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Happy
Birthday, Fidel
NewsMax.com.
Friday, Aug. 15, 2003.
Aug. 13 was Fidel Castro's 77th birthday.
My cousin Pedro's birthday also comes this month.
But the last one he celebrated was his 18th. That
was in 1961, the year he fell into the custody
of Fidel "Helluva Guy" Castro's secret
police, for "questioning." Pedro was
a frail, mild-mannered boy and member of the youth
group Catholic Action.
I was only 7 years old but still recall the phone
call. Four decades later the anguished screams
from my mother, grandmother and sisters still
echo in my head. My aunt was silent, however.
She'd fainted while holding the phone. The voice
had instructed her to come claim her boy's corpse.
My father went instead (Aunt Maria was a widow).
Remember the stricken Vito Corleone as he lifted
the blanket over Sonny? "Look what they did
to my boy," he stammered. "Please do
everything you can, " he implored his mortician
friend. "I don't want his mother to see him
this way."
My father said much the same for his favorite
nephew. I'll leave it at that. You get the picture.
Even at the wake my aunt could barely recognize
her only child. Till her death in 1993 in New
York, she never fully recovered psychologically.
Once at a demonstration in New York this saintly
woman, a Catholic social worker in Cuba, was denounced
as a "Worm!" and "Fascist!"
by jeering Charlie Rangel and Jose Serrano supporters.
Scholar Armando Lago has confirmed that my cousin
Pedro has a minimum of 110,000 co-victims. I wish
I could do them all justice here. One day we will.
Aunt Maria had (and has) hundreds of thousands
of grieving sisters at the hands of Ted Turner's
fishing buddy and Diane Sawyer's cuddle bunny
.
Yet I never see them interviewed on network TV,
though I'm always seeing people sniffling and
clearing their throats during interviews. Seems
TV people like that sort of thing. Instead, I
keep seeing the murderer himself asked things
like "What is your favorite color, Mr. President?"
I also saw the mass murderer's office featured
on CNN's "Cool-Digs!" segment.
Alejandro Del Valle would have been 64 this year,
but he died at 22 the same year as my cousin.
Three weeks before his death, Alejandro parachuted
into what seemed like the very jaws of death at
the Bay of Pigs. With his last handful of bullets
he led his horribly outnumbered men into a charge
against Stalin tanks that scrambled away in panic.
Somehow Alejandro survived the battle. With his
ammo expired and 50,000 Red troops combing the
long-doomed beachhead, Alejandro jumped on a rickety
sailboat with 22 others from his band of brothers
and shoved off. The first day at sea their fury
made them forget their wounds, their thirst and
the scorching sun. They spent it raging and cursing
the betrayal by their "allies."
By the eighth day, five of the men had died from
their wounds, from thirst and from exposure. All
received a burial at sea from their dazed comrades.
By the 10th day in the unrelenting sun without
food or water, three more had perished.
By the time a freighter picked them up, 18 days
after setting off from the doomed beachhead, 10
had died slowly and agonizingly, including Alejandro.
Dehydrated, starved, horribly sunburnt and probably
delirious, Alejandro had leaped overboard with
a knife to battle a huge shark that had followed
them for a day. He thought the raw flesh might
feed his slowly starving men.
The shark escaped and Alejandro was hauled aboard,
where he lay down in a hollow-eyed daze and said
nothing as night closed in.
Next morning, Alejandro's comrades found him
dead. He'd expended his last reserves of strength
against the shark.
The Apaches dispatched their most hated enemies
by staking them in the sun. Mel Gibson will soon
show that death by crucifixion worked as cruelly.
Roughly 50,000 Cubans have died like those young
heroes. That's an estimate. Many probably died
more quickly. Hammerheads and bull sharks make
quick work of their prey. Tiger sharks don't dally
at a meal. You've seen it on the Discovery Channel.
"Nature's perfect killing machine,"
the narrator deadpans during a close-up of those
teeth.
He'd be loath to admit it, a proper '60s person
with his Che T-shirts and all, but Eric Burdon
of the Animals wrote a song that resounds with
many Cubans: "We gotta get outta this place
... if it's the LAST thing we EVER do!"
The last thing, indeed, for 1 in 3.
"Dentuso" (toothy one)! Hemingway's
Old Man snarled while whacking those sharks with
his oar. "Cabrones!" he said as they
ripped and mangled his marlin. Dentuso's teeth
have the same effect on thirst-crazed humans dangling
helplessly in the water as on the Old Man's marlin.
A consistently hot item on Cuba's black market
is used motor oil: poor man's shark-repellant,
they say. Perhaps for a few minutes. I suppose
when desperate we all cling to false hopes. And
people get no more desperate than for a chance
to flee from the handiwork of Norman Mailer's
and Oliver Stone's hero.
Say that, by a small miracle, their recklessness
pays off and they sight land. Can any of us, sitting
in our dens with a brewskie and the remote, imagine
the elation? No, it's not a touchdown by our team.
No, the bachelorette didn't pick the one we thought
cutest. No, the Terminator didn't just vanquish
the bad guys. It's: "I'm delirious with thirst
and hunger and fatigue, I'm covered with second-degree
burns and totally destitute. But, Gracias a Dios,
that's AMERICA on the horizon!"
Well, here's comes the U.S. Coast Guard. Now
it's back to Castroland - and worse persecution.
The same day Del Valle set off in the sailboat
from the Bay of Pigs, 100 of his captured comrades
from the invasion were jammed into a tractor-trailer
for transport to prison in Havana. "No Mas!"
yelled the desperate men from inside the truck.
"No more FIT!! POR FAVOR!!"
They were struck with gun butts, jabbed with
bayonets, spit on and jammed in tighter. "Men
are DYING in here!" more yells. "They're
being CRUSHED!"
"GOOD!" Snarled the Castro commander.
"That'll save us the bullets to SHOOT YOU!"
BLA-A-A-A-A-A-M! and he emptied a Czech machine
gun through the truck, just over their heads (the
only shots this gallant comandante fired the entire
battle).
More bayonets jabbed and 50 more captives were
shoved in. It took 20 Castro soldiers huffing
and puffing to finally jam the doors shut and
muffle the screams.
It was an eight-hour drive to Havana in the scorching
tropical sun. We hear horror stories of prisoners
hauled off in cattle cars. Well, these men dreamed
of a cattle car. Those allow air. This was a rolling
oven. Soon the yelling stopped and the gasping
started. No vents in this trailer; only the bullet
holes let little wisps of air into the sweltering
death chamber.
The Brigadistas beat vainly on the walls. With
their last reserves of strength they rocked back
and forth, trying to tip the truck over on the
bumpy roads. Sweat and excrement sloshed at their
boots. The stronger captives lifted their weaker
or wounded comrades toward those bullet holes
for a precious gasp.
Finally the only effort in the chamber was gasping.
"Could Dante's inferno be worse?" asked
a survivor years later. Eight agonizing hours
later they finally opened the trailer's doors
in front of the prison camp. When all had stumbled
out, 10 remained on the filthy floor. They were
dead.
As always, whatever stumps the Castroites in
open battle they always manage against the helpless
and unarmed. The commander who ordered this, Osmany
Cienfuegos, was recently Cuba's minister of tourism.
Hope you enjoy your Cuban vacations, amigos.
Firing squads - "FUEGO!!"- are much
quicker than any of the above. So perhaps the
18,000 Cuban (and a few score American) boys staked
and blindfolded before them were actually among
the luckiest of Jesse Ventura's charming host's
victims? Perhaps Steven Spielberg's and George
McGovern's pal actually did them a favor?
It wouldn't surprise me to see Stevie and Georgie
claim this. Nothing surprises me from that bunch
anymore.
After all, according to George "peace candidate"
McGovern, his pal Castro - the man who panted
and salivated at getting his hands on nuclear
missiles, the man who but for the prudence of
the Butcher of Budapest would have launched 43
intermediate-range nuclear missiles at the U.S.
- this same man, is actually "very shy, sensitive
and likable."
And according to Oliver Stone, he's "a man
who cares deeply for his nation and his people."
("His" INDEED, Ollie!)
"If the missiles had remained," Che
Guevara told the London Daily Worker in November
1962, "We would have used them against the
very heart of the U.S., including New York. We
must never establish peaceful coexistence. In
this struggle to the death between two systems
we must gain the ultimate victory. We must walk
the path of liberation even if it costs millions
of atomic victims."
Che iconography on T-shirts and posters remains
very popular today, especially among peace activists
and anti-nuclear demonstrators.
"Fidel's feeling of hatred for this country
cannot even be imagined by Americans." That's
Juanita Castro, Fidel's own sister, testifying
to the House Committee on Un-American Activities
after defecting in June of 1965. "His intention
- his OBSESSION - is to destroy the U.S!"
"Say hello to my little friends!" Fidel
had dreamed of yelling at the hated Yankees right
before the mushroom clouds. "Damn that fuddy-duddy
Khrushchev!" He raged for years afterward.
As I write, Cuba jams our satellite broadcasts
into Iran using technology acquired from China,
which acquired it from the Clinton administration.
Two days after 9/11 the Defense Department's top
Latin American expert (Ana Belen Montes) was arrested
by the FBI as a Castro spy. The "Wasp network"
of 10 Castro spies arrested in Miami in '99 had,
among other goodies, the names and home addresses
of the U.S Southern Command's top officers.
Castro's cold war is not over - and he still
dreams of turning it hot.
Anne Applebaum writes in her new book, "Gulag,"
that, all told, 18 million people passed through
Stalin's prison camps. At any one time, 2 million
were incarcerated. That was out of a Soviet population
of 220 million.
Cuba's population in 1960 was 6.5 million. According
to Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans (young and old,
male and female) have passed through Castro's
prison camps. Punch your calculator … see
that? Turns out that calling Castro a "Stalinist"
actually downplays his repression.
But no problem. Few liberals call him a Stalinst.
Instead they call him "charming," "likable"
and "one hell of a guy!"
In March 1996 when Castro addressed the U.N.
( to a raucous, foot-stomping ovation, naturally)
on its 50th birthday, David Rockefeller asked
the honor of his presence for a celebrity-studded
dinner at his Westchester county estate.
"My pleasure," responded Castro. And
after holding court for a rapt Rockefeller along
with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas and Random
House's Harold Evans, he flashed over to Mort
Zuckerman's Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of
Beltway glitterati including Mike Wallace, Peter
Jennings, Bernard Shaw, Diane Sawyer and Barbara
Walters all jostled for a tryst, cooing and gurgling
to his every syllable.
And the Lider Maximo had barely scratched the
surface of his fan club. According to the U.S.-Cuba
Trade and Economic Council, on that visit Castro
received 250 dinner invitations from American
celebrities and power brokers. Many a millionaire,
pundit and socialite who narrowly escaped incineration
at his hands 36 years earlier now pouted at his
RSVP.
Last year at that Missile Crisis reunion and
"workshop" in Havana, a beaming Robert
McNamara hailed his charming host a "great
statesman" for his conduct during the crisis.
Kafka and Fellini, force-fed hallucinogenics
and locked in a room to brainstorm, couldn't dream
this stuff up. Friends … I give up.
Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in history from
Tulane University. He's the author of "Helldiver's
Rodeo," described as "Highly entertaining!"
by Publisher's Weekly, "A must-read!"
by Booklist, and "Just what the doctor ordered!"
by Ted Nugent.
You may reach Mr. Fontova by e-mail at hfontova@earthlink.net.
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