Biography:It is so easy to idealise Fidel "Comandante" Castro. Over the decades, Cuba has become a potent symbol for rebellion against the cultural and political hegemony of the United States. Cuba has shunned all that is worst about mass media and consumer capitalism - but at what cost?
The island is entering a crucial stage of its history. Raúl Castro, the hardline younger brother, has been acting president since Fidel underwent gastro-intestinal surgery last summer; it is as yet unclear whether Castro will ever recover sufficiently to reassume total power.
This book, compiled from more than 100 hours of interviews completed in 2005, serves as an autobiography à deux - with conversations conducted by Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, who edits the left-wing French journal Le Monde diplomatique; this oral style has been successfully rendered with this translation by Andrew Hurley, who also provides invaluable notes on the text. It was disheartening to read Ramonet's toadying eulogy of an introduction, but the book does in fact provide unique insights into the mindset of today's longest-serving political head of state. Castro is a great orator, and this book proves him an engaging conversationalist; we find much of the easy charm captured in Oliver Stone's 2003 documentary, Comandante.
Castro studied law at the University of Havana, gaining an increasingly radical outlook as a student, that would later lead him to mount his insurgency against the corrupt American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. After military training in Mexico, Castro entered Cuba on the yacht Granma with 82 fighters, including one Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The account of the prolonged guerrilla campaign launched from the Sierra Maestra mountain range is truly remarkable.
After various betrayals and tactical blunders, at one point the guerrillas were down to a mere 12 men - yet within a couple of years, against all odds, Castro's troupe had gained the support of the people and found themselves marching triumphantly into Havana. Rather bizarrely, the rebels claim to have taken their inspiration for guerrilla tactics from Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
This is precisely the type of romantic image that Castro likes to cultivate. Although he rigorously denies a cult of personality, when you spend time in Cuba you soon see how inescapable his image is. What this book makes clear is Castro's awareness of his already totemic status in Latin American politics - he openly draws comparisons between himself and Cuba's national hero, José Martí; the Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar; Alexander the Great; and even Hannibal.
Castro's unwavering convictions, and evident belief that he has the support of the people, have lead to the curtailing of many liberties for Cubans. His assertion that "there's not a country with a cleaner history with respect to human rights than Cuba" is not bolstered much by the fact that Amnesty International claims there are currently 69 prisoners of conscience ("detained for peaceful exercise of the freedom of expression, association or assembly") on the island, while Human Rights Watch puts that number at nearer to 300. Castro passes off findings of the UN Human Rights Commission as "lies and calumnies".
The revolution has had undoubted successes: Cuba's healthcare and education systems are beyond compare. The island has over 70,000 doctors and sends other doctors around the world to provide free aid, most recently to Pakistan and Guatemala. There are lower infant mortality rates than in the US and higher immunisation rates.
Ramonet's questions are somewhat bland through the first half of the book - but later he does address more controversial issues such as Cuba's refusal to renounce the death penalty. Freedom of the press is also touched upon. The three state-run newspapers, Granma, Juventud Rebelde and Trabajadores are full of tawdry Party propaganda pieces - Castro defends all of this in the name of the "greater good". Art that does not toe the party line is suppressed and freedom of speech is non-existent. With the almost singular exception of the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, intellectuals have been unanimous in their condemnation of such repression.
My Life is at its best when detailing Castro's thoughts on major world figures or events: correspondence with Krushchev, Saddam Hussein, Kennedy and nine other US presidents; Che Guevara's campaigns in Africa and Bolivia, his strategic "recklessness, rashness"; the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Robert Mugabe as "an intelligent, tenacious, firm leader"; Tony Blair the "fire-breathing militarist"; thoughts on Plato, Victor Hugo and Pérez Galdós.
During my own travels I have found Cubans to be deeply ambivalent about the revolution: an ambivalence portrayed in Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's masterful film Memories of Underdevelopment, perhaps. In spite of abundant deficiencies, it is hard not to admire aspects of the Cuban revolution in these cynical times - the generosity of its internationalism for example - but implementation of the Comandante's idealism often seems at odds with human needs. When asked about the lack of basic material goods, Castro replies "values are what constitute true quality of life . . . even above food, shelter and clothing". Maybe soon Cubans will be able to make up their own minds on the matter.
JS Tennant is a former editor of Icarus, the Trinity College Dublin literary journal. He has travelled extensively in Cuba and now works in publishing in Geneva
My Life By Fidel Castro, with Ignacio Ramonet Allen Lane, 724pp. £25