sign of progress, at least.

Fidel & Religion is a series of interviews between Castro and a Dominican priest, Frei Betto, who is wedded to Liberation Theology. After a lengthy prelude describing how the priest gained access to the secretive Fidel (the Commandant must take a liking to you first), we get down to the conversations that ran late into the night over several days in May 1985. The date is significant, for this was during the height of Fidel’s political strength, when he was able to take pot-shots at the capitalist west, while still being wedded and supported by his ally, the USSR, before that empire ended in glasnost and perestroika.

Fidel talks about his humble beginnings: a bright athletic child of a Spanish father and an illiterate but extremely religious Cuban mother. His father fought on the Spanish side during the Cuban war of liberation but returned to Cuba to live and become a wealthy landowner. Fidel’s schooling was in Catholic institutions: a multi-racial primary school run by the La Salle Brothers, followed by whites-only Jesuit schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. He despised ritualistic practices like mass and prayers; he cultivated the ability to think, reason, feel and acquire conviction—the essentials for political consciousness.

He elaborates at length, and quite candidly, even admitting to mistakes made, on his evolution as a revolutionary. Although Cuba had been liberated from Spain with the help of the US in 1896, the Americans had acquired all the land and wealth from the locals. Batista’s regime was ultra-corrupt. Castro’s abortive attack on the Moncada Garrison in 1952 is elaborated on in detail, but the final battle in 1959 that saw the overthrow of Batista is skimmed over, as is the time Fidel spent in prison and the period he spent re-arming in Mexico. However, he spends some time talking about the Bay of Pigs invasion that Cuba repulsed.

While Frei Betto seems more concerned with questions concerning Fidel’s family’s embrace of religious philosophy, practices and iconography, the Commandant is more interested in boasting about the accomplishments of the Revolution. He admits that Catholics were not allowed into the Communist party in the early days of the Revolution because they had always been counter-revolutionary and supporters of the USA, and he couldn’t risk schisms in his party. He openly lays bare the misinformation campaigns by the CIA, the attempts to assassinate him, and the embargo aimed at crippling Cuba. He claims there were 6000 doctors in Cuba in 1959, and when America allowed Cubans to enter the USA freely in order to thwart the Revolution, 3000 doctors emigrated. As of the time of the interview, Cuba had rebuilt to 20,500 doctors and were exporting them on mercy missions around the world. Fidel goes onto claim other victories: in education, in helping the poor and exploited, and in punishing Batista’s war criminals and expropriating their ill-gotten gains.

He debunks being a dictator and says that the US President and the Pope have more unilateral power than he has. He has a word on Liberation Theology too: his prior concept of the Church was one of exploitation and conquest (citing well known villains like Pizarro and Cortes who went forth with sword in one hand and cross in the other). He posits that it is only when the Church follows the path of Christ, who sided with the poor, that Christians will be in harmony with the Revolution. Frei Betto hastens to re-assure Castro that Liberation Theology is just that, a revolution within the Church, shifting the focus towards the poor and questioning past elitist practices.

There is much repetition in this book for the interviews are recorded verbatim. I was impressed by Fidel’s breath of knowledge of history and world events. Unlike the bloody dictator he has been portrayed as by western media, he is also a deep thinker that few of us give him credit for. And Frei Betto is to be commended for undertaking this project to give a counterpoint to the tsunami of vilification that has gone on in the western press against Fidel Castro. Castro even takes a punt at solving world poverty: forgive Third World debt and turn those crushing interest payments into funding development projects in the developing world. While some debt has been since forgiven, the Developed World instead chose Globalization to boost economies in the developing world and reduce costs at home, and that strategy has landed us in another muddle.

Fidel reserves the last few pages of the book to pay tribute to his friend and fellow revolutionary, Che Guevara. Contrary to the popular rumour that Fidel and Che had ideological differences leading to their ultimate split, Castro refers to Che and fellow Cuban revolutionary Camilo in warm and glowing terms, honouring their courage, intellect and sacrifice.

It is unfortunate that in order to survive the pressure from his bullying and powerful northern neighbour who was looking for any loophole to bring his regime down, Castro had to lock his people up in a vacuum for over 60 years. The vacuum is all that the overseas visitor sees today, leading him to exclaim, “Oh, see what communism had done for this country—impoverished it.” I wonder whether they would be still saying that after they read this book?